Page 10 of Wild Justice

One thing was for sure, this town was never going to be the same. Change was happening whether they liked it or not.

3

“Did you come here to try again at talking me out of this?”

Lulu kept her gaze straight ahead, not wanting to look at her father’s disappointed expression. How many times had she seen it in the past? Too many to count. Her youth had been filled with his frustration at her behavior, and she’d been too young to explain it.

It was only now that she was older that she realized that her “zest for life” wasn’t too far from reality. She wanted to experience things - places, people. She wanted to feel the wind on her face, and the sunshine on her skin. She wanted to plunge into life and let it run all over her. Her need to sink ass deep into things wasn’t something she consciously sought out. If she’d had her druthers, she would have been boring like Ben. But she was who she was.

Not a daredevil per se, although she’d done some stupid shit in the past. It was the rush of adrenaline when she’d try to do something that others wouldn’t do whether it was jumping into the pool when she couldn’t yet swim - and she had a little scar on her eyebrow for that one - or going hell-for-leather down the road on a motorcycle screaming at the top of her lungs.

For that one, she’d been grounded for a week. Since she’d only been thirteen, she couldn’t say that she was angry at her mom and dad for that punishment.

She wanted to know about everything and everyone, not the most realistic goal a person could have. Becoming an expert in one thing didn’t hold any lure for her. She wanted to read all the books, see all the world, talk to all the people. Honestly, it was exhausting sometimes.

She’d mellowed as she’d grown up, of course. She still had the energy to try everything, but she was realistic enough to know that it simply wasn’t possible. Especially when she had rent, food, and electricity to pay for. In other words, life had intervened. Just in the nick of time, some might say.

“No, I didn’t,” her dad replied. He held something in his hands, but she couldn’t see what it was. “Lulu, I know I don’t say this nearly enough, but I am so proud of the person that you have become.”

He didn’t say that often, and she immediately felt a touch of fear in her heart.

“Um, you’re not dying or anything are you? Is that why you finally retired?”

Luckily, he laughed and shook his head.

“No, Lulu-bean. I am not dying. What I am is trying to get smarter.”

“I’m trying that, too.”

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” he laughed. “Although your mom doesn’t seem to have any trouble at all.”

“Moms are like that.”

It was quiet again for a long moment, but then he pushed what he’d been holding into her hands.

“I want you to have this. I know they probably ordered you one, but it would mean a lot to me if you wore it.”

Lulu’s eyes filled with hot tears as she saw what he’d given her. In a million years, she’d never expected this.

It was his sheriff’s badge, the gold star still shiny although worn at the edges. He must have cleaned it up.

“They gave this to you in a frame,” she said, her voice choked with emotion as her fingertips ran over the warm metal. “For your retirement. So, you could look at it every day and remember your career.”

Her father Seth Reilly was a legendary lawman. Nothing in the world could take that from him. She’d be lucky to be a fraction of the sheriff he had been.

Tears were sparkling in her dad’s clear blue eyes as well. She reached out instinctively, and he pulled her in for a hug.

“I don’t need something hanging on the wall. I can look at you, Lulu-bean. I love you, and you’re going to make a great sheriff. No one cares more about this town than you do.”

“You do. You care.”

“Yes, I do. And now it’s your turn.”

They were both crying, sitting in the official SUV, like lunatics. Anyone walking by probably thought that they were simply going to miss one another. Silly to cry though, when he and her mom would be back in a few weeks. They wouldn’t be gone forever.

But someday they would. Even Seth Reilly couldn’t live hundreds and thousands of years.

She dashed at her wet cheeks with the back of her hand, shaking her head.

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