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“That wasn’t my question.” Her lips twitched with a smile.

Smiling slightly, I kissed the top of her head and headed to my room.

Dispatch called at 11:42 p.m., waking me out of a dead sleep. There was a disabled vehicle a few miles down the road, and the caller thought she saw smoke on the mountain.

I dressed quickly. Mom’s door cracked open when she heard me come down the hall.

“Small call,” I whispered. “Disabled motorist.”

“I’ll listen for Remy.”

I peered into her bedroom before I left. I was going to kiss her if she was awake, and reassure her like I promised, but she was asleep. The call hadn’t roused her at all, so I took off.

The ridge was dark when I arrived. A lop-sided sedan idled on the shoulder.

The driver, a young woman, pointed toward the slope. “I thought I saw smoke.”

Moonlight caught low fog drifting through burned trees. Not smoke.

Relief eased through me. “That’s fog, ma’am.”

She looked embarrassed, but I didn’t care. I changed her tire for her and got her back on the road.

I lingered, looking out into the night. The blackened ridge line loomed in the moonlight. The setting reminded me of that night three years ago, when Holly had died.

The twisted guardrail. The empty air. My headlights illuminating the drop.

I’d been first on scene. And I’d known the car before I saw the plate.

I pressed my hand against my sternum. The pain had eased, but that scene would always haunt me. It was a cop’s worst nightmare, coming upon the accident of a loved one.

Miss Jo says my brain thinks it’s helping me.

Maybe that was why I woke at night—replaying the scene, fighting bile, remembering trying to find a pulse that wasn’t there.

I sat there until the fog thinned, then I drove home. Mom sat at the table, hot cup of tea between her hands.

“False alarm?”

“Fog.”

She nodded her head as if she’d already suspected. My mom was smart that way. She’d been the wife of a first responder, as well as a mother. “Remy stirred, but I sat with her until she went back to sleep.”

“Thank you.”

She studied my face. “You stayed out there a while.”

I shrugged slightly. “The night calls still get to me sometimes.”

Mom reached across and touched my hand. “I know, son.”

I checked on Remy on my way to bed. She was still asleep, stuffed rabbit tucked under her chin.

“Holly would want you to live,” Mom said softly behind me. “Not just endure.”

The words niggled at me. I knew she was right.

“Remy comes first.”