The kitchen goes quieter around that.
“And now?” Will says.
“Now it runs clean,” Dad replies. Then, almost as an afterthought, “It’ll need to keep running clean when I’m not the one signing off on it.”
My fork stills against the plate, and I stare down at my pancake, taking a breath through my nose.
Will doesn’t rush to fill the silence. “That kind of operation doesn’t build itself,” he says finally.
“No,” Dad agrees. “It doesn’t.”
They hold each other’s gaze for a beat.
I look up just in time to catch my father looking at Will like he’s measuring something.
Not suspicion.
Assessment.
Approval flickers through his expression, subtle but impossible to miss.
I take another sip of coffee because there is absolutely no neutral ground at a table this small. My coffee has gone lukewarm by the time Will’s phone vibrates against the table. He glances at it, and I catch the subtle shift in his posture, the almost imperceptible straightening that means it’s club business.
“Sorry, I need to take this,” he says, and pushes back from the table without fuss, carrying his mug with him out to the porch.
The screen door swings shut behind him, leaving the kitchen suddenly a whole lot stiller than before.
Dad picks up his newspaper and turns a page, and I think for a moment that he’s not going to say anything at all, that the moment is going to pass unremarked. Then, without lookingup from whatever article he’s reading, he says, “He’s very comfortable on that sofa.”
I set my mug down. “Security detail. Club’s orders.”
“Yeah… that’sallit is.” He turns another page. There’s the ghost of something dry and amused at the corner of his mouth. He lets a moment pass, and then another, and then he sets the newspaper down properly and looks toward the window, where Will is visible on the porch, his back to us, his broad shoulders curved slightly inward the way they get when he’s focused. “He’s good, Millie.”
“Dad.”
“I’m not saying anything.” He picks up his coffee. “I’m saying what I see. Every morning, for the last week, from my kitchen table.”
I don’t have an answer, I’m not sure there is one. So I collect the breakfast plates, carry them to the sink, turn on the faucet, and stare at the soap bubbles forming over the dishes. I try very hard not to think about the fact that my father, who has never once in my life pushed me toward anything he didn’t believe was genuinely worth it, is sitting at his kitchen table telling me he approves of the guy he once warned me away from.
The same guy who’s been sleeping on our sofa all week.
The same man I have desperately, comprehensively been in love with for two years.
I’m rinsing the last plate when I hear the screen door open and close again, and Will’s footsteps cross back into the kitchen. He sets his mug in the dish rack without me asking him to, which is such a small thing and somehow completely undoes me.
“Sorry about that,” he says.
“Club stuff?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the faucet.
“Nothing major. Just checking in.”
Dad reappears from the hallway, his jacket on, keys in hand. “I’m going to drive out to the site for an hour,” he says, pausingat the back door, and he looks at Will directly, the way my father only looks at people he’s decided to take seriously. “Walk with me to the truck.”
I widen my eyes, but Will doesn’t hesitate and heads outside with him.
I stay at the sink.
I don’t follow them, I don’t need to. I can see them through the window above the faucet, two figures standing in the driveway beside Dad’s truck, and I watch my father say something and watch Will go very still and then nod, once. A nod that seems to mean something. Dad claps a hand onto Will’s shoulder for a second, solid and deliberate in that way he gets when he’s decided somebody’s earned his respect, and there’s no taking it back. Then Dad gets in the truck and backs out of the driveway.
