Page 106 of Tanner

The woman gave him a brief look over the top of her glasses. “You were expecting a fight?” Tanner nodded. She softened a little. “Not from me, love. Next.”

When they went outside, Tanner stood on the sidewalk with Savannah on one hip and the registration slip in his hand.

Miles shut the clinic door behind them. “One box ticked.”

Tanner looked down at the paper. The print was cheap and slightly crooked where the printer had fed it through, but it still counted. He let out a breath and tucked it into the folder.

Savannah patted his cheek. “Can we have fries?”

Tanner looked at her. “You always hungry?”

“Yes.”

Miles smiled as he opened the truck door. “That sounds like a yes.”

They got food on the way home because Savannah had asked and because the kitchen held too much leftover tension to walk straight back into it empty-handed. She sat in her booster seat at the table with ketchup on her fingers and told Miles very seriously that her rabbit did not eat fries because he was “only cloth.” Miles accepted that information with the respect it apparently deserved. Tanner stood at the counter and watched them for a second before he unwrapped his own food.

Savannah dropped a fry and gasped. “Oh no.”

“You’ve got six more,” Tanner said.

She counted, got to four, then shoved another fry into her mouth.

By the time she was done, she had ketchup everywhere. Tanner wiped her hands and face, got her into clean pajamas, and carried her through to bed when her eyes started to droop again. She wrapped her arms around his neck before he laid her down.

“You stay?” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

He sat on the edge of her bed until her breathing evened out, then he went through the house with a bin bag in one hand, not because it suddenly mattered more than it had that morning, but because tomorrow somebody was coming to write things down. He cleared the junk mail from the hall table. Put the half-empty laundry basket through a cycle. Checked the bathroom cupboard and threw out old blister packs and a cracked bottle of cough syrup. Tightened the stair gate even though Savannah rarely tried to climb it. The practical things helped. Not by much, but enough to keep him moving.

Miles replaced the loose bulb in the back porch light while Tanner wiped down the kitchen sides. Neither of them talked much, but they didn’t need to.

When the house was finally quiet and the last of the dishes were done, Tanner stood at the sink with his hands braced on the edge and looked out into the dark yard beyond the window. The glass showed a faint reflection of the kitchen behind him. Miles was at the table going through the folder again, stacking papers into a better order for tomorrow.

“They’ll still come,” Tanner said.

“Yeah.”

“They’ll still look at everything.”

“Yeah.”

Tanner nodded. He didn’t turn around straight away. “I wanted to run.”

Miles answered softly, “I know, but I’m here so you’re not alone.”

Tanner looked down at his own hands on the sink. “I still want to.” When he turned around, Miles was watching him. “But I’m not going to.”

Miles held his gaze. “Good.”

That should have annoyed him, but it didn’t. Tanner pushed away from the sink and crossed the room, stopping beside the table. The folder sat there with the new doctor registration slip tucked in at the front. One more piece of paper. One more proof that he was trying to build something solid before somebody tried to take it away.

He put his hand on the folder and left it there for a second.

Tomorrow at two they would come through the front door and look around and write down what they saw. On Friday they would sit in another room and talk about what happened next. The fear was still there, but it wasn’t moving him tonight. Savannah was asleep. The house was clean. The forms were in order. The doctor was done. And Miles was still with him, and Tanner realized how much he needed him.

For now, that had to be enough.