Chapter Six
Teague messaged to be sure he wouldn’t wake me with a call.
I swear he does that to remind me to do the same when I call him at night, because I’m more of a night owl than he is.
He’d had a full day of travel, with connection upon connection to save on airfare for the sheriff’s department. Tomorrow, he would visit a lab specializing in forensic genome sequencing and how it combined with genealogy for law enforcement.
The conference ran Wednesday through Sunday, followed by two days of visits to other departments, then a full-day return trip.
He was a part-time consultant for the North Bend County Sheriff’s Department, which he combined with substitute teaching at some of the area’s tougher high schools.
So he wasn’t an obvious pick for this hard-to-get-info conference.
His last-minute invitation came when someone backed out and his former partner from the Chicago area department where he’d been a detective recommended him.
Teague left that department and moved to Northern Kentucky after he’d been declared legally blind in one eye.
There was more to that story than he’d told me. I was certain of it. But considering my own non-sharing about my past until New Year’s, I’d been in no position to ask.
Since then, with our lives happily rolling along day by day, I hadn’t asked. Rocking boats and all that.
But even though he left only this morning, it felt like my focus was widening past day to day.
His video call came in.
As great as it was to see him, it somehow emphasized how far away he was.
After hearing about his travel day, I asked, “Do events like this remind you about your bad eye limiting your law enforcement opportunities?”
“Where’d that come from? You’ve rarely asked about my sight.”
He could have said that a hundred different ways, including accusatory. He was openly curious.
“I’ve wondered, but . . .”
He waited. Letting me find my words. Making me find my words.
“It didn’t seem fair to ask about your past when I wasn’t telling you such a big chunk of mine.”
“I like that about you — your sense of fairness.”
I eyed the screen. My suspicion faded. He meant it. Just like the curiosity.
He also was teasing me. But that was okay.
“I told you a lot about growing up and my family — a lot more than you’ve told me about yours.”
“You left out fifteen years, when you were world-famous,” he said dryly.
“Because I was pretending to be Kit — well, not pretending to be her, but pretending I did what she actually did. As I told you before, it wasn’t my secret—”
“Which Kit told you to tell me long before you did.”
I should have kept my mouth shut about that. Sharing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth can be dangerous.
Of course, we all know people, including public figures, who stay so far from that danger that they land in a quagmire that coats them in a stink they can never outrun. No question, I prefer the dangers of telling the truth.
Didn’t mean I wouldn’t change the subject.
“—besides, I wouldn’t say world-famous.” I sucked in a breath. “But none of this is the point. I have told you about those fifteen years, so—”
“Which I already knew.”
“—it’s fair for me to ask questions — unless you’re going to keep things hidden from me.”
His eyes glinted at the challenge. “Ask.”
I had two vital questions I wanted to get to, but didn’t want to start with.
“Did you know right away that you’d lost sight in your eye?”
“Pretty much from the start doctors said I’d lost most of the sight in that eye.”
“How did—?”
He cut off the beginning of one of my vital questions.
“There was an incident.” The term he’d used the few times we’d ventured into the topic.
Push? Or retreat?
I retreated.
Possibly because he cut me off. Partly from cowardice. Toss in uncertainty of how to continue on that front.
There were, however, other fronts.
“How did you react after they told you about your sight?”
He’d tensed at the first word, braced against another try at How did it happen?
He didn’t totally relax when it went a different direction, but he didn’t block this question.
“Didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t believe it. Argued with the medical types.” He grimaced wryly. “Didn’t do any good. Eventually, got it through my thick head.”
I could only guess he’d experienced the well-known stages of grief. He’d alluded to denial, then jumped to an off-hand version of the final stage of acceptance. But what of anger, bargaining, and depression?
“It’s an interesting process.” He sounded like a scientist. Maybe he needed detachment to reach acceptance.
Or it could be a carryover from his law enforcement training.
Keep observing no matter what. “The brain has to rewire itself to accommodate not getting as many signals and that the signals it does get can be skewed.
“It’s not fast. In my case, the brain wiring had to keep adjusting.”
“Why?”
“An infection in the eye. Hard to shake. Kept delaying things.”
“Oh, Teague—”
He raised one hand, somewhere between a halt sign and a dismissive wave.
“It’s in the past. Brain adjusted to how it interpreted visual messages and I got better at compensating when messages left holes.
