Chapter Two:
Where the Light Still Gets In
Sheriff Danner stood at the edge of the blanket, boots sinking into the soft, spring-warmed grass. The air smelled faintly of clover and the last cut of someone’s mower down the block. The sky stretched high and cloudless, the kind of blue that made everything below it feel briefly possible.
Mona lay belly-down, elbows propped, flipping through a glossy catalog of doll furniture. Around her, a plastic world was arranged with careful joy—Barbie sunning herself, Ken offering a cardboard pizza box with a printed smile. Everything was perfect in its own, albeit somewhat artificial, way.
“You want some pizza, Daddy?” Mona asked without looking up. “Ken brought dinner.”
Danner smiled—genuinely, the kind that lived in his eyes. “Depends. Is it pepperoni or anchovy?”
“Pepperoni. Obviously.” She grinned, triumphant.
From the porch, Kila watched. Arms crossed, one shoulder leaned into the column. She was still, but not stiff. Studying.
She blinked slowly, like taking a photograph—capturing the moment, trapping it in time. Holding it steady with quiet effort.
Watching the man she once loved most become, again, the man she used to know—at least for now.
He was different with Mona. Easy. Present. The job didn’t hang on him the same way when she was around.
Watching the two of them together, there was this incandescent glow about them. Not the blinding kind—but the kind that warmed and soothed. The kind that let you exhale like you’d been holding your breath for eternity.
That part of him—the soft part, the laughing part—it hadn’t disappeared. It had just gone into hiding. Buried beneath badges and long nights, half-finished arguments, and missed mornings.
She didn’t see Sheriff Danner out there on that blanket.
She saw Cal. Her Cal.
The man who used to bring her coffee before her first class. The man who rubbed her back without being asked when her mother passed. The man who whispered the name “Mona” into her shoulder the night their daughter was born, like it was a prayer.
And now, that man was laughing again. Giving Ken a ridiculous cowboy drawl. He had a pretend slice of pizza and pretended it was the best he’d ever had.
It broke her heart a little.
Because it was so easy.
And because it wasn’t hers anymore.
When Mona ran inside to grab Barbie’s “sunscreen,” Kila finally stepped off the porch and made her way toward him. Her steps were slow and thoughtful. The grass cushioned her movements, soft and uneven from last week’s rain.
Cal looked up when she reached him. Not as Sheriff. Just as himself.
“She misses you,” Kila said gently.
“I miss her too.”
There was a pause. A silence full of years.
“What about us?” she asked.
He didn’t answer right away. He ran a thumb along the edge of the blanket like he was smoothing out something he’d wrinkled.
“I don’t know when I stopped knowing how to fix things.”
“It didn’t happen all at once,” she said. “It just… wore us down. Like wind on stone. Quiet. Constant. We didn’t notice until we were standing on opposite ends of the same house.”
“I kept thinking,” Cal said, “if I could just get through this week, this month, this case—then I’d come back. Then I’d figure out how.”
“And did you?”
His voice dropped. “No. I just got better at staying away.”
Kila swallowed hard. Gosh, she loved him. Even with all the weight he carried, there was still an easiness about him—something unshakable, something familiar. She wanted to reach for him, grab his shirt, shake him until the pieces fell back into place. But her pride kept her spine straight, her hands at her sides, and she swallowed a delicious urge to kiss him.
It would’ve been so easy. Too easy. And that was the danger of it.
“You smile so easy with her,” she said instead. “It’s like the world doesn’t touch you when she’s around.”
“It doesn’t,” Cal said. “She melts everything bad.”
She nodded, eyes full but steady. “She gets that from me.”
Cal looked up at her, and for a split second, the whole world stopped moving.
“Yeah,” he said. “She does.”
Later, back in the cruiser, Cal found the note again. Still folded. Still waiting.
WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
Even here, in this quiet bubble of a backyard, it looked wrong. Like something sharp had been left behind in a soft place. But it reminded him why he couldn’t stay in this moment forever.
Ashwood had its claws in him.
But Mona… Mona reminded him of something that hadn’t been lost, only misplaced.
He looked back at the house one more time. The porch light had come on. Kila stood just inside the screen door, one hand resting against the frame. She wasn’t watching him leave. But she hadn’t turned away either.
He didn’t know how to come home.
And she didn’t know how to ask him to.
But maybe—just maybe—they were both still hoping the other would try.
Keep Following the Trail
Ashwood County doesn’t forget. Neither should you.
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