“Great. What’s up?”
His mother hesitated and James came instantly alert. His mother wasn’t the type to let small things bother her. Something was wrong. “I just wanted to remind you about Thanksgiving. It’s at my house this year.”
James frowned. “It’s always at your house, Mom. Thirty-something years.”
“That’s just it. Allyson has got it into her head that, as the eldest daughter, she should have it at her house this year. She said something about all the preparations being too much work for me.”
James had never thought about that. “Well, is it, Mom?”
“I’ll have you know I can hoist a twenty-pound turkey in each fist. I don’t go to the Y three times a week for nothing. I can certainly handle a meal for nine adults and two children. Of course, we’ll probably include a few last-minute people, too.”
James smiled. That sounded like Thanksgiving at the Cannon house. The numbers increased as the day drew closer. “So, great. I’ll have my feet under your table on Thanksgiving.”
There was a pause. “You won’t let Allyson change your mind? You know she’s not the best cook but she can be very persuasive about things she wants. She’s got almost three weeks to work on everyone.”
“Sic her sisters on her.”
“Yes. I could do that.” There was that hesitancy again.
“Is there something else on your mind, Mom?”
“I was just wondering how you’re doing, son. Alone.”
James frowned. “What’s with the sad tone, Mom? Given how you felt about Jaylynn, I thought you’d be jumping for joy that I’m single.” Before his mother could respond he glanced at Bogart. “Oh, great news, Mom! Bogart’s turned up. Just this morning.”
“Really? James, that’s just wonderful! A miracle. How did it happen?”
James gave her the quick, clean version of Shay having taken his partner in at a shelter in Raleigh and then him finding out about it. No point in laying out the whole shitty mess that involved Jaylynn’s part in Bogart’s disappearance.
“So, is he all right?”
James scrubbed Bogart hard behind the ears and he barked in response. “Hear that? He’s fine.”
“Okay. You be careful driving back to Charlotte. It’ll be dark out.”
James smiled. He was a cop. He carried a gun. His life involved the daily possibility of danger. Yet his mother worried about him driving a major highway after dark. “Sure thing, Mom. Love you.”
James hung up with a smile on his face. The family always ended every call with “I love you.” Only in his teens did he balk. A guy couldn’t say “love you” to his mother—forget his dad—if anyone else was around. But he’d always known he was loved, and surrounded by enough family to make a man sometimes wish he could hide out from them. But mostly it was just good to know that they would always have his back. Time to go home.
Yet once behind the wheel, James just sat without putting the key in the ignition. He couldn’t forget the look in Shay Appleton’s gaze as they walked away. She looked more than defeated, she looked abandoned.
The setting sun slanted down through the trees in the parking lot, highlighting the warm colors of the autumn leaves. The colors reminded him of her dappled gold and brown eyes. Those eyes held secrets he didn’t begin to understand but they moved him just the same. The look said she didn’t have options, or someone to back her up. And that resurrected an old and painful memory he thought he’d successfully buried.
It happened his first year on the job. A domestic-abuse call from a neighbor who’d heard a woman’s cries coming from the apartment next door.
He’d responded with his senior partner to find a young woman, plain and thin and wearing little more than a man’s shirt, and a bruise the size of a fist that had spread across her cheek to swell her eye shut. She wouldn’t let them in and wouldn’t answer any questions except to say that she had fallen over a toy and struck her face on the coffee table. There was a small child crying in the background. If there was a man behind that door, menacing her, they could only speculate.
His senior officer had tried everything to get her to open that door, cajoling her, offering to settle the crying child, to take her to the emergency room. She wouldn’t budge. But the gaze of fear and pain from her one good eye had branded James.
As they turned away, he’d been hot with frustration, calling his partner unfeeling.
His partner had waited until they were back in their squad car to speak. “You got emotionally involved. That’s not the job. If they don’t ask for our help, we can’t force them. If they say no, then you leave a card and walk away. They aren’t your problem anymore.”