Rough Around the Edges

Turning another corner, Gary pulled up his squad car in front of the van. The rain had subsided, falling steadily and sedately now rather than in sheets and gusts.

“Here’s your van,” Gary pointed out needlessly. He twisted around in his seat. “So, you going to do it? Are you going to make an honest woman of her?”

Now, there was a term he hadn’t heard in a long time, O’Rourke thought. Not since before he left Ireland. Then it had come from Susan, telling him that Patrick was going to be making one of her. An honest woman. It was Patrick’s baby she was carrying, all the while he’d been thinking that she belonged to him. He’d felt his heart crack a little then, but told himself it hadn’t. He’d known that the kind of life he’d planned for himself didn’t include having someone like Susan in it. She needed attention he couldn’t spare.

He’d wished her luck and shut his heart. Just another sacrifice he’d made to get to where he wanted to be. A man who could take care of his own, meaning the family that already was, not the one that might be, if things were different.

Problem was, he hadn’t gotten there yet.

A whimsical smile played on his lips as he looked at the policeman next to him. “Are you a Catholic, Constable?”

The shaggy black-and-gray brows drew together in one formidable hairy line. “What? No. Why?”

“Pity.” O’Rourke unhooked his seat belt. “You’d have made an excellent priest. Father Donnelley back home couldn’t have held a candle to you.” Another man dedicated to long-winded sermons, he thought.

Gary hadn’t gotten to where he was in life by not knowing when he was being given the slip. “So, is that a yes or a no?”

O’Rourke grinned. “Not a candle,” he repeated, getting out. “Thank you for the ride and the advice. And the rain slicker.” Shedding the aforementioned garment, he left it on the passenger seat, then closed the door. He could almost hear the man inside the squad car sigh as he pulled away.

O’Rourke’s grin widened.

It faded when he realized he’d left his van keys in his jacket. The jacket that was now with a dewy-eyed, sharp-tongued woman in Harris Memorial, some fifteen or so miles away.