Acts of Nature

said, for they get the better even of their blunders. It was a way of living that suited warriors and lawyers, and Harmon could never understand it.
    “You gonna get that, boss,” Squires said, snapping Harmon out of his flashback. “Line two?”
    Harmon looked down at the blinking light on the phone. They’d disabled the chirping noise of incoming calls the day the last receptionist left. Only the boss ever called on line two. It had to be Crandall. He would be alerting them to get ready to travel after the storm passed. But Harmon knew from experience the man wouldn’t say where until the day they left. He picked up the phone and swiveled his chair away from Squires.
    “Harmon,” he answered. “Yeah. Sure. Yeah. We’ll be ready. Have we ever not been ready?”

SEVEN
    “What are we going to do, Max?”
    I hear the question, but with only half of my attention. I thought Sherry had been reading, her back settled in the bow of the canoe, ankles crossed on top of the cooler, which held the last of the beer, a book of Ted Kooser’s poems I’d lent her in front of her face. I was at the other end, a hand line dropped over the side, daydreaming. Like the gentleman that I am, I’d kept the eastern sun to Sherry’s back and pulled down the brim of my baseball cap, the one stitched across the front with the reversed script letters that perplexed most people unless they figured out that it was simply “FOCUS” spelled mirror backward. After three days my eyes were getting used to the starburst glitter of sun off the slow-moving water.
    “Huh?” I said, full of elocution.
    “What are we going to do about us? When we get back, I mean, to civilization?”
    It hadn’t all been small talk since we started this odd vacation, but tackling the future and the meaning of our relationship was not something we’d poked at. I’d decided the reason was because we were both, fundamentally, cops. We’d been trained, I suppose, to be more reticent than most people. Trained also, I believed, to be more careful with the people we met, be they citizens or suspects or potential trouble or all three at once. If you ever sat down in a diner with a few of us you would immediately feel it as an outsider. We’re trained to evaluate you, give nothing up until we’ve got some kind of take on where you’re coming from. It’s a broad ripple effect of the way we’re taught to approach a driver during a car stop when we’re all rookies: search the mirrors, look for hand movement, assess with your gut and let it tell you if you should have your own hand on the butt of your sidearm.
    I had been on the force in Philadelphia for more than a decade. I’d grown up with the cop rules and what they brought home with them and had seen it turn my parents’ relationship ugly and violent. But I had also known my grandparents to be a loving and respectful couple despite the lifestyle.
    Sherry and I had been dancing for a couple of years now. Granted, some of it had been very close dancing, but like the school chaperone, an emotional hand had always been measuring a space between us.
    “Hike you, Max.”
    It wasn’t the words that got my attention. Sherry’s eyes always had this ability to subtly change color depending on her mood—a green when she was loose and happy, but decidedly gray when she was being fierce and suspicious. I was trying to see them now, in the shade of midmorning sun.
    “I think you might have said that last night, when it was my turn to look at the stars,” I said, stalling.
    I could see her narrow those eyes, but still couldn’t pick up the color.
    “I want you to move in with me, into the house in Fort Lauderdale. But I don’t want to ask.”
    It was a statement. Clear and matter-of-fact, but I knew how much it had taken for her to let the words out of her mouth. I was trying not to overthink what my response should be. It has always been my burden, rolling questions and answers around in my head, probing them, searching for the rough edges, grinding the sharp spots, the dangerous possibilities, and trying to smooth them. Maybe she sensed my hesitation because I could see her face begin to change, like she was going to take back the invitation. Before she could say anything I leaned forward and gripped either side of the canoe gunwales and rocked forward and stepped to her. Now her look turned to a wary smile but before she could come out with anything I led with my mouth and kissed her fully on the lips,