Letting Go

Short Story by Katie Fitzgerald

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“Jeff?” Sarah Boyd's shaky voice sounded from my cell phone. “You need to come to Brookwood Pass. There’s – a body.”

Springing from my desk, paperwork abandoned mid-signature, I motioned to the rookie, Hirsch. Then, keys in hand and phone cradled against my shoulder, I grabbed my windbreaker and headed for the cruiser.

I begged Sarah to stay on the line, but by the time Hirsch opened the passenger door, she was gone.

“What's going on, Hayes?” he asked as I peeled out of the lot, siren blaring. “Did you take a 9-1-1 call on your phone?”

“I am this woman's 9-1-1,” I muttered.

“Oh, your girlfriend?”

“A long time ago, yeah.” We roared through the traffic light at the center of town, breezing past the brightly colored maples slowly shedding their red and orange leaves. “She's with somebody else now.” Two somebodies, if rumors were reliable.

“This is the same woman who has you pick up her dry cleaning? And whose car needed a jump? Where are we going now, to rake her lawn?”

I explained where we were headed, and Hirsch got quiet. “Dang.”

I turned the car into the empty lot behind the elementary school, parked, and we hopped out.

At the halfway point of the overgrown Pass that led from the school into town, there was Sarah, pacing over fallen leaves, hand to her mouth, blonde hair in a frantic tangle framing her face. She wore jogging clothes: leggings, a sweatshirt, and sneakers. Although she looked awful, the part of my heart that belonged to her leapt in my chest.