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“Saturday at three o’clock.”

“We’ll be there. I have to warn you, you’ll be hearing a lot about dinosaurs,” I cautioned the woman.

“I’ll be ready. Now I’d better quit yammering so that Lettie can seat you both for lunch.”

Little Grandma handed us two menus, and a pretty, middle-aged woman took us to a booth along the far wall. Zoe stopped twice to say hello to other patrons.

“How long have you lived in Jasper Creek?” I asked her when we sat down.

“All my life.”

“Your parents, too?”

She frowned then looked down at her menu. “Them too. Just a whole lot of Avery all over the place.”

Lettie came back with waters. “What can I get you to drink?”

I nodded to Zoe.

“Sweet tea.” She smiled. It wasn’t quite as bright as it had been. Apparently her parents were a sore subject.

“Coffee,” I said. After she left, I decided to redirect. “Are all of your siblings living in Jasper Creek?” That got me a smile.

“No. Drake is the oldest. He was the first one to leave at eighteen. Well, almost eighteen. It was complicated. He joined the Navy. We didn’t see him for years, but we kept in touch. Now he lives in Knoxville. He’s a psychologist.” Zoe snorted. “A psychologist. Like working with people and being smooth and diplomatic and shit. Which is the funniest damn thing in the universe.”

“Why is that?”

“My brother was a Navy SEAL for over twenty-five years. Now that job fit him to a T. Kill first, ask questions later. This woo-woo, I-can-psychoanalyze-you shit, that is so not him.” Her brown eyes sparkled before she looked down at the menu again.

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious, or just saying something that is normally funny?”

Her head shot up fast from where she was studying the menu. “What?”

“It’s just, I spent a lot of time with you that night in my truck. You said many things, and told me many funny stories. A lot of them I suspected were exaggerations of the truth. Did I get that right?”

She frowned. “Maybe. Who cares? It made the whole thing a little less stressful.”

“I agree. It did. So are you exaggerating about your brother, and him not being cut out as a psychologist?”

She shrugged. “Come on, Adam. Think about it. A Navy SEAL to a psychologist? It sounds like some kind of joke, where a priest and a rabbi and a bunny go into a bar.”

On the surface, she was right. Zoe liked keeping things on the surface. God knew she’d tried to that night in my truck. She hated admitting that she was scared or hurting. Hated it. To an obsessive level. But she had to know better than that, didn’t she?

“I was in the Army for four years. One of the things I learned was to never underestimate the men and women in SpecOps. The good ones. The ones who stayed. Not just stayed alive. They were good, and I don’t mean just good at the physical, or just good at the tactical, they were some of the most intelligent men and women in the military. And I don’t just mean IQ-wise, I’m talking people-smarts. They read people. Read situations. Seems to me, this is exactly the type of person who would make a damn good psychologist. As a matter of fact, I know one who became a chaplain. Nobody from her team batted an eyelash, they could all see it.”

I watched her as I said my piece. She didn’t react. Not a flicker of emotion showed on her face. That was a tell as well. You had to have gone through some tough shit in your life to be able to go stone-faced at the drop of a hat. I hated that for her.

She smiled. Sunny. Engaging. Fake. “Seems to me you’re the observant one, not the SEALs.”

I shrugged. “I’m the father of a four-year-old; being observant is mandatory.”

Her shoulders loosened a little bit. “Well yeah, with James, you do have to be on your toes.”

“And Drake?”

She sighed. “Yeah, a lot of what I just said is the family schtick, or maybe more, my schtick.”

I saw Lettie coming toward us. “Have you decided what you’ll have?” she asked.