And tonight at my kitchen table he's telling me about a nine-year-old girl who's gonna teach him how to bake pies.
I tell him I'll talk to Thunder. We'll figure out a time.
"Tomorrow?"
"Maybe not tomorrow."
"Day after?"
"We'll see."
He accepts my answer with the certainty the answer's gonna be yes eventually and the patience to wait it out.
He hops down off the chair and goes to wash his hands without being told.
I stand at the stove stirring spaghetti sauce and listen to my son sing in the bathroom—some made-up song about pies and dogs and a four-wheeler—and I look out the kitchen window at Rogue's cabin across the yard.
His front room light is on. The window with the monitors.
* * *
After Nash is asleep with Stitch under his chin, I take a glass of water to the porch.
The yard is quiet. The bunkhouse windows are gold. Somebody's playin' a guitar low.
Banshee, probably, who I've learned plays when he can't sleep. The frogs are loud, and a coyote yips once out past the western fence.
I sit on the porch swing.
Across the yard, Rogue's cabin light is on.
My hand goes to the chain at my neck.
Garrett's ring is warm against my breastbone the way it always is.
I haven't taken it off since he died. Hell, I haven't decided whether I'm gonna take it off any time soon, either.
But I touched it less today than I have in two months. Am I ready to move on?
I lift my eyes to the yard.
The gold light is gone. The dark is deep and the stars are starting to come out, and across the yard the man with three monitors is still awake.
I think I'm building a life here, and I don’t think I noticed until tonight.
I’m really building something for us here.
CHAPTER FIVE
Rogue
The credit card alert hits my watchlist at six twenty-two in the morning.
Todd Whitley just rented a Ford Explorer from a Hertz in Tyler, Texas, on a personal card with his real name on it.
I sit back in the chair.
Phantom hired a treasurer. He got a treasurer. He also got a man who can find anybody on the internet inside an afternoon, and Phantom hasn't asked once where that other set of skills came from.
