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“Yes,” Troy said slowly, “but you may just want to make me feel better. People say things heaps that are supposed to make you feel better, but they don’t. They say my mum is sleeping or that she’s watching me, and she’s not sleeping. She’s dead. And dead people can’t watch.”
Now, Beckett put his own hand on Troy’s head. As for Quinn, she crouched down and said, “Hey.” And after a second, when Troy didn’t look up, “Hey,” again.
He raised his gaze to hers. Slowly. She put a hand on his shoulder—his father was right here, so how could it be wrong?—and said, “That’s strong, too, I think. Saying what you believe is true instead of something you think isn’t true, something part of you wants to believe anyway. What did you like best about your mum?”
“I don’t know,” Troy said. “She did mum things, like cuddles and reading and kissing goodbye. And you could sit in her lap.”
“It’s sad, then,” Quinn said, “that she’s not here with you anymore.” She didn’t try to make Troy feel better. From what she knew, listening helped kids more than anything. Troy was right. Too many people didn’t tell kids the truth, and how could you trust your own feelings if everybody kept telling you that you were feeling something else?
“Yes,” Troy said. “But can we go have burgers now, Dad?”
“Yeah,” Beckett said, his voice a little gruff. “Go get your sister.”
Troy ran off again, and Beckett looked after him and said, “I never know what to do about that.”
“Nobody really does,” Quinn said, standing again. “Also, you have to be freezing. You can get in the truck and warm up. I’ll never tell.”
“Nah,” he said. “She’ll be right.”
“Who’ll be right?”
He looked at her, amusement in the blue eyes. “It’s a saying, that’s all.”
“Oh.” She considered that. “Australians are optimistic?”
“Generally. So. Want to have burgers with my kids and me? Plus a bonus kid. Three kids.”
“And a dog,” she said.
“Dog stays in the ute. Or at home, because I’ll need to go home and change clothes, then … How about if we come by and give you a lift?”
“I knew it,” she said. “Offering me the chance to change out of my sweats. What, I’m not ravishing, with my wet hair and all?”
“No. I’ll take the sweats. Come with us, then, and I’ll bring you back here for your ute afterward.”
“Seriously,” she said, “it’d be a good idea to change. I was just giving you a hard time. I have this date outfit, did I mention? It’s in the truck. Red sweater, tight jeans, boots. Martin says it’s effective, though I have my doubts. Aren’t you supposed to wear a dress?”
“No,” he said. “You’re supposed to wear what you’ve got on, hop up in my ute with me, and go have burgers.”
“So you’re attracted to women in sweats.” She didn’t know why she was pushing it. Shedidknow that Martin would tell hernotto push it.
She was pushing it anyway.
“If I were a gentleman,” he said, “I’d know what to say here. I’m not. Rough as guts, possibly, so I’m going to say—I like the body in the sweats. And the judge thing, maybe. And the Olympic thing, definitely. And everything else. Have to say, though—”
“What?” she asked, and somehow, she was laughing again.
He grinned. “The thought of the black lingerie’s not bad either. Come on, Judge. Let’s go for a burger and a beer. My shout.”
* * *
She gotto see his place. It was a rented condo of the “stylish but impersonal” variety, though, so it didn’t tell her much, and she was only in it for about five minutes. She did, however, get to see where Bacon ate. And slept. She heard about his hobbies, too. “He likes to chew my socks best,” Troy told her. “And eat my food, if I forget and leave my lunch in my backpack. Or once on Sunday when we had pancakes on the coffee table, because Dad said it was a fun morning, and Bacon ate my pancake. But socks is what he likes best. I’m not meant to leave my socks where he can get them. They could get stuck inside him and he could die. So I try to remember.”
“We’ve gone through a fair few packs of socks all the same,” Beckett remarked, coming into the living room, buttoning the cuffs of a blue shirt that he hadn’t tucked into his jeans. Not tucking in must be a thing, she decided, though it wasn’t a thing that had come to Montana yet. Still, it looked good on him. The shirt skimmed his body and showed off his breadth of shoulder and the leanness of his waist, and …
Oh. Socks. She said, “Well, dogs have sharp teeth.”
Beckett’s daughter came out of the back of the place with her friend and said, “Dogs have more sharp teeth than people do. That’s because their teeth mostly have to shred meat.”