Thanks to special programs. Seeing how they taught me and others to get around an issue — physical or otherwise — was what got me interested in teaching. ”
“You’ve said teaching lets you try to get to kids before they might cross paths with law enforcement.”
“True. After the injury, it was—” His flicker of hesitation heightened my attention. “—frustrating. Teaching channeled that into something useful.”
“Quincy said you could have stayed—”
“You’ve talked to Quincy?”
“Clara said Quincy said,” I amended. She’d connected with Teague’s former partner by phone, then she met him in person when she visited the Chicago area with Ned a while back, cementing the friendship. “That’s good enough for me.”
“Hearsay.” He tried to make it sound like a joke, but meant it.
“You’re not a lawyer. I’m not giving evidence,” I shot back.
“There’s nothing secret about why I didn’t fight to stay with my old department,” he said evenly.
“A new chief had come in about a year before. I didn’t like his spin on things I didn’t think should be spun.
He saw me as an impediment to remaking the department the way he wanted.
He knew I wouldn’t pretend to be loyal to him. ”
His wry grimace resurfaced. “Quincy said we could keep doing what needed being done — and he has, along with a number of other folks I worked with there. Not always easy for them.
“Anyway, when my eye was injured, the chief pushed to get me out.”
“People let that happen?”
“No. The community board and people in the government backed me, along with my chain of command and fellow officers.”
“But then—”
“I pulled the plug. I didn’t know what was ahead for my sight or how long it might take . . .”
He looked away, then back to me.
“That’s only partially true. Under our old chief, I’d’ve stuck it out. I didn’t want to work for that guy feeling like he was doing me anything resembling a favor.”
“Oh.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Yeah. I can understand that. I might feel the same way, though other than jobs in school, I haven’t had bosses. Well, except Kit, which was so different . . . “At some level I was aware of his silence letting my thoughts go where they wanted. “Kit would certainly feel the same way you did.”
He laughed. “Oh, hell, yes, she would. And she wouldn’t have been half as tactful as I was. In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing her take him on.”
“Do you miss it, though?”
“This works better for me. I can keep my hand in with law enforcement, keep my hand in with teaching.”
He hadn’t answered the question.
“Hey, you know I do fine, Sheila. You don’t have to worry about being stuck with an old crock who relies on you for everything. If that’s at the root of your maybe.”
Whoa.
Neither of us had mentioned that in the months since he’d brought up marriage — though in a sideways approach — and I’d responded with the equally sideways maybe.
“That is not—”
He interrupted. “How’d the training go at Zepke’s?”
After his conversational veer, I was back to the earlier choice. Push? Or retreat?
I knew more than I had.
There remained a lot I didn’t know.
But his signal was clear. Plus, with us apart, was this the time to press?
Still occupied with personal issues, I said, “We weren’t the worst in the class.”
“Did you think you might be?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“Me? Yes. Gracie? No. Berrie was there—”
“Ah.”
“Yup, with two young Boston fosters.”
He knows her and her permanent dogs from when he can come to the dog park with us.
I related the results of Berrie’s optimism that one of the pups would stay on her bed while Berrie worked with the other.
“Though the barking was not the carrying-on Marcus does.” The patriarch of Berrie’s Boston pack directed a lot of his carrying on at me when I entered the dog park. “And not — I have to admit — the glass-shattering bark Gracie can produce.”
He chuckled.
I liked that sound. I especially liked the sensation under my hand resting on his chest when he produced it.
In this moment, it also reminded me we were too far apart for me to experience that sensation.
“It’s good Berrie’s taking them to training, right?”
“The foster group requires it. But listen to this — she might not have been the worst owner there. There were two couples who came in together and I wouldn’t let any of them near our dogs.”
“You’re concerned they’ll drag down the value of the training?”
“I hadn’t thought about that. Donna’s in the class to help her granddaughter with Bernie, so we’ll probably pick up tips from her, along with Leo’s formal teaching. And everyone else seems nice — you know, normal dog people.”
He chuckled again. “I hate to burst your bubble, but I have, in my law enforcement career, arrested criminals who were dog people.”
“You think you could manage one more and arrest Berrie?”
This time he laughed and didn’t seem nearly as far away.
After we ended the call, I sat in bed with my arms wrapped around my knees, staring straight ahead.
Being blind in one eye seldom seemed to bother him functionally and talking about it didn’t, either.
Except the vital question: How did it happen?
And then there was the question he’d raised about my maybe.