Chapter 12
ZEKE
“Why is Callum still here?” Jos crossed his arms and planted himself in the kitchen doorway, his school backpack still slung over one shoulder.
“He’s staying for a week,” I hedged. Callum’s car was in our drive, but he was out running right now after having skated at practice all morning.
I got tired just watching him, although I was not sad about those thighs.
We’d run together yesterday morning and watching those thighs in action had almost made it worth being badly smoked and gasping for breath halfway home.
“Yeah, but why? He has a house right there.” Jos tilted his head towards the Fitzpatricks’.
“Because his uncle just moved in and Callum doesn’t get along with him, remember? So he’s going to hang out here for a bit. And it works out, because I start night shifts tomorrow, so you’ll have someone around.”
“Why do you have to work different shifts like that? It sucks.”
“It’s my job.”
“It’s stupid. Why would you make cops change their shift every week? Aren’t you, like, sleep deprived? Doesn’t it make you grumpy and likely to shoot people?”
I chuckled. “I sure hope being grumpy doesn’t make me shoot people.
” When Jos huffed a frustrated sound, I added, “Different departments do it different ways. A couple of places I know, the cops do two twelve-hour days, then two twelve-hour nights, and then they’re off for five days, then they do it again. That would be worse.”
“Yuck.”
“And then there are places where the shifts rotate every three months, and some where the officers pick a shift and they don’t change.”
“So why aren’t you working one of those places?”
“You want to move across the country?”
“No! I want things to stay the same. I want to go to school and come home and eat dinner and go to bed and not wonder where you are or who’s in the house.”
“You know where I am. There’s a calendar on the fridge.” I’d put my schedule and Callum’s and Jos’s school on one page, and stuck it up with magnets. We had the info online, of course, but seeing it all together on paper made things easier.
“That’s not what I meant.”
Well, what did you mean? I converted that to, “I’m listening.” I’d been reading parenting-a-teen blogs, trying to learn something, and listening not confronting was high on the list.
Jos stared at me for a while, and I wondered if he’d just shrug and head to his room like he had way too often in the month since Krystal died.
Finally, he said, “Night shifts are the most dangerous. I looked it up. There’s, like, more crime and less cops and it’s dark and everything.
Why would you want to do that? Why are you a cop anyway? ”
“Because it’s what I’m trained to do,” I hedged.
Jos snorted at my bullshitting. “That’s no kind of answer. I never thought… When you babysat for me, you were the one letting me do stuff Mom and Dad never did. You snuck me cookies after I brushed my teeth. You let me sit on the kitchen counter.”
Jos had been a monkey as a toddler. It was more couldn’t stop him than let him. But I guess I didn’t flip my lid over it like Krystal had.
“Dad was more like a cop,” Jos went on. “I could see, if he’d retired, he might’ve…” His voice trailed off thickly. He coughed and said, “But not you.”
“Truthfully?” I said. “I’m not entirely sure how I ended up here.
Part of it was Dad, losing him. I wanted—” Wanted him to be proud of me, especially since he was struggling with me being gay.
“Wanted to honour his memory, to do some good in the world, like he would’ve if he’d lived to retire.
I’m not the military type, but I could do law enforcement. ”
“What about the other part?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t have any particular talent, nothing I really wanted instead.
Joining the police force was straightforward, and it let me support myself.
” Krystal might not have cut me out of the will, but she did let me know, after Dad died, that even with his benefits, there was no extra money for college and it was up to me to figure myself out.
“So you’re just going to keep doing it till someone shoots you?”
“Jos, I told you, it’s not that dangerous.” The worst part really was the stress and the toll of shift work and the nasty stuff we saw and worked around, day to day. More cops died of mental health issues than crime, but I wasn’t going to put that fear in my little brother’s head.
“Do you even like it? Mom’s dead and Dad’s dead and we can’t make them proud or happy or anything now, because they’re in a hole in the ground. So why do you even want to do it anymore?”
Why do you even want to do it anymore? That question hit harder than I expected.
Last shift I worked, I stopped for a homeless woman who was drunk and wandering into traffic on Hastings Street, thumping on car windows with her hands, asking for help.
I tried to talk her down, asked her if she could go somewhere and sleep it off, but she broke away and staggered into the road again, almost falling.
