24. Penny
PENNY
Morris’s office smells like burnt coffee and the same manila folders that have been stacked in the corner since I started here.
He’s got his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead, a legal pad in front of him with nothing written on it, and when I walk in, he doesn’t tell me to sit.
He just slides a single typed page across the desk.
I read it twice before the words actually land.
“You’re resigning.”
“Effective end of month.” He says it plain, no drama, without looking at the page. “Already called the mayor’s office. Already called the county council chairman, for whatever that man’s opinion is worth.”
“Chief—”
“Don’t.” He holds up a hand, and it’s not sharp, just tired, bone-tired in a way I haven’t seen on him even during the worst of the Miller case.
“I’ve worn this badge thirty-eight years, Penny.
I’ve made calls I wasn’t proud of. Looked away from things because looking away was easier, because the budget said so, because some mayor with a checkbook told me it was safer for everybody involved. ”
“You didn’t know what he was doing to those girls.”
“I knew enough to be scared of asking.” He takes his glasses off entirely now, sets them on the desk, rubs at the bridge of his nose like he’s trying to push a headache back through his skull.
“Three families. Three separate times over seven years, and I signed off on every one of those case closures without pushing hard enough to find out why the parents sounded so damn relieved and so damn terrified all at once. I told myself it wasn’t my jurisdiction to dig deeper once the kid came home safe. I told myself a lot of things.”
I shake my head. “You didn’t put her in that basement, Chief. He did.”
“No. But I let him keep doing it.” His voice doesn’t rise.
That’s what makes it worse. “I can’t be the kind of Chief who makes the calls this job needs made if I already know I’ll cave the second somebody with enough money leans on me.
I found that out about myself a week ago, standing in my own office telling you to stay away from a man who was keeping a six-year-old girl in a room made up to look like a dollhouse.
That’s not a mistake I get to make twice and still call myself fit to wear this badge. ”
I don’t have an argument for that. I want one. I sit there searching for something that would make him take the resignation letter back, fold it up, put his glasses back on, and go back to being the man who taps my desk twice and hands me folksy wisdom I didn’t ask for.
There isn’t one. He’s right, and both of us know it, and that’s exactly what makes it so hard to sit here and watch him do the right thing.
“Who takes over?” I ask instead.
“County’ll appoint an interim. Might be you, eventually, if you want it.” He almost smiles at that, just barely, the ghost of the man who used to tap my desk twice and tell me to think things over. “You’ve got the instincts for it. Better than mine, apparently.”
“I don’t want it like this.”
“Nobody ever gets it the way they want it.” He stands, slow, joints popping audibly enough that I wince on his behalf. “Go on. Get back to work, Officer. Department’s still got a hole in it today, might as well not have two of us standing around it.”
I walk out of his office feeling like I lost something I didn’t know I still had until it was already gone.
Morris made mistakes. Big ones, ones that let a monster keep operating for years under everyone’s nose.
But he was a man who genuinely tried, who let Jenson take Sasha home the night her father died because it was probably safest, who’s spent his whole career trying to hold this county together with duct tape and good intentions.
Pemberton got away with it far too long. And now Morris is walking away just when the department needs to change, and something about that math doesn’t sit right no matter how many times I run it.
Sasha’s already at the table when I get to the café, sunglasses pushed up into her hair, two sweet teas ordered before I even sit down. She takes one look at my face and her smile falters.
“You heard,” I say, sliding into the chair across from her.
“Havoc told me last night. Morris called him.” She wraps both hands around her glass, not drinking, just holding it. “I’m sorry, Penny. I know he mattered to you. Even when you two disagreed.”
“He was a good Chief. Mostly.” I stare at the condensation running down my own glass.
“That’s the part that sucks. If he’d been a bad one all along, this would be simple.
Instead I’ve got a man who spent decades actually trying, who just proved he can be leaned on hard enough to look away from something like this, and now he’s leaving, and whoever comes next might not even try. ”
Sasha’s quiet for a moment, turning her glass in slow circles on the table. “What are you going to do?”
