Antiques Disposal by Barbara Allan

normal.”
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    After dropping Mother off at the house, I steered the battered Buick downtown to keep my late-morning appointment with Brian at the police station.
    Downtown proper was four streets, cut into a grid by four intersecting streets, containing just about every kind of business a modest community like ours might need. The main thoroughfare was (natch) Main Street, regentrified Victorian buildings with little bistros, specialty shops, and antique stores.
    The modern redbrick building of the combination police station / fire station perched at the outer edge of the grid, kitty-corner from the courthouse, that grand old Grecian edifice Mother heartily defended whenever the powers-that-be threatened to tear it down.
    â€œOver my dead body!” was her battle-cry, and to some a tempting offer. In any case, she would inevitably swing into action—action that more than once had landed her in the county jail.
    I pulled into a visitor’s spot in the HQ’s parking lot, walked through an open atrium to the front entrance, and inside the small waiting room, approached the female dispatcher, sequestered behind bulletproof glass. I spoke into the little microphone.
    â€œBrandy Borne, to see Chief Cassato—I mean, Chief Lawson ... er ... Acting Chief or Interim Chief— Brian Lawson .”
    This flustered speech made no discernible impression upon the fortyish woman (short brown hair, glasses), who merely told me to take a seat. She would let the chief know I was here.
    I took my usual chair next to the corner rubber tree plant, whose care and grooming had come to rely upon regular visits by Mother and me. The only difference between us was that I did not sing the appropriate excerpt from Frank Sinatra’s “High Hopes” while doing my pruning.
    But I had barely begun my dead-leaf-picking when the dispatcher announced that the chief would see me. Soon I was buzzed through the steel door into the inner police sanctum, where I walked down the beige corridor, its walls lined with photos of boys-in-blue of bygone days, passing the detective’s room, the interview room, and other offices. All of which had become way too familiar to me in the last eighteen months or so... .
    Whenever Mother made it past the steel door, she was escorted by one of the officers. Out of respect , she would say. To keep you from snooping, I would reply.
    The chief’s office was the last room on the left, next to an outside door (for a speedy exit, I supposed), and across from the break room (to keep an eye on the men, I figured); but it was odd, even strange, approaching the office where Tony Cassato had dwelled the last few years.
    I half expected him to be sitting behind the desk, with his barrel chest, square jaw, gray temples, those bullet-hard eyes boring into mine as if to say, “Why don’t you grow up?”
    But sometimes those eyes would soften, as he handed me his handkerchief to wipe my tears and blow my nose. It was then I could see a different man behind the cold steel exterior of Tony Cassato. Yet I loved—and needed—them both.
    â€œYou doing all right, Brandy?” Brian asked, his brown eyes filled with concern.
    He met me at the door, wearing his own take on the top-cop’s uniform: light blue shirt (not Tony’s white), pattern tie (not Tony’s solid), black slacks (not Tony’s gray), casual shoes (not Tony’s Florsheims). Do you think I still had Tony on my mind?
    â€œI’m fine,” I said from the hall.
    That the other ex-beau of the last several years had taken over Tony’s job made this all the weirder. Wasn’t having Vivian Borne in my life enough surrealism for one girl to stand?
    He gestured to the visitor’s chair in front of the desk. “Please, have a seat... .”
    As I did so, he got behind the desk, settling into the swivel chair. But it didn’t squeak when he did, like for Tony.
    â€œI’m glad the reports