“These girls are treating me like an old lady,” CiCi complained. “I don’t like it, so don’t you add to that. When are these cops going to get out of my house—present company excepted.”
“It won’t take much longer.” He looked back at the broken glass door. “We’ll board that up for you.”
She nodded. “Mi wants to call her family. The news is going to get out about this, and while she didn’t tell them she was coming, they’ll worry about me and Simone. So will Tulip and Ward and Natalie.”
“You can call your families.”
“Then I’m going to get a whiskey and do just that.” CiCi rose. “Stop hogging the man for a minute.” She leaned into Reed. “You’re the answer to all my prayers to all the gods and goddesses. You clear these cops out as soon as you can—I need to white sage my house. And you take Simone home.”
“We’re staying here tonight,” Reed told her.
“Because I’m an old lady?”
Deliberately, he brushed Simone aside, whispered in CiCi’s ear. “You’re the love of my life, but I have to settle for her.” When she laughed, Reed kissed her temple. “And because Simone’s not moving in until the twenty-third, and you’re coming to dinner.”
“I’ll accept that. Mi, pour me a whiskey, and yourself whatever you’re having. Then we’ll go upstairs and make these calls. Mine will result in hysterics on the other end, so make that a double. We’ll talk in the morning,” she told Simone, then smiled at Reed. “Over cranberry pancakes and Bloody Marys.”
“She could still change her mind,” Reed considered, taking the coffee Mi brought him.
“Can we just go outside for a minute?” Simone asked.
“Sure. I’m still the chief of police. Don’t let this spoil this house for you, the beach, any of it.”
“It won’t,” Simone told him as they stepped out on the patio, as she took a deep, clear breath. “It can’t.”
Lights still shined on the beach below, cops still did their work. She didn’t care. He was here.
“When they leave, can we take a walk on the beach?” She leaned her head on his uninjured shoulder. “Our version of a couple of tokes and some white sage.”
“Let’s do that.”
“You need to call your family.”
“Essie talked to them, so they know I’m okay.”
“You need to call them. They need to hear your voice. Do it now. I’ll wait.”
“You call yours, I’ll call mine.”
“CiCi’s already talking to Mom and Dad.”
“Call your sister.”
“You’re right.” Simone drew a breath. “You’re right.”
As she spoke to her sister, she heard Reed glossing over some of the details on his end while he soothed the still anxious Barney with long, easy strokes.
She didn’t blame him for the glossing over as she did exactly the same. The hard truths could wait a little longer.
She put her phone away, watched the water, waited for Reed.
“They’re coming out tomorrow,” he told Simone. “I couldn’t talk them out of it.”
“Good, because Natalie’s coming out with Harry, and I’m going to bet my parents will, too.”
“I guess we’ll have to heat up the grill.”
She kissed his bandaged shoulder. “And tomorrow, you can tell me everything. I caught bits and pieces, but you can tell me everything. Not tonight, tomorrow. Except I guess it’s already tomorrow, but in the morning, after those pancakes.”
“That’s a deal. You saved me. She might’ve gotten the drop on me again.”
“I don’t think so. I watched it all, and I don’t think so. But we can say we saved each other. And he helped,” she added, looking at Barney.
“Caviar Milk-Bones for life.”
“With champagne chew-bone chasers.”
“It’s the high life for Barney. Sorry.” Reed pulled out his phone. “Jacoby? Yeah.” He blew out a breath. “Yeah, thanks for letting me know.”
He stared at the phone a moment, then put it away.
“She didn’t make it. Hobart. They called it at twelve-thirty-eight.”
“July twenty-second,” Simone added. “Thirteen years to the day.” She gripped his hands. “CiCi would say it’s karma, or it’s the hand of fate, and she wouldn’t be wrong. It’s a door closed, Reed, for both of us. And for all the people she meant to hurt just because they lived.”
“She heard the sirens, had to, but she didn’t even try to run. So, yeah, it’s a door closed.”
He turned her hands over, kissed them. She’d scraped them up a little on the rocks.
“We’re going to take a walk on the beach,” he told her, “and start the next part of our lives. And since I’ve already talked you into step one—the moving in together—I’m going to start talking you into step two. Especially since the door’s closed, and I’m wounded.”
“What, exactly, is step two?”
“We need to talk about a few things. You never answered the fancy wedding question. Me, I’m more in favor of simple, but I’m flexible.”
“Not nearly as much as you pretend. Step one hasn’t even happened yet.”
“Today’s the day. Plus, ouch, I’m wounded. They’re clearing out. Let’s take that walk on the beach.”
She went down with him, down the steps she and the most important woman in her life had run down only hours before.
Now the moon spread light over the water, spilled it silver onto the rocks that had given her and a woman they both loved shelter.
She didn’t look at the sand where blood had spilled. Time and wind and rain would wash it away. She would cast the lost in bronze, and they would stay. She would walk with him into tomorrow, and he would stay.
They’d tend a house together, and a good, sweet dog, and remember every day as a precious gift.
She turned to him. “I’m not saying I’m ready for or can be talked into step two—even though you’re wounded.”
“Blood. Needles. Stitches.”
She touched her lips to his shoulder again. “I’m just willing to say, at this time, I like simple.”
He smiled, kissed her fingers, then walked the beach with her with the dog trotting at his heels.
— One Year Later —
In the park where a nineteen-year-old Reed Quartermaine asked Officer Essie McVee how to become a cop, hundreds gathered. Survivors and loved ones of those lost each held a single white rose with a sprig of rosemary.
The mayor of Rockpoint gave a short speech under a sky blue with summer while white gulls winged over the water. Among the gathered, children fidgeted, a baby fussed.
Simone took her place, looked out at the faces, the tears already shed. She looked at Reed, standing with his family and hers.
“Ah, thank you, Ms. Mayor, and thank you to my father, Ward Knox, and my grandmother, the amazing CiCi Lennon, for making it possible to place this art in Rockpoint Park. Thank you to my mother, Tulip Knox, for helping to arrange this … gathering today to unveil it.”
She’d tried to prepare a speech, to write one out and practice, but everything she’d attempted came off stiff and stilted and, well, prepared.
So she did what CiCi advised. She said what came to her mind from her heart.
“I was there,” she began, “on July twenty-second, fourteen years ago tonight. I lost a friend, a beautiful girl,” she continued, looking toward the Olsen family. “A friend I still miss, every day, as so many here lost someone they loved and miss every day.
“For a long time I tried to forget what had happened. Some of you may understand what I mean when I say I tried to pretend it was over, and didn’t affect my life. I thought I needed to do just that to survive it. But I was wrong, and everyone here, everyone knows that while we have to go on, we can never, should never, forget.
“You know their faces, the son or daughter, the mother or father, the brother or sister, husband, wife. You know them. I came to know them, and hope by knowing them, by honoring them, no one will ever forget. I hope you’ll think of this, not as a memorial, but a remembrance. I’d like to dedicate this work not only to those we loved and lost, but to all of us. They are, as we are, all connected but not just by tragedy. By love.”
She reached out for Reed’s hand, waited for Essie and Mi to take their place on the other side of the drape.
“Okay.” She took a long breath. “Okay.”