* * *
As Jennifer got into her cruiser, she checked the mirror and she could have sworn she saw that asshole deputy prick smiling as he looked at the wreck. Asshole prick must be thinking about how he can be sheriff now. Everything you ever wanted. Right, Deputy? She even considered that he had something to do with it but he loved the idea of being a cop so much that if he even thought of committing a crime, he’d arrest himself. She knew that even if Sheriff Tom stepped down, the people of Stansbury would take a good hard look around for anyone other than Deputy Steven Marsters to be their new sheriff. People just didn’t like the guy. They didn’t have to and he could be good at his job, but no one wanted the asshole who was good at his job to be the guy in charge.
Still out loud and now with the kind of feeling she didn’t like to show while she was wearing a uniform. “Aw, Ben, I kept telling you to slow down.”
She pulled out of sight of the accident and then stopped her car in the road and wept for the loss of the man she wished was her father. But she knew she had to visit Ben’s real child. As much as she needed to simply sit and cry for Ben, her needs would have to wait until she could sit somewhere quietly off-duty and get good and sloppy drunk. Her needs could wait until then so she stopped crying and reminded herself that she had a job that Ben would have wanted her before any others to do and put the car back in gear.
Gil’s shop wasn’t too far from the accident, which made it worse because she somehow knew that Ben was on his way to see his son. Still, the drive was far too long for such a short distance. She parked her cruiser in front of the store and looked inside. Gil was in there fiddling with his little toy and talking to Will Kurtz. He had that weird combination of comfortable and melancholy that made you sad for him in some way even when he was smiling at you and joking with you. She looked up in the mirror at herself and saw an unkempt girl with eyes swollen red from crying and knew that he would know before she even walked the long walk to his door. Somehow, they always knew.