Chapter 43 Mickey
Sunday night Tex brings me bourbon. He sits in the armchair and doesn’t say anything for twenty minutes, which is the longest Tex has been silent in my presence since the night of the shooting. The not-talking says more than the talking ever could. Then he stands up and says “tomorrow” and leaves.
I sleep. Not well, but I sleep.
My uniform’s khaki shirt has been hanging in the closet since Tex brought my things from my house. The fabric is stiff from months of not being touched, and the shirt smells like cedar from the closet.
The badge clips to the chest. The department patch is on the left shoulder.
The shirt fits differently now — tighter across the chest and shoulders, looser in the waist from the weight I lost in the hospital.
The pants are the same khaki but the legs are arranged by my hands instead of standing in them and the belt goes on while I’m sitting.
I wheel to the bathroom mirror. Now I’m a cop in a wheelchair. Hair cut short from the trim Sheila gave me yesterday. She said if I was going back to work, I was going back looking right.
I take the elevator down. Tex is behind the bar doing the morning setup and he stops when the doors open. He looks at the uniform. His chin trembles. Once. Just a flash. Then he clears his throat and the trembling is gone.
“Look at you all dressed up,” he says.
“It’s just a shirt, Tex.”
“It’s not just a shirt and you know it. Get out of here before I say something I’ll deny later.”
Stormy is at the end of the bar restocking glasses. He looks at the uniform and nods once.
My truck is in the parking lot with the new hand controls.
They dropped it off on Saturday. I transfer from the chair to the cab.
The chair folds into the back seat. I close the door and I’m sitting behind the wheel of my own truck in a sheriff’s uniform.
The last time I sat behind a wheel in this uniform I had working legs and a life that looked completely different from the one I’m driving into now.
The Bay County Sheriff’s station is twenty minutes from the Roadhouse.
I’ve been in this building a thousand times but I’ve never entered it in a wheelchair.
The accessible entrance is on the side — a ramp, an automatic opener.
I press the button. The door swings wide.
The hallway is the same one I walked through for nine years, and the only thing that’s different is me.
The bullpen is through the double doors. Desks in rows. Computers. The hum of a Monday morning. My desk is the third one on the left. The chair fits underneath. The computer is on, the files are stacked and three cold case folders are in the inbox.
There’s one thing missing.
I reach into my bag and pull out an empty photo frame. Silver. Five by seven. I set it on the desk, front and center, angled toward the aisle where every deputy who walks to the coffee maker will pass.
The sergeant walks by and stops.
“Weaver. Welcome back.”
“Thank you, Sarge.”
His eyes go to the empty frame. “Photo coming soon?”
“Tomorrow.”
He nods and moves on. The day keeps going. I dig into work. Cold case files. Evidence logs. The work is different from patrol. Patrol was the body. This is the brain. My brain is good at this.
At lunch I take a photo of the desk. The computer, the files, the coffee mug the sergeant left as a welcome gift, the nameplate that says DET. WEAVER. And the frame, front and center, empty and waiting.
I send it to Dante.
Mickey: This is my desk. Today is my first day back at work. The frame is for a photo of me and Benji. It’s empty because I don’t have the photo yet. I’m going to take it today. I need to know where he is. Please.
Delivered. Read.
Three dots appear and disappear and appear again. Dante composing and deleting. The photo of the desk did something words alone couldn’t do.
Dante: Seagrove. A cottage. White clapboard, blue shutters, two rocking chairs on the porch. I’ll send the address. I won’t tell him you’re coming. Text me when you’re on your way and I’ll disappear.
Then a second text.
Dante: Don’t you dare show up without that frame.
Then a third.
Dante: And Mickey? Wear the uniform. Good luck.
The afternoon crawls. At four-thirty the sergeant tells me to knock off early and go home. I don’t argue but I don’t go home.
I text Dante to give him a heads up. The frame goes on the passenger seat. I pull out of the station lot and head toward Seagrove.
The hand controls respond smoothly to my grip. Gas with the left hand, brake with a push, steering with the knob. The road looks different from the driver’s seat than it looked from the cruiser, but the road is the same.
I find the cottage and notice the parking spot is empty. Dante knows when to be present and when to disappear. After parking on the street, I transfer to the chair. The sidewalk is smooth. I wheel between the two rocking chairs and stop at the front door.
