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Delaney: Really well. No bad nights all week.

The house had run fine without me, and the tightness I’d been carrying since Cole’s messages in Denver eased off a little.

I called from the hotel. Iris answered on Delaney’s phone on the second ring.

“Daddy, you won again,” she said. “Gerald predicted it. He said forty-four was very lucky.” She paused. “You’re forty-four.”

“That’s me.”

“So you’re lucky.”

“That’s the logic.”

She told me everything, from the scrambled egg development to the park to the drawing, which had taken three attempts before Gerald approved the final version.

“Okay, bug,” I said. “Time for sleep.”

“Okay. D says goodnight.”

“Tell her goodnight back.”

“You can tell her. She’s right here.”

The phone shuffled between hands, and then Delaney’s voice came on, closer than I’d expected and a little warm at the edges. “Hey. Good game.”

My pulse picked up in my neck, against the phone. It wasn’t the first time her voice had done it.

“Thanks,” I said. “How are you?”

She paused. I’d never asked her that before, and I couldn’t take it back. “Good,” she said. “Quiet night. I’ve been reading.”

“What?”

“The new one everyone’s been talking about. It’s better than I expected.”

“Mm,” I said. It wasn’t an answer, and she didn’t seem to need one.

“I’ll tell you about it when you get back,” she said.

I wanted to be back right then, more completely than I’d wanted anything in a long time. I wanted to be in my own kitchen with her leaning on the counter, finishing a sentence about a book I hadn’t read, and my hand on the counter beside her hip to see what she did about it.

“Yeah,” I said. “Good.”

“Almost home,” she said.

“Almost home.” The quiet after it should have been awkward, and it wasn’t. We both stayed in it. She didn’t hang up. I didn’t either.

“Goodnight, Eli,” she said.

“Goodnight,” I said. Then I said it before I could stop myself. “Sleep well.”

She’d texted it to me the night before Denver. I’d shoved it down and it hadn’t stayed down.

“You too,” she said, quieter.

Iris hit me at a dead run before the inside door was all the way open.

I caught her one-armed and swung her up, and she got a fistful of my collar and her sneakers knocked against my ribs, blinking red. My shoulders came down an inch the second she landed.