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“I need to work,” he says, but I’m quick to shake my head.
He may need to stay busy, but it wouldn’t be fair to him or the citizens of Lindell if he made the wrong choice while on duty. We deal with life-and-death situations, and those require our full attention.
“Why don’t I have the SO cover for us and we head to The Frog instead?”
He nods in quick agreement.
“Give me a few minutes to set it up, and then you can follow me to my house. I’ll play designated driver tonight, and then you can crash on the couch.”
“That sounds perfect.”
If the man doesn’t want to be in the same house where he was raised, that has now become the house his father passed away in, then it’s nothing for me to offer my place while he deals with his loss.
He gives me a little privacy in my office as I call the sheriff’s department to let them know that we’ll need some help tonight. All of our emergency calls go through them anyway since we don’t have a dispatcher of our own.
They’re quick to agree. Mike let me know that they’d already fielded the call from the funeral home about the transport of Bruce Jacobs’s body.
I fire off a text to Adalynn to let her know that I wouldn’t be making it to dinner tonight, and I hate the simpleokayI get when she responds.
Eastyn has already left for the day, and I was only sticking around the office, waiting for dinner at the Tates’ house, so Imake sure to lock the office up behind Chandler and me when we leave.
I keep darting my eyes to his truck in my rearview, but he seems to be driving okay. I’ve dealt with a lot of death in my time as a police officer. There have been vehicular accidents, old folks in town passing away. The town collectively dealt with the news of Hux Kennedy’s death as well as the shooting that happened nearly two years ago, but this may very well be the first person I’ve lost that I would consider myself close to.
I have no idea what Chandler is feeling right now. I never knew my birth parents and I haven’t spoken with my adoptive parents in years.
I don’t know what to do other than be a good friend. Considering I’m in short supply of even those these days, I’ll do whatever Chandler needs to help himself feel better, even though I know a couple beers at the local bar will merely be a Band-Aid for him.
He stays on the porch when I go inside to change out of my uniform, but he thanks me once again when I step back outside in jeans and a t-shirt, ready to head to the bar.
“It’s the least I can do,” I tell him when I crank my truck up and back out of my short driveway. “I wouldn’t spend a lot of time thanking me yet. My couch isn’t all that great.”
He huffs a laugh like he’s supposed to do, but I don’t hear a hint of humor in it.
“Man, I don’t know what to fucking say.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t expect you to say anything. I knew it was coming, but it doesn’t make it any easier. I don’t know why I thought it would.”
I stay silent.
“He’s just always been there, you know?” he continues. “I don’t know how to exist in a world where he isn’t a part of it.”
“I can understand that,” I say genuinely.
Someone being there one day and not the next has never made more sense to me than it does right now.
I’m so down about all of it that by the time I park outside of The Hairy Frog, it leaves me wishing we’d called someone to bring us both here instead of offering to drive. I’m in the mood for a beer or ten myself, honestly.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” Chandler says once we’re heading toward the door.
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know that I’ll be able to stop once I get started.”
His statement gives me pause. “Do you mean tonight or in general?”
He pauses, his eyes glued to the door, and I can see that he’s running the question through his mind to come to the true answer.
If this is going to be the beginning of a downward spiral for the man, we’ll leave right now. I want nothing to do with his destruction, and I’d never forgive myself for being part of the catalyst if that’s the case.
