“Hi,” she says, stopping in front of me. “I’m Lila.”
“Hi, Lila,” I say. My voice comes out softer than I expect. “I’m Faith.”
“I know,” she says. “Daddy said.”
My chest squeezes at that.Daddy.
So she does belong to Dallas.
She tilts her head, taking in my borrowed clothes.
“You were in the car,” she adds. “The one in the ditch. Daddy said you had an accident and we had to be quiet so you could sleep because your brain was tired.”
I choke on a laugh. “That’s accurate.”
“Did it hurt?” she asks, straightforward in that small kid way.
“A little,” I admit. “But your daddy helped.”
Her gaze flicks back to him. Adoration lighting her face. “He always does,” she says.
The warmth that surges through me at that, not because of what it says about me, but about him, is so sharp it almost counts as pain.
“Lila, honey, why don’t you let Faith sit down?” Maggie cuts in, but her tone is gentler than I’ve heard it in a long time. “You can ask her more questions when she’s got food in her.”
“Oh.” Lila steps back, suddenly self-conscious. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” I say quickly. “I like questions.”
“Careful,” Nash mutters as he pulls a chair out for me. “She’ll test that theory.”
I sit down where he indicates, aware of the choreography of it. Maggie on one side near the stove, Boone and Rose at the far end by the window, Nash beside me, Clay across, and Dallas diagonally, still with his arm draped along the back of Lila’s chair now that she’s climbed into it again.
I’ve been dropped into a play where everyone else has already been rehearsing for years. They know their cues, their inside jokes, their roles. I know them, but… I don’t. Not like this.
A plate appears in front of me, piled with ham, eggs, biscuits, and something cheesy and loaded with potatoes that smells heavenly. My stomach growls so loudly that Nash snorts.
“Eat,” Maggie orders. “We’re not sending you back out into a blizzard half-starved.”
“Mama,” Dallas says quietly. There’s a warning in it.
She glances at him, then at me. “What? I’m feeding her, not interrogating her.”
“Yet,” Nash says under his breath.
Maggie smacks his shoulder with a dish towel without looking. “Hush.”
I pick up my fork mostly because I don’t know what else to do with my hands. The first bite nearly makes me groan. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until just now. Panic burns a lot of calories, apparently.
For a few minutes, the table noise swells again, louder than my own thoughts. Ellie demands that someone admire her new toy. Wyatt drops his spoon and laughs hysterically every time Boone retrieves it. Lila flips carefully through her book with her free hand while she eats, pointing to different horses and whispering to herself. Nash and Clay bicker about whether or not someone cheated at cards last night.
It’s weird. And wonderful. And painful, all at once.
“So, Faith,” Rose says after a while, in a tone that’s light but interested. “I heard you’ve been in the city. How long has it been now?”
I swallow my mouthful of eggs, suddenly hyperaware of every eye that can possibly be on me. “About… six years?” I say. “Off and on. I came back a couple of times for short visits, but… yeah. Mostly Dallas. The city, Dallas,” I amend quickly, realizing how that sounds.
Nash chokes on his biscuit. “I forgot about that,” he says. “You living in Dallas, being engaged to Dallas, would’ve been a nightmare for whoever handled your mail.”
