He gives me a look that says Daniel Sutton does not do anything softer, but he doesn’t say no. Which, from Daniel, is practically a hug.
He stands, collects his glass, and pauses on his way to the kitchen.
“For what it’s worth,” he says without turning around, “I’m glad she’s here. Marlie made a good match, but I’m glad you chose her.”
“She chose me.”
Daniel looks back at me then, his eyes lit with the recognition that the woman asleep down the hall chose this ranch and his brother, all by herself. “Even better.”
He disappears into the kitchen. I hear the clink of his glass in the sink, the creak of his boots on the stairs as he heads to his room and his wife.
The house settles. The cats emerge from wherever they’ve been hiding and redistribute themselves across the furniture. Crowley claims the warm spot Daniel left in the armchair. Pixel materializes on the couch beside me.
I sit in the dark and think about perimeter alerts and corporate threats and a flash drive inside a goat and a woman who reached for my hand on the porch like it was the bravest thing she’d ever done.
Tomorrow, I’ll call Beckett.
Tomorrow, I’ll start building a wall around her that LandCorp can’t get through.
