Page 5

No way she was weighing in on the cousin drama, especially with Taybee, a shittifyingly wealthy lawyer who tackled every dispute like she was cross-examining an ax murderer.

Emmy thumbed down the list to find a text from Jonah.

He’d sent a kind of peace-offering photo of Cole biting down on a chocolate-covered ice cream cone, which was great because every eleven-year-old should freebase a pound of sugar before bedtime.

Emmy heaved out a heavy sigh. She couldn’t bring herself to break Jonah’s balls again, so she texted back a smiley face, then stuck her phone back in her pocket.

She was supposed to be working, not worrying about her marriage.

She adjusted her duty belt, which between her gun, extra ammo, pepper spray, radio, flashlight, Taser, baton, multi-tool, and keys weighed approximately 6,000 pounds.

She took off her hat and wiped her forehead with her arm.

Good Lord God it was hot.

Her skin was sticky. Her hair felt spray-painted onto her skull.

The Kevlar vest under her uniform had turned into the world’s heaviest sandpaper, and her bra’s underwire was stabbing into her ribs.

And to top it off, she had a pounding headache.

She’d told Madison to drink some water, but hadn’t taken her own advice.

Madison.

There was no SnoBall stand. There was no sign of Cheyenne, either.

Emmy had picked up a kind of low-key worry over both girls from Hannah.

The two were the subject of many late-night phone calls and drinking sessions at the Clifton Biergarten.

Madison had always been so easily led. Cheyenne was the kind of teenager who made life interesting and exciting.

God knew Emmy understood the allure. She had been bored to tears with every person, place and thing at that age.

It was one of the many reasons she had fallen so hard for Jonah.

And look where that had gotten her.

“Em?” Hannah was coming up the hill. Like everybody else, she looked hot and sweaty and ready to get the hell out of here. “So, Jonah.”

Emmy rolled her eyes so hard she almost glimpsed an alternate dimension. Hannah wasn’t asking for details. She was sharing in the existential angst of being married to a disappointing man.

“Sorry.” Hannah squeezed her arm in solidarity but didn’t hold on because it was too hot. “Did you talk to Madison?”

“It went exactly like you said it would.” Emmy couldn’t say she hadn’t been warned. Hannah had been walking the tightrope between caring adult and stepmonster for five years. “Sorry, I gave it a good try.”

“I appreciate it,” Hannah said. “God it’s weird. The meaner she is to me, the more I love her.”

Emmy couldn’t help but feel the same way. She had been best friends with Hannah since kindergarten. They had either seen or talked to each other practically every day since. Her love for Hannah had easily transferred onto the complicated girl that Hannah loved. “We were never like that, right?”

“’Course not, we were fucking perfect.” Hannah nodded up toward the bleachers. “What did Tinky-Winky have to say?”

Emmy snorted a laugh. Vanna looked a hell of a lot like a Teletubby in her purple dress. “Babies are a miracle from God.”

“She’s gonna shit all over herself when that thing rips out of her.”

Emmy pressed together her lips to keep from laughing again.

“Ten years from now, she’s gonna be at the Walmart and sneeze real hard and her uterus is gonna drop down between her legs like the clapper on a bell.”

“That’s very specific.”

“Happened to my aunt Barb’s friend.”

“The one with the mole?”

“Shit, I gotta go.”

Emmy watched Hannah run after her husband.

Paul had been drinking off and on all day, consoling himself about Madison’s refusal to celebrate her birthday with the family.

The poor guy could barely walk a straight line, especially with their two-year-old in tow.

Emmy’s own cheeks burned with sympathy when she caught the embarrassed look on Hannah’s face.

“Emmy Lou?”

Her father’s deep baritone cut through the white noise of the crowd. She slipped her hat back on and walked in his direction.

Emmy tried not to think too hard about the new scratchiness in his voice.

Gerald Clifton had turned seventy-four in January and suddenly, shockingly, her strong, capable father was wearing out.

Bad knees. Bad back. Bad arthritis in his hands.

Even the way he coughed had changed from a quick, short burst to a raggedy-sounding grumble.

Her mother wasn’t much better off. Myrna had been rushed to Atlanta four years ago for open heart surgery.

She was constantly forgetting where she’d put her keys, who she needed to call, what had happened last week on her favorite TV show.

Emmy’s brother had started showing his age, too.

