Page 75

Delia met us at the door with a dish towel over her shoulder and flour on her cheek, pulling me into a hug before I’d fully crossed the threshold. The house smelled like roasted chicken and rosemary and the kind of home cooking that only existed in places where people still made things from scratch.

“Finally,” she said into my hair. “Come in, come in. Wes has been pacing.”

“I have not been pacing,” came a gruff voice from the living room.

Wes Calloway sat in a leather recliner that had seen better days, sizing me up over his reading glasses. “The girl who bought the Henley place. Bold choice, young lady.”

The delivery was so perfectly Tyson-esque that I had to smother a laugh. I caught Tyson’s eye and saw him fighting the same battle.

“Dad,” Tyson warned.

“Just making conversation.” Wes’s mouth twitched. “Welcome to dinner, young lady.”

“Thank you for having me.”

“Had to. Noa’s been drawing pictures of you for three weeks. My fridge is covered. Figured I should meet the woman taking up all my magnet real estate.”

Heat crept up my neck. Tyson cleared his throat beside me.

“Hey.” Patrick appeared from the kitchen with a beer, looking exactly how you’d expect a cop to look. Solid, suspicious, and definitely running my name through databases as we spoke. “So you’re from Charlotte?”

“She is,” Tyson answered for me, stepping slightly closer.

“I can talk,” I told him, then turned to Patrick. “Yes. Been here for almost four months now.”

“And before that?”

“Jesus, Pat, she’s not under arrest.” Rose swept in from the kitchen, wine glass in hand, saving me. “Hi again, Sam. Ignore my brother. He ran your plates the first week you moved in, so this information isn’t news for him.”

O - kay. Comforting.

“Rose!” Patrick protested.

“What? You did.”

“That’s police procedure.”

“That’s nosy procedure.”

The youngest Calloway chose that moment to make his entrance. He took one look at how Tyson was hovering near me, grinned like Christmas had come early, and announced, “Oh, he’s fucked.”

Delia smacked him upside the head while Patrick got him from the other side.

“Language!” they said in unison.

“I’m twenty-four!”

“Then act like it,” Rose said, pulling me toward the kitchen. “Come on, let’s get you more wine before they scare you off completely.”

***

Dinner was loud and warm and nothing like the silent, tight-shouldered meals I’d grown up with. Conversations overlapped, silverware clattered, Finn stole food off Patrick’s plate while Patrick argued with Rose about a parking ticket from 2019 that she apparently still hadn’t forgiven him for writing.

“You’re my sister.”

“Exactly.”

“I was doing my job.”