Reno took a small, sharp breath. "Be there as your brother or be there as something else?" he asked reluctantly.
"You know which one I'm asking."
Reno squeezed his eyes tightly shut and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose.
With a glance at Boone’s feet sticking out from under the pickup, he said low and urgent, "I'm not asking you to file paperwork or review the case. I'm asking you to sit at the table next to my lawyer and help protect Madi when she’s questioned.”
Not that. Not family. How was he supposed to say no to protecting his own flesh-and-blood niece? But how could he possibly say yes? That part of his life, that part of himself, was over. Gone.
Hank added, “Lorraine's lawyer is going to come at Madison hard about running away. He’ll try to make her seem wild and irresponsible and incapable of making a smart choice about which parent she wants to live with. My lawyer’s good at knowing family law and negotiating amicable arrangements out of court. But he’s no great litigator. Going toe-to-toe with a barracuda like Lorraine’s lawyer is not his strength. I need someone up front, with the power to speak up, who can stop Lorraine’s lawyer from badgering Madison or making her out to be a rotten, angry teen who’s just mad that her mom is being a responsible parent."
Reno didn’t say anything. He couldn’t say no. But he couldn’t say yes, either.
"I know what I'm asking, Reno. And I’m sorry. But will you do it."
Reno looked around the shop. Looked across the street at Grace’s shop. The front room still had a line of customers snaking away from the counter. He thought about Lily and how bad he would feel if someone put her on the witness stand and assassinated her character when she was fourteen, all for the sake of a narcissistic, substance abusing parent getting custody of a child she couldn’t properly care for and didn’t particularly want other than to keep up appearances with her circle of vapid friends.
"Yes,” Reno said heavily. “I’ll do it.”
Hank looked at him with naked relief and gratitude. "Thank you, Reno."
Hank pushed away from the fender and took a step forward to grip Reno’s shoulder tightly for several seconds. Then he let go and walked outside to his truck without looking back. It struck Reno all at once that Hank must not want his little brother to see how emotional he was feeling.
Reno sat on the crate, wrestling with his own emotions. He’d done the right thing. The only thing he could do. He had to help his brother and his niece. The most fundamental rule the Steele family lived by was that they took care of their own.
But he hadn’t stood in front of a judge in three years. He hadn’t held a person’s entire future in the palm of his hand and molded it into what he thought it should be. The last time he’d played God like that, it had ended disastrously for more than just the defendant in the case. Innocent people, including children, had been devastated by his actions. He’d vowed then never to play God with other people’s lives again.
But Hank had just put him right back in that position. And this time it was his own family that would be irrevocably changed for better or for very, very much worse.
Breathing hard, he dragged himself to his feet, winced at the pain that sliced through his leg, and went to work reinstalling the Mustang’s water pump while he watched Grace’s store.
He walked across the street to the bakery at two forty-five PM. The CLOSED sign was already in the window and the front door locked. Business had been especially slow after lunch today, and Grace must have decided to close early. He went around to the back and texted her that he was at the kitchen door. He told her to check her phone’s security app to verify before she unlocked the door and let him in.
He watched on his own phone as she looked at him on hers, and then the door in front of him opened.
She smiled at him. "Hi. You're here early."
"I finished what I was doing at Boone's and saw you close up. Thought I'd come by."
"Business was slow, and Mary said the espresso machine was making a noise. Figured I’d have a go at seeing if I can find what’s wrong with it."
"I can look at it if you’d like. I’m no espresso machine repair guru, but I’m decent with engines and mechanical things.”
"I'd appreciate that."
Once he unscrewed the stainless steel side panel, he noise was easy to hear: a combination rattling and metal-grinding-on-metal sound. It was even easier to locate where it was coming from. He pointed his phone flash light to the back section of the interior and spotted the coffee bean that had somehow jumped out of the bean hoper and gotten wedge in among the gears that connected the motor to the grinding mechanism. Using the tip of a kitchen knife, he pried the bean free. He tried running the machine again, and it sounded like any other espresso machine he’d ever heard. He replaced the side panel and washed his hands in the kitchen’s prep sink.
He wandered over to where Grace was cutting star-shaped sugar cookies from dough she’d rolled out on the counter.
"Can you use a second pair of hands?" he asked.
"Sure. I’ll roll and cut. You lay them on the cookie sheets, three across, four down."
The marble was cool as he lifted each star, the dough coming up in soft pieces. He matched her rhythm, and the only sound for a while was the rolling pin thudding softly on dough and the hum of the big refrigerator in the corner.
"You're awful quiet today, Reno," Grace commented without looking up from rapidly cutting stars out of the next batch of dough.
He lifted stars out of the layer of dough and carefully laid them on the next cookie sheet. "Hank came by Boone's shop this morning."