At fifty-one, Tommy spent nearly every weekend on the couch watching the golf channel and buying vintage hats off eBay.

Which left Emmy on her own as usual. She had been what was euphemistically called a surprise baby.

Tommy was already in college when she was born, and her parents had buried two more children, first Henry, then Martha a year later, in between.

Gerald had been too old to chase Emmy around the soccer pitch, and Myrna too set in her ways to change her schedule for game days and trips to the outlet mall.

They were the only parents in Emmy’s grade who’d had to balance college loan applications against deciding when to start drawing social security.

Obviously, Emmy had always been aware of the age difference, but only now was the impact of the math occurring to her.

She was hitting the prime of her life around the same time they were all sliding in the other direction.

Even Tommy’s quirky wife, Celia, had started to slow down.

She was a badass vice principal who ran half the high school, but she’d told Emmy last week that her idea of heaven was wearing pajamas all day and only leaving the house to swing by the Dairy Queen drive-thru.

“Emmy Lou.” Myrna appeared out of nowhere. Her expression was filled with disapproval as she handed Emmy the corner of a blanket to help fold. “Did you hear your father calling you?”

“I had no idea, Mother. I was just walking toward him for no particular reason.”

“That’s a very interesting tone you’re using. Do you mean to imply the opposite?”

“You could infer it that way.” Emmy finished folding the blanket. She knew exactly why her mother was giving her shit right now. “Go ahead and say it. I know you saw what happened with me and Jonah.”

“Saw it. Heard about it. Then heard about it again. And again.” Myrna gathered up another blanket and slapped the dirt off the back. “I’m not going to say I told you so.”

“That’s a very interesting tone you’re using.”

“From which you are welcome to infer my meaning.”

Emmy reflexively took up for Jonah. “His gig over in Macon ran late last night. He had to chase down the owner to get paid. He’s exhausted.”

“I believe you are capable of juggling full-time employment with child duties.” Myrna matched the edges of the blanket. “Meanwhile, Jonah couldn’t be assed to stick around long enough for his son to see the fireworks.”

The chocolate-covered ice cream cone. Jonah had bought it in town. Emmy was going to kill him. “He said he was going to drive Cole up to the Falls to get a better look.”

“Did he now?”

Emmy couldn’t lie anymore. “Mom.”

Myrna’s chest rose and fell as she sighed. She stacked the blankets on top of the rolling cooler. When she looked up, her expression was more neutral. “I told Jonah to bring Cole by the house later. I’ll make sure he gets tucked in.”

“Thank you.”

“‘Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.’”

Emmy gave her a blank look.

“Edgar Allan Poe,” her mother the English teacher said. “Now, where did your brother go? I can’t lug this cooler up the hill by myself and God knows Celia won’t lift a finger.”

Emmy didn’t look for Tommy. She looked for her father.

She easily spotted Gerald. He was standing about ten yards away, his head meerkatting above the crowd.

Someone was talking to him. Or at least trying to.

Gerald Clifton didn’t speak unless he felt something was worth saying.

Even at home, he preferred to let Myrna fill the silence.

She took off her hat again, hoping to feel the slightest breeze coming off the lake. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Probably another cousin asking for a third secret dinner or her crazy aunt reporting a raccoon for vagrancy.

As Emmy got closer to her father, she realized that he wasn’t paying attention to the man standing right in front of him.

He was looking at Emmy. Their eyes locked.

Something was wrong. His cop radar was so much better than hers, but she felt it now, that electrical current in the air that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

The tickle.

Emmy called it a bad feeling . She’d heard other cops refer to it as a hunch or, instinct or, if the officer was a woman, intuition . No matter the name, what it meant was that either something really bad had happened or something really bad was about to happen.

She cut through a group of stragglers, clicking the radio mic on her shoulder. “Brett, check in?”

“Check.” Brett’s voice crackled through the static. “I’m on Long Street. Truck rear-ended a Prius. Prius smacked into a telephone pole. Road’s blocked both ways. Tow’s twenty minutes out. ’Sup?”

Emmy didn’t think a traffic accident a quarter mile away was responsible for her bad feeling. She started to ask, “Can you—”

Gerald gently took the mic out of her hand. He held it to his mouth, pressed the button. “Call in backup for the accident. Meet us on the upper lot. Eyes peeled. Right?”

There was a hiss of static, then Brett responded, “Yes, boss.”