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and a Hawaiian-style shirt he’d bought when he and Erin had
visited Oahu on their honeymoon.
“Erin’s back in Manchester,” he said.
Bill Robinson, his captain, flipped burgers on the grill. “Again?”
“I told you that her friend has cancer, right? She feels like she’s got
to be there for her friend.”
“That cancer’s bad stuff,” Bill said. “How’s Erin holding up?”
“Okay. I can tell she’s tired, though. It’s hard to keep going back
and forth like she’s been doing.”
“I can imagine,” Bill said. “Emily had to do something like that
when her sister got lupus. Spent two months up in Burlington in
the middle of winter cooped up in a tiny apartment, just the two
of them. Drove them both crazy. In the end, the sister packed up
Em’s suitcases and set them outside the front door and said she
was better off alone. Not that I could blame her, of course.”
Kevin took a pull on his beer, and because it was expected of him,
he smiled. Emily was Bill’s wife and they’d been married almost
thirty years. Bill liked to tell people they’d been the happiest six
years of his life. Everyone at the precinct had heard the joke about
fifty times in the past eight years, and a big chunk of those people
were here now. Bill hosted a barbecue at his house every
Memorial Day and pretty much everyone who wasn’t on duty
showed up, not only out of obligation, but because Bill’s brother
distributed beer for a living, a lot of which ended up here. Wives
and husbands, girlfriends and boyfriends, and kids were clustered
in groups, some in the kitchen, others on the patio. Four detectives
were playing horseshoes and sand was flying around the stakes.
“Next time she’s back in town,” Bill added, “why don’t you bring
her by for dinner? Em’s been asking about her. Unless, of course,
you two would rather make up for lost time.” He winked.