First Comes Love

by Heather Heyford

  “Chloé was only telling me what I should have heard first from you,” said Kerry to Shay.

  “I’m huuungry . . .”

  “Hush, Ella,” said Kerry. “We’re on our way to get you some food. What? Shay, what happened?”

  “I said, nothing!”

  Kerry’s voice shifted into ripping-apart-a-prosecution-witness’s-testimony gear. “You’re the oldest, Shay. Have some consideration. Can’t you see how hard it is for me to handle you three after working all day?”

  Shay’s expression immediately changed to one of remorse. She came back and reached for Ella’s hand. “C’mon, Ella.”

  Now Kerry was the one overcome with misgivings. Shay might be the oldest, but she had taken the brunt of Kerry’s poor decision-making when it came to men. She’d never known her birth father. And just when she’d started to trust Dick, the father of Chloé and Ella, Kerry had discovered he was cheating on her and asked him in no uncertain terms to leave. Now Kerry was expecting Shay to act like a grown-up when she was just becoming a teenager.

  She touched Shay’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to yell.”

  Shay jerked off Kerry’s hand even as she spoke tenderly to Ella on their way to the car. No matter how angry she was at the rest of the world, she was never anything but sweet to her baby sister. “We’re going to eat, Ella. What do you want? Some French fries, maybe?”

  “Fwench fwies!” shouted Ella.

  “No fast food tonight,” Kerry said firmly. “I know everyone’s starving, but we’re going to have a good dinner.”

  Still. If she cooked, it would be at least another hour before the food was ready, and anyplace other than the hot food bar at Thrifty’s meant wrestling Ella into a booster seat and trying to keep Shay and Chloé from annoying other diners with their sniping.

  “Where are we going?” asked Chloé.

  “Ruddock’s,” Kerry replied, keeping a watchful eye on Shay, strapping Ella into her car seat.

  Chloé slid into the back next to Ella while Shay came around to nab her usual, prime spot in the front next to Kerry.

  “Ruddock’s?” With its stone walls, wood beams, and locally sourced menu, Ruddock’s was as nice as any of the places they used to eat in Portland. “They have the best cheeseburgers,” Shay said, all traces of snark now gone. “And their apple bread pudding is amazing.”

  “Pudding!” shouted Ella.

  Chloé’s head popped up in the rearview mirror. “But what about Hobo?”

  Kerry’s foot lifted off the gas of its own accord. The puppy they’d gotten a week ago, locked up in the house all day. How could she have forgotten?

  “We’ll swing by the house and let Hobo out first,” she said.

  Shay’s head fell back against the headrest. “But we’re almost there. The farmhouse is fifteen minutes in the other direction. And then we’ll have to go back to Ruddock’s after we let the dog out. It’ll be forty-five minutes by the time we get back and order, and another twenty before we get our food.”

  Shay was way too smart as far as Kerry was concerned. She turned the car around and headed homeward. “You guys begged me to get a puppy. I told you how much work they are.” She’d caved, hoping the distraction of a dog might make their move more palatable. But it was just as she’d feared. She’d ended up taking most of the responsibility for him.

  When they were almost home, Kerry said, “Tomorrow’s Friday. How about we wait and go out then? I’ll ask Grandma to let Hobo out after school.” Kerry’s parents lived in a newer house on the property, and her brothers and their wives and kids, as well as Jack and Hank Friestatt and their families, also lived close by.

  “Or maybe Grandma can babysit Hobo all day, and then we’ll go straight to Ruddock’s before coming home.”

  “I knew we weren’t going back,” whined Shay.

  “Hungry!” Ella started to cry.

  “Shhh,” said Chloé.

  “Don’t cry, Ellabella,” said Kerry, putting the SUV into Park.

  From the driveway, they could already hear Hobo barking inside.

  “I’ll get you some crackers as soon as we get in, Ella. Shay, would you keep an eye on Hobo while he does his business?”