The breathalyzer confirmed she was drunk, not medical.
Detaining her was for everyone’s safety.
But she begged me to let her go, because what would happen to her stuff, her other stuff, not what was in her pockets.
Her good stuff. She pointed at a shopping cart with some bags and a blanket.
And all I could tell her was to ask a friend to watch it for her.
There were other homeless folks, huddled along the sidewalk.
She laughed and said she had no friends, and they’d steal it.
We drove away and left her belonging sitting there against a wall. I’d told her she could have me bring one bag, and she just broke into wild laughter, so I’d picked one at random. The one on top. I hoped it had stuff she needed. But I didn’t release her.
She offered to blow me in a dead tone of voice, slurring every syllable, and I wondered if that had worked for her before, if she felt she had to.
She was half my size, and older than me.
Then she raged at me, and then she cried.
I wondered how long she’d been on the streets.
Vancouver Detox was full, again, so I took her in for Section 81(1) hold, no arrest, no fines, just in the lockup until she was sober.
But an officer coming out of the lockup as I was going in, half-carrying her, said, “Trash detail, huh?” in passing. And when I cruised back to where we left her stuff, to see if I could give a storekeeper twenty bucks to hold it for her, the shopping cart was already gone.
So did I help her? I guess, because she didn’t die in the road, right then. But she’d no doubt come out of the lockup worse off than she went in.
Was I really doing much good as a cop? Do I even want to do it anymore?
Someone needed to police the city. I’d seen a lot of evil shit, people who would happily murder their grandmother if the price was right. Folks like that would keep on hurting and using others until they were stopped. But did I have to be the one to do it?
Except what else would I do? I was good at the job.
I was silent long enough that Jos snapped, “I knew you wouldn’t care,” whirled around, and stomped out. I heard him clatter up the stairs. Maybe I should’ve gone up and talked to him some more, but I wasn’t sure what use that would be, since I didn’t have any answers to his questions.
The front door opened, then Callum appeared in the kitchen doorway in his running gear. “Oh, hey, I was going to get something to drink.”
“You look like you need it.” We were having a warm, humid day for early March.
Not really hot, but Callum had stripped down to a T-shirt with his sweatpants and the cotton stuck to his muscular torso, damp with sweat.
His hair was glued to his forehead, and a flush coloured his cheeks and neck.
He looks like that after he comes. I pushed that thought away and opened the fridge for him.
Callum reached in, came out with a Gatorade, and sucked down half of it, his throat working as he swallowed.
A blue trickle ran down his chin, and his lips were wet as he set the bottle aside and wiped his face with the back of one hand.
I wanted to lick his mouth. Wanted to press my face to his sweaty neck and inhale the male scent of his skin.
I shut the fridge. “Good run?”
“Yeah. Was fine. Met a cute dog.” He looked around. “Hey, you ever think about getting Jos a dog? Might help.”
“The poor kid’s allergic. Dogs, cats, rabbits, pretty much anything with fur.
We had a cat when he was little and he kept getting sick, so Krystal had him tested and yeah, allergic to animals and molds.
Not pollens, thank God, given what Vancouver’s like in spring.
Or at least, he wasn’t then.” I should probably review Jos’s medical history.
One more thing I’d failed to do as his guardian.
“What happened to your cat?”
“A friend of Dad’s adopted her for his kids. She was super sweet.”
Callum stepped closer. I got a whiff of his musky scent. “So you had to give away your pet? That sucks.”
“Well, I didn’t want my baby brother to be sick.
It was fine. I was going to college in a few years anyway.
” But in this moment of clusterfucking up my duties, a sudden pang hit my chest. It hadn’t been fine.
I’d cried, and offered to keep Tilly in my room, and vacuum every day.
Dad had said no… I turned away from Callum to stare out the window and blinked hard.
“Hey.” Callum laid a hand on my arm. “You okay?”
“I don’t even know anymore.”
“I’m all gross and sweaty, or I’d hug you.”
Like I cared. I turned and grabbed him, and after an instant of hesitation, he hugged me back, murmuring, “Hey, it’s okay. You’re making it work.”
I took the comfort for a moment, pressing my face against his shoulder like I’d wanted to, letting his strength seep into me. Then I stepped back and rubbed my eyes. “Fuck.”
“What’s the problem?”