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The front door opened. Owen came out in dinosaur pajamas at full speed, Shelby two steps behind with a blanket.

“FUZZY! FUZZY FUZZY FUZZY!”

Hank caught him on the porch steps. Forty pounds of toddler hitting his chest like a small, enthusiastic freight train. Fistfuls of beard, immediately.

“Hey, buddy.”

“Fuzzy.” Owen patted his cheeks with both hands. Studied his face. Confirmed whatever he’d been looking for. “Chad!”

He reached for Chad with the imperious confidence of a child who expected to be handed between adults like a parcel, and Chad took him—carefully, the way Chad did everything with Owen, as though he was still slightly amazed that a small person would voluntarily choose to be held by him.

“Hey, Owen.”

“Crimmis,” Owen informed him.

“Tomorrow, buddy. Christmas is tomorrow.”

Owen considered this. Found it acceptable. Grabbed Chad’s ear.

Shelby ushered them inside. The house was warm and smelled of pine, cinnamon, and brown sugar. The tree in the corner was a crooked Douglas fir hung with glass ornaments and Owen’s daycare creations, which Chad examined with the same genuine seriousness he’d brought to them in October.

Lowell appeared from the kitchen.

“Y’all made good time.”

“Light traffic,” Hank said.

“Shelby’s been cooking since noon. There’s enough food for a small army.”

“I believe in abundance,” Shelby said from somewhere behind them. “And leftovers.”

They settled into the house. Bags in the guest room. Drinks poured. Owen demanded that Chad inspect his new train set with the urgency of a museum director prepping for a VIP tour. Chad got on the floor. Owen briefed him. Hank sat by the fire with a bourbon and watched.

Christmas Eve dinner was loud. Owen negotiated green beans with the stubbornness of a seasoned litigator. Lowell had opinions about the Bulldogs’ bowl game that he delivered with building intensity. Shelby ran the table the way she ran everything—reading the energy, steering the conversation, making sure plates were full.

Chad fit. That was the thing Hank kept noticing. Not performing, not trying, not working the room the way he worked the bar. Just sitting at the table, eating Shelby’s pot roast, listening to Lowell’s analysis of the secondary, stealing the last roll before Hank could reach it. He’d only been here once before, in October, when everything was new and terrifying. The terror was gone. What remained was a man eating dinner with his family on Christmas Eve, and the ordinariness of it—the plain, unremarkable ordinariness—was the thing that kept catching in Hank’s chest.

After dinner. After Owen had been coerced into bed through a pact involving one Christmas story, a stuffed alligator, and the solemn promise that Santa was in fact en route. After Lowell had retreated to the den, and Shelby had loaded the dishwasher and kissed them both goodnight.

The porch. Two chairs. The cold.

The stars were out—the sprawl you forgot existed until you returned. Hank had grown up under these stars. Had stood in this county as a boy, as a teenager, as a man who didn’t yet know what he was hiding. Same sky.

Chad sat beside him in a gray wool sweater he’d taken from Hank’s drawer without asking, because that was how things worked between them now. He had his feet on the porch railing and his hands wrapped around a mug of something Shelby had pressed on him—cider, probably, knowing Shelby.

They were quiet for a while. The quiet of two people who didn’t need to fill silence.

“Owen told me a secret,” Chad said.

“What secret?”

“The cat next door ate a bug. Apparently, it was gross.”

“That is significant intelligence.”

“He made me swear not to tell Shelby.”

“Owen takes his secrets seriously.”