Page 530 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

She nods, as if taking in my words. “So, why? Whatever possessed you to write a book?”

I feel a sort of freedom in my answer, one that comes with impunity. It’s not like I’m going to wake up tomorrow with a hangover, regretting the previous night.

In other words, it’s my dream, so I’ll do what I want.

I take a gulp of my beer, wipe the foam from my mouth. “I started it as a journal. Just my thoughts, my daily activities. A place to sort it all out, you know?”

“Sort what out? Life?”

I lift a shoulder. “Why, maybe. The reasons people do what they do. Maybe I was looking for insight.” I lean forward. “Or to learn from my mistakes.”

“You had an extraordinary amount of collars for a rookie detective.” Her pretty eyes are on me and Burke raises an eyebrow at me, even as he’s sopping up his fries with ketchup.

“I got lucky. And smarter, perhaps.”

Burke chuckles. “No, let’s just stay with lucky.”

“Instincts, Burke. That’s what it’s called.” I reach over and snag a fry.

“It’s a good book,” Eve says finally. “Unguarded.”

I’m not sure what to do with that. Reviewers called it “gritty, honest, and a raw portrayal of the darker side of crime.” I stay silent.

She is back to tearing her pretzel. “That story of the little girl who went missing.”

Yeah, I remember, because for a long time I couldn’t shake the echo of our own dark years after Mickey vanished. Age four, she went missing from Minnehaha Park while on a family picnic. We searched for days, with dogs and local volunteers. She was found not at the park but ninety minutes north, near a wilderness park in Little Falls. She’d been taken by a coworker of the mother’s.

I nod. “It was a passing comment from the father, during the initial interview that caught my attention. Something about his wife talking to a friend. We tracked down the friend, put a name to him and linked him to a truck spotted at the crime scene.”

“And arrested him back at his job,” Eve says, her gaze holding mine.

Okay, despite the dream, my throat is thick because I wrote about it—not just the case, but the anger that gnawed in my gut for weeks afterward. The nights I roamed the house, or haunted the gym. Maybe those were the secrets Mulligan hated revealed.

I did leave a few things out, however, and I look away. There’s a reason a guy like me can’t believe in happy endings.

All we can hope for are endings we might, somehow, survive.

“I remember that case,” Burke says, reaching for a napkin. “Rem didn’t sleep for three days while we hunted for her.”

I lift a shoulder, but really, how could I? Not with Mickey a ghost in my head. “I promised the family answers.”

“You promise everyone answers,” Burke says, crumpling the napkin and tossing it into the middle of the table. “Someday you’re going to make promises you can’t keep.”

He has no idea. I sigh. “Listen, answers are all they have left. Their lives are permanently shattered and there’s no coming back. If I give them answers, then maybe they can stop hoping and start figuring out how to live with the wreckage of their lives.”

I hear my own jaded history in my words, the fact my parents spent the better part of their lives holding onto a barren hope. I’m not sure why I let this spill out, maybe remnants of the frustration of my waking life, the fact that I still haven’t mended from my own jagged pieces. Maybe you never do, really. Maybe, when tragedy hits, all you have left is the broken shards of happiness.

My sudden morose comment has pushed silence between us, stolen the magic from the dream.

As is her nature, Eve rescues me. “That’s why I became a CSI. Answers.” She offers me a smile. “We’ll find the bomber, Rem.”

I nod, the image of Melinda Jorgenson and her son suddenly in my head.

And, she called me Rem. Nice. We’re making progress.

She grabs a napkin and wipes off her fingers. “I think I’ll get my father your book for Christmas. Maybe you could sign it for me.” She grins, and something about it strikes me as different, odd. Whole, unreserved.

It makes me, ache, suddenly, to see it. Because I really miss that smile, the one without the fractures.

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