Chapter Seventeen

Sawyer built Evie some shelves. He was surprised at how much he enjoyed doing it. The canoe, too, which was coming along nicely. Policing was so outwardly focused. He was always talking, persuading, organizing. He’d forgotten how restorative working quietly and steadily could be. How satisfying making something could be.

Of course, he would have liked it better if, like the last time he had done this, Evie had been perched on the bed reading a book while he worked.

But a man could not have everything. And hey, he’d discovered a side gig that could keep him and his empty nest occupied next year—the woodworking business he’d invented was, to his amusement, actually taking off.

After he was done with Evie’s shelves, he built her a new front desk.

He built these things for Evie because she was Evie. No further rationale was required.

But maybe also a little bit because he was so grateful for the conversation they’d had that night his dad had come into the bar.

It was funny how a few words from the right person at the right time could make you see things in a new way.

He’d thought about what she said. And about what Clara had said the weekend of the parade, about how Charles seemed more pathetic than dangerous these days.

And then, after all that thinking, he ran into him. It was an uneventful, chance crossing of paths. Charles was headed into the laundromat in the strip mall out on Oak Road as Sawyer came out of the diner next door.

They nodded at each other.

And that was it.

They nodded at each other.

It was unremarkable but, at the same time, a revelation.

The moment he’d caught a glimpse of his dad, he’d braced himself. Prepared for his body or his brain or whatever unholy alliance they had created to trigger the familiar sensation of panic.

But then he thought of Evie and asked himself, What is actually happening here?

What was happening was that Sawyer Collins, the chief of police, was walking out of Sadie’s Diner laughingly arguing with Sadie herself because she was, as was her habit, trying to press free cinnamon rolls on him since he always insisted on paying for the meal she always tried to comp him. It was a good-natured argument they had every time he ate at her place.

Charles, on the other hand, was coming out of the laundromat, probably because he didn’t have laundry facilities in the crappy boardinghouse he lived in, and getting into a waiting taxi because he didn’t have a valid driver’s license.

Sawyer and Clara were getting ready to spend Christmas with Jake and Art and Jamila, having declined a bunch of other invitations. Whom would Charles spend Christmas with?