Page 6 of What's Left of Us

“I’m trying to figure out if you’re a cat mom or a dog mom,” I answer honestly.

The corners of her lips lift a fraction. “Both. I have one cat and two dogs. They keep me busy in what little spare time I have.”

So she’s a busy woman. A workaholic like me. Although I stay busy because I have nothing else in my life. It’s a way to drown out the thoughts that keep me up at night. What’s her motive?

She doesn’t ask me if I have pets, not that I’d expect her to. The things she wants to talk to me about go beyond which dog breed I find superior or what vacuum works best for getting fur off carpets.

Heaviness settles a little deeper into my stomach when I think about the events that led me to this seat, and the throbbing ache in my shoulder rattles to life.

Good. Another reminder.

The good doctor clears her throat. “I have a lot of experience dealing with both men and women in your field, Mr. Danforth. Your line of work is not easy. You see a lot—get put on the front line of a lot of very difficult, dangerous situations. Each of your experiences may be unique, but the gravity of them is all very similar. There’s nothing wrong with feeling the effects of the job or talking about them if things go awry.”

Awry.Is that how she views it? “That’s putting it mildly,” I mumble, meaning to keep the scoffed tone to myself.

I’ve been molded to be guarded after serving four years in the Marines, two years as a sheriff’s deputy, and now seven yearswith the New York State Police. Law enforcement is taxing in more ways than one, sure, but I’ve learned to do what a lot of my peers can’t. Detach before it completely drains you. Three years on the road and four years working on various crime scenes have reminded me that humanity can be a fucked-up thing with a lot of fucked-up people.

I’ve witnessed it firsthand.

Experienced life’s repercussions.

The more you take home with you at the end of the day, the harder you’ll slip. I’ve seen guys lose it. Some of them even quit their job and take a different one, with fifty percent pay cuts for the sake of their sanity.

“Not everybody is cut out for this job,” I tell her, jaw ticking when the tip of her pen drags across the notepad to write God only knows what.

When she sets down the ballpoint, there’s a look on her face that I recognize all too well when we lock eyes. Sympathy. “You may be right, but nobody can sustain a lifetime of suppressed emotions either. We all have our breaking points.”

I swallow the lump forming in the back of my throat and sit straighter, not bothering to look away first. “I can’t change what happened.”

Her head dips once in thoughtful acknowledgment, her features softening. “No, you can’t. But that doesn’t mean you can’t process it and mourn. If you bottle up all of those pent-up emotions, you’ll combust. And if there’s anything I want you to take away from these sessions, it’s that what happened wasn’t your fault.”

Those words are a punch to the gut.

I’ve heard them before, but they don’t soak in or make a difference. If anything, they keep me up as I think about what happened that night. And it always leads me back to the same thought—the same hypothetical what-if.

Because if I’d done things differently, if I didn’t let myself be ruled by my emotions, then my friend would still be alive today.

“I appreciate the sentiment, doc,” I say, standing up and walking to the door. “But I didn’t come here to be lied to.”

*

“Heard you walkedout of your therapy appointment,” Lieutenant Folts says as soon as I walk into his office. He doesn’t even bother looking up from the report he’s reading over to spare me a glance.

I drop some papers onto his desk that he asked me to look over for him. “I thought the happenings of those sessions are supposed to be confidential.”

When he lifts his head, there’s a deadpan expression on his face. “You do understand that they’re not going to clear you for full duty until you’ve completed the grief counseling, right? It’s not just your physical you’ll need to pass.”

My eye twitches at his firm tone. For someone barely ten years older than me, he sounds fatherly. “You and I both know those appointments are ridiculous. It’s a PR stunt to show the public that the state is willing to kiss our booboos and act like they give a fuck about our wellbeing before ripping the Band-Aid off and sending us back out there to put our lives at risk some more.”

He sits back with a sigh, his chair groaning under his weight. Ever since Folts became head of the BCI, he’s packed on a few pounds. His promotion came with a bigger paycheck to go along with a larger uniform and hair loss. When I took on this position, I told myself I wasn’t going to be stuck behind a desk eighty percent of the time, like Folts told me I’d be. I wanted to become a detective to make a difference, not make phone calls.

“Look, Hawk,” he begins, using the nickname I got during my probationary period doing field training as a rookie. Every new recruit is assigned to a seasoned officer to do on-the-road training after you graduate from the academy. The officer I worked with noticed my ability to point out things he never saw. He said I had eyes like a hawk, and the name stuck from there. “I know you’re not happy about this, but I do think it’s worth a real chance. In my eighteen years, I’ve seen what these kinds of situations have done to people.”

“Respectfully, sir, I’m not the victim. And I don’t know why everybody is treating me like one.”

He studies me for a split second, scrubbing his clean-shaven jaw. “Marissa popped by today. She was hoping to see you.”

My spine goes ramrod straight at the name.

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