“I guess ask Damon what he thinks. I don’t want to butt in and break some kind of bro code among men,” I said, glad to have something to be flippant about after I’d opened up like that. It felt a little too personal. I reminded myself that the guy was practically a part of the family and I needed to stop being weird about it. Again, no chance I would stop being weird.
“I will. But Damon basically says it’s all good.”
“Yeah, that’s gotta be a guy thing. Because if you ask me, I’ll tell you. It’s not great. We’re holding it together, but it takes all hands on deck to do it. Between dialysis and the internist and the nephrologist, and keeping up with the medications and what he can eat and what he can’t—and making sure he drinks just the right amount of water but not too little and not too much. Jesus. It’s enough to make my head explode.”
He shook his head. “Yeah. And I bet he isn’t an easy patient. He never gave anybody an inch when Damon and I were growing up. That time he caught us smoking, he made us clean all the slimy crap out of the gutters, and then said that’s what our lungs would look like if we kept that shit up with the smoking and how cool would it look to cough up a bunch of black gunk all over some girl on a date.”
“That is so him,” I laughed. “One time he found out I snuck out to see some guy after curfew. He straight up locked me out, windows and everything. He even locked the damn car so I couldn’t sleep in it. It got down to like forty degrees that night. He tossed me a sleeping bag from an upstairs window and told me to get used to camping if I thought I could sneak out of his house late at night. I froze my ass off.”
“That sounds like something you’d do.”
“It is totally something I’d do. Completely savage, asshole move, but it gets the point across,” I acknowledged and finished my burger.
It was so easy talking to him, knowing each other’s history and being able to color in the details.
“So, what’s the best thing that’s happened in this town since I’ve been gone?” I said.
“Well, we got a new dollar store and they have frozen foods,” he said. “They redid the ceiling in the high school gym, got rid of the asbestos. That’s about it.”
“Okay, worst thing?”
“The Ice Cream Dream shuts down for the season on Halloween now instead of Thanksgiving.”
“Anything important that’s not to do with food?”
“Probably not. I mean besides the fact I made chief,” he said, looking smug.
“So what you’re saying is nothing good happened around here until I came back to town,” I said archly.
“You could say that and you wouldn’t be far off the truth,” he chuckled. “So tell me something you miss about the big city.”
“Let’s see… getting takeout any hour of the night. If I’m up working on a case at three in the morning cause it’s on my mind, I can make a call and have moo shoo pork in fifteen minutes. There was a club I liked that had a terrific DJ and they did karaoke on Sunday nights.”
“You would do karaoke,” he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I would not. What song was your big number?”
“Oh, I did a variety of music. Probably Fancy by Reba was my signature song, but I do a damn fine Halsey. I can’t sing Billie Eilish for nothing though—she goes so soft and she’s so expressive. I’m better at pissed off or just big and bold. Subtlety and the emo stuff—lost on me. What would you sing if you did karaoke?”
“I wouldn’t.”
Our conversation drifted back and forth through various topics from our families to the annual police versus fire department softball game, to cases that kept us up at night.
“You’ve grown up to be pretty impressive, you know that?” he asked me.
I felt heat rise on my cheeks. “Me, impressive? No. I’m just a hard worker. An obnoxious, off-color hard worker.”
Brody shook his head. “Not just a hard worker. You’re a good person, Vance. You’re determined and fierce and compassionate. If anything, you’re too easy to talk to. I’ve—I don’t talk about Missy or her death. But with you, I think I’ve talked more about it than I have with anyone. Because you’re so open and you make things okay like that, because you treat everything like it’s acceptable. Like you won’t freak out if I mention my dead wife.”
“Why would anyone freak out? That has to be the main thing that’s happened in your life to shape who you are. First your dad, then your wife.”
“It is. And you see that and you act like it’s obvious and it’s okay to mention it. You have no idea—that’s like oxygen. To someone with a loss, knowing you won’t get all weepy and say ‘oh I can’t imagine’ or ‘things happen for a reason.’” He said, “So don’t ever apologize for who you are. I can handle some raunchy jokes from time to time if it means being with you.”