Kyle appeared at the top of the stairs. “Dad, can I stay the night?”
“No. We sleep in our own beds tonight.” Sleepovers did not happen unless he had a late-night shift. He and his boy had spent too many nights separated, and they sure were not going to spend unnecessary ones apart.
“Dad, you’re not being fair,” Kyle said as he stomped around the house.
“Life isn’t fair, pal.”
“You always say that.”
“Get your gear.”
“Fine.” Heavy, dramatic footsteps faded away.
“You owe it to yourself and Joan to talk, Gideon.”
“There’s been a lot of water under the bridge, Ann.”
“Not as much as you think.”
Kyle appeared, and the two drove the short distance to their home. As he walked through the front door of the one-story rancher, Gideon shrugged off his coat, grateful to shut out the world for a few hours. He had become accustomed to the quiet in the backcountry, when all he and Kyle had had to worry about was finding a good fishing spot or splitting logs. Now, he was discovering that balancing the job and single parenthood was trickier than he’d ever thought. He had hoped the time spent at the fishing cabin would reset their relationship, but father and son seemed to be falling back into their old patterns. The kid complained, and Gideon grumbled back, sounding more and more like his old man every day.
“Do I have to go to bed?” Kyle kicked off his boots, leaving them discarded on the floor.
Gideon glared at the shoes. “Put ’em back proper.”
Kyle stopped short of rolling his eyes, which he knew now earned him a confiscated phone, but he came damn close as he released a pained sigh and straightened his boots.
“And hang the coat up on the peg.”
Kyle yanked off his coat as if it had offended him and hung it up.
The attitude needed work, but Gideon was not in a mood for a fight tonight. “How about you pop some popcorn in the microwave, and we’ll watch a little preseason football.”
“For real?”
“You can get by on one less hour of sleep, right?”
“Yeah.”
He took his son’s positive tone as a sign of hope. “Good. Get the kind that has the butter and salt on it, not the healthy stuff Ann gave us.”
Nodding, Kyle headed off into the kitchen. The tap turned on, followed by the splash of what sounded like washing hands. A miracle. As he tugged off his sidearm and placed it in a lockbox in the entryway table drawer, he heard the microwave door open and then close with a hard bang. The boy was heavy-handed in just about everything, and Gideon knew every appliance in this house would be worn out by the time Kyle left for college.
Gideon removed his boots, placed them beside his son’s, and rolled his head from side to side. He came into the living room and switched on the television as Kyle removed a bowl from the cabinet. The replay featured the Washington Redskins versus the Philadelphia Eagles game. A couple of East Coast teams. Too bad the Denver Broncos weren’t playing.
The boy settled near him and offered him the bowl. Gideon scooped up a large handful of popcorn and ate it and then another. Hungrier than he imagined, Gideon realized he had been going nonstop for more than twenty-four hours.
As he watched the game, his thoughts drifted away from downs, penalties, and scores to Joan. She had given him a quick synopsis of what had happened in Philadelphia, but he wanted the entire story.
As the boy watched the game with keen interest, he reached for his phone. Over the last ten years, he had been tempted to look her up again, and had done so, but after a while, he’d stopped. There had been plenty of good reasons not to. But she had come back. Not to him, maybe, but to Missoula.
With one eye on the game and the other on the phone, he typed in Detective Joan Mason, Philadelphia. The third search result led with the headline COP PUT ON PAID SUSPENSION. The article was dated September 4.
Kyle’s eyes were drifting shut. A few more minutes and the kid would be out like a light. He read through the article detailing the case of Avery Newport, who had been charged with burning down her home. Her roommate had died in the fire. Joan’s name did appear in an article about police bias, which quoted unnamed sources who detailed the