Chapter 11
Chapter eleven
Asher
Jasmine Wallace.
Jasmine freaking Wallace.
Something about her gets under my skin. The sass. The certainty. The way she talks like the only two settings in life are “stop” and “go” and I’m somehow the yield sign in the middle. I tell myself it’s professional irritation. It feels a lot like personal.
“Dad!” Brick calls from the dining room. “I can’t find the other sock.”
I finish swapping my uniform for jeans and a gray henley tee, drop my utility belt in the closet safe, and lock my service weapon. When I step out, Brick’s at the table with a bowl of cereal and the sock in question draped over the chair beside him like it crawled there to die.
“You sure you don’t want to bring the crutches?” I ask.
“No,” he says. The word lands flat.
He was excited last night. Couldn’t stop talking about seeing friends and how Mrs. Milly always smells like oranges and books. Now he’s all edges and silence. That’s new. And wrong.
“You okay?” I try, casual.
He shrugs. “I’m fine.”
The world’s two least helpful words. I let it go—for now. You push Brick when he’s like this and he turtles. Then nobody wins.
“Eat a few more bites,” I say. “Fuel.”
He pokes the cereal as if the concept is offensive.
I clear dishes, check the locks, and not think about Jasmine’s macho comment looping through my head. I wasn’t trying to impress her. I was doing my job. But the way she said it… like she wanted to believe the worst of me because it helped her believe the best of herself.
Who the hell is she anyway?
I can picture her too easily: the quick flare of her nose when she’s mad, the way she flips her hair out of her eyes like an argument punctuation mark, that scarlet flush she gets when she’s sure she’s right. Which, it seems, is always.
“Shoes,” I say, and Brick limps to the door, crutches still leaned within easy reach if he decides that pride isn’t worth pain. He doesn’t grab them.
We drive. We pass Brime Street. We pass Scotty’s. I don’t mean to look; I look anyway. Sun glances off the window like a mirror. No green eyes glaring back, which is probably for the best.
“You want a scone on the way home later?” I ask, pretending I’m only thinking of snacks and not the woman who bakes them. “Scotty’s has your favorite.”
“I’m good,” he says, voice a little too quick. “Thanks.”
The rest of the ride is the soft white noise of tires and a kid who’s somewhere I can’t reach yet.
At the school, Ms. Milly lights up when she sees him.
She smells like oranges and books. “Brick!” she says, kneeling to hug him, and a complicated feeling tugs at something sore in me.
It’s been a long time since an adult bent and gathered my son like that.
Rebecca would have. She would have done it better than anyone.
“You’ve got the doctor’s note?” she asks.
I hand it over. “Cleared to participate as comfort allows.”
She reads it longer than necessary, lips moving. Teachers read a lot of medical jargon. They don’t need to. Life would be kinder if they didn’t have to.
“Great,” she says. “We’ll take it slow.”
“Call me if slow gets weird,” I say, and give Brick a look that means I’m here.
He nods without meeting my eyes.
I drive away with the window down, letting the wind hit the thoughts I can’t clean up by hand.
It’s just before three. I get to the school ten minutes early and watch the tidal wave of kids spilling out: backpacks bouncing, voices crashing and receding. Brick emerges near the back of the current. He’s walking carefully but seems steady. That should relieve me. It doesn’t.
There’s a boy with him. Shorter by an inch, wiry, that coiled-spring look some kids get when they’re deciding who to be.
I recognize him without knowing how: the way he taps Brick’s shoulder like a test. He says something.
Brick shrugs. The kid taps harder, the kind of shove that’s almost not a shove if you’re the one doing it.
Brick doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t look at him. He just… absorbs it.
My jaw goes tight.
I keep watching through the mirror. The boy nudges him again, more obviously this time, then laughs. It’s small, low, aimed to shoot and not draw refs. Brick stands there like a tree in wind and then the wind moves on.
He climbs into the car and buckles with his eyes on the dashboard.
“So,” I say lightly, pulling out. “Who was the boy?”
He stares out the window. “Which boy?”
“The one who walked with you. Tapped your shoulder.”
“Oh.” He picks at the strap of his backpack. “Andrew. Andrew Beckett.”
“Is he in your class?”
