“Liar,” he joked.
I smiled despite myself.
He gave me the address to the back entrance of the police station near Main Street, and I told him I’d swing by. Just for a bit.
The kindergarten concert wasn’t for a few hours, and Selene had the day off.
I had plenty of time.
The precinct smelledlike old paper and cheap floor cleaner, the kind that lingered in your throat long after you left. The linoleum curled at the corners and the hallway buzzed with lights that looked like they hadn’t been replaced since the place was built.
Brody met me at the back door and nodded like we’d just run into each other at the grocery store instead of planning it.
“I appreciate you coming,” he said.
“Wasn’t doing anything important,” I lied, following him through the maze of hallways.
We passed two officers I didn’t recognize and a bulletin board littered with faded flyers. One still advertised the holiday potluck from last year.
Brody led me to a room I didn’t know existed. It had no windows, just four gray walls and a table covered in file boxes. He flicked on the light and crossed to the corner where a single frame leaned against a stack of evidence folders.
“I found this last night,” he said, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “We were clearing out a storage closet. This box probably hasn’t been touched since the nineties.”
He picked up the frame and turned it toward me.
It was an old photo, slightly yellowed at the edges. Five men stood in front of a police cruiser, arms crossed, smiles crooked with youth and pride.
I knew which one was ours instantly.
Same build. Same eyes, but softer and smiling.
“He couldn’t have been older than twenty-two,” I murmured.
“Twenty-one,” Brody said. “Fresh out of the academy. My mom wrote the year on the back.”
I took the frame. It was lighter than I expected, but the weight of it still pulled at my hands.
“I thought about tossing it,” he said after a second. “I didn’t want it. I guess I don’t need it, but I figured ... maybe you would.”
I didn’t say anything. Just stared at the photo of our father like it would answer questions I wasn’t brave enough to ask.
Brody sat down with a groan, as if his body remembered years that weren’t his to carry. “You know, I used to wonder what it’d be like if we’d grown up together.”
I looked up.
“I didn’t even know the truth about you until I was fifteen,” he said. “Then when I found out, I was pissed. Not at you—just at him. For keeping it quiet. For acting like it wasn’t real.”
He shrugged. “But I think what pisses me off more now is that I didn’t do anything with it once I did know. You were out there and I didn’t reach out.”
There was no emotion in his voice. No edge. Just the kind of quiet honesty that made the room feel too small.
“You were a kid,” I said. “And it wasn’t exactly advertised.”
He shook his head. “Still. I could’ve done better.”
I set the photo down and sat across from him, my boots scraping against the tile. “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”
The room didn’t have a clock. Or maybe it did, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to see it. Time stretched differently in spaces like that—stale air, low ceilings, walls that hadn’t been painted in a decade. The hum of fluorescent lights softened everything around the edges, like the day was underwater.