I knock and hear footsteps coming. Light, quick. The footsteps I’ve been listening for since the first night Benji stepped into my hospital room.
“What did you forget this time, Dante?” Benji says as he swings open the door.
Benji looks like the same man who walked into my hospital room carrying pizza and changed my life. Except the weekend has cost him something I can see from the doorway.
He’s hurting and I caused the pain.
I flash my badge at him. “Officer Weaver with the Bay County Sheriff’s Department. I’m looking for a missing person.”
His eyes go to the uniform. The badge. The patch.
“Who is missing?” he asks, still not opening the door fully.
“The love of my life,” I say. “It’s critically important that I find him before dark.”
“Why is that?” he asks.
“Because I love him and don’t want to spend another night without him knowing how sorry I am for hurting him. Have you seen him?”
Benji shrugs. “What does he look like?”
“He’s about your height. Blonde hair. Eyes that I always thought were blue-grey until I saw them in the sunlight and realized they were green around the edges.
He’s gorgeous. Has a fast mouth that I love.
Wears eyeliner and is the most visible person in any room he enters.
He’s the perfect size to sit cuddled up right here on my lap where I can wrap my arms around him.
” I pat my thighs and he glances down at the photo frame.
“Are you sure you haven’t seen him around? I’ve got to find him.”
“He sounds like someone I used to know,” he says. He points at the frame. “What is that?”
I hold it up for him to see. “This is a photo frame I bought to sit on my desk at work. I need a photo of me and the love of my life to go in here. But I can’t take the photo if I can’t find him.
Once I do, we’ll take the photo and then I’ll upload it to an app from a drugstore down the road.
I’ve already downloaded it to my phone. They’ll print it, I’ll pick it up, and this frame will go on my desk so I can show off my boyfriend to everyone who walks past. The sergeant saw it today and asked me when the photo was coming. I told him tomorrow.”
“How did you get here?”
I point to my truck parked on the street. “In my truck with the hand controls. I came straight from work.”
“Mickey.” His hand tightens on the doorframe. “ You drove here yourself?”
“Yes, and I can drive you around now too. If you trust me enough to do that. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.
I’m sorry, Benji. For what I did at the party.
For more than the party. For every time I made you feel small, because you are the most important person in the world to me.
You kept me going during the darkest time in my life.
I love you and there’s no version of my future where I don’t see you in it with me. ”
He blinks and looks away from me. “How do I know it won’t happen again?” he asks.
“Because I’m giving you my word. When you told Stormy to tell me that you should’ve left the first time Sheila asked you to, it broke me.
To think that you’d be willing to go back and erase us and everything that happened.
If I had the chance to go back, I would do everything exactly the same because you are more important to me than my legs.
You’re more important to me than anything. ”
His face breaks. His eyes spill over and tears roll down his cheeks. He steps onto the porch and bends down. He grabs my face with both hands and he kisses me. I reach up and wrap my hand around his arm. When he pulls back his forehead is against mine.
“Will you forgive me and give me another chance? I love you, Benji. I want to be a man that you deserve and that you can be proud of.”
“If we take this photo and you put it on your desk, who are you going to say I am?”
“I’ll say, this is me and my boyfriend, Benji Bennett. The love of my life.”
He stands, wipes his face, and squares his shoulders.
“Come home with me,” I say. “Right now. Tonight. Come back to the loft and let me take the photo there. In our room. With the plants on the shelf behind us and the Gulf through the window. That’s where the photo should be taken. In our place.”
“You’re not putting a photo of me on your desk at a sheriff’s station looking like this,” he says, wiping his face with the back of his hand.
“I’ve been crying, sleeping on a couch and my hair is a war zone.
If you think I am going to let the first photo your colleagues see of me be this face, you’ve lost your mind.
I need at least an hour. I need my hair product, my good pencil, and the ring light that’s in my bag. ”
“Take all the time you need, though I think you look perfect just the way you are. You’ll have the whole drive to plan your look. The light will be perfect by the time we get back. Golden hour on the water.”
“It should be a sunset photo,” he says. “Through the loft windows. With the plants on the shelf. Both of them together. I need to get Frankie and pack my things. Give me two minutes.”