“Good morning, Daddy,” Abby said in a sing-song voice as she walked into the sheriff’s office.
So, she may or may not have known exactly what he was going to say in response before he even opened his mouth. She’d opened with the “Daddy” greeting because the mood in the office told her that he was in a particularly foul mood, and, well, sometimes it was a little fun to screw with her father’s head.
“You know the rules,” he scolded her. “When either one of us is in uniform, we have to be Sheriff and Deputy. I get enough raised eyebrows for hiring my own daughter. Don’t make that worse, especially today of all days.”
“Oh yeah? What’s going on?” She sat down in front of his gigantic desk, intrigued. Usually, her dad didn’t let stuff get to him, but the way he was pacing back and forth in front of the only window in the room, she was starting to think something bigger than dispatch showing up late, as always, was going on.
“You might as well hear it from me because it’s about to become your problem,” the sheriff said.
“Hold on. You’re the guy in charge. Aren’t problems your department?”
“Actually, my job is deciding who problems belong to and making assignments accordingly,” he retorted.
She stifled the urge to roll her eyes. Some days, being the daughter of the sheriff could be more than a little annoying.
“So, what’s causing such stress in the squad room?”
“You’ll never believe who’s in the back.”
“You’re right, I have no clue. I actually turned my radio off last night and since no one called, I assumed everything was fine.”
“Wyatt Miller,” he said.
“Wow,” Abby said, just as shocked as he’d thought she’d be. She stared at him for a moment, trying to process what he’d just said. She suddenly felt awful for being bratty when she first came in. As his daughter, she needed to be more supportive, a little less sarcastic. “Are you okay?”
“You’ll never believe why he’s in here,” he said, ignoring her question.
“Did he tear up O’Malley’s over a game of pool again?”
“No, he beat up Richard Schmidt in the parking lot of Mr. Petrol’s.”
“He what?!” she exploded. “How in the hell could he do something like that?!”
Dad just stared at her and that’s when Abby got past the shock of Wyatt beating Richard up – although really, that was going to take a while, if she was being honest with herself – to how hard it must be on her dad to be dealing with this. This was like a maelstrom of every shitty possible circumstance, thrown together.
“Oh my God, Dad, are you okay?” She jumped out of her chair and went to give him a hug.
“Abby…” He held up his hands defensively, warding off her hug, something that stung her more than she would’ve guessed it would. She changed directions and headed for the open office door instead.
“Don’t give me that,” she said, shutting the door and turning back to him with a sympathetic look. “There are times that you’re still my father, no matter how many badges you stack between us, and this is one of those times.”
“Okay, fine.” He took a deep breath and looked her in the eye. “To be honest, I’m not doing that well. That’s why I want you to be the one who handles this. I kept it together for the most part when I talked with his brothers. However, I could feel my restraint slipping,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “This seems very cut and dry. I should want him to get what's fair, but given everything that's happened, I can’t stop feeling like he should get more than what's strictly speaking ‘fair.’ That’s the problem. If I can’t control my personal feelings and I screw this up, he won’t even get what he rightly deserves.”
“So…you want me to take this on?” At his nod, she asked him, a bit sarcastically, “What makes you think I can control my temper better than you can?”
“You’re a better person than I am,” he said simply.
“That’s not true and you know it.”
“Well, everyone will have to deal with him at some point, but I’m trying to remove myself from the situation as much as possible. I don’t want my personal feelings to get in the way. I’m hoping that because you have some distance and you’re the shift commander, you’ll be more effective than I would be in making sure nothing goes wrong.”
“Are you okay?” She knew she sounded like a broken record but she couldn’t help worrying as she studied her father. His blood pressure could get too high and—
“Yeah, I’m great,” he said, trying and failing to act happy and normal, and then he slammed his fist down on the desk. “No, I’m pissed as hell right now. I cannot believe that it was that asshole who beat up the judge’s son. That’s Wyatt Miller for you – he thinks he can solve all the world’s problems with his fists, and he never stops to think about whether or not he should be involved, and especially whether or not his fists should be involved. Next, he’ll be down at the bar, telling yet another round of people that he knows how to run their farms better than they do. I’ve never met such an arrogant, know-it-all piece of shit in all my life.”
He stopped and stared at Abby, breathing heavily.
“I’m pretty sure it’s clear that I shouldn’t be involved with the day-to-day business of keeping Wyatt here,” he said, and Abby thought she could hear just the barest hint of sarcasm in his voice when he said that.
She just bit her lip and nodded. Even though Wyatt’s comment to the whole town about how her dad didn’t know how to run a farm and he could show him how to do it had happened what felt like eons ago, it was obvious her dad still hadn’t gotten over it. She wasn’t sure if he ever would. At least her dad realized that he needed to keep that space between them.
“All right, Sheriff, what do you need me to do?”
“Just do your job as shift commander and jail supervisor. Treat him like any other detainee, but if you have any problems, just take care of it. And for hell’s sakes, don’t give his lawyer any wiggle room. You have my full authority to just act as you see fit, as long as you leave me out of it.”
“So can I ask the obvious question?”
“Which is…?”
“Why not just declare this to be a conflict of interest and ship him over to Ada County?”
“The last thing that I need is that jackass proving that I can’t run my own jail.”
“Right,” Abby said. She really didn’t have anything else to add to the conversation, a new one for her.
“What I need you to do, and I do realize that I’m laying a lot on you, is keep this all together and keep me out of trouble at the same time. Just take this on and act as you feel is appropriate. I’ll back you in whatever you do.”
She nodded.
“From afar,” he added.
She left him sitting there and headed for her problem in the back.