I move her out of the way—the spray hits me full on, soaking through my T-shirt, my jeans—and I cup my hand over the torrent, even as I try and shunt the flow. “Turn off the water under the sink!”
“What—?”
I grab a towel and shove it over the spray, deflecting it down and hit my knees, digging out the cleaning products that clutter the cupboard before finding the shut off valve.
The spray dies and I sit for a moment in a puddle on our new wood floor. Eve is standing over me, and she’s not amused, the water turning her white blouse nearly transparent, her hair dripping. She picks up a towel and presses it into the ends of her hair.
“I’m a writer, not a plumber.”
She rolls her eyes, and that hurts just a little, but she offers me her hand. “You’re a detective. Figure out why my faucet is busted.”
Like daughter, like mother. “The rubber gasket on the seal is leaking.” I hear the doorbell and add, “You should go change.” I’m thinking of Silas, but I’m not keen on Russell getting a glimpse of the goods either.
She tosses the towel in the sink and I head to the door.
My step hiccups just a second before I open it because I recognize the man through the side lights.
Tall, skin the color of a starless night, bald, and by his stance, still training weekly at Quincy’s. He’s staring at the door as if he’d like to take it out with his X-ray vision. He’s holding a file box almost like a shield.
This will be fun.
I open the door. “Burke.”
“Sorry, I’m late.”
He’s not on the list, but of course Eve would have invited him. He offers me a smile, and I know he’s trying. But you don’t partner with a guy for nearly twenty years without knowing his tells, when and why he’d flinch, and most importantly, the ability to read the disappointment in his eyes.
Frankly, I’ve sort of gotten used to it.
“No problem.”
He sets the box down on a bench by the door. I recognize the handwriting, the frayed edges of the cardboard, the warped fit of the cover, and can’t help but react. “What is that doing here?”
“It showed up at the station with a note for you.” Burke lifts a shoulder. “Part of his estate, I guess.”
Police Chief John Booker, having the last word. Of course. “I thought the files were destroyed when we scanned them into the database.”
Burke glances at the box and for a second, we stand in silence, the memory of John Booker between us. Regrets and what-ifs and the burning is back inside my gut.
Oddly, and maybe for the first time ever, I’m saved by my parents strolling up the walk.
“Rembrandt,” my father says, landing on our wide porch. He still carries himself like the farmer-slash-builder he is, and I’m sure we’ll later have a dissection of my current projects. Wide-shouldered, his hair now fully gray and thinning, Vincent Stone bears the scars in his countenance of holding us all together—well, at least my mother—during the years of wondering, a decade of grief and anger and questions that held us hostage.
This week is the unfortunate anniversary of the discovery of my brother’s remains, twenty-three years ago, and I can see it lurking behind my mother’s smile as she arrives. She still walks with a cane, sometimes struggles to form words, the right side of her face sags, always at half-pout.
In this way, it’s always with us, Mickey’s murder, embedded in our bones. But like good Minnesotans, we don’t talk about it, tuck it away along with the anger, the frustration.
But sometimes, there’s just nothing to say.
“Mom,” I say and give her a hug. Her bones are fragile beneath my touch, and she’s lost more weight, her crazy no salt diet stripping the fat from her bones. “You look good,” I add, because that’s our way.
She pats my cheek, knows that I’m lying. “Where’s my favorite granddaughter?” Her words are slushy, but we’re all used to that and I understand her perfectly. Her favorite granddaughter. It’s just a funny thing she says—because we all know Ash is her only granddaughter.
“In the backyard. Waiting for you.” I wink and it feels like we’ve put ourselves back together, that we’re going to be okay, for one more day.
My dad comes in and I know I should mention the fact that it’s his birthday week too. But we long ago stopped celebrating anything—birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving. After all, what did we have to be thankful for?
They head into the backyard and it’s then that I turn and, on a crazy whim I know I’ll pay for, I rip free the packing tape on the box and peek inside one edge of the cover.
Inside, nearly packed to the rim, lay files and files of my old cases. Cold cases. Failures, frustrations, and everything I hated about my job.
The cases that won’t let me sleep.
Thank you, John Booker. In his last vengeful act, he gave them to me. Punishment for not being the guy he wanted me to be, maybe.
I pick up the box (the last thing I want is for someone to root through these) and head into my office, a room at the front of the house, away from the chaos of the kitchen.
There’s a smell to my office—coffee, old books, the leather from a chair Eve bought right after I left the force—that should inspire me, I’m sure of it. I even have the cover of my first—and currently, only, book—on my wall. Success, right?
I’m starting to think that first blockbuster is a fluke, a literary anomaly. I’m sure my agent thinks this too, but his emails to me are full of how’s that new ending going, and we have publishers interested.
Everyone, trying to keep me from wallowing in the dark truth.
I blew it, and big, and there’s no going
