“I spent over half my life in the marines, *******. I’m simply reserved. I’m no pedophile, and I’ve very charitably decided to give you the benefit of the doubt for being a protective father.”

******* turned. He was about to say something. Father? But ***** looked like he wasn’t finished talking, and ******* was getting puffed. It seemed to ******* that ***** ran a lot faster when he was feeling insulted. ******* turned back around to watch where he was going. He was having a hard time keeping up.

“I’m going to say this once. I have been watching you and ****. I have been — kind of — following you. But not for the reason you think.”

Later, when the paramedics arrived, ******* thought that ten years before — hell, even five — he wouldn’t have been so shocked.

“I’ve been watching you.”

******* kept running, eyes on the road, one foot in front of the other. Breathe…

“And I’m dying to know if you taste as sweet as you look.”

******* snapped his head around to look at *****’s face. To see if ***** was telling the truth. To see if the man was serious or teasing or crazy. The last sound ******* heard was the loud clang when his head hit the metal light post.

 

“We were called to a single-family home containing a cache of illegal fireworks. Kids had found and lit them in an enclosed space, and things got out of control before they could stop it. The rest of the house went up in just minutes. Four boys. Two brothers and two neighborhood kids. The house was fully involved when we got there. ** transported one of them.”

Oh… that meant…

“Some days I can’t do my job worth a fucking damn.” He sat up and discreetly wiped his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

I had to open my mouth to breathe without making a noise, but maybe even that was a kind of embarrassed sob.

“******?” he glanced up at me. How wrong was that? To be so glad to hear him say my name when his heart was breaking.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think kids die for a reason? Like…does God really need them for something?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“What reason could there be for three kids losing their lives like that? It can’t be a lesson. That’s too cruel. But it can’t be random.”

“Ah, ***. Please don’t. Don’t do this to yourself.”

Why was I even there? What could I say to help ***, with whom I normally lived in a state of friendly détente and unrequited lust? I had followed my feet and my instincts, but now he needed something, and I was absolutely out of my depth.

I leaned over and wrapped my arms around his neck, and it was like grabbing on to a bull. Muscles rippled as his arms slipped under mine and banded tight around me, crushing me. He held on to me as though I was the only solid thing left on earth. He pressed his face into my neck, and I felt the wetness of tears there.

“It’s going to be all right,” I said stupidly.

He shook his head. He was openly crying, and I was acutely aware that there were probably ten people, most of whom were only meters away, who understood what he was going through better than I ever could. I felt his grief like a hot wind all along the place I stuff my inconvenient emotions, and it blew away anything trivial I had ever stored there.