Page 2 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Sheriff

“I can’t believe you drove all the way out here.” Then she pauses, tilts her head. “Wait, you’re not Sheriff Burton.”

“I am not. Meadows. Sheriff Meadows. Sheriff Burton retired. I was elected last month and recently took office.”

“Oh. That makes sense, I guess.” She gives me a genuine smile that nearly knocks the breath from my chest.

I rub at the spot.

“Now you know it’s just me, and I’m okay; you can go back to work. Sorry to be a pest”

“Just me doesn’t help, Mrs… what is your last name?”

“Duh. I’m Hope Bailey. No Mrs. Just a Miss.”

I choose not to wonder why the hell I asked it that way.

“Very well, Ms. Bailey, I’m going to go ahead and walk the perimeter while I’m here just to make sure everything is safe. It is getting dark.”

“Dark? Sure. Happens every day about this time.”

Fuck, she’s cute.

Again she gives me a wide, but authentic smile. “But this is Saddle Creek. It’s perfectly safe.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just do a walk around.”

“Suit yourself, Sheriff.”

This is completely unnecessary; I realize that as I walk around to the back of her property. But there’s always that chance that something could be missed. I won’t let that kind of thing happen again. By the time I’m done with my check, I’m surprised to find Ms. Bailey still standing in her yard.

“All clear.”

“Thank you for checking. And again, I really am sorry you came all the way out here. Do you need me to sign something? Is there a fine? I feel like there should be a fine.”

“No fine.” I keep my voice flat. Flat is safe. I nod towards her wrist. “You want to check that thing's settings so this doesn’t happen again.”

“Yes. God. Yes, I will absolutely—” She looks down at the watch, which picks that exact second to light up with some cheerful little message, and her whole face falls, and I have to study the tipped-over ladder in her flowerbed so I don't do something stupid with my mouth. “It's new. I got it because I live alone out here and my sister—my friend, Cora, she worries, she said get the watch. They’re kind of pricey though so I got this one second hand from a friend in town.”

“It called my cell,” I say. “Not dispatch.”

“Is that bad?”

“It's wrong.” Alerts route to the county line. They don't route to a man's personal cell three weeks off the carrier's recycled pile. “Alerts go to the county line, to the dispatch. Not to my direct number.”

“Oh.” Judging by her expression, I’m pretty sure she doesn't know what to do with that. “Well. Since you drove all the way out—can I get you something? I have lemonade, the real kind, I squeeze it, and I made snickerdoodles this afternoon because I stress-bake when a deadline's bad and this deadline is bad, so there are, like, four dozen, and I cannot eat four dozen snickerdoodles, I'll die—” She's already half-turned for the porch, already sure I'll say yes, because a woman like this has clearly never once considered that a person might not want to sit on her porch and eat her cookies in the last good light of the day. “Two minutes. Sit down. You came all this way, the least I can do is⁠—”

Two minutes. Lemonade she squeezed herself. A chair on that sagging porch and the smell of cinnamon coming through the window and this woman talking until the dark came down.

I’m already making to follow her to the porch. I want it so much it makes me pause. I pull my keys from my pocket.

“Appreciate it, but I need to go.”

“Oh, alright. I’ll get the watch fixed. Thanks for checking on me.”

I nod and climb into my truck.

I make it a mile and a half down FR-12 before I’m pretty sure I know how she takes her coffee.

I don’t, actually. I’ve known the woman eleven minutes, and I’ve got no earthly idea how she takes her coffee. But my brain, unprompted, offered up light and too sweet, probably, with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top. I don’t do that. I have never once done that. I am extremely good at not doing that. It’s the entire reason I’m good at the job—I see people clean, no story, just the facts of them.