by KC Burn
Two people, neither of them in uniform, were seated in the front row, but off to the far right. The entire front row was open, reserved for family that either didn’t exist or wasn’t going to arrive. From where he sat, only the woman’s profile was visible, but she was around Ben’s age. So, not Mrs. Kaminski. Who was she? He could see no physical similarities between Ben and the strange woman—it didn’t seem possible that she was family, despite her position in the family pew.
Under his gaze, she wiped at her eyes with a tissue and offered another one to the man beside her. He took it, but clenched it in his fist instead of using it. The woman moved slightly, and the man’s profile became visible. Kurt didn’t recognize either one.
The congregation rose for a hymn, blocking his view. He didn’t want to tax his leg any further by constantly standing and sitting, and he even had his mother’s blessing not to. She’d been adamant he not do anything to reinjure himself.
When the inspector stood to deliver the eulogy, a small stab of regret pierced his heart. If it wasn’t one of Ben’s friends from outside the force, it should have been him giving it. Shame made him accept the inspector’s offer to speak, and shame made him squirm in his seat while he listened, trying not dishonor his dress uniform by crying. But Nadar hadn’t spent nearly as much time with Ben as Kurt had, and his words reflected that distance. He watched the strangers in the front row, expecting one of them to rise to speak when Nadar was done. But neither of them moved, except for the woman who again blotted tears from her eyes.
Fuck. Could he have worked with Ben this long and not known he had a girlfriend? The woman could be family—maybe—but Ben had never mentioned anyone besides his mother. The woman’s hand fluttered to her face, moving a strand of dark hair behind her ear, and this time he caught sight of something he should have noticed immediately. A wedding band.
What the fuck?
Why hadn’t Ben told him? Granted, Kurt probably talked more about his personal life than his partner had wanted to hear, but Ben deflected almost all personal questions. Kurt thought them friends, but he didn’t even know Ben had been married, let alone recognize the woman he should have at least met in the three years they’d spent partnered. Hell, most of the married cops he knew hung out with their partners off the job, frequently with their wives as well. Sure, he and Ben had never done more than eat lunch together, but Ben had met his parents and all of his siblings at least once, when they’d stopped by the station.
A burning pain lanced up his arm. Looking down, Kurt realized he’d rested the cane across his lap and was squeezing the shit out of it with both hands. Fine for his right, but definitely too much activity for his still-stitched left arm. Taking a deep breath, he unclenched his fingers. He’d talk to the two strangers after the service. He had a duty as Ben’s partner, and he needed to know. As long as he could keep his bitterness contained. Why hadn’t Ben asked for a transfer if he hated Kurt so much? Because Kurt couldn’t imagine any other reason for him not to mention a wife, even an estranged one, to his partner.
He couldn’t talk to Ben’s previous partner, find out if Ed had known. Ed had died of a coronary, after which Ben got partnered up with Kurt. The ache in his heart, knowing his partner hadn’t trusted him—at all—rivaled the emptiness inside where a friend had lived. It may have been a one-sided relationship, but Kurt missed his friend. God. Why hadn’t he known? Had he been too self-absorbed, or had Ben deliberately hidden the information from him? Guilt ate through him like acid, the burning pain in his gut returning. He had to have been at fault.
The service ended abruptly, or so it seemed, since Kurt hadn’t paid attention at all. The two people slipped out a side door almost before the minister had finished speaking. Without thinking, Kurt was up and out of the chapel, hobbling as best he could around the side of the church, to try and catch up to them in the parking lot.
“Wait! Wait!”
Two dark heads swiveled toward him, the man murmuring something to the woman, who nodded.
“Thank you,” he puffed out. God, he hoped he got his strength back soon. He stood before them, and shifted his cane to his left hand so he could shake their hands at least. They were undoubtedly siblings, but the woman was several years older and had that slight puffy cast to her jawline his own sisters had displayed in early pregnancy. Ben was going to be a father? He wasn’t sure if he could find words beneath the bitter guilt drowning him.
“I’m Kurt O’Donnell. Ben’s partner.” The man gasped slightly and turned away. His sister elbowed him in the arm.
“It’s nice to meet you, Kurt. I’m Sandra. This is Davy, my brother.” She would have made an excellent witness on the stand. Her words gave him only a modicum of data that he didn’t have before.
“I’m very sorry for your loss.” Kurt took her hand and gently squeezed it. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her face had the yellowish pallor he associated more with illness than with grief.
“I’m sorry for yours,” she replied.
He stretched his hand out to Davy, glad that Sandra at least had a brother to aid her through this, but their body language warred with his expectations. Sandra had her left arm around her brother’s waist, shoulders tilting toward him in a protective gesture. It should have been the other way around.
Davy turned red-rimmed eyes, like his sister’s, to him. But that was the only similarity.
