Tuesday Tales: From the Word YEAR

Happy New Year! Here’s hoping 2025 has more happy surprises than shocks. Welcome to Tuesday Tales, a weekly blog spot where a small group of authors share a scene from their WIP, each one written to a particular word prompt. This week’s word is YEAR. I continue with my as yet unnamed Romance Suspense. Enjoy.

She turned to her superior. No doubt he’d called her in to get him coffee, files, or perform some other menial tasks.

“Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”

“I won’t mince words. If the RCMP is right, and I pray God they aren’t … In the last three years, nine police officers have been killed in this province, five of them women, the other four were male members of visible minorities. If you hadn’t gotten lucky, you would’ve been statistic number ten. Some were on duty, like you and Cliff, others were killed in accidents which they now believe to have been premeditated murders.”

She gasped. Cliff had been Metis. She’d been certain the reason for the attack would come out sooner or later, some junkie with a beef, a john who’d been ill-used by Cliff who hadn’t always been the politest man, but she hadn’t expected something both as simple and as complicated as hatred.

“Margaret Sutton meet Henry Collins, your new partner, supervisor—I’m not sure what to call him. He’s with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and in collaboration with the Ontario Provincial Police force and every local police force in the province, he’s heading up a new task force aimed specifically at hate crimes. The unit will be based out of Robbinsville.”

An RCMP unit based in a small town only made sense if the small town was involved, but why her? Was she to be the man’s glorified secretary? He turned to face her, and the bottom dropped out of her world.

“Harry?” The word erupted from her mouth before she could stop it.

“Hello, Maggie. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“You two know one another?” The lieutenant’s words cut through the fog surrounding her.

“Yes,” Harry answered. “Maggie and I met at police academy in Aylmer. What was that seven years ago?”

“Eight,” she mumbled, but who was counting? “How … how have you been?” There was no way that she would fall apart in front of Morris or Henry Collins. Their past was just that—dead and buried like her own parents, Cliff, and the children she’d wanted, but would never have. “How is Zoe and the baby?” She stumbled over the last word.

“He’s seven, but she and I divorced six years ago,” he answered curtly.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she lied smoothly, too smoothly, but over the years the pain of his betrayal all those years ago had never stopped hurting.

Don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.