“No. Recreation.”
“Rock wall,” I say, the words cold before they land.
“Yeah.”
“You friends?”
Brick’s silence has weight. “He said he’s sorry,” he says finally. “We’re friends now.”
“Sorry for what?” I ask, even though the answer is already fogging the inside of my skull.
“He’s just sorry,” Brick says, and if I were a worse father, I’d let that be enough.
The light turns red. I ease to a stop and look over. His fingers are white on the backpack strap.
“Was he climbing with you the day you fell?”
A beat. “Yes.”
The second question tastes like copper. “Did he push you?”
His mouth works once like he’s searching for language. “He said it was a joke,” he says, so soft it could be a thought. “He said he didn’t mean to.”
The light turns green. I don’t move right away.
“Dad, it’s fine,” he adds quickly, like he senses the storm. “He said I can hang out with him now.”
“Because he apologized,” I say, and hear how thin I sound.
“Because we’re friends,” Brick says, and stares out the window so I won’t see the part of his face that doesn’t believe it.
The rest of the drive is silent. Every road sign looks like a warning.
***
One perk of wearing a badge in a small town is that information arrives with a speed that looks like magic, but it’s really just Carla being very good at her job.
I ask quietly. The database hums. Andrew Beckett pings: twelve years old, enrolled last week, address on Ellis Way.
Parent: Alan Beckett, recent arrival, works remote, long shadow on a past report or two.
Not a criminal life. A man who has met the inside of a cell and learned just enough from it to never admit he learned anything at all.
I should loop in the school first. I should speak to the counselor, to Ms. Milly, to the principal. I should start a line of accountability that can hold weight. I can do all of that tomorrow.
Right now, there’s a rubber band stretched tight across my chest. It has the Beckett last name printed on it.
“Can you hang here for a couple hours?” I ask Brick after dinner. “I need to run to the office, sign a few things.”
He doesn’t ask which things. He’s at the age where he knows adults lie to keep kids safe. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll watch the volcano show.”
I queue up his favorite episodes, make sure the door is locked, the home camera feed is up, the water’s full, the remote reachable. His crutches are leaned within reach. He’s fine. He’s safe. He’s mine.
I leave. My hands grip the wheel too hard all the way to Ellis Way.
The house that belongs to the Becketts is new money pretending to be old taste: crisp lines, black trim, a door that probably came with a brochure about “craftsmanship.” The dad opens it after the second knock with a face that says he already regrets the interruption to his life, whatever it is.
He’s my height, all angles and gym time, a tank top doing a worse job than a shirt would at making him look like a person. There’s a ring of arrogance around some men like a smell. It hits you before their words do.
“Help you?” he asks, and manages to make it sound like a joke.
“Evening,” I say. “I’m Asher Vaughn. Sheriff.” I keep my voice neutral. “Your son Andrew is in the same recreation program as my son, Brick.”
Something satisfied flickers through his eyes at the word sheriff. He leans against the doorjamb like we’re at a bar and I’m a story.
“Okay,” he says.
I keep my hands visible. Palms open. “There was a fall from the school rock wall. My son was injured.”
“Kids fall,” he says. “They bounce.”
“Mine didn’t,” I say. “He fractured his leg.”
That gets a half-second of surprise and then slides off his face like water off wax. “Is this the part where you ask me to punish my boy for something you don’t know he did?”
I lock my jaw, unlock it. “I’m here to let you know what I’ve learned and ask for your help. If Andrew pushed him …”
“If,” he echoes, smiling with only one side of his mouth.
“ … even as a joke, there needs to be a conversation. With you, with the school. It won’t happen again.”
“Conversation,” he says, like it’s a word he’s chewing. “And what if there wasn’t a push?”
“My son says there was.”
“Kids lie,” he says, and the smile widens, mocking. “Or maybe your boy’s soft, Sheriff. Maybe the world gave him a shove and he folded. What do you make of that?”
I breathe once, slow. “I make of it that you should talk to your son.”
“And I make of it,” he says, stepping closer, the door now a boundary he’s chosen to ignore, “that you should teach yours a backbone so he doesn’t come home crying next time.” He tips his chin. “Or did he not get a model for that.”
