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“I didn’t break in, the door was open,” he clarifies.

I give the guy’s arm a jerk. I haven’t even mirandized him yet, I meant to do that when we got to my cruiser. I’d rather he save any confessions for the interview room at the station.

“Still not your property, genius,” I bite off, hoping the guy shuts his trap before he stirs up Merrick even more.

I’ve had my share of run-ins with the higher ups in Coeur d’Alene—was known as a bit of a maverick—but I’d prefer not to start my tenure here in Silence by antagonizing the mayor.

“Let me get this guy settled in the back of my unit and I’ll come back to take your statement.”

I urge Jesse—or whatever his real name is—forward, when a second cruiser pulls up and one of our deputies, KC Kingma, steps out.

“Need a hand?”

I take a minute to fill him in and happily hand over the task of taking the mayor’s statement, while I settle my suspect in the back of my cruiser. As I pull away from the curb, I notice a small pastel-colored SUV I’m pretty sure is Dana’s slip into the alley beside the pub.

If I didn’t have numbnuts in the back seat, I’d stop and check in with her, but it’s going to have to wait.

Dana

* * *

I glance at the sheriff’s department presence in front of Strange Brew and notice the mayor gesturing wildly on the sidewalk.

Not sure what happened there, but I don’t have time to investigate. I have my hands full today.

Pops relieved me after I spent another night with Mom in Spokane. Now I have to hustle to get food prep going for the lunch crowd. Mom is the one who insisted we keep The Kerrigan open. We’ve had several offers to help out with the running of the pub, some of which we’ve gladly accepted, but Mom insists we keep the kitchen—and her treasured recipes developed over years of perfecting—for family only. In our case that means Pops and myself.

I’ve had to take a leave of absence from my job at the clinic. I had no other option. Juggling to make sure we have both the pub and Mom covered at all times has been a challenge, even with time off from work. Luckily, one of my cousins—Debra, who is my Aunt Thelma’s eldest daughter—lives in Spokane and has been sitting with Mom during the afternoons for a few hours, giving Pops and me a break. My dad comes in the mornings and stays until mid afternoon, then Debra comes in, and I relieve her at dinner and stay overnight.

I’m exhausted. It’s a tight schedule, and I’ve had no downtime since we rushed Mom to the hospital last Friday.

She’d collapsed on the bathroom floor in the apartment over the pub, where Pops found her. I’d immediately noticed a substantial amount of blood in the toilet and called for an ambulance right away. It took a quick CT scan at the hospital to confirm my instant fear; a fair-sized tumor in her colon. The stomach bug my mother had been claiming she’d been dealing with was much more than that. Thinking back, she’d been occasionally unwell for months and I’d been urging her to see the doctor, but she’d consistently brushed me and Pops off, telling us we were overreacting.

My mood has been vacillating between fear for and anger at her. The woman is stubborn as a bull and when she digs her heels in, there’s no moving her.

But I have a suspicion my mother has known all along things weren’t as they should be and decided to ignore the signs, and now the disease has metastasized to her lungs. I could scream in frustration, something that could’ve been easily treated with a good five-year survival rate has now become a much more complicated treatment protocol with a very poor outcome prospective.

Stage four colon cancer is generally not curable.

I blame myself for not pushing her harder to get checked out. I’m a medical professional, for crying out loud. I should’ve known better than to let her go so long without dragging her to the clinic myself.

Because of the excessive bleeding and the serious obstruction of her bowel, the tumor and a substantial section of her colon were surgically removed the morning after we arrived at Providence in Spokane. She is now left with a colostomy bag and is severely weakened by the disease and the surgery. Her oncologist indicated they won’t even be able to start addressing the metastases in her lungs until she can build her strength enough to handle the chemotherapy indicated to treat those. Not an easy task when she can only eat soft foods that are easy to digest, and has no appetite whatsoever to start with.

And since nothing has been easy or straightforward this past week, she now has developed some kind of infection that has her spiking a fever and was put on a broad-spectrum antibiotic until they can figure out what it is.

It’s been a mad roller coaster, and to add to that, I’ve barely been able to sleep a wink on the narrow cot against the wall in Mom’s room with the constant interruptions. I’m already physically and mentally done as I unlock the back door to The Kerrigan and walk in, carrying the supplies I had to go pick up on my way in because I noticed we were running low.

The moment I take in the condition of the kitchen, I want to drop the bags, turn around, and walk straight back out again. Fuck this.

I’m of half a mind to storm upstairs and give my father a piece of my mind, when it occurs to me he’s not home. He’s not home because he’s at the hospital with Mom, and he had to get up at the crack of dawn to get there in time to relieve me so I could get the kitchen going before the lunch crowd. Since he does the evening shift here, he probably doesn’t get much more sleep than I do, and Pops is seventy-two, not forty-one.

Instantly calmed, I clear a space on the prep counter and set down the bags. Then I start cleaning.

Working with my body on autopilot and my mind half asleep, I go through the motions of collecting dirty pots and pans and scrubbing surfaces. I just finished washing the last of the utensils and round the partial wall separating the dish station from the kitchen, when I run into a solid body and promptly drop all the clean utensils on the floor. The loud clang of metal against tile instantly snaps me out of my daze.

“Whoa, easy.”

Strong hands on my shoulders steady me, as I try to catch my breath.