Between Friends by Kristy Kiernan Read Free Book Online

making his way out to the backyard. I followed.
    “Yeah, you said.”
    I watched as he cleaned out the birdbaths and refilled the feeders. A cardinal was already in one of the magnolias, peeping at him. When Benny came back into the cage, he started skimming the surface of the pool while the birds flitted down to feed. Taking care of the pool was supposed to be one of Letty’s chores, but Benny had gotten tired of keeping after her about it and had quietly taken it over again.
    “So,” I started, “did you want to tell me about your new job?” He squinted at me across the pool, the sun still bright enough to flash off the ripples he caused with the skimmer.
    “I know,” he said, resignation heavy in his voice. I’d take resignation over the quick anger any day, and any irritation I might have been harboring fled. “Sorry.”
    “It’s all right,” I said. “Just . . . what happened? Why didn’t you even talk to me about it?”
    “It was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Maybe, I guess, since the kid, the Jasper kid. You remember?”
    “Of course, I remember,” I said. It didn’t seem to need more. Chances were, had Benny still been a street cop when the call came in about Todd Jasper, he’d have been in the vicinity. Not for sure, no, but chances were good; it had been his favorite area to cruise, the area he’d grown up in, where he could do the most good.
    Todd Jasper had been a bright kid, by all accounts a good kid, rarely in trouble. But he’d been living a double life, or at least hiding a frightening one. His parents had operated the largest meth lab in the county from their house.
    Todd was fourteen when his kitchen exploded. He’d tried to save his mother from the chemical fire and was killed when a second explosion obliterated the back half of the house.
    The Jasper house had been one block away from the house Benny had grown up in.
    He sank the skimmer to the bottom of the pool and rested his forearms on it as he looked at me.
    “I didn’t want to be a cop to fill out paperwork,” he said. “I wanted to help people. I could have helped that kid, Ali. He didn’t have to die.”
    “Benny, it wasn’t your fault.”
    He sighed and turned to look at the birds jostling each other for a spot on the feeders before he shook his head and turned back to the pool. He plunged the skimmer to the bottom violently, avoiding my eyes, his lips pressed together tightly, slamming the skimmer back down into the water with every few words.
    “I know that it’s not my fault . But if I hadn’t lost sight of why I became a cop to begin with, I’d still be on the street . I’d be on that street, Ali. That was my street.”
    His vehemence took me aback. He’d been moody ever since it happened, quick to anger, followed by long periods of silence. I had noticed that, of course. But for the first time in months I really looked at my husband. His shorts hung loosely on his frame, and his face was haggard with worry.
    After twenty-seven years of knowing Benny, I’d seen him moody plenty, and he’d put up with my moods over the same amount of time. But over the past several months the silences had become longer, and he’d been spending much more time in the backyard, and on the patio, dealing with the birds, the chores. We had the fattest cardinals and blue jays I’d ever seen, and entire squirrel families now chattered in the trees when Benny came out with his bucket of cracked corn and seed.
    I hadn’t been paying enough attention; that much was clear. I’d been busy with my own obsession over the Miracle Wall. And though he hadn’t exactly noticed that, either, I hadn’t given him the wake-up call he’d just given me.
    I was paying attention now, desperate to make up for lost time.
    I nodded. “Okay, I understand. I really do. I just wish you’d been able to talk to me about it. So, what’s your plan now?”
    He seemed to relax a little, swirling the skimmer through the water