A convenient proposal

“Have you phoned Child Welfare?”

Annoyance propelled her to her feet. “Don’t piss me off, Scott.” She prowled the office, as she did every week, checking his bookcase for new volumes, examining the clean sweep of his polished maple desk, peering out the double-paned glass window at the Calgary traffic on Memorial Drive. Beyond the twin ribbons of concrete stood a row of mature, albeit heavily pruned, cottonwoods, planted to commemorate the veterans of the First World War. Beyond those, the Bow River. Follow that river upstream about an hour—and there would be Canmore. The mountain town she’d lived in all her life.

After training, she’d been stationed in northern Saskatchewan for about six years, but she’d petitioned hard to be returned to the place of her birth. Her middle sister, Cathleen, still lived there, although their elder sister Maureen had a legal practice here in Calgary.

“You’ve been put in a difficult situation, Kelly. Society generally accepts that while killing is wrong, it may be necessary in some situations to preserve order and protect the lives of the innocent. Intellectually, most of us accept that.”

Kelly stared out the window and nodded.

“This places a terrible onus of responsibility on the police officer entrusted to make these life-and-death decisions.”

Kelly said nothing. She and Scott had tromped over the moral and ethical issues so many times, the field was flattened. She supposed he thought that if he repeated himself often enough, she’d find absolution. The very idea was ridiculous.

“Kelly, you will learn to cope with this. I promise.”

Scott’s voice betrayed the pain he felt for her. That was something else she liked about him. The man cared.

Unfortunately, in her case, it couldn’t help.

Because she’d killed a man. And even if society decided she’d been acting within the rules by doing so, there was no way to avoid her moral culpability. The only remaining question was, how could she atone for taking another human life? If it was even possible.

KELLY HAD EVERY INTENTION of returning to her basement apartment after her late-afternoon session with Scott, but once she was back within Canmore’s town limits, the right-hand turn onto Bow Valley Trail compelled her. Soon she cruised past the tiny bungalow that Sharon Mizzoni rented. She parked her truck on the opposite side of the street, down the block a few houses. Turning her key onto auxiliary power so she wouldn’t waste gas, she continued to listen to a talk show on the CBC.

An hour passed. Maybe two. Outside it was dark and light now glowed from the small front window of the house, blending with the blue glare of the television set. The drapes weren’t drawn, and Kelly could see directly into the living room. Sharon sat in front of the set, a beer bottle in her hand. Three-year-old Amanda jumped on the sofa. There was no sign of Billy.

Kelly didn’t think the kids had been fed any dinner. It was almost eight. They should be having baths and brushing their teeth, getting ready for bed. Why wasn’t Sharon helping them?

With the heat off, the truck was cool. Frosty wind from the Rocky Mountains was forecast to bring more snow to Canmore this evening. Kelly zipped the down vest she wore over her fleece jacket, then slipped on leather gloves. She’d stay until the cold forced her on, or until the lights went out.

But the lights generally went out late at Sharon Mizzoni’s house. The death of her husband, Danny, had hit her hard and she’d turned to alcohol for solace. At times, Kelly almost envied her. She, too, longed for chemically induced oblivion. Drugs, alcohol, even an overdose of sleeping pills. Kelly had considered all of them in the darkest hours of these past months.

But two things stood in her way. Her sisters. And Sharon’s kids.

Kelly had always been in awe of her older sisters—Cathleen with her confident beauty and effortless appeal to members of the opposite sex, Maureen with her brains and her take-charge attitude. The two of them would never hold with her choosing the chicken’s way out—ending her own life. Probably, they’d haul her up from the grave and tell her Christmas dinner was going to be at her place for the next twenty years.

In the Mizzoni house, Billy had just come into view from the window. Kelly observed him pick up his little sister and carry her off down the hall. Probably taking the three-year-old to bed. Kelly had seen the same routine on previous nights, and, as always, her heart ached for the kids.

She wanted nothing more than to go into that house and mother those children. But she knew if she got out of her car, she’d end up in trouble. Sharon had noticed her hanging around before, and warned her to stay far, far away.