  But they were too late. Just over the threshold of the dining room, with its cream-colored walls, its corner cupboards and wainscoting painted smoky green, and the rustic iron chandelier with little checkered shades, Ella toddled into a puddle. She slipped, catching herself with palms planted on the wet floor.

  “Oh!” Kerry exclaimed. “Chloé, could you get the paper towels and mop up Hobo’s mess while I get Ella cleaned up?”

  Dutifully, Chloé slung her book bag onto a chair and made a beeline for the kitchen, while Kerry picked up Ella, slipped off her wet-soled shoes, and tossed them out into the yard to be dealt with later.

  After a supper of canned soup and bagged salad, when Chloé was doing her homework and Ella had been tucked in, Kerry went into Shay’s room and sat down on her bed and brushed her bangs out of her eyes.

  Shay moved her head away.

  “You going to tell me what’s going on?” Kerry asked softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. The fight.”

  “It was nothing. Helena Young said I stole her boyfriend. She got some of her minions to come along and cornered me in the gym beside the bleachers when none of the teachers were around.”

  Kerry frowned. “What do you mean, stole her boyfriend?” They were only twelve, for Chrissake.

  “Michael Herod. He’s been calling me at night, playing me songs over the phone. He sure didn’t act like he had a girlfriend.” Shay looked down at where she picked at the corner of the page in the book she’d been reading.

  It wasn’t the first time Shay had had trouble at her new school.

  “It all started when I wore that navy mini and my white shirt with the stars on it and the red tie around my waist. Everyone else had on jeans and flannel shirts. I stuck out like a sore thumb. All the boys wanted to walk with me in the hall, and that made all the girls hate me even more. How was I supposed to know? All I was trying to do was look good on my first day at a new school.” She dropped her head onto her aqua pillowcase with the little pompoms on it. “I miss Mayree.”

  Mayree, still Shay’s closest friend, though it’d been months since they’d moved away from her.

  “I want to move back to Portland.” A tear slid down her nose.

  Kerry brushed the fine strands of hair away from her daughter’s baby-soft cheek. “I’m sorry. That must have been really hard for you.” Terrible, in fact. But venting her outrage would only ramp up the drama.

  “The school year’s almost over and they still hate me.”

  “They don’t hate you. They just don’t know what to do with you.”

  Kerry had thought that moving now would give Shay time to blend in before the start of high school. But it was looking more and more like she’d picked the worst possible time for a child to change schools. With all those hormones cranked on like a faucet, adolescent girls didn’t even like themselves, much less a stylish new girl from the city plopped down in their midst, attracting the attention of the equally hormonal boys.

  “I can’t help it that I’m different. That all my clothes are different. These people around here are just hicks.”

  Kerry smiled. “I guess that makes me a hick, too.”

  “You’re not a hick. You’re my mom.”

  “Hm.” Same thing, Kerry thought with a half smile. She rubbed her daughter’s back, wishing she could solve Shay’s problems the way she used to, with a storybook or an ice cream cone.

  “Don’t make me go back,” she whined.

  Kerry’s hand stilled in the hollow between Shay’s shoulder blades. “You have to go back. Newberry is your school now. This is where we live.”

  Shay lifted her head, her anger roaring back. “And to top it all off, I’m the oldest one at after-school care! Do yo
u know how embarrassing that is? How they laugh at me in the hall behind my back, but loud enough for me to hear?”

  Chalk up yet another maternal misstep. Kerry had had an inkling that that might be an issue when she’d signed the kids up last fall, but between juggling her caseload, paying the bills on time, and managing some semblance of a normal home life, she’d brushed aside her reservations, hoping against hope it would all magically work out.

  She swallowed her guilt, summoning as soothing a voice as she could muster. “You know Helena’s just jealous of you, right?”

  Shay’s head dropped back to her pillow and a tear squeezed out. “Whatever.”

