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Damien stood in his bedroom as the kitchen phone kept ringing. It’s 30 year old bells clanged inside the beige plastic rotary phone that had been in the house longer than Damien had been alive.

The rental home was small, but affordable. It had two bedrooms and a tiny garage that the owner had cut in half. The landlord added a laundry room to the garage and more closet square footage to the master bedroom.

The remaining space left Damien and Raquel with no place to park their car, but a robust storage room for their tools and boxes.

They hadn’t been married long and most of the personal items they brought to the marriage remained packed away. The half-garage held two boxes for Damien, over twenty for Raquel.

Damien didn’t have much to bring with him. He looked forward to starting his life over again with Raquel, so he only packed the essentials.

Raquel brought everything with her, along with all the household items her parents wanted to pass on. Used pots, pans, silverware, cook books, Tupperware and glassware filled half of Raquel’s haul, most of which she was able to fit into the kitchen cabinets.

The other half of her boxes were labelled “Raquel’s stuff.” The vague description intrigued Damien. What was still hiding in those sealed containers?

He’d have to wait to find out. Each room could barely fit the necessities. Maybe in their next house, the one they’d buy, the one they’d grow old in, would have enough room to uncover the mystery hidden in Raquel’s stash.

When they moved in Damien wanted to get rid of the old rotary in the kitchen. He didn’t want a landline, but it came with the property and the landlord didn’t want it disconnected.

So, Damien gave that number to those with whom he didn’t want to speak. He used it when filling out online questionnaires, talking to sales people, or any other time a phone number was required when he didn’t feel it was necessary.

Only the people he knew well got his personal cell phone number.

Whoever had been calling for the past twenty minutes would have to wait. He was nearly finished.

Damien looked into the full length mirror as a cool fall breeze eased through the opened window, carrying with it the pleasant scent of freshly squeezed citrus. In the cooler months, when the winds flowed from the north, the smell of oranges and grapefruit wafted into the air from the Citrus Plant located ten miles deep into the thousand acres of surrounding groves.

Even though Damien was over a month away from graduating from the Hayeston Police Academy, his wife wanted to see him in his newly pressed Class B uniform.

Damien slid on the light blue shirt and affixed his badge in its place where a pocket would be. The stiff leather belt creaked as he slipped it through the belt loops, the black material weighed down as he added equally stiff holders for his handcuffs, baton, flashlight, taser and pistol.

As he pushed the buckle pin through the fifth hole in his belt, he enjoyed the weight of it against his hips. He placed the cuffs into its holder. Then the taser into its sleeve. The flashlight. The baton. Last he shoved his Glock into the unused holster, struggling against the stiff material. His training commander, Lieutenant Decker, told him it took over a month of shoving an oversized metal flashlight into his holster before it finally welcomed his gun without a fight.

A few pushes later, Damien’s Glock clicked into place. The metal latch inside the holster, designed to thwart any attempt by someone other than Damien from taking his gun, pressed against the Glock.

Only by pulling forward and upward at a forty-five degree angle, which was natural to someone wearing the holster, would the gun ease from the leather. Any attempt by someone to grab the Glock from any other angle would result in an immovable weapon held firm by the internal latch.

It would also create one pissed off cop.

As he finished straightening his belt across his waist, Damien noticed two smudges on his black leather shoes. He’d make sure to polish them before graduation day.
Class B uniforms were the everyday wear for a police officer, the ones they wore on duty.

Class As were only worn at formal ceremonies, most of which ended up being funerals for fellow cops.

Damien wouldn’t get one of those. Not before graduation. Maybe not even after. Hayeston was a small Florida town, fighting to remain rural as the population of the state continued to grow.

Class A uniforms were a luxury the city could hardly afford. The only reason Damien found his way to the academy was because of the expansion of Hayeston’s juris- diction to the surrounding, fully rural communities, that needed law enforcement frequently enough to request Hayeston’s help, but not so often as to hire their own.

It was the largest expansion of the Hayeston police force in the town’s history.

The department needed new blood. Like many other small, southern towns, over the years Hayeston had had its share of biased cops whose scrutiny usually fell on the poor and underserved. The world’s social climate had changed faster than Hayeston’s law enforcement and it was about time it caught up with the rest of civilization.

Damien was looking forward to being one of the new breed of cops, the ones that would reconcile Hayeston’s past and prepare the department for its future.

He took one last, long look in the full length mirror and placed his police cap atop his head.

His uniform was complete. It wasn’t the most masculine of color schemes, but Damien filled it out well enough.

He nervously opened the bedroom door, stepped down the hall and through the kitchen, past the surprisingly silent rotary phone, and into the front living room where Raquel sat anxiously on the couch.

