“Uhm . . .” Damn it, she didn’t cry. It wasn’t something she did. Not then, not now. She blinked a few times, pushed away from her inner girl.
“I can drive,” Melanie offered. “I have the van.”
Jo gave a quick shake of her head. “How about you follow me. In case I get a call.”
Her friends saw past her excuse and didn’t press.
Zoe pressed two fingers to her forehead in a mock salute. “After you, Sheriff.”
Jo pushed her friend toward the door. “Get out of here.”
Before sliding behind the wheel of the squad car, Jo removed her baton and tossed it on the seat beside her. Next came her hat. She pulled out of the small parking lot, Miss Gina’s flower child van following close behind. The cemetery was just outside town. Far enough to require a daily drive but close enough to see in passing several times a week. Jo always thought it was poetic that the route to R&B’s passed by the cemetery, reminding people not to drink and drive. It did for her, in any event.
It was a clear summer day with only a few white clouds dotting the sky. Nothing like the day she learned of her father’s death.
She shook the painful memories aside and concentrated on the familiar route to her father’s final resting place.
The cemetery was maintained by the little white church, aptly named the Little White Church.
Jo left her baton in the squad car and carried her hat.
Zoe and Mel fell in step beside her. Like in a library, their voices didn’t raise above soft whispers. Funny how walking among the dead made one quiet. Almost as if yelling invited a spirit to come out and play.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for his funeral,” Mel said for the hundredth time.
“Let it go, Mel.”
“I just feel so bad.”
Jo wrapped an arm around Mel’s shoulders. “I know you do. If it makes you feel any better, I promise not to go to yours.”
Mel started to laugh and the mood lifted.
They walked along the moist graves, avoiding walking right on top of them. Small town cemeteries didn’t have city ordinances keeping the markers on the ground level, and here in River Bend’s only resting place, the markers rose to the heavens in varying heights. The more prominent or rich the member of the community had been, the larger the stone.
Sheriff Joseph Ward’s stone was somewhere in the middle. He hadn’t been a rich man—no servant of the state was unless they were dipping dirty fingers into pockets they had no business being in.
The three of them stopped at the foot of his grave and Jo took in the memorized words on his stone.
Beloved Father
Honored Public Servant
Sheriff Joseph Allen Ward
The date of his birth sat beside the early date of his death. Jo accepted Zoe’s arm as it snaked around her waist. She hadn’t heard her father’s laugh, seen her father’s smile, in seven years.
“He always thought I’d end up here before him,” Jo told them.
“You did give him hell.” Zoe was right, she had.
They were silent for a moment.
“Do you think he sees us here?”
“He damn well better.” Jo forced a laugh. “He put this badge on my chest, he better appreciate it.”
“I’m sure he does.”
Before Zoe and Mel could pull her anywhere close to tears again, she looked beyond the headstones. “Remember summer of our sophomore year?”
Both women followed her gaze and slow smiles started to spread. “Miss Gina’s lemonade and old Mrs. Greely’s grave. We got so drunk.”
Jo started to laugh. “I thought we were incredibly clever drinking in a cemetery.”
Zoe nudged her. “Until we swore we heard voices.”
“That was you, Zoe,” Mel reminded her.
“Running through the cemetery in the dark. Never a good idea.”
“Nearly busted my ankle,” Jo remembered.
“I ended up with poison oak,” Melanie said.
“I got away with a nasty hangover and nightmares for the summer.”
“Good times.” Jo smiled into the memory.
“Isn’t that the time your dad called you out for drinking?”
“He sure did. Said someone complained about a disturbance in the cemetery, came out the next day while I slept it off and found my school ID next to the leftover lemonade. He left my ID next to the mason jars we’d left behind on the kitchen counter. Signed me up for the summer cross-country team the next day.”
“That was awful. Five miles every day in the summer.”
“Smart bastard. I didn’t have time or energy to drink that summer.”
Zoe lifted her eyebrows. “Not much anyway.”
Jo knelt down and pulled a weed that didn’t need to be pulled. “I miss him,” she said in a low voice. “I swear I can feel him at the strangest times. Like he’s there looking over me.”
Mel knelt beside her. “Sounds like a normal thing. I know if there was a way to watch over Hope if something happened to me, I’d do it.”
Zoe walked along the back of the stone and paused. She lifted a single white lily from the ground and placed it on top. “Must have fallen off.”