He reaches and, with the same care he uses for glassware and heavy truths, taps the back of my hand once. “I’ll be on the deck if you want to argue about property taxes,” he says lightly, and leaves me there with my plate, my coffee, and a peace I didn’t expect to want this early.
I don’t get long with it.
Maverick’s voice carries from the foyer. Friendly, carrying, delighted. “Ms. Wolfe,” he calls. “Welcome to our low-drama beach cottage.”
“You’re not the first man to lie to me before ten a.m.,” a woman answers, dry as good gin.
I move before my brain decides to second-guess. In the formal living room, Junia Wolfe stands beside the long table like she owns her corner of it by merit alone. She’s around fifty, dark hair with a white streak she wears like heritage, boots that belong to a person who expects to be on her feet, a linen shirt rolled to the elbows. Her bag is soft leather, scuffed, heavy. She looks atme and the look isn’t greed or pity. It’s assessment, patient and specific.
“Hi. I’m Phoenix,” I say.
“Junia,” she answers. “We’re going to put a face on paper and you’re going to tell me where it’s wrong until it’s right.”
Atticus has already staged the room exactly as he promised: comfortable chairs, a carafe of coffee, water, tissues, a thin blanket folded on the ottoman like we host civilized breakdowns. The windows are open a few inches. The light is good. Spencer is in a wingback at the edge, newspaper in hand, not meddling. Storm is the hinge in the doorway—present without looming. Conrad isn’t here, which somehow helps; I don’t need his need on my skin while I do this.
Junia unrolls a pencil kit and sets out pads. She doesn’t show me samples of her work. She doesn’t tell me about court cases she helped. She says, “Head shape.”
“Long,” I say. “Like he grew into it late.”
She drags a light oval.
“Hair?”
“Short. Clean. Nothing to distract.”
“Brow.”
“Straight. Strict.”
“Eyes.”
“Average size,” I say. “But you don’t see the color first. You see the…nothing…in his eyes. It’s… careful.”
“Nose.”
“Straight. Fixed once.”
She nods, sketches. She doesn’t make me relive the container. She keeps me in the room with the page. She asks about the scar near the ear. I touch my own, show her the length, the thinness. She draws it in quickly, not a flourish. She asks about the mouth. I say efficient, not mean. She puts the line down softer than I expect, and that’s somehow worse. We talk ears. Small, close. Knuckles, not soft. Watch? No. Tie? No. Shoes clean, soles quiet.
Time loses its edges. I sip water. Someone—Maverick—refills it like a ghostly butler. Junia works in cycles: marks, eraser, brush, marks. The first face is close in the jaw and wrong in the eyes. The second is wrong in the mouth. The third makes the air in my lungs change weight.
“There,” I say. I feel it in my stomach, the same hitch from the container’s doorway. “That’s him.”
Junia looks at me and then at the page and then at me again. “You’re sure enough to hate him when you see him in the wild?”
“Yes.”
She signs a small wolf’s head in the corner with a wry flourish and slides the pad toward me. “This one is yours. I’ll do two copies in the other pad for your tech and your wall. If you want me to age him up or down, I can. If you want the hair different, I can. But this, as he walked into your room, lives right here.”
“Thank you,” I say. It’s inadequate. It’s all I have without crying.
“Don’t thank me,” she says, packing the pencils with brisk care. “Tell the men to pay my invoice on time. And if this face ends up on fire in a kitchen sink, invite me to watch.”
“Deal.”
We don’t hug. She shakes my hand. Her grip is firm and ordinary. She leaves with Storm escorting her out as if he’s just taking in the morning and not calculating threats. Atticus clicks something on his phone and then sets it face down. He doesn’t touch the drawing. He waits for me to decide what comes next.
What comes next is simple: show them, and then tell them I want to be in the room when they decide what to do with this information. I pick up the top sheet and walk toward the den, heart steady. My body is doing that thing where it pretends it’s fine so my brain can finish the job.
