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coming back to empty her house and sell it to you. But she’s back back? Staying?”
    “Apparently.” Vin muttered the word into the foam in his mug, taking a long, cold draw, irritated with himself for revealing what was chewing his insides.
    The men playing pool glanced over and made a few remarks about how it would be good to have her in the office again and how hard it must be for her to come back. A somber stillness went over the pool table as everyone thought of Russ.
    “I guess that puts you out of a place to live,” one of the men said to Vin.
    “Yeah. Let me know if you hear of something,” Vin said, doing his best to make it sound casual, not devastating.
    Someone at the other table tossed out some trash talk to one of the men about his ability to set up a shot. It deflected the attention from Vin and got the men playing again, allowing Vin to sink back into brooding.
    His phone buzzed with a text as he was eating his burger. He glanced at it long enough to see that Jacqui wanted to talk. He tucked the phone away and ate, then took a turn shooting pool. He wasn’t trying to be an asshole, but he wasn’t ready to get into it with her. There was no point.
    A few more of their crew arrived from snowshoeing all day and he settled in to BS for the rest of the evening.
    *
    “Hello?” Russ’s sister’s voice sounded hesitant when she answered Jacqui’s call.
    “Roni? It’s me. Jacqui.”
    “Oh, my God,” Rhonda said on an audible exhale. “I saw Russ’s name on the call display… I figured even if it was Vin, it had to be bad news.”
    PTSD. Jacqui had a version of it herself, thinking every fire truck siren was a death knell, which was bewildering because there hadn’t been any sirens going off when she got the news about Russ. All the same, her mind associated the sound with tragic loss. She always worried for the unknown firefighters called to duty.
    “You’re calling from the house!” Roni said with belated surprise. “You’re here. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I could have picked you up from the airport.”
    “Vin did. It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. He wasn’t answering her texts. That hurt.
    All of her hurt. She’d had to enter this empty house alone.
    Walking through it, she had barely recognized parts of it. Vin had done an amazing job with finishing the basement and the powder room off the kitchen. The cabinets in the mudroom were hung and the custom console for the TV was perfect. She had known he had been dedicating his time to finishing the house, anticipating it would be his, but she hadn’t given that one single thought as she’d talked to Sam and waited for Vin to understand how great it was that she was staying in Glacier Creek after all.
    “I just thought I should let you know I’m here and…” Misgivings hit, but they were all about Vin, not about her bigger decision. “Well, all that stuff I said in my email about moving to Florida? I’m actually going back to work at the base.”
    A beat of stunned silence, then, “That’s great. Are you sure about working there ?”
    “I always loved my job. You know that.”
    “You loved Russ.” Rhonda teased.
    Jacqui bit back a pained sigh. “And my job.”
    “Won’t it be hard, working for the new guy? What’s he like? Did you meet him?” Her query went beyond the interest in a newcomer that all small towns had. This was the man who’d taken over her brother’s job.
    “He seems fine.” Jacqui was the veteran in this case and Sam the rookie. She didn’t expect much pushback on how she did things. “I’m more concerned about—”
    She cut herself off, suddenly not wanting to talk about Vin. She and Roni were really close, but what Vin had told her about being a foster kid, well, that felt private.
    God, she felt like a jerk, not thinking about how this affected him.
    “What?” Roni prompted.
    “People in general.” Jacqui prevaricated. Pressure built behind her eyes as a hard truth came out.