Don't Call Me Hero (34 page)

I woke up from my dream to hushed whispers.

“She only goes from my couch to the police station and then back to the couch,” the voice whispered. “No, it’s nothing to worry about. She just needs to get all of this pouting out of her system. No. She hasn’t mentioned her name since she showed up. Yeah, I figured as much.”

I slowly opened one eye. I was on the couch, and Rich was on the phone in the kitchen. I didn’t know what time it was, but it couldn’t have been too late because the alarm on my cell phone hadn’t gone off yet.

“She went back to work nearly the day she showed up at my apartment. Uh huh. That’s what I said, too.”

My other eye opened and joined the first in being awake. My dinner plate from the previous night was still on the coffee table next to two empty beer cans. Yellow cheese sauce and a few neglected elbow macaronis were cemented to the plate.

“She’s tough. She’s been through worse.”

I sat up and ran my fingers through my hair. My body felt stiff, but two beers wouldn’t have had that impact on me. All the garbage I’d been eating lately, combined with inactivity and sleeping on a lumpy couch, was starting to catch up with me. I tugged the rubber band from around my wrist and pulled my hair into a ponytail.

I bussed my dirty plate and the two empties and went into the kitchen. Rich was leaning against a counter, sipping coffee from a mug in one hand and holding his phone in the other. He smiled and mouthed “good morning” when I walked in. I grunted in response and dropped my dish in the sink with the saucepan I’d left soaking overnight.

“I’m due some time off soon.” Rich continued with his phone call and I helped myself to coffee, topping off his mug first before I took the rest of it. “Are you sure?”

I wasn’t one hundred percent sure who he was talking to, but I had a pretty good idea.

“Yeah. That would be awesome. I’ll show you around.” He chuckled into the phone. “You think so, eh? Well, maybe I just want to show
you
off.”

Yup. I knew exactly whom he was talking to.

Rich’s eyes flicked in my direction. “Cass is up; I should probably get going. Uh huh. I will. Yeah. Me, too. Bye.”

He ended the call and turned his attention on me. “Good morning, Princess.”

I brought the coffee mug up to my mouth. “Speaking of princesses, was that Grace Kelly Donovan?”

“No.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“Said the pot to the kettle,” he countered.

“You have a tell. Your smile gets too big for your face.”

“Okay,” he conceded with a sheepish grin. “It was Grace.”

“How is she?”

“Good. She told me to smack you for not calling when you got here. She was worried when she didn’t hear from you.”

I winced. It was weird being accountable and having people care if I was safe or not. “She’s a keeper, Rich,” I said, deflecting.

“I think so, too.” He cast his eyes to the countertop. “She, uh, she might come down for a visit.”

“Lemme guess,” I smirked, “you want me out of your apartment by then.”

Rich jerked to attention. “No way. I told you before, you can stay on my couch as long as you need to.”

“Thanks, buddy.” I didn’t plan on cohabitating with Rich for much longer. I needed my own space, and I didn’t want to overstay my welcome with my friend. I was going to be receiving another psych evaluation in a few days and hopefully get back on the force—active duty—not riding desk. But even if it came to that, I’d take the desk job. Maybe later, when my dreams didn’t plague me so graphically, I could become a real police officer again.

“Besides,” he said, his mouth curving into a mischievous grin, “she said she’s getting a hotel room.”

“Don’t ruin her, okay?” I sighed.

“Not planning on it.” He paused, waiting for something. “C’mon, Miller. Don’t you want to know?”

“Know what?”

“How Julia is.”

“No,” I lied. She was all I could think about, and my dreams the past few nights were evidence of that. “You wanna go to the shooting range with me later?” I asked, changing the subject. I needed to get some hours in with a gun as part of my road to reinstatement.

Rich made a face. “Is that my punishment for saying her name out loud?”

“This has nothing to do with her,” I denied. Embarrassment chased me to the pantry, and I poured myself a bowl of cereal.

“See?” he poked. “You can’t even say her name out loud.”

I shoved the spoon into my mouth. “That’s because it’s not polite to talk with food in your mouth.”

“I’m sure your mom would be so proud,” Rich rolled his eyes. “Speaking of which, have you talked to your parents lately? Do they know you’re here?”

“No,” I mumbled guiltily. I used my spoon to moved my cereal around in the bowl. My packing boxes had probably recently arrived at their house with no warning or note of explanation.

“That seems like something you should do.”

“I know,” I sighed. “But it’s hard. I feel like such a disappointment. My dad says I’ve got no stick-it-to-it-ness. I run away before I can ever fail. I don’t follow through,” I said, repeating my dad’s well-practiced speech.

“You did two four-year-long tours in the fucking Marines. You were top of your class in the academy. You’re a decorated war hero, Cass!” The more Rich spoke, the more agitated and aggravated he became. “Where’s the disappointment in that? Show me one thing you haven’t followed through with.”

My cell phone chirped, interrupting Rich’s rant. Both of our eyes fell to the screen.

“It’s my mom,” I said. “I didn’t know she even knew how to text.”

“What’s it say?”

I frowned at the text message. “My boxes arrived at their house, and she has no idea what’s going on.”

“Jesus, Rookie. You didn’t even tell them you were shipping them your shit? Forget about the firing range today,” he ordered. “You’re visiting your parents.”

+ + +

St. Cloud was about an hour and a half away. The house I grew up in was on a long residential street with generous lawns, houses not situated too closely to neighbors, with a thin patch of woods in the back. My mom was out front hanging damp laundry on the clothesline when I rolled my bike into the driveway. She held up her hand to her forehead, using it as a shield from the overhead sun. I could see the concern and confusion writ on her lined face until I dismounted my bike and tugged off my helmet.

