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There is also the fact that I look the way I look. I’m not bragging or anything, it’s just that being a cop means you have to have an overabundance of testosterone, and, well, I’m a girl.
Most of Dad’s colleagues noticed me from the age of about sixteen. Unfortunately, if any one of them touched me (even after I came of age), the others would have shot him.
Such is the life of a cop’s daughter. You take the ups with the downs.
* * *
In my not-so-clean-and-tidy past,I was caught one night by Dad’s friends, Jimmy Marker and Danny Rose. My best friend, Ally Nightingale, and I were underage drinking and were taken to the station.
My dad had not been angry at this youthful stunt. Dad had one kid and a dead wife. He’d been hoping for a boy to come along, but my mom died when I was five. Seeing as they had their hands full with me, they’d never got around to a second child, and Dad had never got over Mom enough to find another wife.
Dad always said Katherine Savage was the kind of woman you didn’t get over.
He also said I looked a lot like her and the pictures prove it (except, of course, my blue eyes, which come from my dad).
And everyone says I actexactlylike her.
Anyway, Dad thought my drinking binge was kind of cute, and if I had been a boy, my getting picked up by his cronies would be a rite of passage. His best friend and longtime partner, Malcolm Nightingale, agreed.
Malcolm’s wife, Kitty Sue, was my mom’s best friend and the woman who swore to my mother on her death bed that she would help Dad raise me right, so she did not find my short-lived incarceration amusing.
Kitty Sue didn’t find any of my youthful foibles amusing, not in any way, shape, or form. Kitty Sue worried over my immortal soul.
Kitty Sue had her hands full. Not only did she make a deathbed promise to my mom, she also had three kids of her own to look after. And two of those kids were Lee and Ally, and that right there is enough said.
Kitty Sue talked to preachers, teachers and high school counselors, little league softball, baseball and football coaches, neighborhood busybodies—anyone she could to set up her network of Nightingale/Savage Child Watch. Even with all this effort it didn’t work so well.
Allyson Nightingale is my best friend and has been since birth. Ally is Kitty Sue and Malcolm’s youngest child and she’s far crazier than me, mainly because she isn’t scared of anything.
Lee’s another story altogether. Lee’s a Bad Boy with capital Bs.
After getting caught on the side of the road puking our inebriated guts out by Jimmy and Danny, Ally and I smartened up. After that, when Ally and I were underage, out partying and were done over-imbibing, we called Lee and he came to get us.
No matter what, no matter where, Lee would show up in his vintage Mustang, hold open the passenger side door and grin as we stumbled out of someone’s house and into his car. Lee knew the exact sounds a person would make before they were going to hurl and thus knew when to stop and haul a body out so they could do it on the side of the road and not in his car. Lee also hadlotsof experience with holding a girl’s hair back when she threw up.
In our partying days, we tried calling Ally’s other brother, Hank, a couple of times, but he would always give us a lecture. Hank’s the oldest of the three Nightingale children and therefore felt the need to behave responsibly. He may have lectured, but he didn’t snitch. Snitching was a shade too far.
Not surprisingly, Hank became a cop.
No one knows what Lee is.
Henry “Hank” Nightingale was captain of the football team, prom king; he was voted Best Athlete, Most Popular, one half of Best Couple, and Best Smile. He’s six foot one, has thighs that could crack walnuts and just the right assets to fill both the seat and crotch of his jeans, a killer smile, thick, dark-brown hair with just enough wave and whisky-colored eyes. In high school Hank was good-natured, chivalrous and had a steady girl. Not much has changed (except there was no longer a girl).
Liam “Lee” Nightingale could hotwire any car going. He had both a Mustang and a motorcycle, started smoking when he was thirteen, was rumored to be able to get a girl pregnant by just looking at her and was also voted Best Smile. He’s six foot two and gives the impression that faded jeans had been divinely created just for him. Lee also has thick, dark-brown hair with just enough wave, and chocolate-colored eyes with a heavy rim of long lashes. Lee was good-natured as well, but in an entirely different way. Without any effort at all (mostly by crooking his finger, casting a glance, or if a girl was playing hard to get, he’d pull out The Smile), Lee nailed everything that was female, had long hair, big boobs, a fine ass and was breathing.
Every female, that is, but me, no matter how hard I tried. And let’s just say I tried real hard.
I, too, have big boobs, a helluvan ass, long, russet hair (with just enough wave) and was, as far as I could tell, not the walking dead.
I’d been throwing myself at Lee since I could remember.
I should have picked Hank. If I’d have picked Hank, I would now be married with children, probably very happy and definitely getting it regularly.
But I like them bad.
I’m a rock ’n’ roll chick. That’s just the way it is.
Ally and I decided when we were eight that I was going to marry Lee so I could be her “real” sister. She was going to be my maid of honor, we were going to live across the street from each other in houses with white picket fences, and Lee and I were going to name our first daughter after her.
