Chapter 9 Asher
Chapter nine
Asher
“Alright, I’m off,” I call, stepping out of my room and checking my uniform for the third time. Holster snug. Badge straight. Shirt tucked so tight it might be vacuum-sealed. The last thing I need is my deputies seeing their sheriff looking like a man in need of a rescue.
On the couch, Brick is king of a small pillow empire, cereal bowl balanced on his lap.
He’s got a documentary paused mid-science fact and a blanket half-cocooned around his cast. For half a second he looks five again, the way he did the morning I taught him to ride a bike and he asked if the sun ever blinked.
“Are you sure you’ll be fine on your own?” I ask for the third time.
He gives me the look—equal parts patience and exasperation. “Dad. Go to work.”
I hover anyway, flicking my gaze from his crutches (leaning within reach) to the water bottle on the coffee table, to the TV remote. “Remember: I’m on speed dial. You call if you feel dizzy, or if your leg aches weird, or—”
He sighs like a martyr. “If a stampede of squirrels breaks in, I’ll call you.”
I try not to smile. “Good plan.”
I step to the door, then back again. “Your crutches—”
“—are right there,” he finishes, deadpan. “Dad. Go.”
The word lands where it needs to. I squeeze his shoulder, pretend my throat isn’t tight, and step outside before I talk myself into staying.
***
Morning in Golden Heights smells like salt and pine and the bakery that starts too early.
The sky is so clean it feels like the world finally remembered to wash its face.
I start the cruiser and, out of pure anxious habit, tap the home camera app.
The living room feed pops up: Brick is exactly where I left him, eating cereal, staring at a paused diagram of a volcano like he’s plotting an experiment.
It’s been a week and a half since the fall. Seven days of fluorescent lights and forms and me pretending not to watch him breathe on the video feed. He’s okay. He wants scones, of all things. He’s tougher than I deserve.
My mind drifts, the way it does when I stop gripping it too tightly, and lands on Rebecca.
If she were here, she’d be the one fussing—colder compresses, better pillows, louder opinions about calcium.
I can hear her laugh, that low, surprised sound she made when Brick said something bigger than his age.
Two years gone and I still reach for her in the dark sometimes, and it takes a second for the word widower to sink in.
Miami stopped making sense after the accident. Too loud, too fast, too full of places where memories ambushed you at intersections. I wanted quiet. Brick needed quiet. So, we came here: to a town that wakes gently and goes to sleep on time.
I almost shipped him to my parents in Oregon once. I even put his favorite flannel in a suitcase. Then I closed it without adding a second thing. He’s my son. I don’t know if I’m doing any of this right, but I’m doing it with him.
Main Street dips, the street narrows, and Brime Street slides into view.
Scotty’s Diner glints ahead, neon off, morning light making the windows into mirrors.
My gaze catches on a motorcycle parked two doors down.
Sleek. Black. Two riders sit astride it in head-to-toe dark gear—helmets on, visors down. Not talking. Not moving. Looking.
A small prickle begins at the base of my skull.
Brime Street is the soft center of a soft town—porch swings and planters, not trouble.
If something ugly’s going to happen, it usually avoids the place where Eloise and Heather argue about crossword clues.
I reduce speed anyway, memorize what I can—one rider tall and narrow, the other broader through the shoulders.
No plates that I can see from this angle. New bike, clean chain, no rust.
They don’t turn their heads as I pass. That’s what makes me decide to remember them.
***
In the bullpen, the sheriff’s office smells like burnt coffee and paper cuts. My deputies are already loud: mugs clack, report folders thwap, the radio spits out a litany of mundane life.
“Car two, respond to Elm—Mr. Pritchard’s goat is on the porch again.”
“Ten-four,” Gary Quick answers, and someone snorts, “Tell the goat it’s a municipal building; he has to remove his hat.”
Deputy David Joel appears in my doorway with a donut he didn’t ask permission to steal from the break room. “Boss. You look like a recruiting poster.”
“Is that a compliment or a cry for help?”
He shrugs. “Depends if the coffee machine lives.”
“Morning, Sheriff,” calls Carla from dispatch, rolling by on her chair, headset askew. “If you hear a strange beeping later, it’s just the new scanner learning our accent.”
