Page 89 of In the Shadows
"Accept that you can't control everything. Do what you can—stay alert, stay prepared, take reasonable precautions. But don't let the fear run your life." Sid tossed the board aside. "I spent two years after I got back sleeping with a gun under my pillow. Checking the locks six times before bed. Driving different routes to work every day. You know what it got me?"
"What?"
"Exhausted. Paranoid. Alone." He straightened up, stretching his back. "Grace is the one who finally got through to me. She said, 'Sid, you survived the war. Don't let it kill you now.'"
The words hung in the humid air. Ronan looked out at the inlet, where a heron was picking its way through the shallows with prehistoric patience.
"I don't know how to do this," he said. "Be normal. Have a life that isn't about the next mission."
"Nobody does, at first. You learn." Sid handed him a pry bar. "Start with the dock. Work your way up from there."
They broke for lunch around noon.
Grace had sent Sid with sandwiches and a cooler of sweet tea, and they sat on the grass in the shade of the live oak, looking out at their morning's work. Half the dock was stripped down to the frame now, the rotted wood piled high enough to require a trailer for disposal.
"Lila's testifying at the trial," Ronan said. "January."
"I heard. The whole town's heard." Sid unwrapped his sandwich. "How's she handling it?"
"Better than I expected. She's been meeting with the prosecutors, going over her father's files, preparing her testimony." He paused. "She's stronger than she thinks she is."
"Most people are, when they have to be." Sid took a bite, chewed thoughtfully. "She's got good people around her now. That helps."
"She's got this town. That's what really matters to her."
"Yeah, well." Sid gestured vaguely at the inlet, the trees, the cottage behind them. "This town has a way of growing on you. I came here thinking I'd stay a year, get my head straight, and move on. That was three years ago."
"What changed?"
"Grace. The garage. Realizing I didn't have to keep running from something that was already over." He set down his sandwich. "The war ended, Ronan. Not the real one—that's still going on, always will be. But my war. The one I was fighting inside my own head. At some point, I had to decide it was finished."
"And if it's not? If something comes back?"
"Then you deal with it. You've got skills. Training. People who'll stand with you." Sid met his eyes. "But you don't put your life on hold waiting for a threat that might never come. That's not living. That's just a slower way of dying."
Ronan thought about the cottage behind him. The woman who'd started keeping her things in his drawers. The dock they were rebuilding, one rotted board at a time.
"Quinn mentioned you might be looking for work," Sid said, changing the subject. "Once you're settled."
"Did he?"
"Said he could use someone with your background. Construction security, site management, that kind of thing. Nothing classified. Just honest work."
"I'll think about it."
"Don't think too long. Man needs something to do with his days besides fix docks." Sid grinned. "Trust me on that one."
Lila arrived around three, while they were measuring for new lumber.
She parked in the gravel drive and walked down to the water's edge, picking her way around the piles of rotted wood. She was still in her work clothes—a light blouse, dark slacks—but she'd kicked off her shoes somewhere along the way.
"It looks worse than it did this morning," she said, surveying the stripped-down dock.
"It's going to look worse before it looks better." Ronan set down his tape measure. "How was your meeting?"
"Long. The forensic accountants found another account tied to Coastal Property Services. This one had transactions going back fifteen years." She rubbed her eyes. "Every time we think we've found the bottom, there's another layer."
"There usually is."