The rubber band across my chest pulls taut to the point of snap.
I hear my own voice from a distance. “You’re going to want to dial it back.”
He laughs the way some men laugh when they’re trying to make you smaller. “I’m on my porch. You came to my door to tell me a story about your little victim. Go home, Sheriff. Practice some dad skills. Try not to embarrass yourself in the meantime.”
The snap is not loud. It’s just final.
He steps into my space and gives me a shove—open palm, off-center, enough to rock me back a half step. “Or maybe,” he adds, “you want me to teach you how a man—”
I don’t remember making the decision. I remember my training making it for me. I trap his wrist, pivot, and pin him against the doorjamb with a forearm across his collarbone—hard enough to remind, not hard enough to injure. “We’re done,” I say. “Hear me? This stops here.”
He snarls and bucks his shoulder beneath mine; we stagger. He aims a sloppy punch. It connects enough to ring the bell in my ear. I tighten the pin and step us both off the stoop before his skull meets the frame. “Do not swing at me,” I say, and the steel in my voice surprises even me.
“Get off my property,” he spits, breath hot.
“I will,” I say. “After I look you in the eye and say the words ‘You will talk to your son.’ And ‘You will keep your hands to yourself in your own house from now on.’ Because if you teach him this?” I press just enough to get attention, not pain. “He will end up as a case file, not a man.”
He tries to shove. He fails. His elbow clips my ribs. The move is ugly and accidental and still finds a place that will be a bruise by morning. I step back, break contact, give us both air before the next bad choice can arrive.
“This is me walking away,” I say, and mean it.
“This is me not apologizing,” he says, and he also means it.
We stare at each other, two men on either side of a line that doesn’t care who drew it. He’s breathing hard now. So am I. The porch light makes everything a little too bright.
I force my hands open, open, open, and step off his stoop. “We’ll be in touch through the school,” I say. “Do better.”
He snorts. “Teach your boy not to fall.”
I get in the car and drive, every muscle arguing with itself until the house is three turns behind me and I can finally breathe in something that isn’t another man’s contempt.
***
Brick notices the mark by my eye before I manage to make a plan to hide it. “What happened?” he asks, small.
“Caught the door with my face,” I say, because the truth is complicated and the truth will make him feel responsible for something he didn’t do.
He looks like he believes me and like he doesn’t. He’s a good kid. He knows I’m not telling him something. I hate it, and I do it anyway.
I get him through dinner and the volcano show and teeth and into bed.
Every movement costs. My ribs throb a dull drumbeat.
When I close his door, the throb moves through the house like the HVAC.
I check the cabinet for painkillers. Aspirin.
Two left. I take them dry and stand in the kitchen listening to the refrigerator hum and my conscience keep time.
The doorbell rings.
I look at the clock. Nine-oh-three. Anyone who rings a bell at nine-oh-three is either selling something illegal or about to change your night.
“Stay in bed,” I call softly down the hall, and check the peephole.
It’s the second one.
Jasmine stands under my porch light with a glass bowl cradled in both hands like an offering. The world tilts half a degree.
I open the door.
“I brought scones,” she says, bright and awkward at once, like she practiced the line and now wants it back. Then her eyes drop from my face to my collarbone to the place where the Henley tee is doing a poor job of hiding the new story on my ribs. “What the—”
“What are you doing here?” I ask, because if I ask How did you find my address it will sound like I don’t want her here, and that’s not exactly true.
“What happened to you?” she counters, because she is constitutionally incapable of answering my questions in the order I ask them.
“I asked first,” I say, sharper than I mean to. “What are you doing here.”
Something flickers across her face—annoyance, then concern, then something that’s none of my business. “Brick likes scones,” she says. “You said. I made a batch.” She lifts the bowl like proof. “Also, they have extra calcium because Riley says science. So. Here.”
For a second, I don’t know what to do with any of this: the bowl, the woman, the day. Pain flares when I shift my weight and I fail to hide the wince.
“Oh, my heavens,” she says, softer now. “What happened?” And she makes her way through the doorway.
The answer is complicated and none of it is the dumb macho thing she accused me of, and all of it is something I’m not proud of.
“This,” I say, because it’s what I have, “is going to be a long night.”