Page 57 of Thunder

And then, after a pause long enough that I can picture her thumbs hovering, hating it:

Please.

Dakota Lyle doesn't say please to me.

Hell, Dakota hasn't said much of anything to me since a hospital hallway where she looked at my mother's face on mine and turned to stone.

So I stand there in the feed store with my heart going sideways, and I text back the only thing there is to text.

I'll be there.

* * *

The diner across from the ranch has been there longer than any of us, a low cinderblock place with vinyl booths and a coffee pot that never stops.

It's the kind of spot where half the county eats breakfast so nobody looks twice at three of Phantom Lyle's kids taking the big corner booth.

I get there first, because of course I do, because I've been ready since six out of pure nerves.

Grace comes in second, Braxton in a carrier and Waylon walking beside her.

She sets Braxton’s car seat in the booth beside her, and she gives me a real smile and a "hey, you" that steadies me some.

Then Dakota.

She stops just inside the door when she sees me, and for a second the old stone flickers across her face, the reflex of a woman who taught herself to hate the sight of me.

Then she pushes it down, visibly, with effort, and she comes and slides into the booth across from mine and says, stiff as a fence post, "Thanks for comin'."

"Course."

"Where's Shiver?" Grace asks.

Dakota sets her phone in the middle of the table and hits a button, and my brother's voice comes out of it, tinny and warm. "I'm here. Ridin' shotgun in my own kitchen. Y'all order yet? Get me a coffee in spirit."

We order like we're feeding an army, because that's what you do when you're about to talk about something nobody wants to talk about—you bury it under food.

Belgian waffles, a short stack, sausage and bacon both, a mess of scrambled eggs, hash browns, a basket of biscuits with gravy on the side.

The waitress doesn't blink.

The table fills up with more than four people can eat and we all pick at it, and the phone sits in the middle with Shiver breathing on the other end, and for a few minutes we just... eat.

Pass the syrup.

Comment on the food.

Dakota cuts Grace's sausage without being asked because Grace has got a fussing newborn on her arm, and it's such an ordinary sisterly thing that it puts a lump in my throat.

For a while we don't talk about why we're here at all.

Grace tells a story about Waylon flushing one of Shadow's socks down the toilet and the plumber's face when he fished it out.

Dakota laughs so hard she has to put her coffee down, and Shiver's voice off the phone demands to know why nobody sends him this kind of material.

For a few minutes it's almost like it used to be, back before the spring, back when I was still drunk on the miracle of suddenly having sisters at all.

I'd forgotten this part.