“Abbi, are you drinking coffee?” Meredith asked as she breezed into the kitchen. She didn’t give me time to answer. “Everything in the living room is picked up. I just want to go through the bathroom down here one more time.” She turned to Dad. “And can you make sure to empty all the trash cans?”

“Do you really think they’re going to care about the trash cans being dirty?” he asked.

They’d been having the same argument since she’d moved in. Nothing ever changed. Dad knew Meredith was going to want the trash cans emptied in all the rooms before company arrived. She asked every time, and each time, without fail, he made some comment about it. Why not just empty the trash cans and avoid the drama? But before they got into their same old argument, there was a knock at the front door. We all froze even though we were expecting them.

Dad shot us an encouraging glance before getting up and heading to the door. We followed behind him as he opened it. Dean stood on the porch with a woman who I assumed must be the FBI expert Dad had told me about last night. She was almost as big as he was. Three men stood behind them holding equipment and various-size bags. Normally Dean would’ve rushed into the house and scooped me into a big hug, but he stayed in his spot, waiting for Dad to lead the way.

“Come in,” Dad said, ushering them inside. “How are you?”

“I’m good, thank you,” Dean said, shaking his hand.

“Hi, Uncle Dean,” I said. All of this was so weird.

He tousled my hair. “Hey, you. Once all this is done, I’m taking you out for ice cream, okay?”

I smiled. Our relationship had started because of ice cream. Dad had to juggle being a grieving husband, father, and suspect all at the same time, so he had always been dragging me with him to important meetings and interviews. Not because there hadn’t been people who’d volunteered to babysit me. There had been plenty of people who would’ve helped, but one of the downfalls of a recently disappeared parent was that you didn’t let the other one out of your sight. And Dad had never pushed me to do anything I wasn’t ready for. He had let me stay with him because he had understood how much it meant to me, but it had definitely made his life harder than it already was.

It was one of those days when something significant had happened in the case, and they had needed Dad alone. Dean finally talked me into leaving the police station and getting ice cream, but I refused to go unless he took me. His status meant nothing to me. He loved to tell the story of how I stomped down the sidewalk to get ice cream and ordered him to find my mommy or I was going to tell his mommy that he was a bad detective.