Get Knocked Down

"HEY, CHRIS," Tad Hawkins said to his partner, Chris Castro, a fellow detective in the Sacramento Police Department, Office of Investigations. "How's this weekend looking? Anything I might get called in for?"

Their police department had been modernized—twenty years ago. The detective bullpen featured sturdy desks, barely cracked linoleum, and computers from the last decade at least. Chris pulled up the schedule on his computer and shook his head. "Not seeing anything pressing," he said, scanning it. Chris was a good detective—and a good family man. In his forties, with his youngest kid entering college at the beginning of September, Chris was savvy enough to have ensured he and Hawkins had a lightened load by the end of April. They both had investigations pending, which they worked doggedly on during the week. But weekends were for Chris helping his youngest, Robin, study for her AP exams and going to see her softball games, and Chris had seniority. Since Tad's ambitions had been shoved aside for his own family considerations, he was good with this. He loved his job—had been on the force for a couple of years and had enjoyed his promotion to detective very much—but he… well, needed time.

Needed to be able to compartmentalize: job on one hand, his sister on the other.

"Looking good so far," Chris told him, cracking a smile. He frowned for a moment. "Ugh. We've got a series of Monday morning workshops, though—whole next month. What we can do to aid our forensics team."

Tad brightened. "That's actually interesting!" he said. "I mean, I'm not a science genius but… you know." He hummed the theme for the original CSI , and Castro chuckled.

"Yeah, I watched it too. You're right. It'll be fun, but—" He glanced around as though this was a state secret. "—me and Robin have started waking up early, having coffee together. I mean, it'll be summer soon, she'll have her summer job, then school. I'm gonna miss my baby."

Tad smiled wistfully. He and his sister had been raised by a single mom, a constantly exhausted single mom, and moments like a cup of coffee with their parent had been really important. "You're a good dad," he said, fighting the lump in his throat. "I'll cover for you."

"Look at you, fuzzing the line like an old pro." Chris grinned at him, and Tad thought for the umpteenth time that he was damned cute. He had the eyes that crinkled in the corners and sparkled, and the strands of gray in his black hair only added to the sex appeal. But Chris was too good a mentor to be a crush—being partnered up with him had been one of the best things to happen to Tad in the last year, and he wouldn't clutter that up with a hopeless infatuation.

"Well, just know I'll be out of town this weekend. I mean, I can get here, but I'll be in Bodega Bay, so, you know…."

"Three hours away," Chris said soberly. "How's she doing?"

Of all the people in the department, Chris was the one who knew where he'd be.

Tad held out his hand and wobbled it from left to right. "We're stuck right now," he said on a sigh. "She… she doesn't do well in cities. She really does need a smaller town. But she keeps running into her old crowd, and that's no good either. She won't leave the halfway house right now, and the thought of coming to Sacramento makes her cry." Or it had six months earlier. Maybe that had changed?

Chris blew out a breath. "How's the halfway house?"

Tad cringed. "Gross," he said. Some of those places were nice, clean, newer, with a staff that was young and idealistic and ready to care. This place was small, the house was old, the staff was apathetic at best. Tad had worked to find a better one in the area, but Bodega Bay was a beachside town, no matter how popular. Much of the population was seasonal, and the seasonal population wasn't excited about paying for other people's problems.

Chris nodded. "Well, I don't have a long-term solution for you, kid, but I can tell you that your weekend is yours. How's that?"

"Thanks, Chris." He hoped the gratitude in his voice was crystal clear.

"Good, now that that's settled, do we have the labs on the Reeves murder?"

Tad grunted. "No. And yes, before you ask, I tried to light a fire under the techs, but you know…."

"Backlog, backlog, backlog." Castro rolled his eyes. "Any leads at all?"

Tad bit his lip—a tell, but he meant it to be in this instance. "Well…," he said, "their cousin, the one who was so helpful in the first interview?"

"Yeah?" Chris held out both hands and made a "gimme-gimme" motion.

"Would you like to know how much gambling debt he has?"

"Ooh." Chris made a little moue of excitement. "Is it more than my salary? As big as the gross national product? I'm all aflutter!"