But that was impossible.

Kelly rubbed at the condensation forming on the inside of her truck’s window. On the radio Shania Twain was feeling like a woman. Stuck here in her four-by-four, Kelly felt hardly human.

If she hadn’t shot Danny Mizzoni, those kids would still have a father, and Sharon wouldn’t be drinking. Like a roller coaster forced to travel the same circuit again and again, she lived through those short seconds that had forever changed so many lives. Danny bringing out his gun, pointing it at her sister Cathleen…

Her shouted warning. “Police. Drop the gun, Danny!”

Danny’s stupid, knee-jerk reaction—cocking his weapon, bringing it up to Cathleen’s head….

Kelly had been trained to preserve life. She’d also been trained to make difficult choices. When Cathleen fell away from Mizzoni’s grasp, leaving him exposed, Kelly didn’t have to think. Her training took over. She aimed for the center of his body, as was RCMP policy.

BAM! The shot left her gun before she fully comprehended what she was doing. Instantly dead, Danny had loosened his hold on his gun. His blood had splattered on the rotting porch boards.

God, God, God… Kelly reached to turn up the volume on the radio. At that moment, a knock at her side window sent her heart slamming against her chest. She turned to see a man’s torso, his bare hand still rapping on the glass by her head.

Her panic subsided. Quite certain who this was, she unrolled her window with trembling fingers.

The man stooped, and she saw his face. His handsome, almost beautiful face, framed with thick dark hair. “On surveillance, Officer?”

The bitter question came from the children’s uncle, Mick Mizzoni. Before the shooting she and he had had an amicable relationship. He’d often come to her for police information when he was working on a story for the Canmore Leader. They’d crossed paths now and then in social settings, too—at the wedding of a mutual friend; a couple of times at the Canmore Folk Festival.

She’d half entertained a hope he might ask her out. But behind Mick’s casual banter had always been an almost imperceptible coolness. She’d assumed she simply wasn’t his type.

And that was before she’d killed his brother.

“Mick.” Kelly couldn’t meet his quiet, intense gaze for long. She glanced back at the house, not able to find the words to remind him she was on temporary leave from the RCMP. Undoubtedly he knew, and was only baiting her, anyway.

Mick Mizzoni had to hate her, and Kelly didn’t blame him. Mostly she hated herself, too.

“The children should be in bed,” she said.

Mick frowned, the expression not diminishing his attractiveness one iota. He wore a denim jacket over a rough wool sweater. Warm, substantial clothing that emphasized his masculinity.

“How the hell do you know?”

“I can see them through the window. Billy just carried Amanda to the bedroom. Sharon’s been drinking—” she glanced at the digital clock on her dash “—for at least two hours.”

Mick yanked open the door that separated them. “How long have you been sitting here?”

When she got out of the truck, she noticed that Mick backed off several steps. As if he couldn’t stand to be too close.

“Does it matter? What’s important is the kids. I don’t think they’ve even had supper. Most nights Sharon doesn’t move from the television.”

He cursed. “I know she’s drinking again. God, I’d hoped she’d finally put that life behind her…”

But her husband’s death had been too much for her to handle. “What can we do to help them?”

“We?” Mick’s voice had been relatively calm. Now she saw him struggle to regain that equilibrium.

“Kelly, I’m trying my damnedest not to blame you for what happened. I know Danny had a gun on your sister. I know you were trying to do your job. But given the consequences of that, maybe you ought to stay the hell away from Danny’s family.”

“I’m sorry.” She understood what he was saying, totally accepted that they all had to hate her for what she’d done. But it was because of her responsibility for Danny’s death that she couldn’t walk away from his kids. If she tried to explain, would Mick understand?

“Get in your truck, Kelly, and drive back to the right side of town.”

“But—”

He opened the truck door wider. She ignored him. The lights from Sharon’s window were irresistible. She advanced along the snow-packed road, until she stood in front of the small bungalow.