  “The world was Helena’s oyster, and then along comes this pretty, smart new girl and everything changes. She takes away the attention Helena was getting from her friends, the boy she wanted for her boyfriend, whether or not he knew it. She acts tough, but deep down, she’s scared. She doesn’t know what to make of you. Chances are maybe her parents or her siblings or someone else has bullied her before. That’s how we learn, by experience. Helena learned that bullying’s an okay way to deal with things. So, when she feels backed into a corner, she lashes out.”

  “So, what am I supposed to do? I don’t try to act better than her. I’m just being myself.”

  “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going go to your school tomorrow and tell as many adults as possible—”

  “Don’t do that!” wailed Shay. “If Helena and everybody hears my mom’s involved, it’ll just make it worse.”

  “Listen to me. Your guidance counselor, your teachers, and your principal—they all need to know about Helena, and she needs to know that they’re on to her and that this behavior has to stop. From then on, she’ll know she’s being watched. A lot of times, that’s all it takes. And here’s the hard part: You’re going to have to stand up to her, too, and tell her to quit it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. You have to. If you don’t, it could get worse.”

  Chapter Four

  “Walker.”

  Alex was halfway down the hall to his locker to change into his sweats when behind him, he heard Chief Garrett call his name.

  He stopped in his tracks and turned around to see the chief leaning against the wall with his arms folded.

  “Nice going today.”

  “Thanks.” It had taken over three hours to talk the guy lying in the bushes alongside a rural road to surrender the rifle he was holding and take him into custody. Alex had spearheaded the team. It was the most action he’d had since switching jobs.

  Garrett nodded toward his office. “Got a minute?”

  Alex massaged the nape of his neck as he followed behind his boss. After idling by the past five hours reading every dog-eared, germ-infested gossip rag at the Newberry Medical Center cover to cover, waiting for his detainee to be evaluated, he was itching to jump into his athletic shorts and run off the stress of the day. If he were still in Portland, he’d be on his way to his boxing club right now. But Newberry wasn’t big enough to warrant its own, dedicated boxing gym. So, instead of venting his pent-up anxiety on a speed bag, he’d been logging about twenty miles a week on the roads.

  While Alex squeezed into one of two scuffed, sunshine-yellow plastic seats, Garrett strolled behind his desk and sank into his black vinyl swivel chair. The unlikely decorating scheme wasn’t because Garrett enjoyed lording it over his men, but due to simple lack of public funding. Truth was, Garrett was pretty easy to get along with. Didn’t micromanage. Let Alex be Alex. But if there’d been any doubt as to who was in charge in this impromptu meeting, the disparity between the chairs made it crystal clear.

  Garrett crossed his legs, folded his hands behind his head, and swiveled easily back and forth. “Been two months. How’s it going?”

  Alex shifted in his seat, but the small chair made it impossible for him to get comfortable.

  “Going great.”

  “Big difference between a major metropolitan agency and a small-town cop shop. Any surprises so far?”

  “What with fewer men, I knew there’d be more going it alone with no backup. And I expected having to pinch-hit sometimes, even to the point of answering the phone if I’m the closest one to the desk when it rings. But I got to admit, I might not have made the switch if I’d known I’d be giving up my Dodge Charger for a five-year-old Taurus.” He grinned.

  “We make do. Like I said when you came on. This is Newberry, not Mayberry, so don’t think you can just coast from now till retirement.”

  Alex shrugged. “Not the first time I’ve changed my own oil.”

  “Did I forget to mention in your interview the savings to the department in doing our own vehicle maintenance?” The chief laughed. “But something I did mention . . .”

  Here it came. Alex had been waiting for this since his first day of work for the Newberry Special Ops Division.

  “The biggest difference between Newberry and Portland is that here, we know most of our citizens by name. We either went to school with them or go to the same church, or our kids go to school with their kids or play on the same baseball team or go to the same ballet school or whatever. To be completely honest, that was a strike against you, coming in. More than one individual strongly suggested I ought to hire a different candidate for that very reason. Have to admit, I gave it some thought. But I saw something in you that the other candidates didn’t have.”

  “You mean, aside from my rugged good looks?” A reference to his bent nose, courtesy of Lucky Joe Johnson in the Annual Boxing Invitational some years back. “My natural charm?”

