CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Selena sat on the hood of her rental car with both hands wrapped around the edge of the metal and her eyes fixed on the sky.
The sheriff’s department behind her had gone mostly quiet.
A light still burned in dispatch. Another glowed in one of the back offices where somebody had likely been trapped by reports, evidence tags, and the long bureaucratic trail that always followed violence.
Out front, though, the night had settled properly.
Crickets stitched the dark together. A breeze moved through the flag by the entrance and set it to giving a soft, tired snap now and then.
Above all that stretched a sky the city had no right to compete with.
Black and broad and crowded with stars.
She had forgotten how many you could see on a good clear Harlan County night.
Or maybe she had not forgotten. Maybe she had trained herself not to think about them because remembering meant thinking about the rest. The roads. The fields. The old hurts she had once sworn distance would solve.
A door opened behind her.
Boots crossed the concrete with no hurry in them.
Connor came to the car and leaned against the fender for a second before hoisting himself up beside her with the careful stiffness of a man who had been thrown around a motel room and was feeling every bit of it now.
The cut at his temple had been cleaned and taped.
A fresh shirt hid most of the mess from earlier, but not the fact of it.
He smelled faintly of aftershave and outside air.
Neither of them spoke.
There was no need to. Not yet.
The quiet between them had changed over the last few days.
Early on it had felt barbed, each silence holding all the things they would not say.
Tonight it felt tired instead. Worn down by too much truth, too little sleep, and the kind of day that left people grateful simply to sit beside another living human and not explain themselves.
Selena tipped her head back a little more.
“You forget how amazing the night skies are out here without those city lights.”
Connor followed her gaze. “Yeah. But then those cities must have their moments.”
She turned and looked at him.
The bandage at his temple had made him look older in one way and more familiar in another. Not the boy from high school. Not even the man she had married. Something else. Someone who had stayed and been shaped by it.
“They do,” she said. “But… Home is home.”
Connor nodded once and looked back up.
For a while after that, they only sat.
The car hood gave back the heat it had held from the day in a slow, fading warmth. A truck passed on the highway far enough off that it sounded more like weather than traffic.
Selena let her hands rest loose at her sides.
Then she said, “Thank you.”
Connor glanced at her. “For what?”
“For the last few days and…”
He waited.
“When you came through the door.”
A small smile touched his mouth, not careless, not entirely happy.
“Well,” he said, “I feel I owe you something.”
That drew a faint crease between her brows. “For what?”
He looked down at his hands. “I seem to remember you taking a bullet-sized problem away from me.”
She let out a quiet breath that might have been a laugh.
“It’s been a crazy few days,” he added.
Selena nodded. “That’s one way to put it.”
Another silence followed, but this one held less weight.
Connor turned then and looked at her properly.
Not by accident. Not one of those glancing looks people gave because they happened to share a line of sight. This was the old way. The way that said a person had forgotten to guard their face in time.
For one brief, aching second, Selena remembered that look exactly.
High school football games and stolen time in parked cars. The first apartment after they got married, with cheap blinds and a kitchen table that wobbled because one leg was shorter than the others. Long stretches when loving him had felt as natural as waking up in the morning.
Then he looked away.
The moment broke as quickly as it had come.
“How long you staying in town?” he asked.
Selena knew the answer before he asked it. That did not make saying it any easier.
“Well,” she said, “now Pruitt’s confessed, I need to go back to Washington and debrief my boss in the morning.”
Connor turned back toward her.
The smile was still there, but something under it had gone quieter. Almost mournful. Not enough that anyone else might have named it. Enough that she did.
“That’s a shame,” he said.
Selena held his gaze. “Yeah. It is.”
The front door of the station opened again before either of them could say more.
Arnold came out carrying a six-pack by the plastic rings, looking pleased with himself in a way that suggested he believed he had solved morale single-handedly.
“So,” he said, coming toward them, “I checked. Everyone’s off duty now, right?”
