“How did you find out?” she asked, softly.

“Colleen saw it on a true crime documentary last night. She came and told me, but she hasn’t told anyone else and she won’t. We are the only two people who know.”

“Oh my gosh. I can’t get away from it! It’s on a documentary? Why can’t I get away from this?”

She stood up and started pacing back-and-forth in the kitchen like a wild animal.

“Why don’t you sit back down? I don’t think you should be…”

“Do you know what it was like? How hard it was to stay in that town after it happened? Everybody looked at me differently. Everybody judged me.”

“I’m sure that wasn’t true, Emma. You did the right thing. It sounds like he would’ve killed you or someone else if you hadn’t done what you did.”

“I could’ve shot him in the leg or tackled him or done literally anything else…”

“You can’t second-guess yourself! I know police officers, and I know what kind of training you go through. You have to make split-second decisions that the rest of us can’t even imagine. And it’s just the luck of the draw who ends up having to make those decisions in the field. You did the right thing. Otherwise you would’ve been in trouble or lost your job, but everybody knows that you protected yourself and your community.”

She sat down and put her head in her hands. “I thought I could start over here, but this is going to follow me forever. I’ll always be known as the cop who killed somebody.”

“A lot of cops are in that club, unfortunately. It’s part of the job.”

“You know, I never really wanted to be a police officer. I was running from something then and I ran straight into that. And if I hadn’t made the decision to become an officer, I wouldn’t be feeling like this right now.”

“Emma, I can’t pretend to understand what you’re going through, but have you gotten any counseling?”

She laughed under her breath. “What counselor is going to understand what I’m going through?”

“I don’t think it’s about someone understanding what you’re going through. I think it’s about helping you learn how to accept what you’ve gone through and forgive yourself.”

She sat there for a moment quietly thinking about what Janine had said. She couldn’t keep going on like this, that much was for sure. It was exhausting trying to hide who she was all the time. She felt like she was living a double life, constantly trying to pretend she was okay. She’d been involved in a case where a person was put into witness protection, and she often wondered what that life was like. Now, she had at least a small taste of it.

“When I was a kid, I used to save bugs. I drove my mother crazy because I was constantly bringing them into the house in Mason jars or her good Tupperware. But I didn’t want them to die. And if I stepped on one accidentally, I would cry. I couldn’t imagine hurting another living creature.”