She tells me to let it go.

Kyle wonders why I don't look him in the eye anymore...why I walk past him without squeezing his shoulder and asking him how his day was. He blames it on my father's lifelong crusade...on my own fascination with UFOs. He should be blaming *me* instead. How can I look my son straight in the face when I am nothing but a liar, a monster, and a glorified pedophile?

She tells me to let it go.

The guilt or my life? I'm not sure. For her, I would give up both.

If I had known, all those weeks ago, that changing a tire would change my life, I never would have stopped to help do it. I would have turned and walked right back into the stationhouse and locked myself in. But no...instead, I fell for those big brown eyes and the sweetly teenage admission of "I'm soooo not mechanical". I waved away my deputy and played the manly-man for her.

She called me to my doom like the Sirens in one of those Greek plays Kyle had to read for English last year. She called me and I went. And now I go to her every night.

She tells me to let it go.

The only thing I can't let go of is her.

I asked my son once..."How did that Ulysses fella chase away those Sirens?" He looked at me like I had two heads and turned back to playing his PlayStation. But after I asked it again, he told me that the sailors on the ship tied themselves to the mast and blocked their ears...but Ulysses kept his ears uncovered. Because he didn't want to die...but he still wanted to hear the Sirens' song. Kyle remembers all that and he still gets a 'D' on every English test...it doesn't add up. But then neither do I.

I'm not strong enough to tie myself to the mast...and I definitely want to hear her song.

Her hair trails across my stubbly jaw as she slides into bed. There's a kind of distance in her eyes...but her hands are warm so it doesn't matter. She IS mechanical. An expert at turning gears and shifting. I wonder if she reports back to her brother...? Does she tell Evans that she has everything under control? That I don't suspect a thing about them? That I am so lost in her curves that I don't have the energy to dig into the CrashDown shooting anymore? That she enjoys having an old man under her spell? That her private surveillance no longer gives her the creeps?

She doesn't. There are some things a sister can't share.

I tell her to let it go.

She only grabs me tighter.

Am I her mast? And if I am...what is it that's calling her? What is she keeping herself away from? Probably the same thing she keeps me from. The Siren's Siren. Deep thoughts for a small town Sheriff. Especially a bad one.
She tells me to let it go.

So I kiss her.

I kiss her and hold her close in the dark and whisper "Isabel...you're killing me."

"I know," she whispers back, smiling into my mouth.

I hear her song so clearly.

And I'll get up in the morning, buckle on my gun belt, fix on my star, and walk the streets. As a model of hypocrisy.

Under her soft hands, I let it go.