Tonight, I just let him sleep.
Chapter Two
~ Liam ~
There are no clocks at the edge of the world. My phone battery died somewhere east of Butte, and I smashed the face of my old Seiko against the Subaru’s door frame three weeks ago, so the only timepiece left was the moon—except even that has gone missing, hidden behind a cloudbank so thick it might as well have been buried in the backyard with the rest of my life.
The porch light bled into the yard, carving a small country of amber in the cold. That was the whole plan: get Emilio to the one bright place for miles, set him down in the halo like a saint’s relic, and wait. Wait for the wolves or the angels or, more likely, the man with the crooked smile and the voice that turned every room into a disaster site. Pray he’d be the first one to the door. Pray he’d know what to do.
I counted the seconds by the shivering of my own body, each full tremor a little clock hand jumping forward. The wind cut between the trees and left its fingerprints on my skin. My shoes were not real shoes, just the sort of canvas slip-ons you get from the discount rack at the Goodwill, and my socks were hospital-issue. Both were soaked. Both had failed hours ago.
It didn’t matter.
From my angle behind the big oak, I could see the bassinet at the top of the steps—a state-of-the-art number, bought on clearance in Missoula and paid for with a stolen credit card. I’d left the receipt tucked under the bassinet mattress just in case he needed to return it.
Emilio was inside the carrier, zipped into three layers of sleep-and-play, his arms folded across his chest like he’d already given up on this world. His little hat had the ears of a bear. His face, visible only as a flash of pale in the yellow light, was pointed at the house. He hadn’t made a sound.
I had not planned for that.
The plan—such as it was—depended on him crying, on that ancient, helpless broadcast to draw someone out before the night could freeze his tiny fingers stiff. Instead he was silent, as if he’d already agreed to the terms of surrender.
Every few minutes, the house made a sound: a board stretching its spine, a choked cough from somewhere upstairs, the dry tap-tap of a dog’s nails on tile. I let each noise roll over me, then fade. The porch light never flickered. The bassinet never moved.
I tried to conjure Hooper—Tomás, technically, but he was never Tomás to me, not even in Billings—by force of will alone. I pictured him in the kitchen, hunched over a mug of whatever chemical filth he brewed in place of coffee, talking shit about the weather to a clock radio that never answered.
I imagined him at the garage bench, arms gloved to the elbow in grease, cursing some recalcitrant engine while humming a song so low and off-key it barely registered as music.
I needed him to come outside.
Needed him to notice.
Needed him to take the kid inside before the next set of headlights crested the ridge and spilled something worse than cold into the yard.
I took three steps out from behind the tree, just far enough to watch the windows for movement but not so far that I lost the protection of shadow. My heart was already red-lining, so I let the fear do whatever it wanted. That was the trick: don’t fight the fear. Let it run, let it finish, and maybe you get to walk away afterward.
I thought about going to the door myself, but then I saw the outline of my own hands, trembling, bloody at the cuticles and dirt ground under every nail, and knew I couldn’t risk it.
The way my face looked in the last gas station bathroom mirror—thin, hollow-eyed, yellowed with exhaustion—if Hooper saw me before he saw Emilio, there would be no time for explanations.
Besides, I couldn’t trust myself to leave if the door actually opened.
I’d left the letter inside the bassinet, buried under the formula samples and a pack of clean onesies. The letter had taken an hour to write. I’d rehearsed it so many times that the words no longer sounded like language, just a sad.
What else was there to say?
Emilio shifted. I heard the squeak of the carrier’s plastic, or maybe I just imagined it. I wanted to run to him, but the plan was clear: if you break cover, you break the whole chain.
It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I was not the kind of person who should be making plans for anyone, let alone an infant. Let alone my own. The thought was a hot coal in my throat. I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek and tasted iron.
I looked back at the tree line. Nothing. No headlights, no shapes, not even a coyote. The world had stopped, as if to witness the scene in some cruel, eternal freeze-frame.
I had memorized the entire path from the gravel drive to the porch in daylight, practicing it so many times I could do it with my eyes closed. What I hadn’t practiced was the waiting. The standing still while your bones went brittle and your mind started flickering between past and present and all possible futures.
A gust of wind caught the porch flag and made it snap, hard, like a rifle round. I flinched, then steadied, arms crossed tight across my chest.
That was when I saw the light in the kitchen window come on.
There he was—blurred by the frosted pane but unmistakable: Hooper, bigger than any human had a right to be, moving with the careless precision of a man who believed nothing on earth could touch him. He wore a sleeveless shirt even though the night was below zero. His hands were already moving—wiping a mug, tossing something into the sink, the kind of useless fidget that meant he was trying not to think too hard.
