I finished the laundry, put everything in its place, and let myself believe that tomorrow, and every day after, would be exactly as real as I wanted it to be.
Chapter Eighteen
~ Liam ~
It’s a hard winter dawn, but the kitchen window is fogged on the inside where my breath hits it, leaving a soft halo of vapor right at the level of my mouth.
If I angled my head, I could see the icy sweep of the yard, the battered mailbox, the curled path of tire tracks that leads from the county road all the way up to the house. There are no new tracks, not yet, but I know in my bones it’s only a matter of time.
Emilio sits heavy on my hip, warm through his onesie and a second layer of flannel, fingers curled around the neck of his favorite teether. He makes a cooing sound, more exhale than word, and leans forward so his nose is nearly pressed to the glass.
I watch him for a second, the way his pupils widen and contract with the faint blue glow of the morning, the condensation from his own breath mixing with mine in slow, overlapping circles.
The silence in the house is so complete it almost has a taste: old coffee grounds, burnt dust from the baseboard heater, the sugar-fat after-smell of canned peaches.
I have a stack of papers waiting for me at the kitchen table, but I can’t make myself move. I’m running a mental check every ten seconds: scan the drive, check the perimeter, count the minutes until the first threat of the day announces itself by the sound of an engine on gravel.
Behind me, I hear the soft pad of feet—Jojo, probably, moving slow so he doesn’t wake the baby again. I don’t turn around. If I look away from the window, I’ll miss it, and I need to be the one who sees it first.
It doesn’t take long. At 7:28, a black SUV with Montana plates makes the turn onto our drive. It doesn’t bounce orfishtail like the ranch trucks do, and the headlights are adjusted just a little too high, so they blaze straight through the kitchen window and make everything inside feel like a hospital exam room.
I know the car. I know it by the make, the model, the way it sits a little lower on the rear left, like it’s carrying more weight than it should be. I know it by the way the windshield is wiped clean in perfect arcs, not a single streak.
I know it because it’s been parked in the same spot outside my childhood house for the last ten years, and every time my father drove it, he made sure it looked like a threat even before he got out of the driver’s seat.
This is not like Eleanor’s arrival, not at all. That one came with sirens and ugly preamble and the sense that something could go physical at any second. This one is quieter, deeper, a dread that starts in the jaw and works its way down into the bones.
I stand there, motionless, for three full seconds. Then I shift Emilio to my other hip and say, “Jojo, can you take him?”
Jojo comes into focus, hair still sticking up in tufts from sleep, eyes wider than I’ve ever seen them. He nods, not trusting his voice, and extends both arms for the baby. I hand Emilio over, careful, and watch Jojo back into the hall with the kind of reverence you show to a sleeping animal that bites.
I grabbed my jacket and then opened the door. It was half stuck with ice, but I force it open and step onto the porch, letting the cold hit my face so hard it clears out the last of the cobwebs. The planks creak under my weight, but I barely notice. My hands are at my sides, not fists, not pockets—just waiting.
Hooper is already there, standing at the top of the steps, arms folded over his chest like he’s trying to hold in the heat. He’s not even wearing gloves, just the battered navy jacket zipped up to his throat. He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t say aword. He watches the car as it pulls up, then stops, a perfect four feet from the edge of the porch.
Through the edge of my vision, I can see the house assembling itself the way it always does when something bad is about to happen. Rawley’s silhouette appears in the hallway window, not moving, just observing. Burke emerges from the far side of the house, boots crunching deliberate and loud, hands loose at his sides. At the end of the drive, almost lost in the morning’s haze, I can make out Macon, standing dead still, like a scarecrow that just happened to be made out of muscle and bad intentions.
The doors on the SUV open at the exact same time. My mother gets out first. She’s wearing a coat the color of dove feathers, her hair up in a twist that probably cost more than the porch I’m standing on. She closes her door with a careful click, and then, as if she’s auditioning for a role she already owns, she raises both hands and gives me a smile I haven’t seen since before college.
She says, “Liam,” and it’s the way she always says it when she wants the world to know she’s never stopped loving me, even when I was doing my best to prove her wrong.
My father gets out next, but he doesn’t look at me. He goes around the front of the car, checks the hood, then stands behind my mother, two steps back, arms folded. The gesture is so identical to Hooper’s that for a second I have to blink and make sure I’m not hallucinating the parallel.
“Liam, honey, can we talk?” My mother is walking up the drive now, the heels of her boots leaving tiny punctures in the snow. Her voice carries, warm and practiced, across the empty yard.
She’s five feet away before I realize she’s already decided the outcome of this meeting.
I say nothing.
Hooper still hasn’t moved.
She stops, looks up at me, and holds out one hand, like we’re meeting at a debutante ball and not on the edge of a siege. She says, “The last eight months have been a misunderstanding. We know that. We just want to make it right. Please, come talk. Just you and me. We can sort it out.”
I don’t move. I don’t take her hand.
She drops it, lets her smile falter just enough for the crack to show. “Eleanor’s been patient. So has her father. We all want this resolved quietly, before it becomes a thing that can’t be fixed.”
The word quietly does most of the heavy lifting in her vocabulary. It means “do what I say, don’t make a scene, let me solve your life for you.” It is a threat, a promise, a history lesson, and a warning all at once.
