of those other things Keegan. You guard your heart so fiercely because you don’t want to get hurt but this Matt. He seems to be getting under your skin.”
“I don’t know what to do, Ma.” Keegan watched as her mother prepared a mug of hot chocolate and a cup of tea. She slid the hot chocolate over to Keegan. “We are the two people who keep the departments interconnected and we keep the peace between the two. I don’t want to put that at risk.”
“But do you want to live like me?” Maria cocked a brow and gestured to the empty house and the lonely kitchen. Not even a pet in sight. She did have a wonderfully decorated home for the holidays. It made the house seem infinitely cozier and lived in rather than cold and lonesome. Maybe that was why her mother bothered with the decorations.
“Sometimes listening to your heart isn’t always a bad thing.”
“How do I get it to shut the hell up?” Keegan moaned pitifully. “I mean I’ll listen to my heart about work. That usually works in my favor but now? Everything is nice and stable, back on solid ground. I’m not going to fu- mess that up.”
Maria glared at Keegan for the near slip up of foul language, “But sometimes letting someone in isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world Keegan. And who cares about what happens at work? I’m sure the departments would still work together even if you and this Matt fellow weren’t there to guide the way for them.”
Keegan huffed out a sigh. It wasn’t like SIU and Homicide were useless without them. They just made things run smoother because they actually got along. They didn’t fake smiles or grudgingly hand over information. Both she and Matt had a common goal in mind and that was the victims came first and all personal issues came last.
“So what do I do?” Keegan mumbled into her hot chocolate.
“This is usually the part that sisters get together and gossip about their love lives.” Maria pointed out cheekily. “Maybe you can call one of yours up and see what they have to say about it?”
Keegan glanced down at her watch and snorted, “Yeah, sure. Let me call Cy up at nine o’clock and tell her, ‘hey I’m having a crisis, care to help?’ Yeah that’ll go over real well Ma. If you recall her and her fiancé David told me I was an abomination. Why would they bother listening to me? I don’t see that happening.”
“What about Gordon?” Maria suggested, “You two still talk some.”
“Mom,” Keegan stood up. Her heart feeling heavier than it had before she had arrived. “I’m just going to go. Thank you for listening to me ramble on about stupid shit.”
“Keegs,” Maria reached out and grasped her daughter’s wrist. “Sometimes you have to be the better person and reach out to say you’re still my family.”
“Cy, Elsie and Joan, they all did the same thing when I told them. They looked at me like I was a monster. I tried for the longest time. It’s been ten years since I have seen any of them. Three if you count the time Gordon wound up on my doorstep drunk off his butt sobbing about Jaime. When I called her to pick him up she told me his drinking was my fault. The stress of having a freak for a sister was getting to him.” Keegan wrapped her mother in a tight hug. “I will love them to death Ma, but sometimes it is better like this.”
“You know Christmas is coming up. Am I going to have to suffer through another year without you?” Maria pushed trying to reconnect her children.
“You know that Halloween is my night with you.” Keegan shrugged. “I’m not going to steal theirs.”
“Fine, be a stubborn ass,” Maria huffed out as she followed Keegan towards the door. “Love you.”
“Love you too Ma.” Keegan waved over her shoulder good bye and headed towards her car in a worse mood than she was in before she arrived. Instead of focusing on Matt she couldn’t stop thinking about her family and how she hadn’t actually seen them in years.
Keegan had barely gotten a shower and fallen asleep before her cell phone was chirping obnoxiously at her. She glanced at the number and grimaced as she recognized it as dispatch. “Detective Morne.”
She listened before she reached over to her nightstand and began scribbling an address out. “Okay, let the uniforms and homicide know