Free The Shadow of Your Smile by Susan May Warren

jaw, feeling sick as the kid rolled off him.
    He’d never hit his children.
    Eli scooted back on the floor, held up his hands. “Kyle! Knock it off.”
    Blood dribbled down the corner of Kyle’s mouth. His eyes burned through Eli, his voice rife with vitriol. “You make me sick. First Kelsey and now Mom. She might have forgotten us, but you forgot us first. You lost this family, Dad. You blew it. You know, Emma was right—there’s nothing to go back to in Deep Haven. Nothing but scars. Nothing but pain. Thanks for that.”
    Then Kyle got up and strode past Eli.
    Kirby had a hand over his face, his shoulders shaking.
    Eli dropped his head into his hands, wishing that he, too, could find the courage to weep.
    Especially since he feared that every word Kyle spoke might be painfully, brutally correct.
    Kirby finally sat down beside him. Eli felt his son’s hand on his shoulder, and the gesture made him shake.
    “What do we do now, Dad?” he whispered.
    Eli sighed. “I guess we take this woman home and try to help her get her life back.”

Kyle’s mother had nearly lost her life beneath a three-way blinking stoplight, in front of a used-car dealership, a dry cleaner, and a coffee shop that shared strip mall space with a gift shop specializing in slippers and candles.
    Her SUV sat, still parked, in front of Mocha Moose, buried under a crusty layer of snow.
    Kyle stared at the yellow-taped doors of the crime scene and wanted to retch. He’d peeked inside the locked doors. The place still betrayed the chaos of the burglary—a cash register with the drawer open, the candies on the front counter spilled, some of them littering the floor. He’d called the Duluth Police Department, and one of the assistant deputies agreed to meet him here at the scene.
    A courtesy to his father, whom he’d had to mention to get any face time with the investigators.
    Kyle’s jaw hurt. The bleeding had stopped somewhere between Duluth and here, but the incident replayed in his mind like a slap—shock, then a flash flood of anger, indignation, shame, all spurting out of him.
    He’d tackled his father to the ground. Wanted to hit him, to put his fist in his face in an explosion of fury, of desperation. Anything to expel the roil of hurt inside. The thought now caught him up, sent a tremble through him.
    He almost wanted to thank his old man for the elbow shot in the jaw. It probably saved them from an all-out brawl in the middle of the hallway.
    Yeah, like his mother needed to see that . Not that it would jolt her memory—sure, Kyle and his father had rounded on each other a few times during his growing-up years, but his father had never, not once, hit him.
    And he’d never, in all of his teenage angst, considered turning on his dad.
    Even when his father had left them at Kelsey’s graveside, the rain sloughing mud onto her casket.
    Even when Eli started sleeping at his office, on a little cot he shoved next to his file cabinets.
    Even when he bought himself the Taj Mahal of fish houses to hide inside.
    Even that day when Kirby called, his voice shaking, saying Dad had come home, emptied out Kelsey’s room, and gotten rid of everything, while their mother watched, knees drawn up as she sat on the floor of the living room, her eyes haunting all of them.
    Not long after, Kyle had transferred to Alexandria, where he started the program in law enforcement. It simply made sense. Someone had to protect his family.
    Still, it wrecked him just a little for his dad when his mother looked at her husband and didn’t know him.
    Or didn’t want to.
    “Are you Kyle?”
    The voice startled him; he hadn’t heard the officer drive up. Kyle turned and met his hand. “Yes, thanks for meeting me. Kyle Hueston. I’m with the Deep Haven sheriff’s office. I was hoping you could walk me through the scene here.”
    “Marc Wrenshall.” Wearing a pair of brown pants, his weapon under an insulated black jacket, and his dark hair shorn tight to his head,