Page 61 of Thunder

I drive to the back of the property with breakfast going cold on the seat.

Today I protected the people I love, and I got my sister back over cold waffles, and I'm bringing the man I love and his little girl a hot breakfast on a hard morning.

Today the dark stayed buried.

I'll take the day.

I've learned to take the days.

Thunder opens the door before I knock, hair a mess, hip stiff, and his whole tired face changes when he sees the boxes in my arms.

Raine shrieks, "Miss Presley bought breakfast!" from somewhere inside.

I step into the warmth and the noise of the only place that's felt like home all year.

Nobody in this cabin knows what I did this morning.

That's the deal now. That's who I am now.

A girl with a family stitched back together on one side and a body buried on the other, standing right in the middle, holding it all together with both hands.

Just like my father.

I set the waffles on the table and kiss Raine's head and let Thunder pull me in against his side, and I don't say a word about any of it.

I'm getting so good at not saying a word.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Thunder

My daughter has been conducting an investigation, and this morning she presents her findings. "Daddy."

Raine sits across from me at breakfast with the serious face she gets when she's been thinking hard about something, cereal spoon paused halfway. "I found four hair ties that aren't mine. And they're not Grandma's because Grandma doesn't wear the little clear ones. And there's a girl toothbrush in the bathroom that's purple. And the coffee creamer in the fridge is the vanilla kind and you drink yours black."

I set my cup down real careful. "Is that so?"

"Mm-hm."

She takes a bite, chews, watches me with those dark eyes that don't miss a thing, my eyes in her face. "And Miss Presley's truck is here a lot. Early. Like before-school early."

She lets that hang there like a little prosecutor. "So."

"So," I say.

"So is Miss Presley your girlfriend or what?"

I've faced down armed men with less of a dry mouth.

There's a whole calculation a man does in a half-second like this—how much a nine-year-old can hold, how much of the truth is safe, how much a slip at school could cost when the whole thing's supposed to be a secret.

But I've never once lied to Raine, not the real kind of lie, and I'm not about to start over a hair tie.

"Would that bother you?" I ask her. "If she was?"

Raine considers this with the gravity of a Supreme Court justice.

"No," she decides. "I like her. She helps me with my cow project and she doesn't do the fake voice grown-ups do. And she makes you not sad."