Northern Lights

doesn't wash."
    "She married the son of a bitch she was cheating with, so I guess that plays into it."
    "Okay, she fell for somebody else. Shit happens. But that's on her. Pushing the blame for her actions on you is just bitchy and cheap."
    He looked at her now. "How do you know she did?"
    "Because I'm looking at you, cutie. Am I wrong?"
    He took a gulp of wine. "No."
    "And you let her."
    "I loved her."
    Those wonderful eyes clouded with sympathy as she touched his cheek, brushed her hand through his messy mass of hair. "Poor Nate. So she broke your heart and kicked you in the balls. What happened?"
    "I knew things weren't right. I ignored it, so that's on me. Figured it'd smooth out. I should've worked at it harder."
    "Coulda, shoulda, woulda."
    He gave a half-laugh. "You're tough."
    Easing over, she kissed his cheek. "How's that? So you didn't pay enough attention to the cracks in the ice as you should have, in your opinion. What then?"
    "Bigger cracks. I thought I could take some time off, and we could get out of town, rediscover. Whatever. She wasn't interested. I wanted kids. We'd talked about it before we got married, but she'd chilled to the idea. We had some rounds about that. We had some rounds about a lot of things. It's not all her fault, Meg."
    "It never is."
    "I came home one day. Bad day. Caught a case, drive-by shooting. A woman and her two kids. She's waiting for me. Tells me she wants a divorce, that she's sick of waiting around until I decide to come home. Sick of having her needs and wants and plans take a backseat to mine, and so on. I blew, she blew, and it comes out she's in love with somebody else—who happens to be our frigging lawyer—and she's been seeing him for months. She lays it all out. I've emotionally deserted her, never consider her needs or desires, expect her to alter her plans at the drop of a hat. I'm not there for her anyway, so she wants me out. And has considerately packed up most of my stuff."
    "What did you do?"
    "I left. I'd just come in from dealing with the useless slaughter of a twenty-six-year-old woman, her ten- and eight-year-old kids. And after Rachel and I yelled at each other for an hour, I didn't have anything left. I packed up my car, drove around awhile and landed at my partner's. Slept on his couch for a few nights."
    To Meg's mind, the woman—Rachel—should've been the one sleeping on a friend's couch, after Nate had delivered a good kick in her ass to help her out the door. But she let it pass.
    "Meanwhile?"
    "She served me with papers; I went to talk to her. But she was done and made it clear. She didn't want to be married to me. We'd divide up the assets and walk away. I was married to the job, anyway, so she was superfluous. That's what she said. End of story."
    "I don't think so. A guy like you might get his heart cracked, and he might mope about it for a while. Then he gets pissed off. Why haven't you?"
    "Who says I didn't?" He got up, set his wine aside, walked to the fire. To the window. "Look, it was a bad year. A long, bad year. Or two. My mother got wind of the divorce in progress and that was lots of fun. She came down on me like bricks."
    "Why's that?"
    "She liked Rachel. She never wanted me to be a cop in the first place. My father died, line of duty, when I was seventeen; she never got over it. She'd handled, pretty well, being a cop's wife. But she couldn't handle being a cop's widow. And she never forgave me for wanting to be what he was. Somewhere in her head she thought that Rachel, that marriage, would turn me into something else. It didn't, and as far as she was concerned, I'd wrecked it. That pissed me off, for a while, so I buried myself in the job and got through."
    "And then?"
    He turned away from the window, came back to sit. "Rachel got married. I don't know why it was such a kick in the gut, but it hit me pretty hard, and I guess it showed. Jack, my partner, said we were going out, have a couple drinks. Jack was a family man. He'd go home to his wife and kids, but I was down, he was my partner, so he sat with me over a couple of beers and let me vent. He should've been home, instead of walking out of a bar with me in the middle of the night. He should've been home in bed with his wife. But he wasn't. And we come out, and we see it, half a block up. Drug deal going south. Guy starts shooting, and we pursue. Down the alley, and I'm hit."
    Shot, she thought. "The scars on your leg and right side."
    "I go down, with the leg shot,