Cottage at the Beach (The Off Season)

by Lee Tobin McClain

  She pulled out her phone and walked away from Trey, spoke into it for several minutes while Trey stood awkwardly near the group of students. He ought to reach out to them, try to connect. Coming in and catching one of them in an illegal act probably wasn’t the best start.

  Erica walked back toward him. “Officer Greene is on his way over,” she said. “It’ll just take him two minutes to get here.” Then she walked into earshot of the kids. “Okay, gather your things. We’ll head back to the building.”

  Trey usually felt good, triumphant, when King had made a find. But looking at the boy in the red jacket walking along, desperately searching from side to side for a place to dispose of his stash, he felt like a jerk.

  In his normal life, he knew what to do in such a situation, his role well-defined, that of a K-9 police officer. Now he had no idea of how to act. He was way out of his element trying to be a teacher type rather than a cop. It made him remember his own days as a troubled teen, the problems he’d had with school due to his father’s frequent moves and his own shifts in and out of foster care.

  “I didn’t mean to get him expelled or anything,” he said to Erica.

  “When you told me that he was holding drugs, I had to call the police.” She bit her lip. “I hate it, though. The academy is often their last chance before juvie.”

  Trey felt worse. He’d grown up with some kids who had gone the juvie route, and it had been the end of anything good for them.

  There had to be some other way to survive this period until his benefits came in, some way that didn’t mess up kids’ lives and make him look like a chump in front of a pretty but annoying woman.

  Maybe he could find a way to hurry the notoriously slow disability paperwork along. He’d submitted all the required documentation, finally, but the hearing process took a ridiculous amount of time.

  As they reached the schoolyard, a police car approached, and he could feel the tension coming off these kids in waves. Normally, he’d have been in the car and he wouldn’t have felt it; he’d just have come in and taken charge, made arrests.

  From the car emerged not only Officer Greene, but also... Abe, Trey’s chief? Why? Now he was the one who felt like he was in big trouble.

  Trey moved with King toward the two men, ignoring his own qualms.

  “Which one?” Greene asked.

  He almost didn’t want to say. He’d never been arrested as a kid, but he’d gotten in plenty of trouble, and he found himself identifying with the teenager with the backpack, weirdly enough. Maybe it was because he was here to help kids, not to uphold the law.

  He’d been trained not to identify with perps, though, and he called on that training now. “Tall one in the red jacket.”

  Greene nodded, walked over and pulled the kid aside, while Erica shepherded the rest of the students into the building.

  His chief patted his back. “Not the start I’d envisioned, but good job,” he said. “Get the bad seed outta there and the place will run more smoothly.”

  Trey had the feeling they were all bad seeds to someone, but whatever. “You here to check up on me already?”

  “Um, no. Not actually.” The chief looked uncomfortable.

  Trey waited.

  “There’s no easy way to say it. I have a potential new handler for King.”

  The words slammed into Trey’s chest and, instinctively, he looked down at King, whose alert chocolate eyes stared back at him. King, so naturally talented that he’d detected drugs in a random kid’s backpack. King, who was aching with boredom, who wanted to work.

  The chief was going on about a K-9 officer whose dog had gotten sick, who needed a highly trained dog, who did the kind of drug detection work at which King excelled, who worked just thirty miles up the shore. Might be temporary, but probably permanent unless Trey got back on the force and another dog came available for the other guy.

  Trey had known this day could come. He’d signed off on the possibility when he’d gotten King five years ago.

  He opened his mouth to say that would be great, fine, but the words stuck in his throat. He’d lost his wife, his job and his home, and he could handle all that. Maybe not well, but he could handle it.

  Losing his best friend? Not so much.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BACK IN THE CLASSROOM, Erica told the agitated teenagers to take their seats, and they did, eventually. Venus had tears in her eyes—she and LJ were good friends—and Rory kept getting up to pace, then sitting back down when she frowned at him.

  How would they trust her now?

  Erica’s own eyes kept going to LJ’s empty desk. His defiant smirk as he’d been led away hadn’t concealed the fear in his eyes, and her heart ached. She’d thought she was reaching him, had spent extra time with him, found him books that played to his interests, encouraged his friendships with a couple of the more stable kids.

  With one little bag of drugs—had it been marijuana or something worse?—he’d thrown it all away.

  The ache stayed as she got the kids started writing up their findings from their outdoor session, then straightened the old, dusty shades on the classroom’s single window.

  The academy had been assigned the smallest room in the school and been lucky to get even that. She’d tried to warm it up with prints of great artwork and motivational posters, but the overall impression was still pretty pitiful.

  The lack of ventilation meant the room full of sweaty teenagers smelled terrible, too, despite her discreet use of plug-in air fresheners.

  After what had happened to LJ, all of her efforts seemed inadequate. Losing LJ, losing any kid, wasn’t an option for her. She fingered her mother’s crucifix, tucked inside her shirt. Mom had known how traumatic it had been for Erica to have the preventive surgery that slashed her likelihood of getting ovarian cancer, but also destroyed her chance to bear a child. On her deathbed, Mom had made Erica promise that she’d use her nurturing abilities to help kids somehow, even if it wasn’t through mothering as she’d hoped.

