Macon does not move until the vehicle is fully onto the county road. Then he steps back, disappears into the morning.
Hooper stands with me for a moment, silent. I look at my hands, still at my sides, steady as stone. He says, “You want a minute?”
I shake my head. I say, “No.”
He opens the screen door and waits for me to walk through first.
Inside, Jojo stands in the hall with Emilio, who is now awake and gnawing on his fist, happy as any baby in the world. Jojo holds him out to me, eyes big, but calm, like he’s seen a hundred of these scenes and knows how they end.
I take Emilio. He fits perfectly against my chest, and when I rest my chin on his head, I feel the steadiness transfer from my body into his.
Hooper comes up behind me, wraps one arm around my shoulders, the other around Emilio, and just holds us there.
For a long time, nobody says anything.
It’s enough.
I stayed in the hallway until the SUV’s engine faded to nothing and the glass in the window stopped trembling with the echo. I watched the black streaks of the tires as they cut back onto the county road, straight as a promise.
For a long while, I couldn’t move. My arms and legs felt locked in place, my jaw clamped down so hard that even when I tried to relax it, the ache just migrated up behind my ears.
Hooper never said a word. He just kept his arm around me, his other hand resting in the small of my back, thumb brushing a slow, hypnotic circle. Emilio fussed for a second, then calmed, his tiny hands resting on the fabric of my shirt.
I listened to the sounds of the house—the tick of the old clock, the faint hum of the heater, the way the boards in the kitchen creaked as Jojo retreated with the baby bottle and setit on the table. In another room, a door opened and shut, the sound perfectly ordinary.
After a while, I said, “I think that’s it.”
Hooper squeezed my shoulder, just once. “Not unless you want another round,” he said, and the deadpan of it made me almost laugh.
I shook my head. “No. That’s enough.”
He let go, gave me space to walk down the hallway on my own. It felt strange, like my body didn’t fit right in the gravity of the house anymore, but I made it as far as the living room before I had to sit down.
Emilio squirmed, and I shifted him to my lap, resting his back against my thigh. I watched him watch the ceiling, his face soft and blank, as if nothing at all had changed in his world.
Hooper stood in the archway, hands in his pockets, waiting for me to make the next move.
I said, “They’ll file anyway, won’t they?”
He shrugged. “If they want to waste the money. Rawley’s lawyer said the record is airtight, and even if they got a judge to listen, it would take months to schedule. By then, nobody’s going to care.”
I looked at Emilio, then back at Hooper. “They care.”
He nodded. “They do, but they don’t know how to win.”
The words hung in the air, heavier than I expected.
In the kitchen, Jojo poked his head around the corner. “You want some coffee?” he asked, voice tentative.
I nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He came in and set the mug on the end table, then perched on the edge of the couch, eyes flicking from me to Hooper and back. I could tell he was running his own version of the math—what did it mean to say no, what happened next, would the walls still be standing by dinner.
I said, “They always talked about what came after.” I didn’t realize I was going to say it until it came out. “Like, you could do whatever you wanted, as long as it made sense for what happened after. College, work, family, the whole run. Never the day-to-day. Just… the future.”
Jojo nodded, slow, like he understood.
I took a sip of the coffee, bitter and over-brewed, and let it burn the roof of my mouth. “I don’t know how to do the future,” I said.
