Page 60 of Thunder

Grace and I don't talk.

We only watch her, Grace's hand still in mine, Braxton snuffling between us, Waylon still chowing down on food, and I think about how strange it is that the worst thing our family ever did is what's finally pulling us back together.

Through the glass, Dakota goes still. Listens a long moment.

And then she nods, once, hard, and lowers the phone and just stands there a second with her back to us.

When she turns around and walks back toward the diner, her face is wrecked and lighter all at once, and I know before she says it.

"It's done." She drops into the booth and puts her face in her hands a second, then comes up. "He bought it. All of it. Said—" a shaky laugh, "—said he was glad it turned out to be nothing sinister, that most of his cases don't end happy. Wished me well. Closed the file."

She exhales like she's been holding it for as long as she’s been mad at me. "It's done. He's gone. He's not looking anymore."

Nobody cheers.

It's not that kind of win.

But Grace reaches across and squeezes her hand, and Shiver's voice off the phone says quietly, "You did good, Dakota. You protected this family. Mom would—" he stops. "She'd understand. Whatever else, she'd understand us kids lookin' out for each other."

We sit with it a minute, the four of us, with what we just became, keepers of the same secret that broke us.

I don't feel clean.

I don't think any of us do.

But I feel, for the first time in months, like I'm on the inside of my family instead of frozen out of it—even if the price of the ticket was picking up the shovel.

We linger over the wreckage of breakfast until Braxton's fussing turns serious and Grace has to go. Waylon is an easy little guy, as happy as can be.

There are hugs in the parking lot that would've been unimaginable a month ago, Dakota holding on to me a beat longer than I expect and muttering, "I'll call you, I mean it," and then they're gone, and I'm standing in the diner lot in the full morning light feeling scraped out and stitched back together at the same time.

I go back inside before I leave.

"Can I get a to-go order?" I ask the waitress. "Two of the big breakfasts. Waffles, sausage, the works. And a short stack with extra syrup for a picky nine-year-old."

Because Thunder's still getting around slowly in the mornings, the hip at its worst before he's moved on it, and Raine's a bear before school.

It'd be a kindness to drop breakfast by so neither of them has to cook.

That's what I tell myself.

The truth is bigger and I carry it out to the truck with the warm styrofoam boxes.

The truth is that an hour ago I sat in a booth and helped my family bury the last thread that could've sent Thunder to prison.

I did it without a single second of hesitation, and part of the reason my hands were so steady is that every time I pictured that investigator finding what's out past Big Spring, I didn't just see my father in cuffs.

I saw Thunder.

I saw Raine growing up visiting her daddy through glass.

I chose him.

Again.

In a diner booth, quiet, without anyone knowing what I was choosing.

And now I'm bringing him waffles like it's nothing, like I'm only a girl being sweet to a banged-up man and his kid, when the truth is I'd bury a body myself before I'd let anyone take either one of them from me.