I paste on my game face and head downstairs. I’ve thrown a sheet over the construction debris in the dining room, but the place hangs heavy with the scent of sawdust and stain.
Eve is waiting for me in the kitchen, slicing a watermelon. Outside, the handful of the younger guests are playing on the swing set I spent all of last weekend, and then some, building. A couple parents—neighbors—are helping themselves to the adult beverages. I step up to my wife, pressing a kiss to the nape of her neck, the memory of her scent still swirling inside me.
“I’m going to chop a finger off if you keep doing that,” she says, glancing up at me.
I reach around and grab a piece of the fruit. She points her weapon at me, turning in my arms. Hazel-green eyes, soft curves despite her toned body—the woman is tenacious about her morning runs—and a tolerance for my eccentricities that still astounds me.
I’m not sure how I got this lucky, but a guy with my history shouldn’t ask too many questions.
I kiss her, quickly, even as she puts a hand to my chest, pushes me away. “Hey, Silas,” she says over my shoulder.
I turn, holding out a hand.
Her former assistant, now armed with his own prestigious title, meets my grip.
“Rembrandt.” He gives me a small nod, but no smile.
“Silas.” Two could play that game. He’s never been fond of me. Told me flat out once that I’m not good enough for Eve. I guess we agree on that.
“Play nice you two.” Eve uses the tone that earned her the August Vollmer Forensic Science award, and waves her knife. “Don’t make me use this.”
“You’re scaring me,” I say as Silas herds his daughter—Cyra—to the backyard.
“Somebody should.” Eve hands me the bowl of watermelon.
Maybe I should be scared, because Eve really can handle herself. The product of being the only daughter of a cop, and surrounded by brothers.
I take the bowl outside, into the heat and sunshine. Overhead, the sky is a brilliant blue, a perfect Memorial Day weekend, the redolence of cut grass and lilacs in the fresh Minnesota breeze.
Not a day for darkness, for memories, the kind that could cut a man to his soul, so I force away the familiar, murky ache and smile for the gaggle of little girls and their parents.
Why remember anyway? I have too much good in my life to let the past steal it.
At least that’s what I tell myself.
My neighbor Russell—former lineman for the Vikings, and current attorney—lifts his sweating Stella to me even as he continues his conversation with Gia, from across the street. Gia is dark-haired, petite, curvy and newly single, separated from Alex who moved out in a loud domestic event two weeks ago. Eve and I watched from our porch, her hand on my arm. I wasn’t sure if she was holding me back or waiting to push me into the fight.
Frankly, I wasn’t sure myself. My instincts are a little off after three years away from the force.
Russell is leaning down, his attention back on Gia and I fear there’s more to the conversation than I want to know.
Perhaps my instincts aren’t as off as I think.
Silas has helped himself to a beer in the cooler—he’s used to Eve’s expectations by now—and pops the top with his ring as he comes back to stand by me. “They grow up too fast,” he says, referring to Cyra and Ashley and the rest of the first graders. “How’s the book coming?”
Small talk, because he’s a bright guy, a crime scene investigator and one look at my house suggests an answer.
Apparently, writer’s block can’t be solved by remodeling the kitchen, building out the back deck or re-tiling the fireplace in our 1930s craftsman.
“It’s coming.” Silas is the last person I’m about to let dig away at my choices. That critique, I leave to Burke.
“Keeping busy?” I counter. “Lots of crime in Minnetonka these days?”
I mean it as a joke, sorta, but I can almost hear Eve in my ears, don’t start. Some people want the suburban life.
“Enough,” Silas says, his mouth tightening at the corners. We’re opposites of the same coin, perhaps. He’s a sandy blonde to my dark brown, although his hair is cut short, and yeah, I’m starting to resemble a clichéd version of reclusive author, my hair long and curly behind my ears. Eve can nearly grab it into a ponytail. She doesn’t hate it, though—or at least I don’t think so, given the way she plays with it when we watch T.V. Silas is about my build, six foot flat-footed, and although I have a couple years on him, I’ve kept up my workouts. I could still take him in a pickup game.
Or in other games.
Silas’s gaze flickers to Cyra and Ash, comparing, maybe, the way it all worked out. I see old stories, old recriminations rising in his pale green eyes.
If he’d had his way, Eve would be living in some modern rambler on an acre lot overlooking a biking trail in some oak-shaded safe suburban neighborhood.
Instead, she landed a vintage fixer upper with character, situated just a few blocks off Lake Calhoun, in the shadow of Minneapolis, on a postage stamp lot.
With me.
I walk over to the cooler to grab a cold beer.
Ash is swinging, her pumps arcing her high into the wind, and I want to tell her to be careful. The words are almost out when a scream—followed by a word the seven-year-olds shouldn’t hear—turns me on my heel.
A crash, and I’m at the door, barreling inside.
Eve is standing at the sink, her hands in front of her, deflecting the spray of