“Does the scanner know goats?” Gary asks.
“It knows you,” she fires back.
The bulletin board behind the front desk is its own small-town newsletter: a flyer for the fall chili cook-off, a photo of last year’s county fair pie-eating champion (Hank, mid-bite, eyes wild), three lost dog notices, two found chicken notices, and a printout with BE AWARE OF SCAMS crossed out and replaced in red pen with BE AWARE OF SCAMMERS; SCAMS ARE ABSTRACT.
Gary claims Ruiz did it. Ruiz claims God did it.
“Sheriff?” Carla calls again, more gently. “How’s the boy?”
I half-turn. The bullpen buzz dims just enough to be noticeable.
“On the mend,” I say, and the room releases a breath like we were all holding it.
“Good,” Gary says, then ruins it. “Now you can get back to hunting feral goats.”
“We prefer the term ‘unhoused caprines,’” David says solemnly, and gets smacked in the shoulder with a rolled-up incident report for his trouble.
The humor lets me unclench a notch I didn’t realize I’d locked. This place—these people—were part of the reason I took this job. Small town, big heart, just enough chaos to keep you honest.
“Sheriff?” calls the County Commissioner from his office down the hall. “Got a minute?”
The bullpen makes a quiet oooh sound like we’re all twelve years old.
I straighten my tie that doesn’t exist and step in.
Howard Edwards—county commissioner, veteran, and former sheriff—is the kind of man who could stare a raccoon out of a dumpster.
He waves me toward a chair that’s probably molded to every deputy who’s sat in it over the last twenty years.
His office is painted with that universal bureaucratic beige.
A framed photo of him and his mother, Melissa, laughing at a town picnic hangs on the wall.
On a shelf sits a mug that says BEST BOSS in a child’s handwriting—Melissa probably bought it and signed it herself.
“How’s Brick?” he asks, and it’s not a formality. Howard has a way of asking that makes you feel both seen and measured.
“Better. Home, cranky, hungry. He’ll be okay.”
“And you?”
I shrug. “Working on okay.”
He nods, his gaze drifting to the single window over the back lot. Light catches the creases in his face, deepening them for a heartbeat before softening again. “You fitting in all right here, Asher?”
It takes me half a second to realize he means Golden Heights, not the chair. “Yeah,” I say. Then, because he’s earned more: “Miami… had too many ghosts. Too much noise. Here, I can hear myself think.”
He grunts. “Thinking’s dangerous. I try to avoid it before lunch.” Papers shuffle under his hands until he finds what he was looking for. “Heard you’re planning to take some patrol shifts again.”
News travels at the speed of light around here. “I am. Keeps me close to the town. Shows the guys I’m not just a desk badge.”
“Good,” he says simply. “That’s your call, not mine. Gratefully, I don’t hand out routes anymore.” His eyes sharpen with quiet amusement. “Brime Street’s quiet this time of year, if you’re after a low drama start.”
I huff a laugh. “Noted.”
“Quiet isn’t punishment,” he says mildly. “It’s a chance to pay attention. You had a week where the world got small and scary. Don’t need to throw yourself straight into a domestic with knives. Drive the heart of town. Remember who you work for, who we all work for.”
When he puts it like that, it’s hard to argue. “Copy.”
He leans back, fingers steepled. “Also, heads up: you’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest with that Hartley mess. Moneyed folks with opinions are circling. Keep your eyes open for out-of-towners who smell like plans.”
I think of the motorcycle—black on black, like a blank square in a crossword. “Already saw a couple I didn’t like.”
“Trust your gut.” He points toward the door. “Now go be the friendly kind of sheriff.”
As I stand, he adds, “Your boy needs anything, you shout.”
“Thank you,” I say, meaning it.
Back in the hall, David materializes at my elbow like a mischievous cat. “So—goats or geese?”
“Brime Street,” I say.
David winces. “Ah yes. The spa day of law enforcement.”
“Keep making fun,” I warn, “and I’ll stick you on parking meters.”
He clutches his chest. “Cruelty.”
***
The next morning, the cruiser hums like a contented refrigerator as I roll down Brime.
Main the woman inside the window holds a pose that looks like an argument with gravity.