Tad chuckled, feeling the excitement of the hunt in his bones. "Yes to the first, no to the second. Think we should pull him in, or do we need to do more digging?"

"Let us dig," Castro said, waggling his eyebrows. "Could be the young man already has enough dirt for us to make a big ole hole."

Tad pumped his arm like he'd done in high school when he'd caught a pass in football. "Booyah! Forensic accounting. It's got me all atingle!"

Castro laughed, and Tad took his seat at the desk across from his partner, and together they moved on to their favorite part of the day.

"SO YOU got everything you need?" Tad asked, trying not to glance around April's depressing room for the umpteenth time. He'd done everything he could for it. He'd gone shopping with her for curtains, helped her pick out a bedspread, all in shades of pink and pale yellow—even hit internet sales for crocheted afghans like their mother had made them when they were kids. Most of those blankets had disappeared after their mother had passed on, and April had… well, disappeared herself.

Tad took a deep breath and tried not to think of April's pink blanket with pink-and-purple butterflies crocheted in the center of pink-and-white granny squares, surrounded with a white border. Their mother had made it for her when she was, what? Seven? Eight? She'd loved it. It had graced every snuggle in front of the television, every blanket fort, every beloved book from that moment on.

April had dragged it with her when her drug addiction had taken her to the streets in search of a john, in search of a fix. By the time Tad had found her, wrapped up in its tatters, the thing had needed a ritual burning, along with her clothes.

And her hair.

He shuddered, hauled back to those terrible weeks and the things he'd done to get her clean. God, all that because of a blanket.

Fucking blanket.

Tad couldn't find that one, but he'd found others, in other colors. "Different," he'd said. "But, you know—Mom's heart is still here."

April had clung to them. She'd even learned to crochet, like their mother, in rehab, and, along with the curtains and the new bedding, the new clothes—and the ones sourced from thrift shops—a plentiful supply of super colorful yarn in boxes and bags were scattered around the tiny room with its hand-me-down furniture and scratched hardwood floor.

"You don't need more yarn, do you?" he quipped, trying to make his parting easier.

She gave him a droll look, the kind that used to make him smile when they were kids. "Always," she said, picking up the project in her lap. "This won't last me a month."

He chuckled, although she was probably right. She'd made a blanket for every one of her housemates—different styles, different colors. He'd even bought her stitch bibles.

"You say that, but I don't have that new one yet," he joked. His had been the first one she'd made as she was learning.

Her eyes changed. "You don't need another one, Tadpole," she said soberly. "Blankets are for comfort. You're very self-sufficient."

He swallowed, not sure which way to go with this. Should he go with the patented big brother "Of course I'm self-sufficient—I've got this!" schtick, or should he go with honesty?

"You can't crochet me a boyfriend, anyway," he said, winking. There. The joke, the wink… and the truth. God, he was lonely. His last boyfriend had been a closeted fireman. Jesse, the fucking two-timing jerk.

"I could," April said in mock earnestness. "But I don't think it would do the same things for you that a real one would."

He chuckled, so grateful for the joke he could have cried. She'd been in the halfway house for six months—had been in rehab for the six months before that—and so much of that time she'd been pale and withdrawn and afraid. Their mother had died two years ago, and April had gone from the occasional party use to a full-blown addict in less than six months. Tad felt like he'd been missing his little sister as long as he'd been missing their mom.

"Hell, I don't even know what I'd do with a real one," he said. "Except for, you know. The regular things."

She laughed gently, but her eyes went sad. "I'm sorry," she said. "You… you spend a lot of time with me. I know that can't be easy on your life."

He swallowed. "Just… just keep feeling better, April. Don't worry about me. I mean, I'm a cop. I'm supposed to have a crappy love life. I think it's in the bylaws."

She flashed a little tiny smile, but her expression was still sober. "I can't make that any easier either."

"I'm lucky," he said, meaning it. "My partner—"

"Chris," she said, because he talked about work to her all the time. She seemed to like his stories: the bust he and Chris had made the day before, getting the DA to issue a warrant to search on Friday morning so they could bring the suspect in for questioning before lunch had been a roller-coaster ride from first to last. Getting the confession before quitting time had felt like winning the lottery, and he and Chris had joked about which one of them needed to sacrifice a virgin on the roof of the department building in order to get another bust like that.

