Hix had felt that way about Hope’s hometown since the minute he’d stepped foot in it twenty years ago to meet her mother and father.
He hadn’t wanted to move there from Indianapolis, but she’d wanted to raise their kids there (and also wanted her mother close so she could foist the kids off on her when she wanted to do something else). So once they started having them, she’d started in on him. And in pure Hope style, she hadn’t let up.
On that, Hix had held out.
It took nine years.
Then, before Shaw could get too entrenched in school and the friends he’d make, and Hix had seen the way things were going in public schools in the city and he didn’t like it much, he’d given in.
That was seven years ago.
His boy was seventeen now. Corinne, his second child, his first girl, fifteen, sixteen in January. Mamie, his baby, thirteen.
Hope had been thrilled with the move.
Hix and his kids had been bored out of their minds. No Children’s Museum. No Colts. No 500. No Monument Circle lit up for Christmas. No Eagle Creek Park. No special occasion dinners at St. Elmo Steak House. No weekend trips up to the Dunes or rental cottages on Lake Shafer, or family treks up to Chicago to catch a Cubs game and then hork down the best pizza known to man.
Just a whole lot of Nebraska filled with farmland sprinkled with farmhouses, or ranchland with ranch houses and the occasional town that wouldn’t ever get uppity enough to consider declaring itself a city.
That place was where city cops went after a bad case that twisted their shit in a way they couldn’t face even the possibility of another one.
Or where metro cops went to lose their minds.
Of tedium.
There were a few drunks who did stupid shit because they were drunk. There were some kids who did stupid shit because they were kids. There were whisperings of domestic violence or child abuse that not a soul would report because “that doesn’t happen here,” but if it got out of hand, the concerned parties went to their pastor, not their sheriff.
There was pot.
That was it.
The last death that was suspect ended up being a suicide, and that was twenty-three years ago.
And the only criminal element there was a man who had a crew who operated a meth lab that Hix couldn’t find any legal reason to raid. Not to mention the former sheriff had had a good-ol’-boy arrangement with him that he could make his shit in their county, but he couldn’t sell it in their county.
An arrangement that criminal held true to, to that day.
Reason one why Hix couldn’t find a legal excuse to raid his lab.
And when that sheriff retired two years into Hix and Hope moving back, and Hope didn’t let up on pushing him to run, he’d run for sheriff unopposed, thus won.
He’d been opposed the last election. A deputy from the next county over moved in and tried to move in on Hix.
Hix had taken ninety-eight percent of the vote.
This was because McCook County didn’t like change. The last sheriff had held his post for thirty-three years. He’d endorsed Hix his first election, when he didn’t need to, and his second one, when he only kind of did.
And Hix might have been born and raised a Hoosier, but Hope was Cornhusker to the bone, even if she’d finished fucking up her degree (thus not graduating) at Purdue (her third and last hope).
Nebraskans just played it that way if your momma pushed you out on their soil, but definitely if both your parents, and all their parents, hit Lincoln for their higher education.
And Hope’s kin had, and so had she, the first try.
But when Hix was grown enough to quit wanting to be a superhero, then a fighter pilot, after which he thought he’d settle for an astronaut, he got serious.
This was precisely at that time when he was eleven years old, sitting in that parking lot in the car with his mom, and that gaunt, jittery man had knocked on the window.
She’d gone all funny, telling him to lock his door, locking her own just in time as the guy went for the handle, and she got them away with the man shouting after them.
He’d never forget how pale her face was or how tight she held on to the steering wheel as she drove them home, saying repeatedly it was all right. She’d only fallen apart behind her bedroom door with his dad after his dad got home, and she did it not knowing Hix sat outside, listening.
After that, all Hix had ever wanted to do was be a cop.
It wasn’t about making a difference. It wasn’t about righting wrongs.
It was about finding bad guys and making them pay for forcing women, or anyone, to be that damned scared.
But now, Sheriff of McCook County, Nebraska, he didn’t do dick.
If his deputies threw a drunk in the tank, he dried out and they let him go. He screwed up and got behind a wheel, Hix sat in a courtroom months later while their county judge gave him or her a lecture in responsibility and a slap on the wrist, even if that lecture was repeated . . . repeatedly.
This being because that judge was always related one way or another to the drunk.
It just wouldn’t do to make Thanksgiving uncomfortable.
Forget about it with the kids messing around. They were all far more scared of their parents than Hix and his deputies.
Then again, it wasn’t about kids in his county driving new cars, having the latest smartphone, wearing designer clothes and looking to score ecstasy or Rohypnol to better enjoy their night on the town.
If they got in trouble, they might not be home to help work the fields.
So they’d get laid out by Dad, or Mom, in a way that Hix never saw them again unless it was at a school event where they would mind their manners, all “yes, sir,” and “no, ma’am,” and he’d see them open their date’s door so she could get in the car.
He understood it was unhinged that it seemed like he missed crime.
But it wasn’t that.
He missed feeling relevant.
He was forty-two years old but he felt like an ole timer with nothing better to do than flip the sign on the door so it didn’t say Open. It said, Gone fishin’.
There were a good many places to fish in Indiana, and if you wanted to make a thing of it, you’d go up to Wisconsin and get the really good shit.
Hix hated fishing.
He didn’t share that in those parts, or the fact he wasn’t a big fan of hunting either.
He watched his son play football. The school year wore on, he’d watch his son at first base for the school’s baseball team.
He also watched his daughter play volleyball then take a break before soccer season hit.
And his baby he watched dance.
Other than that, now that he no longer had a wife and only had his family every other week, he sat at his desk and listened to his deputies ask him how to deal with Mrs. Schmidt accusing her neighbor, Mr. Christenson, of stealing the tomatoes out of her garden. He worked out at the gym. He hung with his boys at the Outpost to catch a game or three. And he watched a shit ton of TV.
And last Saturday he’d gone to the Dew Drop out on Country Road 65, and he’d listened to Greta sing.
Between sets, after he bought her a drink, they’d chatted.
After she was done, he’d taken her home.
And after that, he’d made love to her.