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She might forgive the lie. She might even understand it. But finding out that your father is alive is one thing. Finding out what he is would be another.

Alex was on the floor, letting Hazel stack her presents against his legs. He looked up at me and smiled.

Declan gave her his jaw and the shape of his face. Alex taught her to skate, built volcanoes in her kitchen, carried her out of a hallway, and showed up every single day.

CHAPTER 20

Soren

ALEX

I'd been trying to show up more. I took Janine to see Dennis Ryan and the guys at a bar in Southie, and I stayed for all of it. I returned calls I normally would have let sit. When Sawyer told me the crew was doing a Christmas party, I didn't make an excuse.

The bar was packed and the crew had claimed the back corner, loudly and completely, with Sawyer holding court at the center table.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Captain Alex Holloway is at a bar. With a woman. On a night he is not working." He turned to the crew. "Did someone check the temperature outside? Is it snowing in hell?"

"Sit down, Sawyer."

"This is historic. This is the moon landing. Julio, are you getting a picture?"

Julio was already holding up his phone. Janine laughed beside me, and the sound cut through Sawyer's performance. I introduced her. The crew shook her hand one by one, and each of them told her some version of the same thing: thank you for getting him here.

"I came on my own," I said.

"You came because she told you to," Bert corrected. "We've been trying for years."

Sawyer pulled out a chair for Janine and handed her a drink. "Welcome to the crew, Janine. You're one of us now."

Tanner and Keating showed up during the first round. Janine moved through both shifts with the same ease she brought to dispatch: she listened, she responded, she met people where they were. She asked Amos about his daughter's school play. She asked Bert about his girlfriend. She laughed at Sawyer's stories and gave him grief when the stories got too big, and he loved her for it immediately.

The conversation loosened as the drinks flowed.

"How's Abbott doing?" Sawyer leaned back in his chair and looked at Tanner. "He looked rough at changeover last week."

Tanner looked at me. I nodded.

"Not great. His wife's threatening divorce." He took a drink. "Didn't say why. She took the kids to her mother's, and they haven't come back."

"He's been locking the office too," Keating said. "I went to grab the supply log last week, two in the afternoon, and the door was locked. Last tour he didn't come out for dinner. Just stayed in there with the lights off."

The table was quiet for a second. Then the conversation moved on the way it does when nobody knows what to do with what they just heard.

I'd gone to the Battalion Chief after Tanner came to me. The chief had pulled Abbott in. Abbott told him about the divorce. As far as the chief was concerned, the man was going through a hard time and needed room.

He wasn't just going through a hard time.

Janine leaned close to me. "He's not the easiest captain to work with on the radio." She glanced toward Tanner. "I didn't know he was going through all that. Have you talked to him?"

"Not yet."

I'd talk to him at shift change. I knew what it was like when the house went quiet and the station was the only place that still made sense.

"Is that her boyfriend?"

Sawyer was watching a man in a booth near the window, leaning toward a woman. His arm was across the back of the booth. The body language was unmistakable.

Bert looked up. "Whose boyfriend?"