Chapter 5
Bodie
Emmaline was already in the doorway when I pulled in.
Framed there like a challenge, one hand tight on the jamb, her body angled just enough to block the threshold, as if she could keep the world out by sheer will.
Her chin held a defiant tilt, but that crease between her brows told me everything.
A headache line. I’d seen it on her face too many times when we were kids, after her mama had torn her down to the bone.
It made my gut clench now, because I knew that meant she was already hurting, and here I was about to add more.
I wanted to turn around, let somebody else handle this. But there was no way in hell I’d pawn it off. She deserved the truth from me, no matter how much she might hate me for it.
I sprang Rubble from the backseat and signaled for her to take up position at my side. She stayed exactly where she’d been ordered, though her tail wagged hard enough to shake her whole backside as she looked toward the porch with happy, eager eyes at the new person who might give pets.
“Emmaline.” I tipped my hat in her direction, the gesture formal and careful, like the strangers we’d become instead of two people who’d grown up running wild on this mountain, who’d shared secrets and sandwiches and safety before everything had gone to hell.
“What are you doing here, Bodie?” Her voice was sharp with a mix of fear and accusation, each word edged like broken glass.
The way she said my name—like it left a bitter taste on her tongue—made something twist hard in my chest. It wasn’t new.
She’d been like this ever since I’d arrested her brother. But every time was a fresh blow.
I didn’t want to deliver this news out here on the porch, where the neighbors could see and hear everything. So, I took off my hat and stepped closer to the porch. “Can I come in?”
Her gray eyes narrowed, sharp as a blade, suspicion cutting deep lines around them.
The late light caught the amber flecks I remembered from when we were kids, when those same eyes used to look at me with something softer than wariness.
For a second I thought she’d slam the door right in my face, end this before I even began.
Then, with every muscle in her body screaming reluctance, she shifted back just enough to let me pass.
The house smelled like cinnamon and vanilla. Or maybe that was Emmaline herself. Did she bake at home or only for work? It seemed wrong that I didn’t know that about her.
Rubble trailed inside behind me, her claws clicking softly against the hardwood floors, tail giving a hopeful sweep as she took in the new surroundings.
She padded right up to Emmaline and sat, posture perfect, dark eyes gazing up with the gentle intelligence that made her such a good partner.
She gave the tiniest whine, nudging her head toward Emmaline’s trembling hand like she could sense the storm brewing in the air between us.
What little color had been in Emmaline’s cheeks drained away completely as she shut the door. “Did something happen to Wesley?”
That raw, desperate fear, borne of too many years of waiting for bad news, struck me straight in the gut. I was already making this worse. I shook my head quickly, wanting to reassure her on this, at least. “No. Not so far as I know.”
Her shoulders eased for just a breath, relief flickering across her features like sunlight through storm clouds.
Then reality crashed back down, and she straightened again, spine rigid, bracing like she knew another blow was coming and was determined to take it standing.
God knew, she had plenty of experience with literal and figurative blows in her lifetime.
I’d seen the bruises when we were kids, heard the shouting through thin walls, watched her flinch at sudden movements long after her mother had bailed, leaving her and her brother with Evelyn.
The silence was too loud. The house had the thrum of a place that was loved and lived in and also missing its heartbeat. What had it been like for Emmaline to live here all these months without her grandmother? What would it be like for her after I dropped this bomb?
I turned my hat by the brim, thumb worrying the leather band like there might be better words etched into it.
I’d given death notifications before. Stood in doorways and kitchens all over this county.
Said the same terrible phrases in different orders, watched faces break in different ways.
But I hadn’t done it to someone whose laugh I used to chase through the creek bottoms, whose tears I’d once wiped away with the corner of my shirt. I hadn’t done it to her.
“It’s about your grandmother.”
Her lips parted. Hope flared so hard and bright it almost knocked me back. “You found her? Is she okay?”
If wanting could make something true, it would’ve been.
I’d have conjured Evelyn Maddox right then, with flour on her apron, tea steaming on the counter, that quick, soft tsk she always gave when people tried to stand too tall on pride alone.
But the image of that buried car was stamped behind my eyes like sun glare.
I couldn’t lie. Not to Emmaline. Not ever.
“I’m afraid she’s not.”
She swayed as if the floor had shifted under her feet. Her hand came up, fingers curling like she needed something to hold on to and didn’t trust a single thing in this room to stay put. “What happened?”
I drew breath, and it scraped like gravel.
“I found her car about fifteen miles south. Looks like she got caught in the flood and washed off the road. It was pinned under trees and debris, way off any of the usual trails. That’s why no one found it before now.
” I forced myself to keep my voice even.
“Her purse was inside. Driver’s license, everything.
