Where We Left Off

That couldn’t have gone any better.

I was still on cloud nine when I hopped into my truck. Finding my phone, I cranked the music to max volume, and I used the dashboard, the steering wheel, and the brake pedal all as the instruments for my drum solo. My head bobbed to the beat, banging with the percussion. I drove for miles, a stupid grin on my face, my body buzzing.

That came to a sudden and unfortunate halt when the sirens—which, for a moment, I thought accompanied the current track playing from my phone—broke up my personal rock concert.

I reached across the cab to crank down my window. “Officer,” I greeted, then was thrown by the face that came into view. “Officer Douglas?”

“Mr. McBride.”

My registration was current. My insurance renewed. The paper he’d flung into my backseat last time was not a ticket, but instead a note that said, “It was nice to finally meet you,” which—although a little weird—did not require payment or a court appearance.

Sure, I’d been enjoying my music more loudly than necessary, but I wasn’t breaking any laws here. So I wasn’t nervous this time. I was on the brink of being pissed, and it took a lot to get me there.

“Sir, I’m not sure what I’m being pulled over for, but—”

“Would you mind stepping out of the vehicle?”

Okay. Now I was nervous. I would never survive jail. I barely made it through my shave at the barbershop without passing out. The types of improvised weapons and shivs that I’d seen on cable TV prison shows made me crap my pants in fear. Jail time was not an option.

Obediently, I popped open my door and followed Officer Douglas to his cruiser. His thick boots left loud and intimidating stomps and my heart matched in time and sound. He walked to the shoulder of the road, then slouched against his car, his ankles crossed, arms tightly folded over his chest. Even under his black sunglasses, I could see the intense squint of his eyes.

“Heath, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“That there’s a warrant out for my arrest?”

The officer’s head cocked. “Should I have any reason to believe there’s a warrant out for you?”

I laughed, but it was tight and forced and full of apprehension. “No. No, sir. I was only kidding.”

Officer Douglas released a gruff sigh. “Heath, Officer Quinn was my best friend. Not just on the force, but in life.”

I wish I could say that relinquished all my pent-up nerves, but in reality, his statement only multiplied them.

“We grew up together in Kentucky. Transferred to California at the same time. We were just kids when we both graduated from the academy and started our first year with the unit.”

He was going somewhere with this, so I didn’t interject.

“I was there for the accident, Heath.”

“Mallory’s?”

“Yeah. And I was there for all the months that followed.” With his hand, he slid his glasses to his forehead. Blew out a hot breath. “You have to understand that Dylan had just come out of a really bad breakup. He’d planned to marry the girl and she just up and left for Europe. Some foreign exchange program. Met a guy while over there and eloped. Dylan was shattered. More depressed than I’d ever seen him. It was hell for him.”

I scraped my hand through my hair. “I’m not sure what any of this has to do with me.”

“I deleted your texts, Heath.”

My mouth gaped open. “What?”

“We retrieved Mallory’s phone from the accident,” he said. “I saw the way Dylan looked at her. It was the first time his spark returned. He felt like he could be her hero, and that did something to him. Gave him purpose again. And I finally had my best friend back.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“I read everything you wrote to Mallory.” Police officers weren’t usually the ones doing the confessing. The shock still hadn’t fallen from my face. “How you would always love her. How sorry you were. How it wasn’t over.”

My hands twisted in my pockets and I gave Officer Douglas a wary glance.

“I blocked your number, Heath.” His voice was stilted. “I had a high school friend of mine hack into her e-mail account and delete everything you sent her, too. She never saw any of it.”

Had I not known any better, I would’ve thought Boone slipped something stronger into my drink. My skull pounded. I planted my feet wide and ground my teeth. “Why are you telling me this now?”

His nostrils flared, head whipping back and forth in a twitch. “I wasn’t just close with Dylan. When they started dating, Mallory became a friend, too. I care about her, Heath. Watching her survive Dylan’s death was awful. She was so alone. But then I pulled you over that day,” he continued. “I finally put a face to the name. And it reminded me that someone else had shared his feelings for her, too.”

Two minutes earlier I’d wanted to deck the guy. But there was sincerity in his tone—at the very least, vulnerability. He didn’t need to share this with me. I could appreciate the humility it took to finally let the truth out.

“You were Mallory’s chance at happiness again. Maybe you were supposed to be her happiness all along.”

“She was happy with Dylan,” I defended, feeling the strange need to interject.

