Where A Witch Goeth

Chapter One: A Mundane Romance

 December 2021

"Home sick," I explained to the sheriff's deputy.

He twisted in the driver's seat of his squad car to look at me. Creaky, artificial noises occurred in slow motion as his vest, holster, handcuffs, and various other parts of his police uniform scuffed across vinyl car seat.

He was stern as he glared at me. "You expect me to buy that?"

My immediate reaction was to scoff at this imposing man in all his power paraphernalia. He didn't intimidate me. I had power of my own.

I shrugged. "Not in the least. But it's what she said."

He turned his attention from me—where I sat in the passenger seat—to the view beyond the windshield. Wipers scrubbed unhappily across the glass, pushing a melting line of snow flurries that had momentarily obstructed our view. We both regarded the blue-tarped, fifty-year old-mobile home and its weathered, right-leaning porch. A barefoot, middle-aged woman in sweats and a canary yellow bathrobe stood on the porch holding a coffee mug, squinting at us with rebellious eyes. She made a shooing motion at us.

"You buy that? That her grandson is in there, home sick from school?"

"Again, not in the least," I admit. Her grandson was sixteen, and his attendance the entire first two months of his junior year had been hit-or-miss. His ancient Bronco—lifted, spray-painted camouflage and rolling on rented 44's—was a very distinctive vehicle around town and was currently MIA from this residence. Likely, his grandmother had no more idea where was he than I did. "But there's nothing we can do about it today. Playing bad cop won't help. "

"Playing bad cop," Nick repeated flatly. He made an irritated sound close to "hehn." He ignored me as he called into dispatch and reported we were leaving the welfare check, then switched off his body cam.

"I'm not playing at anything." He turned to me again and gave me a pointed up-and-down, from my longish dirty blonde beach waves, over my fitted beige sweater dress, down to my knee-high brown boots. His perusal wasn't particularly sexual—or at least, it wasn't only sexual. It was meant to point out the visual evidence of my civilian nature, I supposed—even though I had a badge empowering me to perform my duties as a social worker issued by Lycombe County, the same governmental body that had authorized his Sheriff's Deputy badge.

Nick slapped at that badge on his uniform now, as he continued. "I am a cop, Cecilia Dunne. A damn good cop—"

He did not just use my full name, as if he were my father. The urge to turn as feral as a teenager at his condescension— to roll my eyes or maybe huff dramatically—was a bit hard to quell, but as I was twenty-five, not fifteen, I managed to restrain both impulses. I would overlook the irony of my colleague's career choice and his obviously defensive need to assure me of his cop-competency. We both knew damn well that though Nick might wear a badge and a uniform these days, when we had dated in high school he had been far more likely to be on the opposite side of the partition behind our backs, at higher risk of wearing handcuffs rather than wielding them.

"-with a job to do here," he was still lecturing me. "If you had let me do that job and accompany you to the door of this welfare check, you might have gotten further in your interview than the porch. That woman—" he pointed to Mrs. Johnson, who had slammed her door and was now peering out a blanket-covered window sipping from the mug which I was had discerned held boxed cabernet, not coffee, "didn't take you seriously."

"Is that so, Sheriff Deputy Nicholas Townsend?" As a comeback, it was weak, I admitted. My wit sometimes approached rapier, but today it was dulled by the early morning care-taking I'd had to perform for my seriously ill father. His condition was disheartening and caring for him draining.