As for the bat, Rachel kept it by her front door.
Ethan once asked if she planned to retire it.
She looked at him like he had suggested getting rid of oxygen.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “That bat has better instincts than half the police department.”
He laughed then, because he was alive enough to laugh.
And every time he told the story afterward, he started the same way: “I thought a woman was running at me with a baseball bat to hurt me. Turns out she was the only person on the street paying enough attention to save my life.”