Chapter 12
Walt's impending return to work is awkward, even for those of them who didn't fuck him in weak moment, or four.
When Ruby delivers the news, Post-it in hand, Ferg just stares at her stunned, a miniscule crinkle in his brow.
"Guess the party's over," Eamonn says.
"What party?" Vic snaps.
He leans back in his chair with that smug grin she has a sudden urge to punch off his goofy face. She's glad she didn't sleep with him. When he apparently realizes she's not playing, he looks puzzled, but not puzzled enough to put any energy into figuring out where this is coming from.
Ruby's expression is a mixture of sympathy and disapproval though it's not clear who she pities and who she's judging. It pisses Vic off. The woman's never had four weak moments in her life.
"Well, that's a relief," Vic says in as even a tone as she can manage. "Now we can get back to normal."
All three of them look at her like she's speaking Klingon.
/
Walt's first day back, she comes in early, long before she expects him to get there, and she gets lucky: She fields a call about a couple of vintage Harleys stolen from a yard out in the far northern reaches of the county. It's a call Ferg should take, but there's no way she's letting that happen, not when this one promises at least two hours of driving, if not more, and a drawn out investigation if that's what the responding deputy feels is necessary, and she does. Then she'll call in a lunch break before she returns to the office. She figures that'll put it at around 1:00 or even 2:00 by the time she gets back, and if she's luckier, Walt's stamina will be compromised by all the ass-sitting he's been doing, and he'll check out early.
She knows she can't put it off forever, but she's willing to push it back as far as it will go.
Rarely does she think about what they did that day, she and the late Walt. In fact, she's gotten good at not thinking about him much at all, mostly because the pressure to step-up to the position, with the Feds hovering around every corner, has been immense. Every single tough day on the job since Walt was removed from service, she's reminded herself that this is her ticket out, and she's going to milk it for all it's worth—at the end of six weeks, if she can just hold the department together and keep everyone on her side, she'll have a gem for her resume.
Even in the weeks before Walt killed Barlow, they'd drifted further and further apart. He was still obsessed with Nighthorse, and she wanted nothing to do with it, or him really.
In that time, she started to notice things about him she hadn't noticed before: the puffiness in his face, and the scragginess of his hair and perpetual shadow, and the gut, which she was pretty sure he hadn't had, at least not to that degree, when she'd been naked with him, the idea of which now made her cringe.
For the first time ever, she realized he was middle-aged, and slowing down. The tough, lanky, intelligent cowboy she'd yearned for, and who it turned out had yearned for her, too, was gone. She'd never thought of him as being too old for her, but now she noticed the age in his hands, and his ears seemed oddly large, like her grandfather's. She'd always associated ears getting bigger by the year with old men. If she'd recognized that feature in Walt, she never would have wanted him. She was ashamed that this man in front of her, who she barely knew, had touched her, been inside her, without a condom. She'd never done that before even though she'd been on the pill since she was 18, except with Sean of course. But Walt had been different, or so she'd thought.
She'd never do it again, that was for sure. People change.
By the time he killed Barlow, it had all boiled down to yet another regret. She'd begun to regard it the way she might have regarded a random drunken romp. She knew it wasn't that at all, but none of what she felt for him then was accessible to her now.
A month earlier she'd deleted the three pictures she had of him on her phone because she found herself looking at them over and over, pining at first for who he'd been, but mostly wondering what on earth she could have been thinking, how on earth she could have believed she was in love.
She wasn't in love. She knows that now. Whatever it was she felt that deluded her so severely, she doesn't feel a speck of it anymore.
It was an unhealthy attachment rooted in decades old self-esteem problems and, God forbid but maybe, daddy issues. At least that's what she's come up with. The first one she can accept; the second has the potential to make her seek therapy.
When she returns from the Harley call, his office door is shut, and to her relief, it doesn't open again until close to five o'clock.
He notices her then, says hey, comes over to her, stands next to her desk. She looks up briefly.
"Welcome back," she says with as genuine a smile as she can pull off.
"Thanks," he says. He looks around him then back at her. "Everything seems pretty well in order."
"Pretty well?" She glances up again.
"Very well."
"Thanks," she says.
She thinks then he'll go about his business, but he just stands there as though he's waiting for something. Whatever it is, he won't get it from her. When he finally figures that out for himself, he says, "Good to be back."
She nods.
He goes back into his office but he doesn't shut the door. A few minutes later, she closes up shop and heads home.
/
They work together well enough when it's necessary, which isn't very often. Things have slowed down to a reasonable small-town pace, and Walt uses that as an excuse to can Eamonn.
On his way out, Eamonn suggests they meet for a drink. She's non-committal, but bats her eyelashes a bit just in case.
As he's getting into his Jeep, he says, "What's the story with you and Walt anyway?"
Her stomach clenches. "Me and Walt?"
"Yeah," he says as though he really wants an answer.
"No story."
"He possessive of all his deputies like that?"
"Oh, yeah," she says. "You should see how he acts when anyone pays too much attention to Ferg."
/
They're in the alley behind the hardware store, searching for Henry's truck, when Walt says, "We need to hire a deputy."
"I think Eamonn's still available," she says.
He glances back at her.
"What?" she says.
"Nothing."
She's walking behind him. He sounds bugged, but without a view of his face, she can't be sure.
"Bullshit nothing," she says. "What?"
"You and Eamonn?"
"What about me and Eamonn?"
"Are you sleeping with him?"
She stops walking. He keeps going.
"Wow," she says. "That's inappropriate."
He stops and turns to her, fast enough that it startles her into backing up a little.
"Are you?" he says.
"You mean regularly?"
He sighs, shakes his head in disgust.
After all this disconnection, after so long of being unaffected, this one small gesture connects. It knocks the wind out of her.
He starts walking again, and she follows but at more of a distance. They come across a green truck. Without getting any closer, she knows it's not Henry's, that they're just wasting their time here, pounding more nails into the coffin.
They're almost back to the Bronco when she says, "What about the doctor?"
At first she thinks he hasn't heard her, and she's about to repeat it, louder, when he says, "What about her?"
"What exactly is the nature of your relationship with her?"
He stops at the rear of the truck, pulls the keys from his pocket, and without even making eye contact, he says, "The nature of my relationship is none of your business."
Though it shouldn't, it hits her like a cold, hard slap in the face.
He gets into the truck. She waits a minute, tries to compose herself.
When she gets in, he's holding the mic on his thigh, and Ruby's voice is loud in the cab: A fire at the clinic. Dr. Monahan's car. The doctor called personally to report it.
The world feels like it's spinning, and shrinking. To stabilize herself, she holds onto the door handle.
They've already gone maybe a mile when she's able to talk again.
"You know what's funny?" she says.
"What?" he says, still irritated but with a touch of some other unrelated tension now, too.
"That's something you'd say to someone who actually gives a shit about you."
"What is?" he says, and it's a direct hit to the head of what she thinks might be the final nail.