I shake my head. “Wait it out, I guess. See who they appoint. See if I can trust them enough to keep doing this job the way it’s supposed to be done.” I finally take a sip of the tea, too sweet, exactly the way I like it. “Not much else I can do.”
She nods slowly, and neither of us says anything else about it, because there isn’t anything else to say that would make it any better.
Diesel’s truck pulls up right as I’m gathering my things, and Sasha waves at him through the window before turning back to me with that same easy grin she always carries despite her past.
“Lunch again soon?”
“Always.”
She heads for the truck, and I’m three steps toward my own truck when Evan rests an elbow out the driver’s window, sunglasses pushed up into his hair the same way Sasha wears hers.
“Can I kiss you hello?” he asks, grin already halfway there.
“Don’t you dare.” I point a finger at him, though I can feel my own mouth fighting a smile. “I’m in uniform. You’re in a cut. Somebody photographs that, and I lose whatever’s left of my career in one shot.”
He laughs, low and unbothered, like the threat doesn’t scare him even a little. “Fair enough. I’ll see you later, Officer.”
“That’s not a promise I asked for.”
“Never is.” He winks, throws the truck into reverse, and pulls out with Sasha already laughing at something in the passenger seat before they’ve even cleared the lot.
I stand there a second longer than I need to, watching them go, and the question that’s been sitting under my ribs for weeks finally surfaces loud enough that I can’t ignore it anymore.
What is this? What are we, exactly—two people sneaking around between crime scenes and evidence rooms, or something closer to what we almost had at eighteen before I got scared and drove off with the radio too loud?
Is this a couple? Is that even a word that applies to a cop and a Wicked Sinners VP, or is it just seventeen years of unfinished business working itself out one reckless encounter at a time until it burns out the same way it did the first time?
Do I want it to be more? I turn that over, standing in a parking lot with my keys already in my hand, and I don’t get anywhere close to an answer before I give up trying to find one here.
I drive to my parents’ place instead.
Mom’s on the porch with a glass of tea, same as always, and Dad’s in his usual chair, and they both look up when I pull into the driveway instead of just honking and rolling past like I usually do.
“Well, look who’s actually stopping,” Dad says, setting his own glass down.
I climb the porch steps and sit on the top one instead of taking the empty chair, needing the distance, needing something solid under me while I figure out how to say this out loud for the first time to anybody who isn’t Sasha or a Rottweiler.
“Evan’s back in my life,” I say.
Neither of them says anything for a second. Mom’s the one who breaks it, setting her tea down slow, careful.
“Evan Cole?”
“Yeah.”
I brace for it. For the disappointment, the Penny, we thought you were smarter than this, the same worry I’ve been carrying myself since the wedding. Instead Mom exchanges a look with Dad, something quiet passing between them, and when she speaks again, her voice comes out gentler than I expected.
“We wondered when that might happen again,” she says.
“You wondered?”
“Honey, you left seventeen years ago because you were scared, not because you stopped loving him.” Dad says it plain, the way he says most things, like it’s obvious and I’m the only one who’s spent almost two decades pretending otherwise.
“Your mother cried for a week after you two broke it off. Not because we thought he was a bad kid. Because you were hurting and we couldn’t do a damn thing about it. ”
“I’m pretty sure he runs guns, Dad. He’s a felon who’s never been caught.”
“And you’re the one who’s gonna catch him, or you’re the one who’s gonna love him.
Can’t do both forever, sweetheart, but you don’t have to decide that today.
” Mom reaches over, pats my knee. “We just want you happy. If that man makes you happy the way he did at seventeen, I’m not gonna sit here and pretend I’ve got some moral high ground to stand on about it. ”
I don’t know what I expected coming here. Judgment, maybe. A lecture about badges and outlaws and everything I’ve built my whole adult life avoiding.
Instead I get my parents on their porch, tea sweating in the afternoon heat, telling me it’s alright to want something that scares me.
I stay another hour, longer than I meant to, and when I finally drive home, the answer still isn’t sitting neat and tidy in my chest the way I wanted it to.
But something’s loosened, just slightly, enough that I let myself think about Evan without immediately reaching for every reason it’s a bad idea.
Maybe that’s enough for tonight.