“Cassidy!” She dropped her wicker basket on the freshly mowed lawn and rushed toward me.

I stood awkwardly in the driveway and shook out my hair. “Hey, Mom,” I greeted.

The air was forced out of my lungs when two strong arms wrapped around my ribcage and she squeezed me in a fierce hug.

“I didn’t know to expect you,” she sternly chided. “I haven’t even started on dinner and the house is a mess. I haven’t dusted in days. And look at me.” She ran her hand over her short hair and plucked at the front of her worn T-shirt. “I’ve been cleaning windows and doing laundry.”

Everything about this moment was so warm and familiar and perfect. It was home. I swallowed down the large lump in my throat. Everything was going to be all right.

I hugged my mom tightly in a second, unexpected embrace. “You look great, Mom. Perfect as always.”

She lightly slapped my shoulder when I released her. “Why didn’t you call? When your things showed up this morning I thought you’d died.”

I ducked my head, feeling properly shamed. “I’m sorry. I know I should have called.”

“You’re right. You should have. I thought we raised you better than that.”

The cross look on her face softened. “You should go say hello to your father. He’s back in his work shed. I’m gonna go start dinner,” she said as she bent to retrieve her discarded laundry basket. “Remind your father that he promised the Potters he’d mow their lawn while they’re away this week.”

“Sure thing,” I said, already falling back into the familiar routine.

My mother left me in the front yard and made her way to the house with the laundry basket propped on one hip. Her still-flustered mutterings about me not calling and my god damn motorcycle was music to my ears.

My dad’s work shed was an old pole barn in the backyard where he used to store his snowmobiles until he’d messed up his lower back and couldn’t ride anymore. Now he spent most of the day out there, tinkering on some handyman project. He was leaning over a metal vise, his back to the door, and his body blocking my view of whatever he was working on. The bottoms of my boots scuffed the cement floor as I entered.

“Nancy, can you get me two double A batteries from the house? I think I saw some in the junk drawer.”

“Hey, Dad.”

My father straightened his back. “Cassidy.” He turned on his heel to face me.

I rocked back and forth in my boots. Unlike my mom, my dad wasn’t a hugger. But even if he was, that wasn’t my go-to reaction with him. My father and I had never been close. We’d had little in common as I was growing up, and when I’d come back from war—damaged goods in his eyes—the distance between us had only grown. He was too young to have fought in any previous war. His older brothers, veterans of Vietnam and currently living with the after effects of Agent Orange, could relate to what I was dealing with when I returned from Afghanistan. But my dad couldn’t wrap his brain around an illness like PTSD that was invisible to the eyes.

Not knowing what to do with my body, I shoved my hands into the back pockets of my jeans. “Mom wanted me to remind you to mow the Potter’s lawn.”

His grey eyes blinked behind his reading glasses. “That’s right.”

“I could do it if you’re busy,” I offered.

He nodded solemnly. “That would be a big help. Thank you, Cass.”

It shouldn’t have taken long on my dad’s riding lawn mower to take care of the Potter’s lawn, but I kept having to stop when other neighbors wandered into their yard to say hi and ask questions I didn’t have the answers to:

How long are you in town for?

What have you been up to?

Are you staying out of trouble?

How have you been?

After taking care of the Potter’s yard, I took a shower and rummaged around in my room for something clean to wear. My packing boxes were stacked in the garage, but I found a shirt and jeans from high school that I could miraculously still wiggle into.

My bedroom smelled the same—a little mustier—but mostly the same. The bedspread on my double bed was the same and so were the posters on the walls. Framed pictures of me with extended family or friends I hadn’t seen in a decade covered every available flat surface. My swimming medals and trophies from high school still lined the top of my dresser. My Navy Cross was still in its box in the sock drawer.

There was a tentative knock and the white wooden door of my bedroom creaked open. “Cassidy, baby?” It was my mom. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

“Ok. Thanks, Mom.”

She hesitated a little longer in the doorway. “Are you staying longer than that?”

I ran my fingers over the cool metal of the silver cross and the textured material of the attached blue ribbon. I blinked away the tears. “Yeah, Mom. I think I am.”

Dinner was a lasagna my mom had frozen earlier in the week. She continued to fuss and apologize throughout the meal about not having something more special for me to eat. But my glass was filled with two percent milk and my plate was overflowing with my mom’s lasagna and green beans from the garden. It didn’t get much better than that.

The questions started when dinner was winding down.

“What happened in Larry’s town, Cassidy? Why did you leave?” my dad asked.

I pushed out a long breath. I knew this was coming. I wondered if Chief Hart had told them anything after I’d left Embarrass. “It’s a long story.”

My dad frowned, dissatisfied with the brevity of my answer. “Larry went to a lot of trouble to get you that job, you know. He was probably bending a lot of rules and regulations letting you be an active officer after what happened.”

Hidden from view under the dining room table, I clenched my left hand over my knee. “I know, Dad. But it’s better for me in Minneapolis, trust me.”

“He told me about the investigation.”

“Then you know what happened,” I said dully. “And why I couldn’t stay.”

“Some,” he admitted. “He said a lawyer manipulated the system to help a corrupt politician avoid jail time. Sounds more like something that would happen in the Sin Cities, not northern Minnesota,” he snorted.

I ran the pad of my thumb over the tines of my fork and watched the tiny indentations they made in my skin. “She was just protecting her dad. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

My dad snorted. “From what Larry tells me, the girl’s a real piece of work. It’s probably better you got out of that place when you did.”

I balled my paper napkin up and tossed it on my plate. The legs of my chair shrieked as I stood up.

“Where are you going?” my mother said in a panicked voice.