Tom Croydon sat at his desk rubbing supposedly calming circles around and around his temples. Maggie had taught him that secret, and most of the time it worked. Most of the time he could concentrate on the movement, focus on it and then whatever it was that was causing the stress would take a back seat until Tom was ready to cope with it.
Most of the time.
Most of the time it worked, but not this time.
Not when she was the cause of it all. Not today, the anniversary of her death, not today. Tom sighed. PJ had seemed to be coping, he'd seemed to be getting on with his life – or at least that was the impression that the bosses had been given. The Mt Thomas coppers had closed rank, and as far as 'he powers that be' knew, PJ was fine. Tom knew different. Tom knew damn well that PJ was only just hanging on. He had loved her so much, his beloved Maggie. So very, very much, and the way she had been taken from him had been heartbreaking. A break-up he could have coped with. A split, a fight, cheating – anything but the savage untimely death that had been savagely forced on them by her own brother of all people. PJ had lost his soul when Maggie had breathed her last breath. They PJ they knew and loved had gone, replaced by a hardened, bitter man, a man who fought the world rather than embracing it. A man who despaired of life rather than welcomed each day.
They'd been doing their best to look out for him, and he'd been letting them – which in itself spoke volumes. The PJ of old would have fought, argued, hell he'd have yelled from the rooftops that t was all so wrong – but this PJ? This one had given up. This one had lost the spark, the ….the life that he'd cherished when Maggie had been alive.
The disaster of a morning that had just happened had scared Tom. The look in PJ's eye had scared him – really scared him. PJ was a man who lived through his emotions, and his world had been shattered. He'd lost his reason for a future, and now it seemed like he was only waiting until he found a bullet with his name on it. Tom had been all ready to go after PJ, to try and help him make some sense of the disaster that was his life, but Nick had stepped in, and for that Tom was pleased. Nick and PJ, despite their differences, had become good friends. They had both fought for and won the love of a good woman, and they had both loved and lost. If anyone could talk to PJ, could bring him around (apart from himself, Tom thought), it would be Nick. It would be the man who had also lost his wife, who had also lost the love of his life – and who had then recovered to forge a new life, and a happy one at that. Nick was the blueprint for the future that PJ might be able to have.
Might be.