Sandra was sad. Davy was devastated. Davy’s chocolaty eyes were filled with all the desolation in the universe. The scleras were more than bloodshot, like he’d been crying for days, and his nose was as swollen and red as his eyelids. His face had the deathly white hue of shock that Sandra’s should have had, and he didn’t appear to be focusing too well.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, Davy’s hand in his, shake forgotten. He had a sudden urge to hug Davy, but he was too busy trying to keep the shock and betrayal off his face. The world spun dizzily as all his preconceptions and conclusions vaporized, to be replaced by the new information now in his possession.
Davy’s mouth worked, but nothing came out. He dropped his gaze, but he left his hand in Kurt’s. Sandra separated them.
“We need to go now, Kurt. Thanks for introducing yourself.” She tried to smile.
They got into a car, Sandra behind the wheel.
“Wait!”
Sandra twisted around in her seat.
“What about Ben’s mom?”
“Oh, well, she wasn’t having a good day. Sunshine Manors advised against bringing her.”
Kurt stood back and let them—there was no other word for it—escape. He steadied himself on his cane while the taillights receded. Assuming Ben hadn’t lied about his mother, it was entirely possible she’d been too ill or too disoriented to attend the funeral. But Sandra had been lying. He’d been a cop too long. He knew.
Chapter Two
That night, his family tried to cheer him up. His eldest sister, Erin, brought over her daughters before his mom went to the restaurant. Now that all of their children were grown, both his parents spent the majority of their time at the family-owned Finn’s Frolic, a cross between a family restaurant and a pub. Since Kurt’s surgery, his mom had been home almost constantly, with other family members either taking him to doctors’ appointments, visiting him, or taking extra shifts at Finn’s to allow mom to stay home.
He sat at the kitchen table, longing for the solitude of his sterile, joyless apartment.
“Kurt, honey, the girls wanted to see their favorite uncle. You up to playing a board game or two?” Erin kissed his cheek and set a couple bags of groceries on the kitchen counter.
“Sure, yeah, no problem.” As long as they picked something simple, he could play and still digest the information he’d received today. He scratched at a flaw in the bright yellow tablecloth. “You’re my nursemaid today?”
“Kurt!” Erin could have doubled for his mother. He blushed. They were only trying to help.
“I’m sorry, it’s been a difficult day.�
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Erin squeaked a little, and came to hug him, long hair brushing over his forearms. If he ever grew his hair out that long, it would look exactly like hers. Out of all of their siblings, Erin was the most similar to him in appearance: auburn haired, golden skinned, and deep-blue eyed. When she stood next to him, probably anyone could tell she was his sister, like Davy and Sandra today.
“Hey, when you’re pregnant, how far along are you when you get all fat-cheeked?”
Erin turned and threw a dishcloth at him. “Haven’t you learned yet not to call a pregnant woman fat? After five nieces and nephews?”
Kurt tossed the cloth back at her. “I’m not calling you fat. No, I saw a woman at the funeral today. She had that same look on her face.” He gestured vaguely around his lower jaw. “You know, puffy. I’m sure she was pregnant, but I don’t know how far along she was.”
She wrinkled her brows. The question was odd, no doubt, but he was finding he had a lot of latitude since the incident. Which was fine by him. He wanted to keep Davy and Sandra to himself for the time being—at least until he’d decided what to make of them. Not realizing Ben had a baby on the way with a wife Kurt didn’t know about was one thing, but suggesting anything about a connection to Davy, if it were untrue, wouldn’t go down well with his colleagues. He must have been mistaken about the source of Davy’s grief. Either way, Kurt had to be the worst detective ever.
“Well, mine comes around the fourth month and leaves by the fifth, but Colleen and Caitlyn both had it from about the fifth month until they gave birth.” Just like the twins, always had to be the same.
“What about Heather?” Mike was the O’Donnells’ second-eldest child, and his wife of three years was still getting used to their large brood. She didn’t share everything like his sisters did and her pregnancy last year was well advanced before she confirmed it for anyone. It was the puffiness that had his sisters and mother speculating, though, which is why he’d noticed it so quickly on Sandra.
“It was hard to tell with Heather. But I think we all suspected in her fourth month also.”
“So, not before you know you’re pregnant, right?”
“No. You know by then. Are you sure you’re talking about a woman at the funeral? Wait…. You didn’t get some poor girl in trouble, did you?”
Okay, not as much latitude as he thought. “No, Erin. I haven’t gotten a girl in trouble.” He had to date for that to happen, and he’d gotten so tired of the scene, he hadn’t bothered in weeks… months. His brother, Ian, was practically addicted to dating, but Kurt didn’t know why he went to all the effort. Kurt missed sex, but it wasn’t a whole lot better than jacking off, and it was always fraught with stress over whether he was doing it right and…. Fuck. He was not going to think about sex while sitting in his mother’s kitchen with his sister.
“Nothing more than a cop’s natural nosiness, I promise. But it’s not important. I thought I was supposed to play games with my nieces.”
