Page 167 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

“She’s more nurturing than she realizes.”

I smiled. “Imagine her face if you told her that.”

Lincoln grinned. “Should we speak to Damien? He’s still our son. And then we go to Mary again and crash through those gates.”

“Or call her,” I said.

Lincoln smiled.

“Damien’s downstairs,” I said.

Damien had been given one of the guest apartments on the lower floor. He hadn’t left London or gone back to Boston. He was sulking, raging, texting, apologizing and withdrawing it in alternating bursts.

Not once had he asked if Mary was safe.

I couldn’t get around that fact.

He had asked whether we were still angry. He had asked whether he could come upstairs. He had asked whether we were seriously going to throw away family over a girl who had lied to everyone.

That omission sat heavier than anything he had said.

Lincoln’s phone buzzed. He looked at it, then handed me the phone.

Damien: Tell Hudson I need to talk. If you both still care.

“He knows where to press,” Lincoln said.

“Are we going down?”

I looked toward the hallway. The old Hudson would have waited until morning. Made notes. Prepared language. Controlled the circumstances.

The man Mary had left was done mistaking control for care.

“Yes,” I said.

Damien opened the guest apartment door before we knocked. Bare feet, a sweatshirt, hair damp from a shower. His eyes were red-rimmed in a way that would have moved me if I wasn’t so angry I could feel it in my teeth.

“You came,” he said.

“You asked,” Lincoln replied.

Damien looked between us. “Is she still gone?”

“Yes,” I said.

His mouth tightened. “So what, this is my fault?”

Lincoln made a sound under his breath.

I stepped inside. “It’s your fault that you were cruel,” I said. “It’s our fault that we hesitated.”

Damien flinched. “What?”

“When you asked if she planned it,” Lincoln said.

Damien looked away. “It was a fair question.”

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t clever. It wasn’t the wounded truth beneath the anger. It was cruel, and we should have answered before the silence had time to hurt her.”