The backyard is already loud before Brendan clears the gate — music spilling from a speaker on the porch rail, Drew laughing too hard by the grill, smoke rolling off the burgers in blue sheets, a neighbor's dog barking two houses over. The bass comes up through the soles of your shoes.

Brendan walks in still half in his uniform: the patrol jacket open, the sleeves shoved to his elbows, like he forgot to finish shedding the shift. He doesn't wave. He stands just inside the gate and reads the yard the way he reads a room on a call — exits, faces, who's too quiet — and he finds you first, before he says hello to anyone.

he says, dry, one corner of his mouth up.

Drew stabs the tongs toward him.

Brendan ignores him. He's already at the cooler, cracking a beer, and his eyes are on you across the grass, where you and Brett stand close and low, speaking in the clipped, tense voices of an argument you've already had a hundred times. He crosses the yard like it costs him nothing, the can cold in his hand.

He stops beside you.

He holds the beer out — not the bottle, the can, because he knows which one you drink. For one second his gaze slides to Brett: flat, silent, unreadable, the way he looks at a man he is about to separate from a crowd. Then it comes back to you, and there's a question in it he won't say out loud. He holds the beer out and waits.