Page 5 of We Are All Guilty Here

“Not really. I felt great.” Emmy figured the insomnia, back pain, four cavities in her teeth, and having to carry around an extra pair of pants for when she inevitably pissed herself were a walk in the park compared to dislocating her pelvis, losingtwo liters of blood and projectile vomiting from the pain during delivery. “I barely even remember it.”

Vanna gave an annoyingly beatific smile. “Babies are a miracle from God.”

“They’re something.”

Brett asked Emmy, “Where’d you see this Madison last? I can help you look for her.”

“No need.” Emmy assumed whatever urgent event had made Madison desperate enough to actually talk had likely passed by now. “I’ll catch up with her later.”

Brett gave her a careful look. Emmy shrugged him off, mostly because they didn’t have the time or resources to handle a fifteen-year-old in a fit of pique. Hundreds of people were trying to leave at the same time and there was only one road in and out of the park. The cars up on the hill were squeezed in like sardines. The two small lots by the baseball diamonds were double parked. Add to that the heat and alcohol, and the odds were high that someone was going to need a ride to the hospital before their shifts ended. The time for standing around and talking was over.

She asked Brett, “Which one do you want: traffic cop or referee?”

Brett groaned out a thinking noise. “Traffic. Got punched in the face last time I refereed.”

Vanna pinched his cheek. “You got him back good, didn’t you, baby?”

Emmy ignored the way Vanna cooed at him in a silly, breathy voice. The woman was only five years younger than Emmy, but she still acted like a teenager. That would change in a few months when she was operating on zero sleep and Brett was taking double shifts because the risk of being shot during a traffic stop was still better than dealing with a screaming baby.

Emmy told him, “Radio if you need me.”

She stuck her hat back on her head as she walked into the lurching mass of people, heading down the hill while everybody else was trying to go up. Emmy studied the faces, tried to figure out who’d had too much to drink, who would cause trouble, who needed an escort back to their car, and who was just irritated that it was taking too long to get to the parking lot.

This predictive part of policing was something they couldn’t teach at the academy. Emmy had been on the job six years and had finally developed a cop’s instinct. Sometimes it was triggered by a sudden burst of sound or even absolute silence, but most times it was nothing more than a subtle change in the air, a sort of static charge she felt on the surface of her skin that told her something terrible was about to happen. Her father called itthe tickle, and Emmy figured a man who’d served in the sheriff’s office since Eisenhower was in the White House could call it whatever he wanted. If Emmy knew the town like the back of her hand, her father knew it like the arteries inside of his heart.

Clifton County was in the south-western part of Georgia, with a population of nearly 20,000 people. Fewer than a thousand of them lived in the county seat of North Falls. The largest of the four cities was Verona, where the auto parts factory was located. Ocmulgee was known for its outlet stores along US 19, and Clayville had one of the biggest vocational schools in the state, mainly because it fed skilled labor into the factory. Both North Falls and Verona were bordered by the Flint River, which started below the Atlanta airport, then flowed through the bottom part of the state into the Florida panhandle, where it eventually drained into the Gulf.

The three larger cities were big enough to have their own police services, but the sixteen-person sheriff’s office serviced North Falls, which made sense. The courthouse was downtown. Deputies were in charge of the jail and prisoner transport. They also placed resource officers in the schools, performed patrol duties, assisted with investigations throughout the county, and did crowd control during public events, which was why Emmy and Brett were at the park.

There was a much bigger Fourth celebration on the banks of the Flint, but North Falls had always done its own thing. The money was here. The people who ran the county were here. In a region where outsiders were suspect, North Falls had a particular distrust for anything that wasn’t born and bred within the 190-acre city limits of North Falls.

Which was why most of the faces Emmy saw in the crowd were familiar. From the grocery store from downtown from thegym from the diner from the hair salon in Peggy Ingram’s basement. Some of them smiled when they saw her. Others scowled. Then there were the busybodies who stared openly because they’d seen the fight with Jonah and they wanted more gossip.

Emmy looked down at her phone as if she’d just gotten a very important message. The stupid thing had been vibrating in her pocket for the last hour, but she’d been blissfully ignorant of the goings on. There were six missed calls from her crazy aunt, most likely complaining about winos swimming in her pond or hobos stealing wild blackberries off her fencerow.

Her cousin Taybee had sent all the girl-cousins a text suggesting a Sunday potluck hosted at her sprawling family farm. She had writtenno boys allowed, which had resulted in one cousin immediately accusing her of reverse sexism. Three cousins had bypassed the potential spat and asked what to bring. A fourth had privately texted Emmy to say she wasn’t going because she still wasn’t talking to Taybee. Another cousin had texted privately to suggest an alternative dinner at a restaurant where people waited on you, and nobody had to cook. And then Taybee had privately texted Emmy to ask if she’d heard aboutthis alternative dinner.

A fat drop of sweat rolled off the tip of her nose and hit the screen.

No way she was weighing in on the cousin drama, especially with Taybee, a shittifyingly wealthy lawyer who tackled every dispute like she was cross-examining an ax murderer. Emmy thumbed down the list to find a text from Jonah. He’d sent a kind of peace-offering photo of Cole biting down on a chocolate-covered ice cream cone, which was great because every eleven-year-old should freebase a pound of sugar before bedtime.

Emmy heaved out a heavy sigh. She couldn’t bring herself to break Jonah’s balls again, so she texted back a smiley face, then stuck her phone back in her pocket. She was supposed to be working, not worrying about her marriage. She adjusted her duty belt, which between her gun, extra ammo, pepper spray, radio, flashlight, Taser, baton, multi-tool, and keys weighed approximately 6,000 pounds. She took off her hat and wiped her forehead with her arm.

Good Lord God it was hot.

Her skin was sticky. Her hair felt spray-painted onto her skull. The Kevlar vest under her uniform had turned into the world’s heaviest sandpaper, and her bra’s underwire was stabbing into her ribs. And to top it off, she had a pounding headache. She’d told Madison to drink some water, but hadn’t taken her own advice.

Madison.

There was no SnoBall stand. There was no sign of Cheyenne, either. Emmy had picked up a kind of low-key worry over both girls from Hannah. The two were the subject of many late-night phone calls and drinking sessions at the Clifton Biergarten. Madison had always been so easily led. Cheyenne was the kind of teenager who made life interesting and exciting. God knew Emmy understood the allure. She had been bored to tears with every person, place and thing at that age. It was one of the many reasons she had fallen so hard for Jonah.

And look where that had gotten her.

“Em?” Hannah was coming up the hill. Like everybody else, she looked hot and sweaty and ready to get the hell out of here. “So, Jonah.”

Emmy rolled her eyes so hard she almost glimpsed an alternate dimension. Hannah wasn’t asking for details. She was sharing in the existential angst of being married to a disappointing man.

“Sorry.” Hannah squeezed her arm in solidarity but didn’t hold on because it was too hot. “Did you talk to Madison?”

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