Name Witheld

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With Seattle's New Year's fireworks display due to begin soon, the Peters girls-nine-year-old Heather and ten-year-old Tracy-and I shut down our Uno game at twenty minutes before midnight. While Tracy put away the cards, Heather and I retreated to my penthouse condo's kitchen to prepare our celebratory New Year's drink-Thomas Kemper root beer floats.

This was a first for me. Back in my boozing days, if I had still been standing by the time New Year's toasts rolled around, you can bet I wouldn't have been swilling down root beer or champagne, either. MacNaughton's and water would have been far more like it. Even sober, root beer wasn't my first choice, but the girls had overruled me on that score.

Their dad, Ron Peters, is an ex-partner of mine, although we've been friends now for far longer than we were ever partners on the homicide squad down at Seattle P.D. He and Amy, his second wife and the girls' stepmother, had splurged on one of those hotel sleep-over New Year's dinner/dance affairs. With Ron in his wheelchair and Amy six and a half months pregnant, I'm sure the romance end was far more important than either the drinking or the dancing. I suppose they saw their New Year's night on the town as one last prebaby fling.

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