A cemetery worker stood ten feet off, no doubt waiting to fill in the hole, and I nodded to him and turned away. I had no excuse for not hurrying back to the house to help out, except that I was unneeded, and probably unwanted. Krystal had clearly told her family she didn’t think much of me, and neither did they. I was a police officer, decorated even, and they treated me like some unreliable grifter.
So instead of heading to my truck, I wandered between the graves, peering at the stones. Mostly boring, although I spotted one woman who’d been a hundred and four, if my math was right, and a baby lost the day it was born. I hadn’t been here since Dad died. The memories of his funeral, with Krystal’s loud mourning taking up all the space, were an ache I didn’t need to relive.
I spotted a flash of red hair and saw Callum, squatting in front of a headstone. I almost went over to see what was so interesting when I remembered that his parents were probablyburied here. The last thing I wanted was to intrude on that. I averted my gaze and walked the other way.
By the time I convinced myself I couldn’t avoid the wake any longer, I assumed all the other mourners would be long gone. But when I reached the parking lot, I saw Callum behind his car with the trunk open. A flat tire on the rear wheel made the reason obvious.
“Hey.” I headed his way. “Need some help?”
He straightened and put his back to the car. “No! I got this, okay? I know how.”
I raised my open hands. “Sure. No problem.”
“I get tired of everybody thinking I’m useless.”
“Huh? You’re the top goalie in the PHL right now.” I might not have followed Callum’s hockey career closely, but his grandfather was proud of him and said so every time I met him. “How is that useless?”
“Not about hockey. About all the other shit.” He yanked a jack out of his trunk, flipping a cascade of fabric bags and printed papers and jumper cables out onto the pavement. “Fuck! See what you made me do?”
“Me?” I still had my hands in the air.
“Bothering me when I have this under control. Don’t you have anywhere better to be?” He glared at me from under thick auburn brows, his forehead creased in a frown.
“Yes,” I agreed steadily. “My stepmother’s wake, for instance.”
Callum blinked, and a series of expressions I couldn’t interpret crossed his face. When he said, “So why aren’t you there?” his tone was quieter.
Because frankly, I’d rather kneel on the pavement picking up crap.I shrugged. “Figured I’d help out a neighbour.” I scooped up the wayward papers before they could blow away and held them out.
He snatched them from me and stuffed the wad deeper into the trunk. “Well, I don’t need help. You can go.”
Something in his stance reminded me of the nine-year-old who appeared next door and told me, “I live here now. Get used to it,” the first time I met him. I’d known then the attitude had a lot of hurt behind it, although at twelve, I was self-centred enough not to really care. I wondered what drove him now.
Still, there wasn’t much room to argue with“You can go.”Except, “Is your spare okay? I have a tire pump in my truck.”
“Of course you do.” He scrabbled up the bags and jumpers, tucked them away, and unearthed the spare. Which definitely was not okay, from the way it sagged when the tire hit the ground. “Fuck!”
“Let me get it.” I jogged to my Chevy pickup and unlocked the topper. The little air compressor sat where it belonged in the box, and I fetched the device over. “Right. Can you see the recommended pressure?”
He squinted at the tire for a moment. I tried to subtly point to the sidewall where pressure would be written, and he threw me a glare, but rotated and read it. “Looks like sixty.”
“Got it. Hold it steady.” I set the compressor to sixty, squatted, hooked it up, and threw the switch. Thirty seconds of humming, then it beeped and shut off. “There. All set.”
“That’s a nice tool.” It was the least antagonistic thing Callum had said so far. He peered down at the now-firm tire, not at my face.
“Works well. The first time I was late to a meeting with my captain for a flat tire, I went out and invested.”
“Bet.”
“A couple hundred bucks, though.”
“Yeah? Well shit, no way.”
“Aren’t you a pro player?”
“Not in the millionaires’ league. Yet. Money’s still tight.”
“Well, your grandfather seems to think you’ll be in the NAPH real soon.”
