The Sheriff's Daughter. Tara Taylor Quinn

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      “It’s almost midnight!”

      “So?” he said to the boy. “I know a shop that’s open until one from May ’til September. You saying you don’t have room for a banana split?”

      Jordon loved banana splits.

      “Sure!” His nephew said, just as the sounds overhead started to change. “I’ve always got room for that.”

      “Then get your rear next door and grab a shirt and some shoes.”

      Moving out to the tiny space that served as a living room, Mark raised his voice, ostensibly to be heard from the spare bedroom next to his, avoiding the sight of the wrought-iron bars on the windows—a necessity in this neighborhood—as he grabbed his keys.

      He had Jordon out of the apartment and onto the street before the going really got good upstairs. And he took the long way to the ice cream shop two blocks away. He figured he had at least an hour to kill.

      “WHY DO YOU LIVE in that place?” Jordon asked, when his boat-shaped dessert dish was completely empty, as Mark nursed a cup of decaffeinated coffee, regardless of the eighty-degree temperature outside.

      “I’m too lazy to move,” he answered the boy.

      “You, lazy? Give me a break.”

      “I’ve done a lot a work on the place,” Mark tried again, wondering how such short hair got so rumpled as he ran his hand through it. “What about that entertainment system? Can’t beat that, huh?”

      “’Cept the room’s so small you get kinda dizzy watching such a large screen.”

      Yeah, he hadn’t anticipated that consequence.

      “It’s’cuz of that stupid sex offender stuff, isn’t it?”

      He shrugged. “It does make things a little difficult.”

      “It’s not fair, Uncle Mark. You didn’t do anything.”

      His family had never tried to hide from the horrible turn Mark’s life had taken that night at the lake, not far from Wright State University during his freshman year of college. He and Dana had told Jordon about Mark’s past as soon as they’d thought the boy was old enough to understand.

      They’d thought that was preferable to him hearing about it somewhere else. From someone who maybe wasn’t in possession of all the facts.

      “Yes, I did, son. There was forensic evidence to prove that I did.”

      “You were at a party with a bunch of college kids.”

      The place was empty except for the old guy working in the back room.

      “I had way too much to drink.” Readjusting his long legs beneath the short, square table, Mark tried not to think about the bed he’d just left.

      “And you haven’t had anything to drink since.”

      “Doesn’t change the fact that I broke the law.”

      “Yeah, and served your time.”

      Though Jordon’s voice was changing, he still looked young for his age. Even with the too-long hair and baggy clothes.

      “Some crimes you pay for for a lifetime.”

      “The girl said she was twenty-one.”

      “She was bruised.” He squinted against the harsh fluorescent lighting.

      “There were two other guys with her, too.” Jordon’s hazel eyes—a family trait he shared with Dana and Mark—were wide and glinted with emotion. “They had to have hurt her. You wouldn’t have hurt her.”

      “But I can’t remember what happened.” He’d tried everything from revisiting the scene to hypnosis, and still not one clear recollection of the latter part of that night came to him.

      “You know you wouldn’t have hurt her.”

      He did know that. Which was the only reason he could sleep at night. But he also knew he’d had sex with a sixteen-year-old girl at the same time that there were two other men having sex with her. Had they taken turns, watched each other? Had two of them touched her at once? The thought sickened him.

      Stopped him in his tracks.

      “I think you should move. You got the money.”

      He did well for himself.

      “There’s no law against it, is there?”

      “No. I’d have to let the sheriff know, and reregister with my new address.”

      “Then why not do it?”

      Jordon was growing up, choosing to tackle mature issues. Mark decided to be honest with him.

      “Because if I did, everyone in the new neighborhood would be notified about me being there. I’d likely have hate mail, things thrown at my house, signs put in my yard and people running scared with their little kids.”

      “That’s bullshit!”

      “It’s life.”

      His life, anyway.

      “I’m comfortable where I am, son. People know me.”

      “It’s a ghetto.”

      Not quite. But close.

      “You could get gunned down taking out your trash.”

      “We’ll stay in Cleveland next time your mom leaves town, okay?”

      “I think you should move.”

      Mark gave up trying to convince his nephew of things he had a hard time accepting himself.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      AMAZING, REALLY, how quick and easy it was to disassemble something that had taken fifteen years of hard work to build. Agree to split all assets in half, file papers, wait thirty days and the state of Ohio dissolves a union once destined to last a lifetime.

      Sara hadn’t even been able to fully wrap her mind around the idea before the marriage was legally ended.

      Providing male oversight on the last day of June, while the movers took her half of the household out of the home in which she’d hoped to raise children and grow old, her father gave her hand a squeeze.

      She nodded.

      And that was the end of any conversation they were going to have on the subject.

      “When do you close on the new place?”

      “A couple of weeks.” The new house had been vacant and the owners were letting her rent it until the paperwork was complete.

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