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“How’d you spend your morning yesterday?” Will obligingly calls from across the room.
“Putting the flower gardens back together before the Georges drive by and see them. Seems mice have been making their winter burrows in there, and the dog tore them up.”
As the others laugh, Casey murmurs, “It’s fine,” to me. I eye her for a moment. Then I set down the boots, and we take our places at the table.
2
It’s nearly midnight,and I watch Casey from the balcony as she enjoys a campfire with the other women. I’m well aware that could sound creepy. I’ve never quite understood guys whodon’trealize there’s a problem spying on their partner when she’s with her friends. The difference is that I’m not spying. I don’t feel left out. I’m not worried about what Casey’s saying—I’m too far to eavesdrop and wouldn’t want to. I’m not pissy that she isn’t spending the evening with me. I’m just taking a moment to watch her, and then I’ll stretch out in one of these lounge chairs with my beer and read my book by the porch lights.
It’s not a “girls-only” campfire, though I’m sure they’d joke that it was. April and Diana had been outside discussing the new medical clinic. Diana has been “playing nurse,” as she says, though she actually has an aptitude for it. She must if April wanted her to join us in the new town.
I don’t trust Diana. She thinks I’m jealous of her relationship with Casey. I’m not, but what I do feel is a little too close to being the guy who wants to control his partner’s relationships—in this case, by getting rid of the toxic friend he doesn’t trust. The problem is that by not vetoing Diana joining us, I left the decision on Casey’s shoulders, and that didn’t feel fair, either. I’m still figuring this shit out, and I’m starting to accept that when it comes to relationships, getting it seventy-five percent right might be the best I can hope for, but from what I can see, that’s a damned sight better than a lot of couples.
Anyway, April and Diana were outside, and then Casey and Nicole strolled by with Storm and suggested starting a fire. Then Isabel joined. Phil had been with Isabel, but seeing it was all women, he’d made an excuse to come in, and I gotta give him credit for that. They should have time to talk without having to shoo us all off as if we’re in a Victorian novel, the ladies retiring to sip port in the drawing room.
I’m taking this moment to watch Casey because seeing her laughing and relaxed reminds me of the first time I realized how much I wanted to see that side of her when she was aroundme. When Casey first came to Rockton, I was an asshole. Standard operating procedure, really, but I’d been worse with Casey because she pissed me off. She was brilliant and driven and beautiful and fuckingriveting. The kind of person who seemed to have it all. A gifted detective with a best friend she’d come to Rockton to protect, temporarily leaving behind a rocketing career, a devoted boyfriend and a bulging bank account.
Someone like that should be insufferably smug with their perfect life. Instead, Casey moved on autopilot, and her relentless drive had an air of the frenetic, as if all she saw was the job. No, all she saw wasduty. Duty to Diana. Duty to her job. Duty to fulfill whatever was needed from her, and after that she just... shut down. She had money, but her apartment was tiny and bare. She cut her lover loose as soon as she feared he was in danger by being with her. Casey didn’twantanything, and that made me want to spit nails.
She wanted nothing and allowed herself nothing, and then she came to Rockton and found things she wanted, and God help me, I wanted to be one of them.
In those early weeks, I’d sometimes see her at the Red Lion or a campfire, laughing with Will or Petra, and all I could think was,How do I get that?How do I make her relax around me and laugh around me and talk to me, really talk to me?
Now I have all that, and so I’ll be the smug one, taking this moment to watch her being happy. I’m glad she’s happy, and I’m glad she has peopleotherthan me who make her that way. Because I know I do, and that’s enough.
When my phone vibrates, I grab it before the sound of that vibration carries. Yeah, I have a cell phone now. The new Rockton won’t have cell service, but there are other uses for smartphones, so we’re allowing them among key staff, at least when we have the extra solar power to charge them.
I glance at the screen and see the caller name.
Katherine Dalton.
The woman who raised me for half my childhood. The woman I had, until recently, called Mom.
I stare at the screen for a moment. Then I do what I’ve done the half dozen other times she’s called.
I hit Ignore. Then I turn the phone off and stuff it into my pocket.
At a sound behind me, I wheel, instincts honed from life in the forest. It’s Will, a beer in each hand. He sees the one I have resting on the balcony railing.
“Already set up, I see,” he says.
“I’ll take another.”
“It’s not opened, and I wouldn’t drink two even if it was.”
He’s smiling, only good humor in his voice, but I still know there’s reproach in that comment, and I nod, accepting it.
I’m more comfortable with Will than I’ve ever been with a friend. He’d joke that’s because I’m his superior officer and because he puts up with my shit. Neither is completely true. I’m “the boss” because he likes it that way. And he doesn’t put up with my shit at all—he just acts as if he does.
I tried to take that second beer so he wouldn’t have an excuse to drink it, and his gentle reproach reminds me it’s been nearly a year since he’d have snatched that excuse. Even when things got bad at the end in Rockton—and Will was at the center of the storm, with every excuse to throw back a few shots—he’d stayed the course.
Will can say I’m his superior officer, but most of the time, I’m the one looking up to his example. We just play it the other way because it works. I like being the hard-ass sheriff, and he prefers the role of the easygoing deputy.
“Creeping on your wife, Eric?” he says as he nods down at the bonfire.
I roll my eyes, and he laughs. He knows me better than that. Just as he knows how much I like hearing Casey called my “wife.” The only problem is that we aren’t actually married. A problem for me, that is. Casey doesn’t care, or she pretends not to, knowing a legal wedding would be difficult when I don’t even have a birth certificate. Getting one the normal way—or the normal way for someone like me, born off the grid—is a risk. Even if “Rockton” is long gone, it’s still an exposure threat for our new town.
I’ve been promised proper identification. It’ll just take a while to get it, and until then, Casey has declared that since living together more than a year makes us common-law spouses, we can consider ourselves married.
