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“The bear made the fort for me.”

“He did.”

She smiles. “And Ashby knows the frog song.”

“Who would have guessed?”

Torin showed me how to draw a shark.”

“That will stand you in good stead in the future.”

She smiles sweetly.

Then she adds softly, “And you came back.”

The words are like punch in the diaphragm. Because she says it as though she expected otherwise.

I sit back down beside her, covering her hand with mine. “Hey.”

Lucy opens her eyes and blinks up at me.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I tell her. “I promise.”

An emotion a five-year-old should know nothing about flits across her face then vanishes. She shifts beneath the duvet and whispers, “You make things feel less scary.”

And just like that, my entire heart melts… then rearranges itself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Ashby

The unending rain streaks across the windshield while Briggs drives through Redwood Run.

There’s three of us in the truck tonight, but it still feels unusually crowded.

Part of that comes from the silence between us. Part of it comes from a collective realization that none of us seemed particularly eager to leave Laurel's house.

Five miles separate us from her porch, yet my thoughts keep circling back there.

I can still picture Lucy asleep against Laurel's shoulder.

I can still see the look on Laurel's face when she carried her upstairs.

The exhaustion hasn't disappeared. Neither has the worry. Yet over the past few weeks another piece has worked its way into the cracks.

She cares about that little girl.

I watch rainwater slide sideways across the glass for another second before speaking. “We should talk.”

Briggs glances at me briefly in the rearview mirror. “That sounds ominous coming from you.”

“It probably is.”

Torin sighs softly beside me. “You found another problem?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

It would be inefficient to add that the upcoming conversation has the potential to end with somebody being punched through drywall, so I don’t. No need to lower morale any further than necessary.