Mac swung the door wide and gestured inside. I stepped in and surveyed the room. It was decorated in light yellow and green with dark wood twin beds flanking a large bureau. They also had a small sitting area near the window. Their room boasted a view out the side of the building and down the hill into the woods. I wandered to the windows while Mac rummaged in the closet with the wall safe.

I glanced at the small table between the chairs and caught my breath. A manila file folder sat on top of a knitting magazine. Stamped on the front was the seal of the Ann Arbor police department and my name was typed on the tab. The envelope with my name scrawled on it sat on top.

I took a deep breath and glanced at the closet. Mac was mumbling to himself about old safes. I flipped open the file and saw exactly what I was expecting—a report on the shooting that had occurred almost a year ago.

It had been the catalyst that sent me back to Crystal Haven. My partner and I had chased a suspect through backyards and eventually ended up in a cemetery. When the man had turned to face us, I was certain he held a gun. I didn’t actually see the gun. I felt the malicious intent with some other sense. I shot him, but aimed for his leg and he went down. That one decision had effectively ended my career, at least as far as I was concerned. If I was sure he was aiming a gun, I should have aimed for the largest target—his torso. In that situation the surest way to protect myself and my partner would not be to simply wound the gunman. However, he wasn’t holding a gun. I was thankful that I hadn’t killed him, but he would always walk with a limp and had to undergo surgery to repair his knee. He was only seventeen, not much older than Seth. The guilt from harming another person ate away at me and the knowledge that I couldn’t shoot to kill ate away at my reputation with the other officers.

I picked up the file and flipped through the pages. Interviews and witness accounts were followed by my report of the shooting. I flicked the folder shut and realized Mac was now quiet.

I turned and saw him looking at me with a mixture of concern and obstinacy. We had been over this ground before. But just before Christmas I thought I had finally convinced him that I didn’t want to pursue any more investigations into the shooting. Apparently Mac had other ideas.

“Clyde, let me explain,” he said. He took a step toward me.

I held up my hand. “There’s nothing to explain, Mac.” I dropped the file back on the table. “You’re checking up on me even after I asked you to let it go.”

“No, I wasn’t checking up on you.” He took another step forward and stopped when he met my gaze.

“Then what are you doing with the police report on the shooting?”

Mac sighed and looked away from me.

“I planned to talk to you about it while we were on vacation,” he said.

“Talk to me about what?”

“I think you’re being much too hard on yourself,” he said. “Your lieutenant says you won’t even consider his opinion that you acted well within the bounds of what would be expected—”

I stepped forward and held up my hand.

“I don’t want to talk about it. I completely misread the situation and shot an unarmed man. Nothing will change that fact.” I stopped and took a moment to control both my anger and my sadness.

“Clyde. You have to listen to me,” Mac said. He held his hands out in a pleading gesture. “You did what you were trained to do.”

“I need a few minutes, Mac.” I strode to the door and pulled it open. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

24

I went straight to my room, figuring I could grab a few minutes to calm down and get some perspective. Mac and I had covered this ground before. He felt I was overreacting and that all police officers face this kind of guilt along the line. He also didn’t want me to throw away my career at such an early point.

We frequently found ourselves at an impasse, and my reluctance to name another career seemed to prove Mac’s point that I needed to return to my job in order to be happy. I knew that I was dragging my heels and was grateful that my financial situation allowed me the time and space to figure things out. I needed to decide what to do with my life now that I had stopped running from who I was. But I wasn’t ready to share all of that with Mac yet and so he didn’t understand my reluctance to return to my old job.

I shook my head to clear it as I turned to shut the door behind me.

“Oh! I didn’t expect you,” Vi said from the couch by the window.

I’m embarrassed to say I actually jumped at the sound of her voice. I had been so intent on my own thoughts I didn’t see her sitting there in her multicolored array of shawls.

“Vi,” I said, “I thought you were at the workshop.”

She shook her head. “I needed a break from the knitting.” She said this while clicking her needles along a sage green scarf.

I cocked an eyebrow. “I see.”

She glanced at her hands and snorted. “Not that kind of a break. The gang couldn’t stop chattering about the blood-covered flashlight. Selma has them all thinking they’ll be murdered in their beds. I needed to think.”

“Me, too.” I sat on my bed and stared at the whiteness outside.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “I’ve been hoping we could go over the case together.”

“I really—”

“I know what you’re going to say,” she said and held one hand up to stop me. “You want me to just sit back and let you and Mac have all the fun.”

“I hardly think of trying to solve a murder as fun. Especially when the murderer is likely having dinner with us every night,” I said stiffly and again wondered how Vi always managed to make me feel like the older, more mature person in the room.

“Okay, you keep telling yourself that,” she said and went back to her knitting.

“What are you talking about?” She was irking me despite my intention to remain calm.

“I mean you’re made for this kind of thing.” She set her project down and turned to face me. “You loved working cases when you were a police officer and you’ve loved solving the murders in Crystal Haven this past year.”

Great. Another person trying to push me toward a calling that wasn’t mine.

“I don’t want to go back to police work, Vi.”

“Who said anything about the police?”

My head snapped up and I narrowed my eyes at her. “You just did. I can see right through you. You want me to join the Crystal Haven police force, and move back home for good.”

Vi came to sit with me on the bed. She put her arm around my shoulders.

“I do want you to move home for good, but I think you’d lose your mind if you joined the Crystal Haven police. You’d have to work with li’l Tom Andrews and take orders from Mac whenever anything interesting happened.”

Tom was a junior officer on the force, but Vi still saw him as the twelve-year-old neighborhood hooligan—her words. And Mac’s job as a homicide detective meant he took the case whenever there was a murder in Ottawa County.

I laughed and turned toward her. “Then what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you and me. We should open our own business.”

My mother and Vi had been nagging me to join the family business for years. They each had a psychic niche—Vi as a pet psychic and Mom as a tarot reader—but felt they could build an empire if I joined them and used my premonitions and touch sensitivity to tell clients their future, help them find lost objects, or warn them of doom.

I shook my head and stood up to get away from her.

“We’ve covered this, Vi,” I said. “I’m not interested in a psychic career.”

She sniffed and looked away from me. “I gave that up a long time ago.”