High Noon

rest is always available.”
    It could have been worse, Phoebe thought. With Ava and Josie huddled in the kitchen and her mother and her daughter closeted with designs and yarns, Phoebe had a solid chunk of time to work undisturbed.
    For a house under siege, she decided, theirs was clicking along at a remarkably normal pace.
    In the morning, she thought, she’d contact the FBI, relay the situation and request copies of files where she was a part of a crisis team.
    Long time gone, she mused as she opened more current files. But she’d take no chances.
    Every case file she read took her flying back. Amazing, she realized, how every detail popped clear. Four years, five, it didn’t matter how long ago. Once the log was in front of her, she remembered.
    Suicides, domestic disputes, robberies gone wrong, custody battles, embittered employees, revenge, financial gain, grief, mental or emotional instability. Any and all could and did arrow toward hostages.
    And sometimes, no matter what was done, negotiations failed. She failed.
    She organized by year, and started with the first year she joined the Savannah police.
    By the end of that year she’d lost three. One suicide, one hostage and one hostage-taker. It didn’t matter that there’d been dozens more she’d talked down, or talked out. She’d lost three, and now each was fresh in her mind.
    So fresh she began second-guessing the steps she’d taken, the words she’d spoken, the tone used. Too long a pause—not enough of one.
    Fruitless to do so, she knew. Even dangerous.
    Still, three lives had slipped out of her hands. Was Roy dead because of one of them?
    She started a fresh file with the names of the dead, the year, the place, the nature of the crisis. Then began to chart the names of those connected to them personally, professionally. And added the names of team members.
    She was halfway through the second year when Ava gave her doorjamb a knuckle rap. “You’ve got to come up for air. And a meal.”
    “I’m fine, Ava. Promise.”
    “You’re not. None of us are. But we need to breathe and eat and sleep.” She crossed to the desk. “Your mother and your daughter need to see you doing those things, even if it’s only for a bit here and there.”
    “All right, I’ll come down. Ava, I know you’re planning to take a couple weeks with Steven out West later in the summer. I was thinking you ought to bump that up. The semester’s over in just a few days anyway. You could head on out, hook up with him early, then—”
    “Be out of harm’s way, if by any chance I’m in it? Seeing as we’re all stuck in this house for however long that might be, it’s pretty shortsighted of you to make me mad on day one.”
    “I’m not trying to make you mad, Ava. I’m trying to give myself one less person—two, actually, as Steven’ll be coming home—to worry about. You’d be doing me a favor if you and Steven take your vacation now.”
    Ava tilted her head. “I’m not doing you any favors, Phoebe. I’m not leaving Essie or Carly, and that’s all there is to it. If it was just you, I’d go, because a more self-sufficient woman I’ve never known. To the point of being annoying at times. Such as now.”
    Phoebe shifted in her chair. “You shouldn’t make me mad on day one either.”
    “Then I’ll hope to avoid that and tell you I’ve already talked to Steven and told him he should go on up to Bar Harbor with the family of his college roommate as they’ve hit it off so well. He won’t be coming home until June. And if we’re not back to normal by then…” Ava scooped a hand through her swing of hair. “I’ll think of another way to keep him from coming home.”
    “Which tells me you didn’t tell him why you’re so easy about him going to Maine.”
    “He’s my baby same as Carly’s yours, no matter how old he is. I’m not letting him come into this. Essie needs me, and while Carly has some of your self-sufficiency, she’s just a little girl, and she needs me, too. And so, damn it, Phoebe, do you. So you can just forget tossing me off like I was more weight than value.”
    “If I didn’t value you, I wouldn’t want you to go. You could take Carly and…” Phoebe dropped her head in her hands. “I know that won’t work. I know it, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting it. If I sent Carly away, she’d be upset and scared, probably more than she is now. Mama’d be frantic. I know it, Ava. Just as I know I can’t leave Mama on her