Connor slid off the hood first. “What’ve you got there?”
“Medicine.” Arnold held up the beers. “Thought after today maybe we’d earned some.”
Selena climbed down more carefully. Her legs were stiffer than she wanted to admit.
Arnold handed Connor one, then offered another to her. “Have one on me.”
She took it. The can was cold enough to sting her fingers.
“Thanks,” she said.
They stood in a loose triangle in front of the sheriff’s department, three tired people under the county stars with the case finally closed and none of them yet quite knowing what to do with the abrupt absence of motion.
Arnold popped his tab and took a drink. “So, about the FBI.”
Selena looked over. “What about it? You still want to join?”
He swallowed. “Actually, I saw a war documentary yesterday and… I’ve been thinking maybe I’d prefer military police.”
Connor closed his eyes briefly. “Why?”
Arnold considered. “I don’t know. I always liked their white hats.”
Connor turned to him. “Helmets, Arnold. They wear helmets.”
“Yeah.” Arnold shrugged. “Still. Would be cool.”
That got a real laugh out of Selena, small but unforced. After the day they had all had, it felt almost foreign in her throat.
Arnold brightened at the sound. “I don’t see what’s funny.”
“You’d last three days,” Connor said.
“That’s mean,” Selena said.
Arnold pointed the beer at them. “That’s hurtful.”
“Tell Selena what you said you wanted to do with your life last week,” Connor replied.
Selena waited. Arnold hesitated.
“I thought it would be cool to own an antiques shop.”
Selena laughed.
Connor said, “See! He changes his mind like the wind.” Connor put his hand on Arnold’s shoulder with affection. “How about you stick around here with your old sheriff?”
Arnold smiled. “I’ll think about it.”
They drank.
The beer was cheap and bitter and exactly right for the hour.
Selena tipped her head back and looked up once more. The stars had sharpened even more since she first stepped outside. The dark seemed larger now. More honest. She finished the can slowly, feeling the coolness slide through her and settle where the adrenaline had burned all day.
When it was empty, she lowered it and looked from Arnold to Connor.
“It’s been a pleasure.”
Arnold snorted. “That’s a very FBI way to say goodbye after all this.”
“Parting is such sweet sorrow, then.”
Arnold held out his hand anyway.
Selena shook it. Arnold’s grip was earnest and firm, still carrying some of that young-deputy energy no amount of death or paperwork had beaten out of him yet.
“Try not to leave all this too soon, Arnold,” she said. “I mean, who would look after Connor?”
“No promises.”
Connor stepped closer then.
For a second Selena expected another handshake, and he did take her hand, warm and solid in his. But before she could fully register it, he leaned in and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
The contact was brief.
Still, it landed harder than a longer one might have.
When he pulled back, his expression gave away almost nothing except tired fondness and something else she did not trust herself to examine too closely.
“Don’t leave it so long next time,” he said.
Selena swallowed once before answering.
“I mean not to.” A rueful smile touched her mouth. “I never even saw my sister.”
Connor laughed softly. “Yeah, Diane won’t let you get away with that!”
“No,” Selena said. “Probably not.”
For a moment she stood there looking at him, at the tape on his temple, the beer in his hand, the sheriff’s department rising plain and square behind him. So much of her life had moved away from this place. Yet all at once it no longer felt as easy to imagine leaving it again.
Then the moment had to end, because that was what moments did.
Selena crushed the empty can lightly in one hand, handed it to Arnold, and moved to the driver’s side door. She got in and started the engine. Headlights washed over the station front and the parking lot in front of it.
Arnold lifted a hand in farewell.
Connor did not.
He just stood there.
Selena eased the car into reverse, glanced once over her shoulder, then looked in the rearview mirror as she pulled away.
Arnold had already gone back inside.
Connor remained where she had left him, alone now, still in front of the sheriff’s department with the building rising behind him and the night sky above his head, standing there as if part of the town itself.