Page 36 of Justice

Then I asked her the thing I had no business asking.

“Do you have kids? Want them? My bad for overstepping.”

Her face changed. Quick. There and gone, a shadow crossing behind a window. Then she smiled, easy, and reached for a joke like a woman reaching for a coat.

“Lord, no.” She waved it off easy, a little laugh in it. “I like being able to hand ’em back at the end of the day. Give me all the auntie perks and none of the stretch marks.”

I chuckled. “Fair enough.”

And that was that. Her eyes flickered when she said it, quick, there and gone, but I didn’t think twice about it. Folks got their reasons for the lives they pick, and it wasn’t my business to go digging in hers. She’d given me a straight answer and a good joke, and I took her at her word.

“I care about them, though,” she said after a moment, softer, like she wanted me to have that part plain. “Your girls. I want you to know that. I know I’m the help, but I don’t do this for a check. I care about them.”

“I know you do.” And I did. “Dream’s easy. She’ll love anybody who loves her back.” I looked at Storie across the yard. “The other one’s harder. But she’ll come around to you. Give her time.”

Skye didn’t say anything to that. She just nodded, and kept her eyes on my oldest, and I couldn’t read what moved behind her face.

That’s when I felt it. Eyes on us.

I looked up, and there was Kira again, across the yard, watching me stand too close to another woman with an expression she didn’t bother to hide this time. Not hurt. Harder than hurt. A woman who’d already made up her mind.

And that cold prickle came back up the back of my neck, stronger now. I needed to keep a watch out for her.

19

SKYE

By the time we got home from the castle, the sun was going down and everybody was running on fumes. Rita had worn herself out and gone to bed by eight. Dream crashed in the car on the ride back, still in her party dress. Justice carried her in, peeled her out of it, and tucked her in. Storie shut herself up in her room without a word.

With every one settled, I decided to enjoy the deck for the evening. Justice had insisted over and over to make this home my own and feel free to use any of the amenities. I poured myself a glass of wine and headed towards the deck. I figured I’d earned it.

The early fall air was still warm. The dark coming down soft over acres of his land, not another house close enough to hear a sound. Justice had a firepit built into the far end of the deck, and I decided to light it. The flames were glowing orange against the dark. I decided to rest for just a minute and then I’d take my tired feet to bed.

I didn’t hear him come out.

“I didn’t know you were still up,” he said as he made his way outside and sat next to me.

“It’s still early,” I giggled. What the fuck was up with the giggling? I am thirty-five years old. I don’t giggle.

“What a day. Dream had a good time though. The horse will be delivered soon as we get the stable built.”

“I can’t believe you got her a horse,” I playfully shook her head.

“Listen, you gotta spoil your daughters so they won’t be impressed with nobody’s dusty son’s scraps. I want my daughters to be bougie about who they give themselves to. Materials ain’t everything but I don’t ever want them with a man for money. I want those men to come with more than just what they can provide. And since they’re growing up in luxury, they already know,” he said as he sat back, staring out over his vast land.

“I feel you. And Dream’s a good girl. She’ll appreciate it.”

“Yeah… Thank you for helpin’ Storie out. I know she’s been distant with you but she’s just going through that phase.”

“Uh huh,” I said as I remembered her calling me a booty wiper. I started to tell him about it but decided against it. I didn’t want to get her in more trouble and then have her hate me more. Storie is a smart girl and I didn’t want to be on her bad side. I had a monetary goal and I wasn’t lettin’ a teenie bopper get in the way of it.

Besides, I had a better understanding of her now. Before he said anything, I’d written her off as one of the nastiest kids I’ve ever met. And back when I was a lawyer, I’d defended some terrible teens.

But sitting here now, knowing what I knew, it fit itself into a different shape. Knowing that Storie found her mother really brought it home. I knew that feeling. I knew that grief. I knew what it did to a person to walk into a room and find the one they loved emptied out of their own body. I knew how that image nailed itself behind your eyes and stayed, played on a loop in the dark for the rest of your natural life. It had happened to me. And it had made me hard in places I used to be soft, made me icy and cruel to people who didn’t deserve it, in the years right after.

Maybe that was all Storie was. A girl who found a body too young and got mean the way a wounded animal gets mean. All that lawyer talk, all those cold little questions, maybe it was nothing but a bright, broken child poking at the world to see what would hurt her back. Curiosity. Grief wearing an ugly face. Aubrey had said it, and I’d waved her off. Maybe Aubrey was right. Maybe I was seeing a monster where there was only a motherless girl.

I felt the wall I kept that child behind grow a small, quiet door.