"Yeah, he's a good family man. He works hard for us to have a really productive workweek, so if we do catch a case over the weekend, it's important." Of course, that didn't always work, but Chris was good enough at letting Tad have enough weekends off to come visit April that the weekends he missed weren't overwhelming for her.

"Tell him I'm grateful," she murmured. Her smile flashed for another moment. "I might even make him a blanket."

Tad laughed a little, but before he could needle her again about his blanket, she added, "But I still take up your free time, Tad. I know it. Just… you know. You… I'm not supposed to be getting better at your expense. You know that, right?"

"It's not my expense," he said.

"It is," she argued, her eyebrows drawing in, her thin-lipped mouth pulling together mutinously. In the last two years, her face had sharpened, become pointed and hard, and what had seemed like a playful pout when she'd been in high school or college appeared dangerous and real now. "I'm serious, Tad. You… you would make me happy if you called one weekend and said, ‘Can't come today, honey—gotta get laid.'"

Tad laughed shortly. "Sorry to break this to you, ‘honey,' but even when I have relationships, they don't work like that." No, Jesse notwithstanding, Tad usually had relationships with overearnest closet cases, or guys who were looking for the poster boy for Young Professional Gay. "Yes, we've had the requisite three-point-two dates, the point two being coffee and/or flirtation over something innocuous, so we may now proceed to sex with the understanding that if the sex was satisfactory, we will move in within three-to-six months because neither of us can do better."

"That yuppie lawyer really scarred you for life, didn't he?" she asked, and he tried not to be surprised that she remembered Sam. That had been about a year before their mother had passed suddenly from a stroke, and she'd been in college then. Most college students were pretty self-centered, and April had been struggling with her own mental health as well. Tad and Mom had been clueless—until Mom had died and suddenly April's emotions were uncontrollable, and Tad was at a loss.

"Ugh," he said, with feeling. "I gotta tell you, all I felt when he left was relief!"

She eyed him curiously. "What made him leave?"

Oh, this was awkward. He was never sure what would wreck her, and he'd been eyeing the clock, thinking he had to leave soon.

"Was it me or Mom?" she asked astutely. Well, she wasn't stupid—just oversensitive to absolutely all emotional nuance and balanced on a razor's edge of recovery strategy and antipsychotics.

"Little bit of both," he said, shaking his head. "I was wrecked—you and me both, actually. He saw us crying on each other at the funeral, and it probably ended right then, but he didn't tell me until…."

Until Tad had gotten back from helping April get in rehab. He didn't tell her that; the sequence of events wasn't important, but the wording of Sam's goodbye letter was , and he gave the abbreviated version now. " Sorry, Tad, but you seem too emotionally codependent on your family, and I need an adult. " He blew out a breath, and April said what he'd been thinking.

"He needed an automaton ," she snapped. "Good God, what a jerk! What happened to the last guy you were dating? The fireman?"

He shook his head and told her the Jesse story as he'd heard it. "And the worst part?" he said.

"There's worse?" She was horrified.

"He apparently broke up with this guy when the guy was in the hospital , then showed up at my place with a fifth of bourbon and the other guy's movies ." He shook his head, furious all over again. "I told him to go away and come back sober, but Jesus ."

"What a douche!" She chuckled a little. "Tadpole, I love you, but maybe you really do need me to crochet you a guy. It's got to be an improvement, right?"

He chuckled and then stood from his spot on the edge of her bed, stretching. That was his cue. "All things considered, honey, I'd rather have a blanket."

She rose and went in for a short, hard hug, which he returned with interest.

"Love you," she whispered. "Don't worry so much about me, okay?"

"Oh but I do," he whispered back. "Stay safe and sane for me, okay?"

"Yeah." She kissed his cheek, and he trotted into the dank hall and toward the rickety steps of the two-story house by the beach.

