and him and Mom held your hand and swung you between them.”
Pansy’s throat started to get tight, a lump building there.
“Don’t you remember how they would read to us?” Iris asked. “How they would tuck us in?”
Tears started to fall down her face, and she hadn’t even been aware of them building.
“No,” she said, her voice a broken whisper. “I don’t remember.”
“Why not?”
“It hurts too bad,” Pansy said. “And there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s just sadness. It’s just loss. At least when...when I was going to be police chief for him there was a reason. It meant that he...that he mattered. That him dying mattered. That it changed me. How can you lose your parents and not have it change you?”
“Of course it changed us,” Iris said. “But Dad would have wanted you to be happy. More than anything else. You know that.”
Something broke inside of her. And pain washed right on through.
He would want her to be happy. Because suddenly she didn’t just remember his stern face, but his smiling one. Him lifting her up in the air, putting her on his shoulders.
You wouldn’t want to make him proud if he weren’t a really great dad.
And West’s words echoed in her head.
He had been a great dad.
He had tickled her and teased her and he had tucked her in at night.
And he had disciplined her when she needed it, because that made him good too.
He’d worried for her. He’d tried to teach her his values. But he’d loved her. Above all, he’d loved her.
She hadn’t been able to let herself remember just how much.
“It hurts to remember,” she whispered.
Iris put her hand over hers. “I know. I know.”
“I’m afraid to love West,” Pansy said. “I’m afraid it will make me weak.” She swallowed hard. “When he left I cried. And I thought I might die. It felt like when we lost Mom and Dad. And I never wanted to feel that way again ever in my whole life. And he makes me feel that way. I’m so scared of losing him.”
“Honey,” Iris said. “You lost him already.”
“No,” she said, stubbornly. “I sent him away. It’s different.”
“Is it?”
“It feels like it,” she said.
“It’s all the same in the end.”
Seconds ticked by, marked by the clock that hung on the wall. Old-fashioned and steady like Iris herself.
“I’m afraid of being happy,” Pansy said quietly.
“I know,” Iris said. “I know. But you have a real chance at something here. And I think you need to take it.”
“Is that what you would do?”
Iris shook her head slowly. “No. I have a feeling I would run away scared. I’d hate myself for it later. But I’m not brave like you, Pansy. I bake pies and knit sweaters. You arrest bad guys.”
“You are brave, Iris,” Pansy said. “You took care of us. If it weren’t for Ryder and you and Logan...”
“I know,” Iris said. “But I like to be here. I like to be safe and it’s why...it doesn’t matter. Be brave enough to remember the good parts about love, Pansy. Be brave enough to let him love you. And to love him back. Because our childhood wasn’t all grief. And your life shouldn’t be all about it either. We’ll always carry the loss with us. It’s part of who we are. But there’s plenty enough that we get to choose.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“It’s up to you,” Iris said. “You know I’ve always admired you,” she continued. “I admired the way that you left the ranch, and went out and did all this stuff. I never knew you were afraid of anything.”
“I’m pretty much afraid of everything,” Pansy said. “And up until recently I could pretend it wasn’t true.”
“It’s hard when you know that the world isn’t safe,” she said.
Pansy nodded.
“But rejecting him won’t make it safer,” her sister said, gently. “It’ll just make you sad.”
Pansy sniffed loudly. “I came to you because I figured you would be practical about it.”
“If a gorgeous man who is also good in bed tells you that he’s in love with you, rejecting him is not the practical choice.”
And then her sister got up and left her sitting in her bedroom. And Pansy was left to wonder if she was right.
* * *
WHEN SHE WAS called into Chief Doering’s office the next morning she was sure that it was going to be to have him delicately tell her that she did not get the job. So when he told her that she in fact