Because the minute I called, this stopped being mine.
The questions would start. A wounded man. A gun. Cash. A child in the house. Reports. Forms. Home evaluation. Temporary protective placement.
Temporary.
That was one of the dirtiest words in the English language if you’d grown up the way I had.
Temporary meant strangers in your room.
Temporary meant adults deciding what counted as safe while never once asking the child.
Temporary meant locked cabinets and thin mattresses and pretending not to be hungry.
I set the receiver down.
Gus said nothing for a moment.
“You’ve got trouble,” he said finally.
“Not my trouble.”
He looked at the peroxide and gauze, then at me. “You’re buying medical supplies for trouble that isn’t yours.”
I almost smiled.
Gus had been a cop for twenty years before retiring early and opening that store. He understood enough about people to know when the clean answer was the fake one.
He shoved the bag toward me without ringing anything up.
“I’ve still got the shotgun if you need it,” he said.
Something about the way he said it, gruff and practical and terribly kind, made my throat tighten so fast I had to look away.
I hauled the bag back through the snow and stepped into the cabin expecting silence.
Instead I heard Brie reading.
She sat on the floor beside Reed, shoulder nearly resting against his arm, East of Eden spread open across both their knees. Reed leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, not asleep, listening like she was reciting something holy.
A colder fear moved through me than the one attached to guns.
My daughter was attaching herself to him.
A gun can be hidden. Money can be refused. Men can be lied to.
A child’s belief in someone is harder to survive.
That afternoon, the storm eased enough for the tree line to show again. I was folding laundry when I heard engines.
Not a truck. Too light.
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