It was cold and foggy outside. He'd gotten her a space heater for her room, but he'd still been able to feel the dankness creeping in through the gaps under the door and the window frames, so it didn't surprise him. As he hopped in his Ford Escape (he'd enjoyed the name, swore that's the only reason he bought the car), he cranked up the heater and shuddered.

And then his stomach growled.

Oh hell. He'd taken April out to lunch, but the place she liked was… well, sort of icky. He'd enjoyed vegan food in the past—if nothing else, tempura vegetables were supposed to be delicious! But this place put a spice that he couldn't place on all its dishes, and he was not a fan. Suddenly he was in the mood for a steak and a beer. Before he pulled out from in front of the halfway house, he took out his phone and searched for a steakhouse of sorts.

He found one that seemed to fit the bill. It offered live music on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and he thought, How bad could it be? The ratings aren't bad, right ?

Washoe House turned out to be sort of a regional treasure.

He followed a series of fog-ridden backroads, wondering if his GPS was full of shit or possessed by demons, and was relieved when the giant red-and-white painted farmhouse appeared by the light of soda lamps in the mist.

The place looked like it got a new coat of paint once a year, and as he mounted the stairs, he realized that it seemed to be divided into two sections—family dining on one side and a bar that served food on the other. He asked to be seated in the restaurant, but that didn't mean he didn't listen as, midway through a really amazing steak, the band started to warm up.

Was that a… a violin? He listened some more, heard some guitar chords that didn't sound dirty in the least, a keyboard that sounded practically operatic, and a bass that sounded… oh my God. That was a cello. The bass was a cello. And they were playing in a honky-tonk bar?

This felt serendipitous—like the bust he and Chris had made on Friday. No dirt, no shooting, no miserable slogs through piles of data, everything had just fallen into their lap.

But then a sweet tenor voice with the hint of a southern twang said, "Hello there. We're The Crabs, and you all are pissing the night away!" And with that, the band launched into a version of "Tubthumping" the likes of which Tad Hawkins had never heard before.

It was glorious. The song normally consisted of the chorus, shouted regularly, and a sweet female voice, usually echoing the intro. But in this case, the sweet female voice was replaced by a violin, and the keyboard player did what the guitar player usually did.

And the drums carried the show.

Tad signaled his waitress and asked if he could take dessert and a beer in the bar, and she grinned, taking his credit card and allowing him to start a tab.

"They're great, aren't they?" she asked. "It's Sunday. There's a small table near the back. I'll set you up there."

He grinned back and went to sit down, getting there in time to hoot and holler and whistle for the next song.

"Friends in Low Places" came next, followed by Van Halen's, "Ain't Talking 'bout Love." From Guns N' Roses to Taylor Swift, the band played a truly eclectic mix of pop, country, rock, and oldies. As the lead male vocal/drummer/guitar player launched into Sam Cooke's "Cupid," Tad wanted to clutch his chest. The guy was… damn. Cute. He had longish dirty-blond hair, pulled into a half ponytail away from amazing brown eyes, and a narrow, appealing face with a Roman knife blade of a nose—one that had been broken a couple of times, to keep everything from being too boring. He grinned through teeth that probably could have used some fixing when he was a kid, and sang about wanting some help from the god of love because his lover didn't know he was alive, and Tad thought, I'm right here! Look at me !

The song ended and the bar erupted in applause, and Tad managed a glance at the clock. Dammit. Dammit . It was getting late, and they weren't done yet.

From the behind the bar, he heard the bartender—a fortyish woman with her hair in a messy bun, wearing an oft-laundered black shirt and jeans—call out, "Hey, guys, it's been a long, long time , hasn't it?"

The lead singer chuckled from behind the drum set and glanced at his bandmates. "Guess that's my cue, ain't it?"

"You love it, Guthrie," said the violinist, giving him a smile.

"It's your solo too," he said, and she batted eyes at him.

He laughed, stood, and walked around the set to grab his guitar and a small stool, which he parked in front of the microphone at the front of the stage. "Okay, guys. I guess it has been a long, long time."

And with that he settled into an old Linda Ronstadt song, and proceeded to break Tad's heart into a million pieces.