Mrs. Bane blinked as what she’d said sank in. “I— I’ve used incorrect English?” She sounded like it was impossible for this to be true.
“Jesus,” Alex groaned quietly. “This is going to be a massacre.”
“Why aren’t we moving?” Reid asked, sounding nervous. “If this escalates into a physical fight, there could be broken hips and walking stick injuries. They don’t tell you how to deal with that in the de-escalation classes.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Dalry shrugged, continuing. “You’re not the level of perfection you assume you are.”
“I have a right to say what I do,” Mrs. Bane snapped, having recovered from the biggest knock to her ego she’d probably ever suffered.
“You phrasing it like that implies that your rights are more important than ours. If you have the right to correct common mistakes, do we not have the right to use the words we want to? We’re not being graded on what we’re saying, we’re merely conversing.”
Mrs. Bane’s mouth opened and closed as she desperately tried to come up with a response, whereas Mrs. Keating looked like she’d just won the lottery.
Shooting us a smile, Mrs. Dalry sat back in her chair. “Now that we’ve cleared that up, who’s up for a game of Bridge?”
Ten minutes later, we were leaving the building, still shocked that we hadn’t had to break up the typical fights the ladies had with each other. They were best friends and had been for a long time, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t get a kick out of pissing each other off.
“That was… anticlimactic,” I mused as we all walked back to the vehicles.
It’d ended with a very quiet Mrs. Bane, while Mrs. Keating and Mrs. Dalry had begun a game of Bridge like nothing had happened, and they’d even included Mrs. Bane in it.
“Speaking of climaxes, how’s your Papa Smurf situation, Carter?” Reid asked.
Logan frowned. “His what?”
“Papa Smurf.” When we all just looked at him confusedly, Reid rolled his eyes. “Blue balls. Papa Smurf had them, so that’s what it’s called. Gotta hand it to you, man, I don’t know how you lasted as long as you did, waiting for Naomi. Unless you’re one of the most discreet men ever to walk the earth?”
I’d dated a couple of times after I’d moved to Piersville, but once Shanti and Naomi had become permanent fixtures in my life, I’d quit doing that and had Papa Smurfed through the last four years. Did I regret it? Not even a little bit. They’d needed me to focus on them, so that’s what I’d done. Through doing that, I’d fallen in love with both of them, leading me to my current place in life. Who’d regret that?
I also wasn’t going to discuss my relationship with Naomi with these guys. She was going through enough with the news of Jeremy’s existence and her deliberations over what she was going to do. We’d discussed it briefly yesterday, and it was clear she was suffering emotionally over what to do, so I wouldn’t betray her by bragging to the guys about what we’d done in bed—repeatedly. I was old enough to know better and way more mature than that.
So, shrugging a shoulder, I split from them and walked over to the driver’s side of the Charger and whistled at Alex. “Keys!”
He didn’t even blink as he threw them over to me and moved to the passenger’s side.
I had a 1969 Ford Mustang Boss with a V8 engine in my garage that’d belonged to my dad before he’d died. It’d been getting some work done at his friend’s garage the week of the fire, so it’d survived it unscathed, and I’d been looking after it ever since. Because of all the love and attention that’d been poured into it over the years, it purred like a kitten and drove like a beast, but even I had to admit the Charger was fucking outstanding.
“So, you finally got your girl,” Alex finally said, breaking the contemplative silence in the car.
“Yeah, I finally got the girl,” I agreed but then added, “Both of them.”
“I’m happy for you both, man.”
“I’m fucking happy myself.”
We moved on to discussing the cold case we were focusing on now, the little boy who’d gone missing over two decades ago. People who lost family and loved ones to crimes went through Hell, and it was up to us to help give them closure and the victim justice.
Unfortunately, some either never got solved or took longer to do it, meaning the families were stuck in limbo. If we could bring them peace and help vindicate the victim, then that’s what we’d do. Statistically speaking, though, the chances of solving a crime after the first forty-eight hours weren’t in our favor—not even close—but that didn’t deter us from trying to do it. And sometimes, a fresh set of eyes made a difference.