Page 19

“What is your next move?” he asks quietly, handing me back my letter.

I have to think on that for a moment before I answer.

“Talk to Pops. Find out what, if anything, he knows about this.”

I lift the letter up. “Then I’m going to get in touch with Matthew Fife.”

“Wise call. And are you gonna grab hold?” he asks, echoing Mom’s words.

I bark out a bittersweet laugh.

“Not like she’s left me much of a choice.”

Then he puts a slightly different spin on my perception when he responds with, “Seems to me she just gave you one.”

Chapter 7

Rick

* * *

“That was good, Ma.”

I sit back and fold my hands over my stomach, which has been stretched to the point of discomfort. That’s what a weekend with my mother does. From the moment I walked in the door, she’s been shoving food at me. I swear she’s feeding me like I haven’t eaten since the last time she saw me.

“Here, have some more.”

She’s already balancing an overflowing serving spoon over my plate.

“It’ll go to waste, Ma,” I warn her. “I am stuffed.”

“Then let me pack it up for you, mi hijo. It’ll keep for a few days in the fridge, or you can freeze it.”

She’s already shuffling to her kitchen and starting to dig around her cupboards for Tupperware containers. I don’t bother trying to stop her, it’s a lost cause.

I’m a forty-three-year-old man, with almost twenty years in law enforcement under my belt, hauling dangerous criminals off the streets, but I set one foot inside my mother’s house, and I swear I turn back into that scrawny little kid I was at twelve. At least I do in Ma’s eyes. She’s still trying to fatten me up, when that’s the last thing I need, but that’s how my mother loves.

She cooks, she feeds, she nurtures…it makes her feel good, and to refuse her food would be to refuse her love. Ma has had enough heartbreak in her life, I’m not about to add to it, so I make sure I pick up the Tupperware container she set in front of me when I get ready to leave.

“Already, Rico?”

I hate seeing the disappointment on her face, but I know my own limitations.

“Sorry, Ma,” I mumble as I walk to the door of her small apartment and shrug into my coat.

“I was hoping you’d have time to visit Charlie⁠—”

My raised hand cuts her off. “Ma, please. My shift starts at seven in the morning, and I want to get a decent sleep in.”

“Of course,” she concedes, sounding defeated, and making me feel like a cold-hearted bastard.

I wrap my arms around her, easily dropping my chin on her almost fully gray head of hair.

“I don’t need to visit, Mamá…” I take her hand and press it against my chest. “I’ll never forget.”

Despite my full stomach, I leave my mother’s place with a hollow ache in my chest. Every time the same struggle, the same hurt feelings, the same guilt.

I love my family, but they love loud, fight loud, and grieve loud as well. But that’s not me; I don’t feel the urge to broadcast my emotions for the whole world to hear, I don’t need an audience for my fights, and I definitely don’t believe in sharing my grief, I prefer to do that in silence.