I’d met Sophie a long time ago.

I was there the day she was assigned to Liam's team at the M.E.’s office.

He didn't like her back then.

But the department insisted that every senior ME had to train a rookie, so he got stuck with her.

For a long time after that, whenever I visited the lab, he would complain to me endlessly about her.

She was too squeamish to be a medical examiner, couldn't handle lifting a body, couldn't even look at decomp.

Her autopsy reports were a total mess, vague and sloppy, and he even had to teach her the most basic formatting for data entry.

"I'm not a teacher," he'd grumble. "I'm busy enough without the lab throwing more work at me. This job is brutal. It’s not for little girls, especially not the kind who can't lift a finger to help."

I remember arguing with him back then.

"That sounds just like what they used to say about women not being cut out to be cops," I’d said. "And look at me, I’m doing just fine."

Liam had looked at me with that proud smirk of his.

"How can you compare her to you? My wife is the star of the force."

After that, I rarely heard him mention Sophie’s name.

I'd almost forgotten she existed.

Until that period when a few major cases hit the city, and Liam started working late, sometimes staying at the lab all night.

I made a big pot of his favorite chicken noodle soup and brought it to his office.

Only he and Sophie were there.

They had takeout containers in front of them, and she was saying how much she loved the diner’s liver and onions.

Liam stared at her for a long moment, his eyes half-lidded.

"You know why old-timers in forensics don't eat organ meat?"

She blinked her wide eyes and shook her head, completely clueless.

"Because the texture is a lot like human."

The look on Sophie’s face was priceless; she looked like she was about to cry.

When she saw me, she immediately started complaining to me about his morbid joke.

I didn't realize it at the time, but Liam was never the joking type.

Especially not with people he disliked.

A loud crash pulled me out of my memories and back to the present.

Liam came out of the bathroom, water droplets still on his cheeks, tracing a path down his jawline to the hollow of his collarbone.

Sophie was standing frozen amidst a pile of shattered glass, biting her lip helplessly, a single tear trembling on her eyelash.

"I... I didn't mean to."

She had knocked over the one thing my dad left me.