Things changed drastically in the weeks that followed.
Instead of being open and comfortable with him, I steeled myself to speak in bullet points of information. We didn’t talk anymore; I reported to him. I gave him updates, and that was all. The girls were an amazing buffer. I was betting that was how people who had kids but weren’t happy in their marriage ended up staying together. The house revolved around the children, and there was barely time to breathe.
By the end of the second week, I had my routine down cold.
I woke up with the girls, we’d do morning stretches, and then Olivia and I would work on her karate, and April practiced her new ballet steps. She had always wanted to learn, as her mother had studied ballet as well, and over text message, Emery had given me his blessing to get her enrolled.
After that, we had breakfast, and then I took them to school. When I got home, I went for my morning run and afterward took Winston for a walk for my cool down and his morning constitutional. Most days I walked with Mrs. Everman and Mrs. Patel and their dogs once around the huge dog park before we went to get a cup of coffee.
Once home, I showered, changed, and then went to see Sheriff Thomas at his office, which also served as the seat of the county clerk of Ursa as well as the detention center, which sounded nicer than saying jail. I enjoyed going on patrol with him, as it broke up my days. I would have gone stir-crazy otherwise, as I wasn’t used to doing nothing. I got to where, after the first couple of weeks, I knew some of the “frequent flyers,” as the sheriff called them, and many responded to me even better than they did him, because, let’s face it, they couldn’t outrun me. It was heartwarming too, that so many people stopped to say hello and ask after the kids and Emery when they saw me on the street.
During my rounds with Sheriff Thomas, I met Malachi Jezic, owner of Ursa Customs, one of the places in town that made no sense because he was one of the top custom motorcycle manufacturers in the country and his shop was in rural Montana. I liked him the moment Sheriff Thomas introduced us, and though he had an icy rapport with both Thomas and Reed—they’d thought he was a homeless drifter when he first hit town, very First Blood—with me it had been warm from day one. I’d seen the Marine Corps tat on his forearm and grimaced.
“We’re first in,” he growled, defending his branch of the service, advancing on me as the sheriff took several steps back.
Standing my ground, I grinned wide. “Do you have any idea how many times we had to save your asses?”
He shook his head. “The hell you say.”
I arched an eyebrow as I studied the big man, the massive shoulders, tree-trunk-sized biceps, and his towering height. “We’re in and out, man, gotta provide you some cover.”
He rolled his eyes, clearly I was ridiculous, but he offered me his hand, and I grabbed it tight. When he invited me to box with him, I was careful to steer clear of his hammer of a right hook. He always bought breakfast afterward.
Once I was done spending time with the sheriff, I would walk by the Ursa Women’s Shelter on Boulder Lane, and if there were any men outside, ready to hassle the women inside, I explained that I was there, and if anyone had a problem, they should feel free to discuss it with me. And it wasn’t that I thought the women there couldn’t handle themselves, but everyone deserved to have their sanctuary actually be one. I’d visited lots of guys I knew in halfway houses after they came back from a deployment and had trouble transitioning back into society. Sometimes people got obnoxious with returning military as well. I would have been just as vigilant in that case. But there was never any trouble. Talk of Jenny Rubio’s husband had gone a long way to helping that along.
Lunch for me was usually spent at the Little Dipper, where Nadia Woods served huge deli sandwiches and amazing soups and salads. I sat at the counter and talked to whoever sat down beside me, as well as talking to Nadia’s husband, Homer, who would come out of the kitchen most days and visit. Nadia always appreciated me spending time with Homer and never hurrying off. He was a nice man who had been shot in the head during a robbery before they moved to Ursa. The brain damage he suffered had changed their lives. They went from her being a stay-at-home mom with a CFO husband, to her running a sandwich shop and her husband carving pastrami. At times, his thoughts got jumbled together. She said a lot of people didn’t have the patience for him. I had nothing but. The three of us, plus her three teenagers, got along great.