“You’re moving today,” Helen said.
Marcus glanced toward the clock.
“I’m aware.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“Because these cans didn’t put themselves away.”
“They have twelve volunteers.”
“Eleven now.”
Helen rolled her eyes.
“You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve been told.”
She reached for one grocery bag.
Marcus reached it first.
Helen slapped his wrist lightly.
“I can carry my own groceries.”
“I know.”
“Then give me the bag.”
“No.”
“I was carrying groceries before you had gray in your beard.”
“That doesn’t mean you need to keep proving it.”
Helen narrowed her eyes at him.
“You practice that line in a mirror?”
Marcus picked up the second bag.
“Every morning.”
She laughed and followed him outside.
The morning had already begun warming.
Marcus carried the bags across the cracked parking lot toward Helen’s silver sedan.
Morning Star was a long way from Cedar Ridge, not only geographically.
Here, nobody cared what kind of truck you drove.
Nobody measured lawns.
Nobody posted photographs in homeowners association chats because someone unfamiliar parked near a mailbox.
People measured reliability differently.
Did you show up?
Did you keep your word?
Did you help when somebody needed it?
Marcus understood that currency better.
He placed Helen’s groceries into the trunk.
She reached for her purse.
Marcus pointed at her.
“Don’t.”
“I was buying you breakfast.”
“I already ate.”
“Coffee.”
“Free inside.”
“Lunch.”
“Helen.”
She smiled.
“Fine.”
Marcus closed the trunk.
For a moment, she studied him.
“You nervous?”
“About moving?”
“About tomorrow.”
The smile on Marcus’s face faded.
Tomorrow.
For the past five months, Harrison City had been searching for a new police chief after the retirement of Chief Robert Langley.
Marcus had never applied.
At first.
He had spent enough time inside police departments to know what chiefs actually did.
Budgets.
Politics.
Union negotiations.
Discipline.
Public meetings.
Midnight calls about things that happened twenty minutes before but would be discussed publicly for twenty years.
He had been a patrol officer, detective, lieutenant, district commander, and deputy chief.
He had spent years training younger officers and trying to improve a profession he still believed could be honorable despite knowing intimately how badly it could fail people.
Leadership had always interested him.
The title had not.
Then Harrison City’s search committee called.
Three interviews became five.
Five became meetings with community leaders.
Then came the final vote.
Marcus Reed had been selected unanimously.
Tomorrow afternoon the city would introduce him publicly.
His first formal day would follow Monday morning.
Helen folded her arms.
“You spent twenty-eight years preparing for tomorrow.”
Marcus looked toward traffic beyond the parking lot.
“Twenty-eight years teaches you enough to know you can still get tomorrow wrong.”
Helen smiled sadly.
“That sounds like something your father would have said.”
Marcus looked back at her.
James Reed still existed inside conversations like that.
A sentence.
A smell.
A tool.
A photograph.
James had died at seventy-one after a short illness that felt unfairly efficient. He had been strong his entire life until suddenly he was not.
He never wore a badge.
He worked as a diesel mechanic.
His hands were thick and permanently marked by work no soap completely erased.