Page 77 of Monk

I took a shaky breath and swiped at my wet cheeks with the heel of my hand. “She’s inside,” I said. “With my dad. She’s been asking about you.”

John’s expression crumbled so fast and so completely it nearly undid me. “She has?”

I nodded. “She saw you at the farm. That day in the barn. She’s been asking who you are, why you were here, why I was upset. She notices everything.”

John closed his eyes for a second, and his hands curled into fists at his sides like he was bracing for impact.

“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing yet,” I said softly. “I told her I would explain when the time was right.”

He opened his eyes and looked at me again, and there was something almost unbearably vulnerable in the question when he asked, “Is now the right time?”

I held his gaze for a long moment, measuring the fear in myself against the hope in his expression. Then I nodded. “Yeah,” I said softly. “I think it is.”

I turned toward the front door on legs that didn’t feel entirely steady, my heart pounding so hard it seemed to echo in my ears.Behind me, I heard John follow, the heavy fall of his boots on the porch boards sounding final somehow, like each step was carrying him over a line neither of us could uncross. When I reached for the doorknob, my fingers tightened around it for a second longer than necessary.

Please let this work. Please let him be the father she deserves. Please don’t let this break us all over again.

Then I pushed the door open and stepped inside. John came in right behind me—into my house, into our daughter’s life, and into whatever future waited for us on the other side of that moment.

For better or worse, there was no turning back now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Monk

The inside of the Wilcox house smelled like home.

Not my home. I’d never had one of those. Not really. Not in any lasting way. Home had always been temporary for me—a string of cheap motel rooms with buzzing neon signs outside the window, safe houses with peeling paint, rented apartments where the furniture didn’t match and the locks got changed too often. Places the Marshals stashed us while my old man’s sins chased us from one corner of the country to another. But this... this was the kind of home I used to imagine when I was a kid lying awake in some unfamiliar bed, staring at water stains on the ceiling and trying to picture what normal people had. Wood polish. Fresh coffee. Something sweet baking in the oven—cookies, maybe, or bread. The kind of smells that saidfamilyandsafetyandpermanence. Things I’d never had. Things I’d trained myself not to want.

Until now.

Lina stepped inside first, and I followed a half step behind her, suddenly hyperaware of everything—my boots sounding too heavy on the hardwood floor, the broadness of my shoulders in the narrow entryway, the patch on my cut, the fact that I looked like I belonged in grease and asphalt and smoke, not in a house that felt this warm and lived in.

The living room opened around me in a rush of detail—a worn leather couch softened by years of use, a recliner that hadseen better days, family photos lined across the mantle above a wide stone fireplace, a crocheted blanket folded over the arm of a chair, a pair of tiny pink sneakers abandoned near the coffee table. It was cozy. Real. The kind of room that had held a thousand evenings and arguments and birthdays and quiet moments. And there, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table like she belonged at the center of it all, was my daughter.

Tatum.

She was bent over a coloring book with the fierce concentration only kids seemed capable of, one hand planted on the page while the other gripped a crayon in a determined little fist. A box of crayons lay spilled around her in a bright wax rainbow. Her hair was dark like Lina’s, pulled back into a messy ponytail that had half come loose, and she was wearing jeans and a purple T-shirt with a cartoon horse on the front. She looked small and sturdy and impossibly real. Then she heard the door close and looked up.

And I saw her eyes.

My eyes. The same blue-gray that stared back at me in the mirror every morning. The same eyes I’d watched harden over the years, watched go flat with violence and grief and too much blood on my hands. But on her they looked different. Clearer. Softer. Untouched by all the shit that had stained mine. The sight of them in that tiny face hit me so hard my chest locked up around the breath in my lungs.

That’s my daughter. That’s my little girl.

Tatum’s gaze flicked from Lina to me, and I watched the exact second her expression changed. Curiosity gave way to caution. Her shoulders drew in a little. Her mouth flattened into a thoughtful line. She wasn’t afraid, not exactly. Just wary. Careful. Measuring me the way a skittish colt might measure a stranger stepping into its stall.

She didn’t smile. Didn’t run to me. Didn’t do any of the wild, impossible things some broken-off, hopeful piece of me might have secretly wanted. She just stared, her crayon frozen in midair, like she was waiting to see what kind of man had just walked into her house.

“Tatum,” Lina said softly, moving farther into the room and kneeling beside her. The gentleness in her voice hit me almost as hard as looking at the kid did. “This is John. Remember? I told you about him.”

Tatum’s eyes narrowed just a little, like she was sorting through a memory. “The man from the barn,” she said, her voice small but steady.

Lina nodded once. “Yes, baby. The man from the barn.”

Tatum looked at me again, really looked this time, her gaze direct and far too perceptive for a six-year-old. “You made Momma cry,” she said.