Erin called the girls to the kitchen, and he played while she cooked. But he couldn’t shake the idea that Ben had to have known about the baby. Kurt never sensed a day of elation in him, or conversely, depression. Not once. How long had Ben been married? He positively itched to call in the plate number he’d memorized, but if his boss found out he’d used department resources for personal reasons, he’d be in deep shit.
For a week and a half, Kurt went through the motions. He went to all his physiotherapy appointments, saw the department-mandated psychiatrist, filled out forms for his short-term disability, discussed with his doctor when he could return to work, spent time with his family, and visited with friends from the force who dropped by. But he couldn’t shake the memory of Davy’s haunted brown eyes.
When he woke Tuesday morning, three weeks to the day from Ben’s death, he found his brother Mike in the living room reading the paper.
“Don’t you have to work today?” He needed to go back to his apartment. His arm was fucked up still, and his knee unsteady, but he wasn’t a baby, for God’s sake. Since getting out of the hospital, he hadn’t had one minute to himself.
“Took the morning off. I’ve got lots of time accrued.” His brother was an investment banker, and a damned good one. Like the rest of the family, he was a hard worker, and rarely took vacation. As irritating as it was, it warmed him inside to know his family was here for him. “I’ll take you to your doctor’s appointment.”
Although he didn’t need his left knee to drive, no one wanted him getting behind the wheel and risking tearing the stitches in his arm if he needed to react in a hurry. Made him feel even more like a helpless child, getting chauffeured around everywhere. This appointment was to remove the stitches, but he probably wouldn’t be cleared to drive yet.
“Can we stop by the station first?”
“What for?” Mike set his newspaper aside and narrowed his eyes. He was the most outspoken, besides their mother, about Kurt not going back to work before he was ready. But that wasn’t why Kurt wanted to go in. He wasn’t in a hurry to go back to a desk job, to sit staring day after day at the seat Ben should have filled, until he was cleared to go back on active duty. Or even worse, to sit across from a new partner.
“I need to talk to my boss. About forms and stuff. Whether Ben’s desk needs to be cleared out.”
“I’m sure that’s done, squirt.” Mike’s tone was gentle. “But just in case, let’s go after your appointment, so you don’t have to rush.”
His brother stood and gave him a quick, gentle squeeze around his shoulders.
“Thanks, Mike.”
He stared at the blocky building. Had he ever come here off duty? Not since he’d dropped off the final paperwork when he was hired on. “Can you pick me up later?”
Mike patted his shoulder. “No problem. There’s a coffee shop around the corner. Give me a call when you’re ready. You’ve got your cell with you?”
Kurt rolled his eyes. He was a cop, a detective, for God’s sake. His cell was almost as important as his gun. He hadn’t carried his gun since the incident, so he’d kept his phone almost obsessively close.
“Yeah, Mikey, I’ll call when I’m done.”
With the cane, he was able to maneuver out of the low-slung vehicle without too much struggle. He shut the door and walked slowly into the building.
The greetings of his coworkers and friends were an uncomfortable mix of happy-to-see-him and sad-to-see-him-alone. Resolutely, he made his way to Nadar’s office without looking at the corner that housed his and Ben’s desks.
“O’Donnell. What are you doing here? Ready to get back on the desk? Because I think you should take some more time.” The shuffling papers gave away Nadar’s nervousness. Which made Kurt nervous in turn.
After closing the office door behind him, he sat down across from his boss. “Sir, I need Ben’s home address.”
Eyebrows rose into Nadar’s hairline. “Care to elaborate?”
“You said you went to inform the family. I think you informed someone else besides Ben’s mother.”
“Well, you are one of my best detectives. Are you sure you want this? If you’re asking, I can only assume Ben didn’t trust you with this information.”
More fucking tears welled up in his eyes. “And I’m sick about that, Sir. He should have. I am… was… his partner. And I need this. Please.”
“As long as I don’t hear about you doing anything stupid.”
“No, Sir.”
A few pen scratches later and his boss passed him a sticky note with an address.
“Thank you, Sir. What about Ben’s personal items?”
“I already looked. I was going have them boxed up, but aside from his case notes, there was nothing more than snack food in his desk. There were some spare clothes in his locker, which I returned already.”
This wasn’t new information, but it held more portent than it had before. Kurt tucked the note into his pocket and headed to Ben’s desk. He sat in the chair. None of the chair
s were comfortable, but sitting in Ben’s chair, viewing a different angle of the department, was odd. The other detectives were considerate enough to pretend he wasn’t there, keeping their eyes averted as he opened drawers and closed them, hoping to find something personal of Ben’s that Nadar missed. Even the mug was standard issue. The inspector might have called him one of the best detectives, but that couldn’t be true. Not when he missed Ben’s lack of personal items at work. There were no pictures, nothing with sentimental value, nothing denoting causes he supported or things he found humorous. Kurt should have pushed, asked more questions. Shown Ben—somehow—he was worthy of trust.
Unable to sit there any longer, he made sure he still had the sticky note Nadar gave him and called his brother.
