Willa opened her mouth to speak, but Margo got there first.
“Should you be wanting caramel pie, Sienna?” Margo replied with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Your mother always worried about you taking after your father’s side of the family. Something about the heavier genes on that side.” She gave Sienna the same sweeping look she’d just given Margo. “You are looking a little bloated. I guess you’re able to eat what you want now that your mother is out of town and not here to stop you.”
The campground seemed to go quieter around them.
Willa pressed her lips together. Part of her wanted to laugh, and part of her was aware that the two of them had just reverted to a mode of interaction she hadn’t engaged in since she was seventeen years old. She was about to say something that would end it cleanly when Sienna spoke again.
“Fine.” Sienna straightened up with the practiced ease of someone reclaiming the high ground. “I’ll find one at the grocery store.” She smiled, and the smile had nothing warm in it whatsoever. “Or maybe I’ll pick one up in Gainesville tomorrow night after the concert.” Her eyes moved between Willa and Margo. “Ace and I have been looking forward to it all week, and we’ll be having a romantic picnic dinner after it.”
She turned and walked away with the unhurried confidence of someone who knew the words would land and didn’t need to stay to watch.
Margo watched her go.
Then she turned to Willa with an expression that was equal parts fury and regret.
“I’m sorry,” Margo said quietly. “I shouldn’t have said what I said. That was beneath both of us.” She paused. “But now we know why Ace acted so strangely after that phone call.”
“Yes,” Willa agreed. “He was preoccupied with his dates.”
She picked up the nearest platter, carried it to the supply box where Willa stood with her back to the table for a moment, letting the quiet sit in her chest, where the pain was trying to make itself at home.
Willa drew in a deep breath, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, deciding that she wasn’t going to let this cause her any distress. She and Ace hadn’t committed to anything yet. He was still free to do what he wanted and with whom he wanted. It was none of Willa’s business.
She set the platter down and went back to help Margo finish cleaning and packing up.
Rad
Rad got back to the station at half past four, still in his dress uniform.
He’d kept it on through the cleanup, the goodbyes, and the drive back into town because changing had seemed like an unnecessary detour when there was work waiting as there always was. Just because it was Memorial Day didn’t mean he didn’t have to report to duty afterward. Rad sat down at his desk, loosened his collar slightly, and pulled his laptop toward him.
He’d attended a lot of memorials in his career. They were part of the job in law enforcement, just as difficult conversations and cold coffee were. It was something you learned to carry properly because the alternative was letting it carry you. Today had been different. Rad hadn’t known Shaun Parker or the other firefighters personally. He’d met Gilbert Fry a handful of times when Gilbert had been working a cold case out of New York that had briefly overlapped with Rad’s own caseload. He’d found Gilbert to be sharp, persistent, and the kind of investigator whodidn’t let things go until they’d given him what he needed. The man deserved to have his name on that stone.
Rad was glad it was there.
He opened his laptop, pulled up his work email, and started moving through the day’s accumulation. Most of it was routine. A report request from the county. A scheduling update. A notification from records.
Then Rad saw it.
The email sat in his inbox with the particular weight of something he’d set in motion himself and had subsequently tried not to think about too directly. Guilt moved through him the moment he registered it, a clean, uncomfortable wave of it that he didn’t try to deflect because he’d earned it and he knew he’d earned it.
What he’d done had violated at least three departmental policies. Possibly more. If his father found out, the conversation that followed would not be a short one.
Rad stared at the email without opening it.
There were documents attached. Three of them. He could see the attachment icons without opening anything, and his stomach had been doing something uncomfortable since he’d first sent the request through, the quiet, persistent unease of a man who had started pulling on a thread without being entirely certain he was prepared for what might unravel.
Rad was about to click the first attachment when a knock at his office door pulled his head up.
The officer from the front desk leaned into the doorway. “You’ve got a visitor, Detective.” She stepped aside.
“Send them in.” Rad closed the email without opening the attachments.
Sienna walked through the door.
Rad kept his expression neutral and gestured to the chair across from his desk. Sienna sat down, smoothing her sweater as she settled, her fingers moving immediately to the cuffs and pulling them down over her hands in the habit he’d noticed every time she sat anywhere for more than thirty seconds.
It was a warm afternoon. The kind of afternoon that made a long-sleeved sweater an unusual choice.
