Page 121 of What's Left of Us

I needed real.

Dad offers me another beer, cracking the top off with the end of his spatula. “Something going on with you two?” he asks, addressing the elephant in the room.

“I don’t know.”

Every time I think we’ve talked it through, when I believe I’ve reeled her back in, she pulls away. Fights me. Fightsus.

I don’t show back up to the bookstore to prove to her I trust her. I ask how her day is, but her answers are short, held together by caution tape and a fake smile. She’ll ask me how my day is, and I don’t want to bore her with the details of another traffic stop or DUI arrest.

It’s made things…quiet.

It gives me a reason to stay at work longer.

To keep building my arrest record to prove that it wasn’t the captain’s words of encouragement that’s getting me the job at BCI, but because I work my ass off too.

I don’t ask Conklin for any more information he may have dug up on Nikolas Del Rossi because I know it won’t help us.

Dad hums. “Women get weird about their birthdays.”

I stare at the steam billowing from the grill when he opens the top. “She’s twenty-five, not forty-five, Dad.”

A reflective expression crosses the old man’s face as he flips the burgers. “Your mother bawled her eyes out when she turned thirty. Her coworkers told her it was all downhill from there.”

I snort, remembering that story being told at every birthday we had for Mom. She would always reevaluate life, saying getting older wasn’t so bad. Like how she didn’t have to pay a lot of money for highlights because mother nature was doing that for her. And I’ve definitely noticed how her once dark hair was now speckled with silver in ways it never was before, and the laugh lines around her lips and eyes that never existed ten years ago. It’s no different than Dad’s graying beard and how his hairline is receding in ways I pray mine never will.

Time is a bitch.

“Yeah,” I relent, glancing into the window at the girls sitting around the kitchen table talking.

Georgia is holding her necklace as she talks to my mother and sister.

A silver heart pendant with her initials in the middle—GD for Georgia Danforth.

It was a way to remind her we were in this together, even when it felt like we were at odds.

She must sense the attention because she turns in my direction and sees me staring. It’s hard to tell from this distance, but I think she smiles. From here, I see the tiniest lift of her lips, and it gives me a semblance of peace.

Something I haven’t felt in a long time.

It tells me we have a chance.

Dad says, “You’ll get through it. Every relationship has its rough patches. Do something nice for her. Women love that shit.”

For our sake, I hope he’s right.

“Maybe I will,” I murmur, thinking on it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Lincoln/ Four Years Ago

After years ofintimidating “yes sirs” and “yes ma’ams” while putting endless time in at the station, I officially get promoted as an investigator with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

Adjusting to the new position means a lot of time spent away from the two-thousand-square-foot split-level ranch that I managed to buy for Georgia and me with a large loan and a prayer that it could fix whatever is slipping away day by day.

A new space means a fresh start, and we need that.

But between starting the new job and settling into the house with only the furniture we took with us from the apartment within six months, it’s hard to find a routine. The stress is heightened, which has led to a lot of heated disagreements about paint color, what to have for dinner, and other mundane shit I’d normally never think twice about.

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