  Picturing her mother’s wasted frame, her intense, faith-filled eyes, Erica swallowed the lump in her throat and straightened her spine. She’d go to the station right after school to further discuss LJ’s situation with Officer Greene. Maybe she could get him a second chance.

  A movement out the window caught her eye. Trey and his dog were walking toward his car. Trey’s shoulders were slumped and he was limping a little, but what did he have to be upset about? He’d made an arrest, or at least helped with one. He had to be feeling great.

  He’d gotten a second chance, starting over in the program for officers who’d been injured, volunteering at the school.

  He was supposed to start working with the kids today. But now he was leaving his responsibility behind, and wasn’t that just like a man? He’d come in, wreaked havoc and then left when the going got rough.

  She pushed the window open. “Hey! Mr. Harrison! Trey!”

  Behind her, the students started to murmur. She wasn’t a yeller normally, so no doubt her unusual behavior made them curious.

  Trey turned around.

  She beckoned to him.

  He shook his head.

  She nodded vigorously and pointed toward the school’s front door. “Check in at the office,” she said in her most bossy teacher voice. “Then come to room sixteen.”

  She walked around checking the students’ work and encouraging the slackers to get started, and a few moments later, Trey appeared outside the classroom door, his dog obediently beside him.

  He looked bad. Well, he looked good—still a movie star—but his shoulders sagged and tension lines bracketed his mouth.

  But she wasn’t going to pity him, she decided as she walked over and stepped out into the hall. “Hi,” she said, partially closing the classroom door behind her. “Are you ready to work?”

  “Not really. I
...thought I’d start tomorrow instead.”

  She pinched the skin between her thumb and forefinger to keep from giving him a piece of her mind. “I’d rather you went ahead and started today,” she said, keeping her voice level. “Your introduction to the students didn’t exactly build trust, and I’d like to see you start to mend that.”

  “It’s not a good day.”

  She narrowed her eyes and studied him. “It’s not a good day for LJ, either. He’s the one you had arrested.”

  He lifted his hands, palms out. “I didn’t mean for it to go down that way necessarily. You called the police.”

  “True,” she admitted. “But it still holds. Some of these kids never have a good start to their day, but they still have to come to school. I’m sure that was the case when you were working a police job, so I’d like to see you stick to the same philosophy as a volunteer.”

  He looked almost ill.

  She frowned, studying him. Maybe he actually was sick. “I can’t make you, of course.”

  “No, you’re right. I can do it.” He straightened his shoulders. “Why don’t I do my standard ‘introduction to police dogs’ talk?”

  “Okay, sure, if... Do you think it’ll work for teenagers?” It sounded too basic.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but it’s all I’ve got today.”

  Fair enough, it was his first day, but the problem was his attitude. He didn’t seem to care. She was definitely talking to Officer Greene about his selection of volunteer, as well as about LJ.

  Inside the classroom, the kids weren’t even pretending to work. Paper wads flew across the room, Rory was playing a game on his forbidden cell phone, and Venus and Shane were punching each other, maybe playfully or maybe for real, or a little of both.

  She walked to the front of the room, gesturing for Trey to follow, and clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “People. We have a special guest. Two of them, actually.”

  The kids talked on, ignoring her. She was reaching for her whistle when King gave one sharp bark.

  The room went silent.

  She introduced Trey and King. Trey sat on the edge of the desk and gave a practiced spiel. It was obviously targeted toward younger kids, and her teenagers showed signs of restlessness until Trey got King to do a couple of tricks. That, they liked.

  They didn’t ask any questions, so she did, grilling him about King’s training and his own, how he’d gotten started in K-9 work, whether he’d go back to it. He answered, but there was no spark in what he said, and the kids started whispering and, in a couple of cases, nodding off.

  “If there aren’t any more questions...” she began.

  “I have a question,” Shane said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “What does your dog do, now that you’re not a real cop anymore?”

  Trey looked down at his dog and didn’t answer.

  “I think it’s kind of like being president of the United States,” Erica joked, trying to fill the awkward silence. “Once you’re a police officer, you’re always called one, even if you’re no longer active. Is that right, Officer Harrison?”

  He looked up and cleared his throat. “It’s just Mr., for now,” he said. He cleared his throat again. “And I actually just found out that King is going to another officer. Back to work, huh, buddy?” There was something wrong with his voice. He looked down and ran a hand roughly over King’s head, scratching the big dog’s upright-pointed ears.

  The kids were dead silent now, looking at Trey, but he wasn’t looking at them. He was staring down at King, running his hand down the dog’s back.

  King whined and leaned against Trey’s leg. And now they didn’t look like a K-9 team; they looked like any pet and owner, attached to and dependent on one another.

  And Trey was about to lose King.

