Not in a way that stuck. You didn’t back down today. That takes something. It doesn’t take anything special, Josie says. It just takes deciding not to give someone what they want.

Frank studies her for a long moment. That badge. If I ask where it’s from. Something flickers behind Josie’s eyes. Guarded but not unkind.

My father, she says. He passed away. I’m sorry to hear that. Thank you. Frank nods slowly, filing away the hesitation in her voice.

I wore a badge myself almost 30 years, he says. Different kind of star, but I know what it costs a family. Josie’s eyes meet his steady. You were a deputy second in command for a good while. Retired now.

He pauses. Something crosses his face he doesn’t quite show her. There’s not much that happens in this town I don’t remember. Some of it I wish I didn’t. That sounds like a heavy thing to carry too, Josie says quietly.

Frank almost laughs. Soft and tired. Fair enough. Well, he says finally. You ever need anything?

Ask for Frank Doyle. Most folks know me. I’ll remember that, Josie says. She means it more than he realizes. Frank doesn’t go straight home that night.

He drives out past the edge of town where the street lights stop and gravel roads begin to the small house he and his wife bought decades ago. Empty now, mostly. Just him and an old hound dog. He doesn’t turn on the television like usual. Instead, he walks into the back room, the one his wife used to call the office.

He pulls a cardboard box down from the closet, blows a thin layer of dust off the lid. Inside, old photographs, newspaper clippings yellowed at the edges, case notes he wasn’t really supposed to keep, but did anyway. Something a man can’t throw away. He flips through slowly, patient, the way he used to work a case. Not expecting to find anything, just following a feeling.

Near the bottom, he finds a photograph of himself, younger, standing beside another man in uniform. Both of them squinting outside the old courthouse. He studies the other man’s badge for a long moment. The shape of the star, the worn curve along one edge. It’s not exactly the same as the one from today, but it’s close enough to raise the hair on his arms.

He sits there a long while. Photograph in one hand. There was a case years back that never sat right. A death the county called an accident. A file closed faster than felt right.