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her friend wouldn’t notice if she added enough milk and sugar.
    She paid the sitter, who had been waiting patiently in the kitchen, and doctored the coffee while Keith and Jill played tug-of-war with her scarf. After she set it on the kitchen table, with a paper napkin instead of the usual paper towel, she sent Keith off so she and Jill could talk. He zoned out again in front of the TV, watching Toy Story for probably the seven-thousandth time.
    Jill sipped the coffee she’d concocted. Peggy caught her wince.
    “Is it that bad?” she asked.
    “It’s fine.”
    “Please, I interrogate people for a living. Let me get you something else.”
    “Is this instant?”
    “No, but I have that if you’d prefer.” She laughed at the look of horror on Jill’s face. “I have good memories of drinking instant coffee when I was a rookie.”
    “That makes me want to save cops everywhere.”
    “When you’ve been on shift forever, you quit tasting it.”
    “Stop. You’re making me tear up.” Jill pretended to wipe her eyes. “So, since I’m going on a real date tonight, what do you think of my outfit?” She jumped up and swung around.
    Peggy’s mouth dropped open. Girls twirled for each other? Thank God she didn’t have a baton in the house. This is why she wasn’t comfortable with having female friends.
    “I’m not exactly the fashion police.”
    “Ha ha, but you can tell me if this works, right?”
    Could she? She categorized what she saw as she would if she were giving a suspect’s description. “The green sweater matches your eyes. The jeans are pretty tight, if you’re going for that. And it’s got the whole…” She gestured toward the low V-neck. No way she was talking about boobs with her kid in the next room. “It looks…nice.”
    Jill rolled her eyes. “That’s encouraging. Could I seduce a lawman into doing something illegal?”
    She lifted a shoulder. “Cripes, what have you been watching?”
    “Okay, next time I’ll drive up and ask Mere, but she and Tanner are still in honeymoon paradise, so I don’t like showing up unannounced.”
    “Please, he’s my brother.” She so didn’t want to think about him like that.
    “Point taken.”
    “You and Brian must be getting serious if he’s cooking for you.”
    Jill wacked her hand on the table. “Yes. Finally. We’ve been hanging out, but this is our first real date. I asked.”
    “I don’t remember those. I’m a single mom. I watch cartoons, listen to kiddie music, and assemble toys late into the night.”
    “You need to get out more. We’ll have to do a girls’ night at Hairy’s Bar. You can sit on the leprechaun’s lap.”
    Peggy cracked her knuckles. “In your dreams. So tell me about you and Brian.”
    Instead of answering, Jill stirred her coffee with a spoon. After a moment, she said, “When someone doesn’t want to talk about their past, it usually means something bad happened, right?” It was clearly something she’d been thinking about for a while. “Brian won’t give me a straight answer about why he came home.”
    Peggy looked at the clock and realized she could serve Keith some macaroni and cheese in twenty minutes if she multi-tasked. She rose and pulled out the blue box.
    “Why don’t you just ask him? I’m sure it’s nothing criminal. Maybe he’s still figuring out how much to share with you. You did give him a hard time when he first came back to town.”
    Jill picked up a pan from the stove and filled it with water.
    Peggy stopped in her tracks. “Thanks.”
    “For what?”
    “Helping.” Peggy turned around, the sense of awkwardness returning. She wasn’t used to help. She sure as hell wasn’t used to someone doing it without being asked. Well, except Tanner.
    “I tend to be an all-or-nothing person,” Jill clarified. “I don’t know if I can be with him without wanting more…and that scares me.”
    Peggy ripped the box open. “What does?”
    “Getting hurt again. Brian was always an open book