Emilio immediately abandoned the rings and went straight for Hooper’s hand, grabbing at the thick wrist and the hair that ran down the back of it. Hooper let him, just watching, not saying anything, as the baby tried to stuff half his fist into his mouth.
We sat like that for a long while. Not talking, not watching the clock, not even worrying about what was next. Just being there, the three of us, on the living room floor, with the light going flat and grey through the window and the rest of the world receding to a dull, safe hum.
After a while, I said, “I’m glad I drove four hours north on an empty stomach.”
Hooper looked at me, sideways, and his mouth did that lopsided thing where it almost smiled but didn’t want anyone to notice. “Me too,” he said.
Emilio, as if to underline the point, made a sound halfway between a burp and a war cry and finally managed to get Hooper’s thumb all the way into his fist.
I watched them both, and then looked out the window, and then back at the two of them again. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I didn’t feel the urge to check the clock, or the road, or the horizon. I didn’t feel like I had to measure the moment by what I owed to it, or what I was supposed to fix next.
I just sat there, and let it be what it was.
A life.
Ours.
Chapter Twenty-One
~ Hooper ~
The air had a weight to it, the kind that made your ribs flex when you drew it in. I walked the yard in that blue-grey light you only got from a sky with no intention of ending the day anytime soon, boots skating a crust of old ice over hardpan mud. The ground was so frozen it rang when you kicked it, and every step was an argument with the last.
I had the plans in my jacket, folded tight and pressed flat against my ribs, where the pages dug through the flannel just enough to let me know they were still there.
Two weeks now, and I’d kept them as quiet as a family secret, not because Liam wouldn’t like them, but because I wanted to win the argument before he knew we were having it.
I was three strides from the porch when the sound of a car rolled over the wind, low and even, the kind of hum that said it was built for comfort and not for the county line.
The shape of the car was all wrong for the usual: not a pickup, not a neighbor, not the battered white of the postal Jeep or the warble of an Amazon Prime day.
This was a police issue, and the minute the nose of the cruiser turned up the drive, my body made its decision for me. I stopped, squared to it, hands in my pockets, but ready, and waited.
Callaway drove like he always did—one hand, thumb crooked at ten o’clock, the other tapping the dashboard in rhythm to whatever country station the department still got for free. He braked slow, let the car roll to a stop at the edge of the yard, and then just sat there for a beat, looking at the house, at the porch, at me.
I didn’t move. It was my yard. If he wanted something, he could come get it.
He did, eventually. Opened the door, straightened his shirt under the parka, and made his way up the walk with the deliberate economy of a man who had never once in his life hurried for a civilian.
I met him at the bottom step, neither of us blinking. He had a new badge since the last time, polished so high the county seal looked like a headlight. The mustache was the same, though—gray on the ends, still brown in the middle, and trimmed so sharp you could have cut a rope with it.
“Afternoon, Hooper,” he said. He didn’t say my first name, not out of disrespect, but because he was one of those men who understood that there was only ever one of me in the whole county, so why bother.
“Sheriff,” I said, neutral.
He set his hands on the top rail, glanced at the frost-bitten mums, and then looked me in the eye. “You got a minute?”
I shrugged. “If I say no, you’ll just come back.”
He nodded, as if this was a small mercy on my part. “Not wrong.”
He looked past me to the front door, the windows, the faint shape of someone moving inside. “Liam in?”
“Kitchen. I’ll let him know you’re coming.”
He made a show of scraping his boots on the edge of the step, then followed me up the porch. The door stuck a little—the storm had warped it just enough that you had to put your shoulder in—but he didn’t flinch, just gave it the right nudge and stepped in.
The kitchen was a world apart from the yard. Warm, humid, the air loaded with the tail end of a slow-cooked something that Jojo had set on the stove before he left for the main house. The baseboard heater made a soft click every time it cycled, and the room smelled like onions and the first whiff of yeast from tomorrow’s bread.
