Page 14 of At First Spark
“I… appreciate that.”
“You can appreciate it after you accept it,” she says, then leans slightly closer. “And if anyone tells you Carrington House is too much trouble, don’t listen. Half the people saying it wouldn’t know how to care for a place like that if you handed them instructions.”
I stare at her. Something in my chest shifts. The weight is all still there—my father, Michael, my mother, the inn, the room I have to scrub before I can sleep, the dog who may or may not trust me yet.
Still, for the first time since I crossed into town, I feel a small clean thread of something else under it. Maybe not hope. Not yet. But something close enough to keep.
Claire smiles at me one last time, then glances toward the front of the store. “I’d better go before one of my children calls looking for dinner.”
“Children,” I repeat.
Her grin turns knowing. “You’ll meet them eventually.”
Something about the way she says it makes the back of my neck prickle. I don’t know why. Then she gives the dog one last fond look and pushes her basket farther down the aisle.
I stand there for a second longer than necessary, dog in my arms, cart full of practical things, tomato display in front of me, and the sense that something has just quietly shifted under my feet.
Then I shake it off and keep moving. I still have a filthy inn waiting for me. I still have a first night to survive—industrial-strength locks and pest control at the ready.
And I still have no idea that meeting Claire Wright in the produce aisle is going to change far more than the quality of my dog shampoo.
Chapter Three – Holt
Two weeks into the new station rotation, I stop pretending my body knows what time it is. That part gives up fast.
The shifts run twenty-four hours while the department finds its footing, which means some mornings, I wake in my own bed, and some nights, I wake on a narrow bunk with my boots half laced and the taste of station coffee still sitting stale at the back of my throat. We rotate through days and overnights and whatever else Mac needs to fill the board without grinding all of us into dust before the department has a chance to become something steady.
It makes sense, but it still ruins your internal clock.
The bright side is that after long enough, everybody starts looking equally tired, so no one can judge anyone else for drinking coffee at ten at night or eating reheated leftovers at two in the morning like it’s a perfectly normal human choice.
Tonight is mine. Me. Ray. Beckett. Mac. A Thursday overnight that starts slow and stays that way long enough for me to think maybe we’ll get lucky. Then again, there’s no such thing as lucky in a building like this. Only quiet. Only waiting. Only the understanding that none of it lasts.
I stand at the sink in the station kitchen, a plate in one hand and a sponge in the other, staring down at a streak of barbecue sauce that has somehow hardened into something stronger.
The fluorescent lights overhead hum softly. The old refrigerator clicks on beside me. The coffee pot on the back counter holds what has to be the fourth batch of the day, and it smells exactly like poor judgment and necessity.
Beckett drifts into the kitchen while I’m still scrubbing.
“Explain to me,” he says, grabbing a soda from the fridge, “why you’re washing dishes like they personally insulted your family.”
I don’t look up. “Explain to me why you microwaved wings like a man who wants to be humbled in front of my granny.”
“That was innovation.”
“That was smoke.”
Ray, seated at the table with a stack of incident forms in front of him, doesn’t glance up. “That was nearly a problem.”
Beckett pops the soda tab and leans against the counter. “I refuse to work in this environment if my art won’t be respected.”
I rinse the plate and set it in the drying rack. “Call county. See if they care.”
He grins. “You’re cranky tonight.”
“I’m on a twenty-four-hour shift.”
“So am I.”