“Yeah, she was. But we all know he’d made his mistakes. Things didn’t work out in Europe for his ex and one weekend when Mallory was back home visiting in Kentucky, he flew her out to stay with him. Mallory found out and, Mallory being Mallory, took him back. Forgave everything.”

Mallory being Mallory.

Her forgiveness—the grace she offered others for the very least of offenses to something on this horrible scale—was what I loved about her. Was what challenged me to become a better person. Daily.

“Heath—I’m so sorry for everything I did. Honestly. I thought I was doing right by my friend, but I can’t shake the feeling that I intervened where fate should have led the way.”

I pressed my lips flat and my arms tensed. I shook out my hands and said with more reluctance than I’d hoped to convey, “It’s okay.”

“It’s not.”

“No.” My voice was tight. “No, it is. You didn’t know me. You didn’t know what Mallory and I had. All you saw was the potential for happiness for your buddy and hey, how can I fault you for that?”

“Because it was a shitty thing to do.”

I barked out a laugh. “You’re right. It was a shitty thing to do. That I won’t argue with. But it would’ve been even shittier if you’d never told me. And for that, I have to thank you.”

Officer Douglas smiled. “I wish I could give you a lifetime’s worth of exemptions from parking tickets, but—being illegal and all—I can’t.”

“You weren’t above illegal activity in the past.” I winked with a grin.

“Ouch.”

“Hey, man. Only pointing out the obvious.” I dropped a hand to his shoulder. “But seriously, thank you for coming clean. It means a lot.”

“Thank you for always being so good to Mallory. It’s nice to see her have her spark back, too.”

I swiveled to walk back to my truck but said, “And it’s my plan to make sure she never loses it again.”

“Good plan.” Officer Douglas tipped his chin to me. He hollered my direction. “I’ll be sure to stay out of the way this time.”

“That’s a good plan, too. And no offense, but I’d be perfectly happy if I never saw you again, Officer Douglas. You and those flashing lights of yours.”

“Absolutely none taken.”

The interruption to my drive home set me back about twenty minutes, but I was a staunch believer that everything happened for a reason. Even Officer Douglas’s shenanigans twelve years ago. Whatever the motive, he felt he was doing the right thing, and who was to say that I wouldn’t’ve done the same thing, had I been in his shoes? All right, I wouldn’t’ve done the same thing, but that was not the point. I figured the grief and deceit he’d harbored the last decade was punishment enough, and I wasn’t about to lay it on even thicker. He deserved to move on, too.

I hopped right back onto my cloud nine and enjoyed the view, but not for long.

Pulled over on the shoulder up about a quarter of a mile ahead was a gray sedan, its hazard lights ticking out a distress warning.

With my left hand, I turned my blinker on and coasted the truck up to the back of the vehicle, slowing against the dirt on the side of the road. I stepped out of the cab and called out to the driver who was exiting her car at the same time. She appeared young—probably a college student—and pressed herself against the vehicle as a semi rolled past in the slow lane next to her.

“Everything okay?”

“Flat tire!” she yelled over the roar of cars. “Mr. McBride? Is that you?”

“Brittany Carson?” When I got closer, I recognized her as one of my students from my very first year of teaching. “How the heck are you?”

“Well …” She glanced to the offending tire, its air completely gone. “I could be better.”

“Know if you have a spare?”

Brittany walked around to the trunk. “I think so. I’ve never had to use it, but my dad said there was one when I called him.”

“He on his way over?”

She shook her head. “No, he’s at work, but I’m sure I can figure it out.”

“Let’s see if we can figure it out together. For starters, the tire’s probably going to be under the vehicle. The jack is most likely in the trunk. Let’s pop it open and see what we’re working with.”

Brittany’s face when slack with relief. “Thank you so much, Mr. McBride. I had no idea what I was doing and this isn’t exactly the safest spot to pull over. I don’t know why it’s flat. I don’t think I ran over anything.”

I located the jack and dropped it to the ground. “Probably a nail or something, but we’ll take a look. I hate to say it, but I’m glad I just got pulled over, otherwise I wouldn’t have been driving down the road at this time of night to find you.”

“You got pulled over?” she asked. “That totally sucks.”

“It wasn’t so bad. It was actually really great, to be honest.” Brittany gave me a look like maybe I’d just fallen from a tree, but I shrugged it off. I grabbed a crowbar from the toolbox in the trunk and rapped it against my palm. “Let’s see what we can do about turning your evening around, too.”