At the home of former Detective Paul Young in Knoxville, Tennessee, Sandra is sitting out front on the porch watching the neighborhood move by. She likes Paul’s house, and after all these years, it feels like her home. Her friendship with Paul has always been strange for people who know the two of them, many assume a romantic connection, but they are more like brother and sister than anything else.
Following the death of her youngest son by the very gangs she worked to stop in her neighborhood as a local police officer, Paul had reached out to her after a group therapy session for law enforcement officers who’d lost loved ones. Paul had lost his oldest daughter to the very same drug violence that took Sandra’s son, and he helped her cope with the alcoholism that eventually led to her early retirement.
Eventually, Paul comes to sit in the rocking chair next to hers on the porch and they drink a soda together.
“I talked with Adam today, said he found a place nearby that him and Manuel are gonna rent.”
“We ain’t good enough to be they roommates?” Sandra says jokingly. “We too old?”
“Ain’t like that,” Paul says chuckling. “They just don’t want to have alcohol around the house, you know?”
Sandra nods. It’s been a few years, almost half a decade, but she’s stayed away from alcohol completely to avoid the temptation, she doesn’t think she is at a place where she can be around it casually and not succumb to it.
“Well, I hope he can find something that pay good in the mean time,” Sandra says. “You have to get your PI license and I’m gonna be struggling with accounting for a few semesters, but I’m working on the business license.”
“We can put him to work helping us get it all sorted out,” Paul says.
They watch cars move along the street just beyond Paul’s neatly cut grass.
“I’m excited,” Paul says and he looks at Sandra. “I haven’t been this excited about work in a while. It’s been scary these last few years, but we got a handle on it now. Or it feel like we do anyway. I’m excited.”
Sandra nods at him. She likes seeing Paul smile.
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