Page 140 of Lone Wolf

Bri opened the door. Her penciled eyebrows rose up toward her hairline and stayed there. “Really?” she said. “Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.” Then: “Sofia!”

Scampering footsteps, and then Sofia careened around the corner from her bedroom and Loco caught her scent and clawed viciously to escape Evan’s clutch, scraping his stomach. He dropped the dog, who fell and landed with feline grace, the first blip of elegance Evan had seen from the creature. Then Loco rocketed to Sofia, scaled her leg, scrambled into her arms, and froze beneath her chin as if he had suddenly fainted and been delivered into nirvana.

There was crying and hugging and kissing and licking and all order of cloying emotions. Evan lifted his shirt to examine the puffy red claw marks that had been raked across his abdomen. Watching her daughter roll around on the floor with the dog, Brianna held a tissue to the edges of her eyes and shook her head with grateful bemusement.

“That stupid mutt,” she said to Evan. And then again: “That stupid mutt.”

Finally the celebration wound down and Sofia got up, Loco nestled into her arms, snoring audibly.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “You found him.”

“He found me.”

“Cause for celebration,” Bri said.

Sofia chewed her lip and looked down at her bare feet, her mood shifting.

Evan said, “What?”

“Dad’s missing again.”

He looked over at the dinner table laden with food. Three place settings waited. Now he understood the aura of punctured hopefulness.

“Want me to find him?”

Sofia shook her head, then dipped her face to kiss Loco. He snarfled and went back to sleep. The tip of his tongue stuck out, a pink tab against his wiry beard. She set him down and he staggered over, asleep on his feet, and collapsed by the ridiculous shrine that had been erected in his honor.

“But…” Sofia looked across at the dinner table.

Evan thought: Please don’t ask.

“There’s a extra seat,” she said. “You could use it.”

He felt the familiar tightness in his chest, a cramping of walls closing in, the age-old challenge of holding himself intact in a place he didn’t belong, a place that he’d always thought hadn’t wanted him any more than the man in that double-wide in Blessing, Texas, had.

What if there’s no one to fix anything? he’d heard Jack ask. Except you.

Sofia stood with her feet pushed heel to toe at ninety degrees, dancer’s fifth position. Despite her perfect posture, she was nervy with anticipation, humming beneath the skin.

Evan forced the decision, gave the slightest nod.

Sofia’s eyes found a kind of light he hadn’t seen in them before. It had taken so little to give her so much. People could be shocking in their simplicity.

She raised her tiny fist, aimed the knuckles at him. “Uncle?”

He thought of the man who was his father staring at himself in the mirror, flicking his hair this way and that, trying to hide his thinning spots.

He thought of the man who was his father saying, This is where you tell me who your mom is.

He thought of the man who was his father.

And then he didn’t.

He stared at Sofia’s proffered fist a moment longer.

And then bumped it.

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