“He’s a friend.”
Liam’s face changed. The easy slid off it and the careful came up underneath, the Ranger choosing his ground. “Do you know who that is? That family?”
“Of course I know who he is. He lives across the road.” My back was all the way up now. “What is this about, Liam?”
“You don’t know everything I know.” Low. Like he was holding something back. “I’m saying be careful. That’s all. Be careful with that one.”
And for the first time in forever, I didn’t soothe it. I didn’t make myself small and fine and manage him back down off my porch the way I always have.
“Liam. I love you. And I need you to not do this. I am a grown woman. I do not need you running plates on my friends, and I do not need you going all Ranger on a man who has been nothing but kind to me.”
He was a great deal more than a friend — I knew that the way I know my own pulse — and I was not about to hand my brother that fact on my front step on a Saturday. That part was mine. For now it stayed mine.
“I’m trying to look out for you.” The rough came up under the careful. “That’s the whole job, Soph. Always has been.”
“I know it has. You can stop carrying it like it’s the only thing keeping me upright.” It was sharp — the closest thing to a fight the two of us had had in years, both of us dug in, the air on the porch gone tight as a wire.
That was when Steph came up the path — Dottie’s bag in one hand, the other under the full curve of her belly, well into her third trimester now and walking like it. She took one look at the back of her husband, one look at me, and the whole of it landed.
“Liam Walker.” From halfway up the path, calm as a Sunday and long past arguing with. “What are you doing?”
“Steph—”
“No.” She reached the steps, set the bag down, and put herself on the porch beside me, easy as walking into her own kitchen. “You are standing on your grown sister’s porch doing the exact thing you swore to me you weren’t going to do. She’s thirty years old. Who she lets into her life was never yours to approve.” Not a raised word in it — she has never once needed to raise her voice, and it is one of the great unfairnesses of my life. “Butt out. Let her live.”
Liam dragged both hands down his face, the way men do when they’ve run out of argument and the woman in front of them is right. He let the breath out slow, and looked at me, and the fight went out of him all at once. “I love you, sis. I’m here if you need me. Always.”
“Love you too.” I met him square. “Just stand down. I know my own heart and mind, Liam.”
“I know you do.” Quiet now, every edge gone off it. “I just worry.”
And we left it there. He kissed the top of Steph’s head, tapped my doorframe once on his way past — the small wordless Liam thing he does in place of the sentence — and went to his truck, and a minute later he rolled away down Sycamore Row.
Steph didn’t say a word until his engine had faded off the end of the row. Then she picked the bag back up, came past me into my kitchen, set it on the counter, and turned around with both eyebrows already climbing.
“I’ll talk to him,” she said seriously. “That part’s mine, not yours.”
Then the grin broke across her whole face like weather turning, and she lowered herself into a chair with both hands and a small groan and patted the seat beside her.
“Now. I want details.” She pointed a finger at me. “And don’t you dare spare the spice.”
I laughed, I couldn’t help myself, and sat myself down beside my sister-in-law, and thought, not for the first time and nowhere close to the last: God, I love this woman.
17
Caleb
I’d booked us a table at the whiskey bar and grill a town over — the swanky one everybody drives out for — and spent three days regretting I’d picked somewhere with that many eyes in it.
The text I’d sent that morning, while she was at brunch with Stephy, took me four tries to get down to one line.
Me:Dinner tonight. I’ll get you at seven — wear something you don’t mind me thinking about all through dinner.
Sophia:ok
Two letters. The woman who keeps a straight face through anything goes shy as a teenager the second it’s real, and that one small ok did more to me than a paragraph would have. I got nothing useful done the rest of the morning.
I’d showered at the shop — put on good blue shirt, the one with a collar, freshly ironed. Glad I finally had a chance to wear it. Once I deemed myself ready — sleeves rolled up to the elbow in the hopes that her hands would drift to my forearms again — I drove across town with not one useful thought in my head, just her, the whole way.
