The black German car pulled in at four-oh-three. Three minutes late. The passenger door opened and Maisie climbed out with her stuffed horse under one arm and her overnight bag dragging behind her, the strap catching on the running board. Pink boots on the asphalt.
She saw me and ran.
The hug was long and tight and fierce — her arms locked around my neck, her face pressed into my shoulder, the full-body grip of a child who'd learned not to look back at handovers and was now looking forward with everything she had.
"Hi, baby. I missed you so much."
"I missed you too, Mommy."
She pulled back, chattering before her boots hit the ground again. "Daddy has a pool now. Arealone. And we watched a movie, but it was boring because it didn't have any horses. And there was a dog in the park, and he wassofluffy, but Daddy said I couldn't pet him because of germs." She wrinkled her nose. "I petted him anyway."
Then the record skipped.
"Daddy asked me a lot of questions about Clay."
My hands stilled on her shoulders.
"What kind of questions, baby?"
"Does Clay sleep at our house. Does Clay take me to school. Do I like Clay more than Daddy." She adjusted her horse under her arm. "I told him Clay's Wilbur voice is squeaky, but we're working on it."
Behind me, Clay's truck door opened. Then closed again. He'd heard. He was staying put.
"You don't have to answer Daddy's questions about Clay if you don't want to. You know that, right?"
"I know." Then, quieter: "Mommy, why does Daddy want to know about Clay?"
"Sometimes grown-ups ask questions because they're curious. That's all."
She accepted this with the easy trust of a child who still believed her mother could explain the world. "Can we go home now? I want to see Starlight."
I laced my fingers through hers. Clay crouched when we reached the truck, and Maisie transferred herself from my hand to his neck in one fluid motion. "Hi, Clay."
"Hey, Mais. How was the weekend?"
"Boring. The pool was okay. Can you do the Wilbur voice on the way home?"
She climbed into the back seat and buckled herself in with the fierce independence of a child who considered assistance an insult, and I stood in the parking lot with my heartbeat pressing against my ribs.
Preston didn't ask questions. Preston gathered intelligence. Every inquiry was a data point, every answer a weapon filed for later. He wasn't curious. He was building something — something cold and patient, something that wore a tailored suit and smiled at judges.
Clay's hand found the back of my neck. I leaned into it and didn't say any of the things pressing against the inside of my teeth, because Maisie was in the back seat doing the Wilbur voice better than Clay did, and the drive home deserved to be a drive home.
Thursday morning. The cottage.
Clay Blackwood's boots were size thirteen.
I knew this because they lived by my front door now. Not tucked against the wall, not politely stowed — planted in the middle of the entryway like two leather monuments to a man who took up space without apology. Every morning, I stepped around them. Every morning, I told myself I should ask him to move them. Every morning I didn't.
His coffee mug was on the counter beside my tea. His truck was in the driveway. His jacket hung on the hook I used to keep empty because empty hooks meant I could leave fast if I needed to, and now it held a man's Carhartt that smelled like cedar and hay and something underneath that made my brain do inadvisable things before seven a.m.
I stood in the hallway in bare feet and watched him make eggs.
He didn't know I was there yet. He had Maisie on the counter beside the stove — her spot now, feet swinging against the cabinets — and he was cracking eggs one-handed into a bowl while she supervised with the intensity of a Michelin inspector.
"More cheese, Clay."
"I already put cheese in."
