To Love a Cop

“Can I offer you dinner Tuesday before the class?”

He wasn’t fooled by how elaborately casual she sounded. Some anxiety vibrated in her voice. He couldn’t help wondering. Did she want reassurance about Jake, about letting him handle guns? Or...was she asking because she wanted to see him, and feared it had never crossed his mind to make their relationship personal?

Man, he hoped the answer was number two.

“I’d appreciate that,” he said. “That way Jake can go with me, unless you want to come along and watch.”

The tiny pool of silence didn’t surprise him.

“He’d probably rather I didn’t come.”

“He’s a boy,” Ethan said gently.

“I didn’t even have a brother. Raising a boy is...challenging.”

“If it’s any consolation, my mother says my sister gave her more heartburn than I did.”

“That’s not what you said earlier.” Her voice was teasing.

“Oh, I was a pain in the ass, but Carla was a mass of screaming hormones for at least two years. Even I was scared of her.”

Laura was giggling when they signed off, Ethan smiling in satisfaction.

* * *

“NUMBER ONE IS the golden rule of gun safety. Anyone already know this?”

A girl who looked to be fourteen or fifteen raised her hand. “Never point your gun at anything you don’t want to shoot.”

Ethan nodded. “That’s one way to put it. When you’re handling a gun of any kind, point it in a safe direction. Not at a person, not at your dog, not at your mom’s favorite lamp.” He looked from one face to the next. “Safest place is at the ground, but not too close to your feet.” Holding the unloaded .22 rifle, he demonstrated.

The kids were rapt, even though safety rules were pretty basic. Never touch the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. Keep the gun unloaded until you’re ready to use it. Check to see if the gun is loaded every time you pick it up. Don’t rely on a gun’s safety catch. Never try to take a gun away from someone by grabbing the barrel.

Never fool around with a gun. No Cowboys and Indians, Cops and Robbers games.

Ethan didn’t look directly at Jake when he said that one, but with his peripheral vision he saw him duck his head.

Ethan talked about some other dangers and rules, emphasizing that anyone handling a gun had to be aware not only of their target, but of what was surrounding that target and behind it.

“You might be accurate on the range, but shooting a deer on the run or a duck taking off from a pond is another story. You’re tracking the movement, getting excited. What if there’s another hunter on the other side of the pond? What if you’re shooting tin cans off the fence at your uncle’s farm and you didn’t notice a horse wandering in the pasture behind that fence?”

He had them do some role-playing, let them handle several rifles he’d borrowed from Ken for the purpose, after elaborately checking to be sure they were unloaded even though he had, of course, done so before starting the class.

This first class, they talked about gun care, too. About trigger locks and gun safes. He paired them up and had each pair clean a .22 rifle, in part to help them understand what each part did, but also because a clean gun was a safer gun.

They all worked earnestly, although he could tell that, for about half the kids, he wasn’t saying anything they didn’t know and that they were already pretty comfortable handling the .22s. He appreciated their parents putting them through a class anyway.

He promised to give them a little time the next week on the range, and told them he was trying to book an extra hour at an outdoor range that would give them a different experience.

When the two hours were up, he spent another twenty minutes talking to parents. While he waited, Jake stared into the glass-fronted cabinets at handguns for sale.

Ken had hung around tonight, and he talked easily to Jake while Ethan was busy.

“See you next week,” he said when they left, as if he hadn’t noticed anything amiss about Jake’s interest.

On the drive home, Jake grumbled about not having been able to shoot tonight, but he also asked some eager questions and talked about the other kids in the class.

“I didn’t think there’d be girls. And one of them, Amber, says she already knows all this stuff. Her dad takes her target shooting all the time, and she says her mom hunts, too.”

“There are quite a few women who compete all the way up to an international level in target shooting, too.”

“Girls don’t usually talk about guns.”

Ethan laughed. “Better not say girls in quite that tone around your mom. And if you lived in a more rural part of the state, I think you’d find more girls interested. For men and women, hunting is a less common interest among an urban population.”

“How come you don’t hunt?”

“I take carrying a gun too seriously to want to do it for fun. Plus, I like animals. I don’t want to shoot one.”

“But you eat meat.”

Ethan grimaced. “You’ve got me there. I’m probably a hypocrite. But the truth is I don’t need to take a deer every year to keep meat in my freezer the way some folks do. If I’d grown up hunting, it might be different. As it is, I like to hike, I’ve done some mountain climbing, I love windsurfing, I play basketball, I run for exercise and do some weight lifting.” He glanced at Jake. “Do you play any sports?”

“I did Little League until this year. And I play basketball. Mom said I might be able to do some sport camps this summer. Did you play college ball?”

“I did. Portland State. If it’s okay with your mother, maybe this weekend we could find a hoop and play some one-on-one.” Maybe Laura would want to play, too, or come watch. Offer to feed him lunch, he thought hopefully.

“I couldn’t defend against you,” the boy said indignantly. “You’re really tall.”

Ethan laughed. “No, but we can play Horse, practice our free throws and layups. Just have fun.”

“Yeah! That would be cool.”

“Good.” He pulled up in front of Jake’s house. “I’ll call. And see you next week, if not before. Ask your mom about this weekend, but be warned that sometimes I end up having to work.”

“You don’t want to come in?” Jake sounded disappointed.

“I’d better not,” Ethan said, even though there was nothing he’d have liked better. But...she’d had him to dinner. She’d blushed a couple of times. Once, their fingers had brushed when she passed him a dish, and she’d stopped talking midsentence and gone very still, a hint of yearning in her eyes.

Or so he’d convinced himself.

No, he wasn’t going to push it.

And...he’d better think long and hard before he spent any more time with Laura Vennetti anyway. He had a hard time picturing her having casual affairs. Anything else—they had some major strikes against them. It really might be smarter not to start anything.

But he waited until Jake let himself in the front door, only then acknowledging how disappointed he was not to catch a glimpse of Laura.

And admitting how much he wanted to see her again.