“Interested? In Pensacola?”

Webb shrugged as he flipped another piece of paper. “It’s a good place. Bigger, so there’s more going on. You’d be busy. And it might be a good chance for you to, ah, you know, start fresh.”

“Start fresh?” He’d only been on the force in Sugar Bend for six months. Hardly long enough to need to start over.

Webb finally raised his head and met Frank’s gaze. “Yeah. After the Showboat incident . . . well, when Mike asked if I had any guys who might want to work with them, I thought of you.”

“Huh.” Frank crossed his arms and sat back in the chair, then sat up straight again when the metal squeaked. Things had been strained after “the Showboat incident,” as Webb called it—when Frank had reported on the two cops who’d been enjoying themselves there when they should have been cracking down—but tensions from that had mostly simmered down.

But then there was Violet. It had been a week since she told him she was moving on—with someone else. A week since he’d left the best parts of himself clinging to the other side of her door while his shell walked away. A full week of sleepless nights, frustration and anguish seeping from every inch of his skin and bones.

She’d be back at the end of the summer. He could either be here waiting . . . or not.

“I’ll go.”

Webb looked up in surprise. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. When do I start?”

Two weeks later he stood in the center of his new apartment, trying to get his bearings after his first full shift at the Pensacola precinct. Sergeant Webb was right—he was going to be busy, but busy was good. Busy meant less time for remembering. For hurting.

The move from Sugar Bend had happened so fast, he’d hardly stopped to think about what he was doing. He’d yet to unpack all his things, and one wall of the small den was still lined with boxes. Books, a spatula, two pairs of shoes, and a toolbox covered the surface of the kitchen table, and takeout food containers filled the meager linoleum counter space. All around him, his new, unfamiliar life lay scattered, stacked, and strewn. This was what he wanted—that fresh start Webb had talked about. A way to forget, to move on. But it didn’t mean he liked it. Or that he thought it would work.

He swiped his hand across his face and then, pulled by a force too strong for him to resist, he crossed the room to where a shoebox sat on the table by the telephone and pressed his fingers gently on top. He didn’t need to open the box to feel what was there. Tucked away underneath layers of papers and pens, receipts and old checkbooks, was a small broken shell wrapped in a paper towel.

“It looks like a bird just about to take flight.” Frank could still hear her bright, clear voice in his mind, as comforting as a sunrise, as close as his own heartbeat.