Page 25 of Beckett
Tears burned behind my eyes. I blinked hard, refusing to let them fall. I was thankful Beckett’s focus wasn’t on me and the things I couldn’t explain. It was on Todd—on the man we’d both loved and lost.
And for the first time in forever, I wasn’t completely alone with that grief.
Chapter 8
Beckett
“Todd’s sister,” I repeatedagain, the words hitting me squarely in the chest. My mind struggled to reconcile the woman in front of me with the image I’d carried all these years. “Jesus, I can’t believe you’re the little sister Todd talked about.”
The kitten squirmed in my hands, but I barely noticed. All I could see was Audra—really see her now. Those hazel eyes with their flecks of gold that Todd had described perfectly. The way she tilted her head, just like he used to when working through a problem.
“I hadn’t talked to him in years.” The admission scraped my throat raw. “But somehow when he talked about his little sister, I always pictured…” I shook my head. “A young girl, I guess. Pigtails and skinned knees. Not…”
“Not someone my age?” She wrapped her arms around herself, a defensive gesture I recognized too well.
“Not the beautiful woman with me now.”
The words slipped out before I could stop them. Color touched her cheeks, and she looked away, focusing on something past my shoulder.
“Todd used to brag about you constantly.” I shifted Chaos to one arm, needing to move, to process.Fuck, it sucked that Todd was dead. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. “He said you were the smart one in the family. Got your degree while working full time. He was so damn proud when you landed that PR job in Seattle.”
A sound escaped her—half laugh, half sob. “He talked about me?”
“Are you kidding? I knew your whole life story. How you rescued that three-legged dog when you were twelve and convinced your parents to keep him. How you won your middle school science fair with some project about water purification. How you once talked your way out of a speeding ticket by explaining the physics of why the radar gun must have malfunctioned.”
That got a real laugh, watery but genuine. “I can’t believe he told you about that.”
“He told me everything. How you used to leave Post-it notes with terrible jokes in his lunch in high school. Even after he got out of the military, he talked about you the few times we spoke. How you’d text him random facts at three in the morning just to make sure he was staying awake on patrol night shifts.”
Her shoulders shook, and I knew she was crying. I had to fight the urge to pull her against me. She looked so lost, so young despite everything she’d clearly been through.
“Tell me about him,” she whispered. “The Todd you knew. I got his cop stories, but not as much about his military stuff… He never talked much about that time.”
I settled Chaos against my chest, for once, the little fiend not going into battle with everything around him. “Where do I start?Your brother was one of those guys who could find humor in anything. Middle of a sandstorm, equipment failing, MREs that tasted like cardboard—Todd would crack some joke that had everyone laughing despite everything.”
She moved closer, drawn by the stories of her brother. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that the careful distance she usually maintained had shrunk to something almost normal.
“There was this one time,” I continued, warming to the memories, “we were at this remote FOB—Forward Operating Base. Absolutely nothing around for miles except sand and more sand. Morale was shit. Everyone was on edge. Then Todd somehow convinced the supply sergeant to smuggle in ingredients for s’mores.”
“S’mores? In Afghanistan?”
“I know, right? To this day, I don’t know how he pulled it off. But there we were, bunch of hard-ass soldiers sitting around a trash-can fire, roasting marshmallows on cleaning rods. He even got the lieutenant in on it. Said it was a vital morale-building exercise.”
The laugh that bubbled out of her was the most beautiful sound I’d heard in years. Bright and real, nothing held back. For just that moment, the shadows lifted from her face.
“That sounds exactly like Todd.” She wiped at her eyes. “He once convinced his entire precinct to do a lip-sync battle for charity. Had these tough Portland cops performing boy band choreography.”
“I would pay good money to see that.”
“Oh, I have video.” The words came out light, teasing, before reality crashed back down. Her smile faltered. “Had. I had video. On my phone. But I can’t…”
Access it. Use it. Risk the digital footprint. I filled in the blanks she couldn’t voice. What I didn’t know waswhy.
“Tell me another one,” she said quickly, deflecting from whatever had driven her to abandon her digital life. “Please.”
So I did. Told her about the time Todd jury-rigged a coffeemaker from MRE heaters and spare parts. About how he’d shared his care packages with the younger soldiers who never got mail. About the way he could de-escalate tense situations with locals using nothing but broken Arabic and universal hand gestures for “friend.”
With each story, she relaxed fraction by fraction. Her arms uncrossed. Her shoulders dropped from their defensive hunch. She even laughed again when I described Todd’s attempt to teach Iraqi kids how to play baseball using rolled-up socks and a broken tent pole.
