Travis woke to the sound of wind at the windows. For a while, he lay there, adrift on the edge of sleep, listening to the weather, its rhythm, the hum of the neighbourhood. Then he rolled over and checked the time.
It was nine twenty.
In a past life, he would have been at the office for two, maybe three, hours already. The early starts had been a part of his routine, one that went all the way back to his first days as a detective. The earlier the start, the longer the quiet lasted. The quiet had always helped him focus. Sometimes an investigation had taken him so deep in those first hours of the day, he would look up after what felt like thirty minutes, and it would be afternoon.
But not any more.
He moved to the edge of the bed, staring at himself in the mirror. His shoulder throbbed. He rolled it, feeling the normal spark of aches and pains in his hip, and then he stared at the sixty-year-old in the mirror. There had been a slow creep of excess around his belly and face for the last couple of months; his hair and beard were still mostly black, although the thicker he’d let his beard grow, the more grey he was starting to see. The biggest difference was less easy to pin down: he was diminished somehow, less impressive, as if he’d left a part of himself behind, or lost it entirely. If he were on the other side of a table in an interview room, the cop that Travis had been would have looked at this version of himself and seen a man who carried sadness like a bruise on the skin. It was as if he were grieving for someone.
Or something.
‘Dad?’
He tore his gaze away from the mirror. Gaby was leaning against the door frame, a frown on her face, and he realized she must have been there for a while, studying him. ‘Morning, honey,’ he said, trying to clear his expression.
‘You okay?’
‘I’m good. How are you?’
Gaby shrugged.
She was dressed in one of Travis’s old robes, way too big for her, and her hair was damp. She was a tall blonde twenty-one-year-old who looked like her mother; only her smile belonged to Travis. Sometimes it was unerring, and was why he’d always liked to make Gaby laugh. Her laughter completely changed her face and helped erode the reminders of Naomi, the countless ways in which Travis’s ex-wife had screwed with his life since the divorce.
It was a bitterness he’d let fester and flourish, even if he’d tried his best over the years never to articulate it in front of Gaby and Mark. For the last ten days, though, it had been especially important to gain control of it, to sink the enmity he felt for Naomi and try to forget it, because if he didn’t, he knew it would drive a wedge between him and his children. Mark maybe not as much as Gaby: his son had already returned to LA and he was built more like Naomi – sober, pragmatic, sometimes a little aloof. Gaby was different, more like Travis, much more demonstrative and temperate. She didn’t need to hear Travis recounting the ways in which Naomi had made his life a misery – how much of his money and security she’d taken, how every barbed comment hurt.
Not so soon after Naomi had died.
‘I might go to the cemetery today,’ Gaby said.
Travis nodded.
‘Put some lilies on Mom’s grave.’
‘Sure, honey. She loved lilies. That sounds nice.’
Gaby eyed him. ‘You don’t want to come with me?’
‘It’s not that,’ he said, though that wasn’t entirely truthful. ‘I’m happy to drive you down there, but I’m meant to meet Amy Houser for lunch at twelve.’
‘Your friend from the force?’ A smile twitched at the corner of Gaby’s mouth. ‘Is she attached?’
Travis laughed. ‘I’m old enough to be her dad, kiddo. And, no, I don’t know if she’s seeing anyone. I don’t ask about her love life – it would be creepy. But even if that wasn’t the case, I’m pretty sure Amy – or anyone else under the age of fifty-five, come to that – isn’t interested in an old man who spends his days watching ESPN in a sweet terry-cloth robe.’
Gaby laughed.
Travis enjoyed the sound.
‘I just want you to meet someone,’ she said.
It had become a familiar refrain over the years, and one that he never let annoy him. It came from a good place. He loved his daughter and he knew the thing that bothered her most was the idea of him being alone for the rest of his life. The truthful answer would have been that some people just weren’t destined to be plural, only ever singular, but he reverted to his stock response: ‘I’m happy, honey. You really don’t need to worry about me.’
But every time he said it he was never sure if he was lying to Gaby or not: he didn’t feel unhappy per se, just a little lost. He missed the work and he pined for the routine desperately. It was why he felt – and appeared to himself in the mirror – like a man in mourning. Because he was.
It was three months to the day since he’d retired.
He was grieving for the job he’d lost.