Page 85 of The Evening Wolves

“Yes.”

The phone dinged again.

“I think I could do something good, Ree. You know how it is—when you’re police, you’re always cleaning up the mess after it happens. This is a chance for me to help fix problems, you know? Really get to the heart of things.”

Emery cleared his throat. “Wroxall doesn’t have a law school.”

“Right, but wherever we move, there’ll be a university.”

In the winter sunlight, motes of dust hung motionless in the air.

“We’re moving.”

John glanced over his shoulder. He wore a tiny frown: the corners of his mouth, the furrow in his forehead, even a hint of it around his eyes. He was always good at lying, Emery thought. Always so good at it, especially when he was trying to protect himself.

“You want to stay?”

It was harder than Emery expected to swallow.

“Come on, Ree. From the minute you set foot in Wahredua again, you’ve wanted to leave. You hate this town. You told me the other week it was an infected genital wart, and that was because somebody cut you off on Market Street.”

“This is our home.”

“You hated it when you were growing up here. You only came back because of the job.” John gave him a look like he was trying to see Emery more clearly, as though there were something confusing about this interaction, as though he were peering at him from a long way off. Always, Emery thought. He’d always been good at lying because he knew people. Because he’d always been so good at reading them. “Colt’s not from here. Evie’s too young to care. We’ll have to work out something with Cora for custody, but honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she wanted to move too. She’d love not to travel so much for work.”

“John.” He stopped because when he reached for the words, they weren’t there. He heard himself saying again, “This is our home.”

The phone dinged again.

“Will you turn that off?”

“I don’t understand what the problem is. You want to stay? Is that what you’re telling me? Because you love it here, and you want to raise our children here, and you think after everything that’s happened, this is the best place for our family to be?”

“No—”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“The problem is these small-minded assholes shouldn’t get to run us out of town. That’s the problem. The problem is we have a life here. I have a business here.”

“Which you could do anywhere else. Hell, North would probably cry if you asked him if you could work at Borealis.”

“We have friends here. Family. Our children have friends here.”

“Remind me again about Colt’s friends.”

Emery rubbed his hands over his knees. The phone dinged again. It sounded like someone was ringing the doorbell, had their finger jammed on it. “You have a responsibility.”

John straightened from the drawer. He turned around. His mouth hardened into a slash, and a hint of color came into his cheeks. “Say that again.”

“You have a responsibility. To this town. To the people here.” To our family, he wanted to say, but that ringing in his head made it impossible. “You took an oath.”

“I took an oath.”

“I don’t understand—”

“What about you? You took an oath, Ree. And when you decided it was right, you quit. So much for your oath. And, in case you forgot, you didn’t ask me. You didn’t consult me. Do you remember that?”

“That was different.”

---