  Unwanted sympathy twisted her heart. She knew all too well what a comfort dogs could be. Her rescue Maltese mix had gotten her through the horrible pain of her mother’s death, her sister’s diagnosis and her own preventive surgery. Losing him early last year had nearly broken her heart. It hadn’t seemed possible she could feel for a dog again, but now Ziggy had become almost as dear to her.

  If Trey could feel that much for his working dog, he couldn’t be all that bad. There must be emotions, a real person, beneath that gruff cop surface.

  She stuffed her sympathy away. The last thing she needed was to find out that Trey was a good human being, because that, along with his amazing looks and macho appeal, would be a lethal combination.

  And she didn’t dare open that door. “Thanks, Officer...er, Mr. Harrison. We appreciate your work today. Let’s give him a round of applause, shall we, students?”

  The kids’ applause was more enthusiastic than she’d expected, probably because they, like her, felt sorry for Trey and King.

  But pity wasn’t respect and there was no denying Trey had done a half-baked job today, though she now understood why: he’d just learned he was losing his dog.

  She told the students to clean up for lunch. “You can go now,” she said to Trey.

  He nodded without speaking, grunted something to King and left without meeting her eyes. But she’d seen their shininess.

  A man who could cry about losing his dog might have untold depths, but there was no denying Trey was a hot mess.

  She sat down at her desk and focused on her stack of paperwork, ignoring—or trying to ignore—the heavy footsteps, and her own heavy heart, as the two of them left the building.

  * * *

  WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, TREY sat on the front porch of his cottage and watched King walk away with his new handler. His heart was a rock in his chest.

  King trotted alongside the other officer, Cochran, and Trey reminded himself that this was good for King. He’d get to do the work he loved. Cochran said he was looking forward to working with King. He seemed like a nice enough guy, so it was wrong of Trey to want to punch him.

  When they reached the car and Cochran opened the back door, King hesitated and looked back at Trey.

  Cochran jerked King’s leash to the side and spoke sharply, forcing King’s head front again.

  Trey stood up too fast and his back went into a spasm. He gripped the porch rail to keep from falling. When he looked up again, King was jumping into the back of the police vehicle.

  It was just a leash correction. He has to show King he’s the boss. Heart pounding, Trey sank back down onto the steps and watched the cruiser’s taillights disappear.

  It had just been a leash correction, but...

  The image of King’s confused face wouldn’t leave his head. King had been his dog since he’d left his puppy raiser. He’d never known anyone else. What if he wouldn’t work for Cochran? What if that one leash correction was indicative of a harsher training modality than King was used to?

  Trey wanted his dog back. The chief had said it was a possibility—slim, but a possibility. If he returned to the force.

  Which meant he had to get back into police work...which meant he had to do well at the volunteer work as well as his physical therapy.

  He’d missed both his volunteer job and a PT session today, though. Not good.

  “You okay?”

  He looked up, startled. The voice belonged to Julie, the older woman who owned the Healing Heroes cottage, or managed it at least. Automatically he started to stand, but his back went into another spasm that had him grasping the porch railing halfway up.

  “Don’t stand up.” Julie sank down onto the porch steps beside him. “Listen, I just came over to check on you. Is everything okay?”

  No. Nothing’s okay. “Sure. Cottage is great. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m friends with Earl Greene,” she said. “He seems concerned.”

  Erica must have given him another bad report. Trey thought of King’s eyes, lo
oking back at him, and stiffened his aching spine. “It’s been an adjustment,” he said, “but I intend to make the most of the opportunity.” He had to heal, get back on the force, for King’s sake as well as his own.

  Julie nodded. “Do you have family waiting for you back home? You know you can have your wife and kids stay with you here. There’s plenty of room.”

  She was probably being nosy, probing for information, but since she was a friend of Earl Greene’s, he needed to display an open attitude rather than letting it bother him. “No kids, no wife,” he said. “Divorced.”

  “Me, too,” she said, to his surprise. “You doing okay with it?”

  Something about the way she asked the question made him suspect she wasn’t doing okay with hers. “I don’t miss my wife, to be honest,” he said. “I miss the dream.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “You know,” he went on, “the whole two kids and a yard with flowers and a dog thing.”

  “Oooooh.” She nodded in understanding. “If it makes you feel any better, I had the dream, for more than thirty years. It’s not always perfect, and it doesn’t always last.”

  “I guess.”

  They sat quietly for a few minutes then, but the silence was companionable. Trey had never known his mother, never liked his dad’s girlfriends and never paid much attention to his scolding foster mom. The police hierarchy was dominated by men.

  This might be one of the first times he’d had a real conversation with an older woman. He found himself liking Julie.

  And the fact that she’d offered up her cottage to the Healing Heroes program, helping officers like him who needed to get away from their pasts and start over—yeah. He liked her a lot.

  Next door, he heard the same loud, excited barking he heard multiple times per day, and moments later, Erica emerged from her cottage with her goofy dog on a leash.

  She didn’t even train her dog, and she gets to keep him.

  That wasn’t fair. There was no comparison between a police dog and a pet dog, between a shepherd and a designer doodle mix.