I’m so sorry, Em. I know you were close. ”
For half a second she just stared at me, eyes glassing over like her brain was buffering, searching for a different file to play. Then her face crumpled. The sound that came out of her—half breath, half broken animal—cut me clean through.
Her knees buckled.
My hat hit the floor as I caught her. It wasn’t a decision; my body moved before my head did.
She came into my arms the way she always had—like she belonged there, like some part of both of us remembered.
Her forehead found the notch under my collarbone, her hands fisted in the front of my uniform, and she shook.
Not pretty crying. Not movie crying. The kind that rips through your chest until there’s nothing left but the ringing.
Back in the woods, when we were kids and her mama was tearing the paint off the walls with her mouth, I’d put my hoodie around her shoulders, given her a peanut butter sandwich and tea with too much sugar, and I’d told her, You’re not alone.
I’d meant it like a vow. I felt that same vow now—old and bone-deep and useless in the face of this.
“I’m sorry.” I murmured the words against the top of her head, like they meant anything. “I’m so damn sorry.”
Rubble pressed against both our legs, warm and steady, her body a wedge holding the two of us up. Every few seconds she made a sound low in her throat, barely there, a dog’s version of I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.
Time stretched and stuttered. The clock kept ticking like it couldn’t be bothered to stop in the face of this horrible news.
Dust motes drifted in the beam of light slanting through the window, and the house breathed around us.
My arms ached, but I didn’t let go. The starch in my shirt softened under the damp heat of tears, and the scent of cinnamon and soap and something that was just Emmaline threaded tight through my chest until it hurt.
Eventually, her sobs slowed. She drew in a long, ragged breath and then another.
Her hands loosened on my shirt. She pressed her mouth together in that stubborn line I’d always both respected and feared.
When she stepped back, she did it like someone tearing gauze from a wound: quick, decisive, not looking to see what it took with it.
Her walls slid up between us, smooth as glass.
“What now?” Her voice was hoarse, but steady, scraped clean down to the bone.
Duty snapped up around me like a shield. I hated the feel of it. Hated the way the words lived in my mouth like they belonged to someone else. “We’ll confirm officially, but it’s definitely her car. Once the death certificate’s issued, the lawyers will start executing the will.”
For one flicker of a heartbeat, something like hope sparked again behind her eyes, thin and frantic, looking for any seam to pry. I had to close it. “It’s unlikely to be anyone else, Em.”
The light went out.
She nodded once, a sharp, hard cut of her chin like she was setting steel. She swiped her palms over her face, gathered her straight fall of brown hair back with one hand, and let it drop again. “I need to tell the rest of my family.”
There was the dismissal, clean as a closed door.
I bent, picked up my hat, brushed imaginary grit from the brim with the side of my thumb. “If you need anything—anything at all—”
“I have my family.”
If she’d slapped me, it would’ve stung less.
Almost a decade of the same damn wall, and it hadn’t moved an inch.
I could’ve argued. I could’ve told her that having family didn’t mean having someone who would stand in front of the blast. Certainly not the one she’d been born into.
But it wasn’t the time, and it wasn’t my right.
It had never been my right, no matter how much I’d wanted it to be.
I settled the hat back on my head because my hands needed something to do. “I’m sorry,” I said again, uselessly, and meant all of it—the flood, the car, the years, the ways I’d failed her, and the way I kept showing up anyway because I didn’t know how not to.
Rubble stayed planted beside her, refusing to move until I gave a low, “Heel.” Even then she backed up two steps at a time, eyes locked on Emmaline the way dogs look at the people they decide to keep.
I made myself turn. Every step to the door felt like walking downhill on loose gravel—controlled, careful, pretending I had more balance than I did. The old hinges sighed, and the soft click of the latch settled in my chest like a weight.
I walked down the steps on autopilot and put both hands on the SUV’s roof. The sun had turned the metal hot enough to sting. I let it. The sting gave me something that wasn’t inside my ribcage to focus on.
Behind me, the house stayed quiet. No crying through the door. No footsteps. The kind of silence that had mass.
“Easy,” I told myself, the way I’d say it to a rookie white-knuckling a steering wheel. I closed my eyes. I still felt the shape of her body against me. Heard that first sound she’d made, like a building giving way.
Rubble nudged my thigh with her nose. When I looked down, she was gazing up at me with the kind of solemn attention that had convinced me she belonged on this force in the first place. Her tail gave one cautious sweep before she leaned against me.
“Yeah.” My voice wasn’t steady either. I slid a hand along the blocky line of her head, thumb skimming the edge of her ear. “I know, girl.”
Then I straightened, loaded her into the backseat, and slid behind the wheel to start the long drive back to the station, carrying the weight of Emmaline’s grief like a stone in my chest.