  “If this job were based on either charm or looks, you’d still be driving that Charger. And while I’m being so honest, I’ll tell you something else, even though it’s far from PC. You were by far the oldest candidate. There was some backroom muttering about that.”

  Like Alex needed a reminder. He’d only just turned forty, but his lower back was paying for the years he’d spent riding patrol in Portland, before he made detective. And now here he was, stuck in this sad excuse for a chair while his boss took his sweet time coming out with whatever it was he’d dragged him in here to say.

  “You’re also a little on the surly side.”

  So that’s what this was about. The news anchor Alex had chewed out for being too close to the crime scene today had complained.

  Alex felt his self-effacing grin dissolve. “You spend fifteen years working twenty cases at a time with the worst side of humanity for shitty pay and see how sweet-tempered it makes you.”

  “Heh heh heh. Like I said. Surly.”

  Alex’s patience was wearing thin. “So what’d you call me in here for? You have regrets? You going to fire me? Fire me.”

  “Fire you? Hell no, I’m not going to fire you. You were right on the money today. I’d hire you all over again for your top-notch training alone. Aside from that, you’re confident. You’re accountable. And you embrace failure.”

  “That’s what you were looking for? Someone who knows how to fail?”

  “Being an outsider, you may not have noticed it yet, but Newberry’s growing. It’s not the hayseed town it used to be. Wine sales are up forty percent over the past five years. New businesses that support the grape industry are opening, bringing more workers. Tourism’s skyrocketing. And I don’t have to tell you that when you got more people, you got more people problems. Drugs, crime, and all the rest.

  “What works for a small town doesn’t necessarily work for a medium-sized burg. And that’s where you come in. That heavy caseload you carried all those years? That taught you tenacity. Resilience. You’re the kind of experienced officer a growing town like Newberry needs.

  “But we can’t let go of that personal connection between officers and residents. That’s how we obtain and keep respect. To that end, I was talking to my friend Scott Dishman over at the Community Center. Come to find out he’s starting up a youth boxing class.”

  Alex knew he’d eventually
have to do something in community relations. He never dreamed it’d have to do with boxing.

  “I box. I don’t teach boxing.”

  “You volunteered with PAL at Portland State’s summer camps for five years.”

  The Police Athletic League fitness program that kept low-income kids off the streets during the summer and had the side benefit of showing them that cops were human, too, till it closed for lack of funding when the economy tanked. Chief had done his research.

  “I’m not certified.”

  “Don’t have to be. Dishman’s already got a certified instructor all lined up. We just need you to be more or less a presence. You know. Show up once a week, fill in from time to time when the regular guy can’t be there.”

  “Like I said, I’m not a teacher. I’m a cop. I picked Newberry as my final stop because I was tired of being depersonalized.”

  Back in the early days of his career, people by and large still had respect for police officers. But by the time he made detective, whenever he lit someone up for running a red light or expired tags, he had learned to brace himself for the inevitable, “Don’t you have anything better to do than pull me over?” Those were the nice ones.

  “Seemed like no matter how hard I beat my head against the wall, I wasn’t having any effect. I’m ready to spend the final decade of my career somewhere quiet and low-key. In case you haven’t noticed, kids aren’t quiet. They’re loud. Loud and messy.”

  “You do know what Community Response Team means?”

  Alex sighed and folded his arms. “It’s a crisis intervention team.”

  “It’s not just that. We have to be genuinely responsive to the community. Interact with them at their level. We go to them before they need us. That way, when the time comes that they’re in crisis, they see us as the good guys. Like I said when I took you on, I expect every officer on the CRT to step up to the plate. Like Myers, who does regular safety talks at the schools. Washington, taking her K9 in. Nothing like an animal to connect with kids. Then there’s Zangrilli, who organizes the neighborhood watch. I been keeping my eyes peeled for something just for you. Pretty much knew you wouldn’t do it yourself, so I did it for you.”