Page 46 of Smoke and Roses

As she sleeps, I look at the roses. Never had flowers anywhere I lived before, and now I’m surrounded.

It’s weird how normal it feels already.

I ease her feet off my lap and get up and go out onto the landing at the top of the stairs. It’s cold. The stars are out. Across the lot, her porch light is on, the way it always is.

Looking at the dark outline of the mountain, I call Rob. He picks up on the second ring. In the background, Cassia is laughing at something.

“Sarge?” he asks.

“Hey.”

Immediately he asks, “You okay?”

“Yeah.” I lean on the railing. “Her friend didn’t run off. There was a boyfriend. He threatened her mother. He threatened Lindsey by name. Said he’d burn down the shop with her in it.”

Behind Rob, Cassia stops laughing.

“Jesus,” Rob says. “That son of a bitch. Where is he?”

“I’m calling Gabe in the morning.”

“You want me to come over?”

“No.” I look back through the window. She’s curled up on my couch under the throw blanket that she found in my boxes the other day. “She’s asleep. I’m just⁠—”

I stop.

“Just what?”

I look at the roses on my windowsill, the boxes I didn’t unpack, the woman on my couch.

“I think I’m staying,” I say.

Rob takes a second with that.

“Yeah, Sarge,” he says. “I figured.”

When I walk back inside, I stand in the middle of the floor and watch her. I’d wind the clock back for her. But all I can do is pick her up and carry her to bed.

She murmurs nonsense against my neck as I pass through the narrow hallway, into the small bedroom. With one hand, I get the blanket back and the pillow right, then I put her down on the side away from the door.

I’m amazed she never wakes fully up. When I tug off my shirt, drop my jeans and climb in behind her, she sighs.

Fuck, that’s a sweet sound.

For a while I listen to her sleep, then the darkness pulls me under too.

In the morning I call Gabe before Lindsey wakes up. I tell him about the diary, and Brett Kessler, and the threat. Gabe is quiet on the other end.

He says, “I remember the Kessler kid. Bad temper. Got arrested in Ogden a couple of times for fighting. His family was trouble. All of them. Moved away around ’10, ’11.”

“Where is he now?”

“Let me make a call.”

After I hang up, I cut the flowers that came in by the truck and hang up a sign that says ‘Closed till 11.’

She sleeps and I don’t wake her up.