She spontaneously clapped as he entered, her hands moving in front of her wide smile, her eyes beaming with pride.

“Look at you,” she said. “My man looks hot in uniform.” Damien chuckled, caught up in her excitement.

As she stood and paced around him, examining his new look from every angle, Damien inhaled her perfume as it swirled by. It smelled of jasmine and rose, gently combined in a way that was uniquely Raquel. The scent originated in Puerto Rico, where her grandparents still lived, and two times a year they would send her a new glass container of the memorable, subtle scent.

Raquel’s hand slid across his clothes as she circled him and joyful shivers moved up his body.

She was beautiful. Too beautiful for a man like him. Short, vivacious, with enticing curves and a passionate side most husbands only fantasized about. She fell in love with him when he was at his lowest. He was a high school drop out working at a bookstore hoping to get his GED.

She saw what he could be, not what he had become. Through her eyes, he was her hero, even when his reflection told him otherwise.

“I want to take a picture and send it to my Mami,” she said, stepping back and holding up her cell phone. “She’ll be so proud of you.”

“I doubt that,” Damien said. “I think it would take more than a uniform to make your family proud of me. Or even like me, for that matter.”

“Take more? Like what?”

“My death?” he said with a laugh. “I think they’ll finally believe you didn’t marry below yourself when I’m six feet under.”

“Don’t be an ass,” she said. “So, you want me to leave?”

“I want you to stand still. Straight back. Look tough.”

Damien laughed. “I think you want Ted to pose for this picture.”

“I don’t want your best friend,” Raquel said. “I want my amazing, cute, handsome, masculine, hunky husband to stand still.”

“Well, when he shows up, I’ll lend him the uniform.” “Ass,” she mumbled as her phone clicked with a faux camera shutter sound followed by her fingers moving across the phone screen.

“There,” she said. “Sent. I’m so proud of you, babe.”

He stepped toward her and kissed her on the forehead. “It’s all you. I’m nothing without you.”

“Don’t do that,” she said, resting her head against his chest. “Don’t insult yourself. You’re an amazing man. You’ll do great things. You’ll save the world one day.”

Damien chuckled.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said. “I still have to graduate from the academy.”

“Easy-peasy. Though…” she said, stepping back, exam- ining his uniform one more time. With her chin resting against her hand, she furrowed her brow.

“What?” he asked, looking up and down. “Is it the shoes? I still have to polish them. I can do that if you want.”

“No, it’s not the shoes. It’s the color of your shirt.”

“I know,” he said. “Light blue. I look like a blue jay.” “Yeah,” she nodded. “I can’t decide whether I like that color, or pink.” “What?”

“Blue or pink,” she said. “Which one would you prefer?”

“They’re not going to change the uniform color to pink, babe.”

A mischievous smirk brightened her face. “I’m not talking about your uniform,” she said.

“Then what are you talking about? What else has to do with blue…” The blood drained from Damien’s face. “…and pink? Like a boy or girl?”

Raquel hopped up and down on her feet, her hands clapping in front of her mouth once again.

“Yes!” she said.

“You’re pregnant?” Damien asked. “I am!” she squealed.

“Holy shit!”

“Damien, language” she scolded. “Not in front of the baby.”

“Sorry… But, holy shit!”

She leapt into his arms. They spun around the room in circles until they collapsed onto the couch. Intertwined, his newly pressed light blue shirt now wrinkled, they gazed into each other’s eyes as the moment finally caught up with them.

He gently placed his hand on her stomach. “How long?” he asked.

“Around six weeks. I won’t start showing for another month or so.”

“Wow… like wow.” He sunk into the couch. “You’re pregnant. We’re pregnant. We’re going to be parents. You’re going to be a mom. I’m going to be a dad.”

“That’s usually the way it works,” she said.

He pulled away and leaned forward, his arms on his thighs.

“I’m going to be a dad,” he whispered.

Raquel scooted up and put her arm around him. “You’re not going to be your father,” she said. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because, I didn’t marry a man who could be that cruel. I married a man who survived such cruelty. You’ll be every- thing he wasn’t.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said. “I am.”

Their eyes once again met and Damien melted at her gaze, enveloped in a love he didn’t believe existed until she opened her heart to him.

The loud bells rang inside the kitchen phone.

“Won’t these sales people ever leave us alone?” Damien asked.

He got up and moved to the kitchen, snatching the handset from the wall.

“What,” he said, but his demeanor quickly shifted. “Ted? What’s up? No, I’ve been home.”

He pulled out his cellphone. Eighteen missed calls.

“Sorry, I had it on mute. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I’ll be right there.”

Damien hung up the phone, grabbed his wallet and car keys and headed for the front door.

“What is it?” Raquel asked.

Damien looked at her, his face burdened with concern. “There’s been a murder.”