“You’d think we moved to Alaska with how bad the wind chill is out there,” he mutters to no one in particular.
He shrugs his layers off and hangs them on the rack by the door.
Then, he toes his boots off and sets them on the mat.
It’s all painfully ordinary until his gaze lifts and catches on the three men sitting at his dining room table.
He blinks once, slow and deliberate, as if giving his brain a chance to reset what he’s seeing.
“Morning…” His eyes sweep the table taking in the plates, the mugs, the unmistakable evidence of a breakfast already had, then land back on the me. “What’s all this?”
Dean is the first to recover.
He leans back in his chair and gives a lopsided grin that’s probably worked on half the women he’s ever met.
Too bad my father isn’t one of them. “Happy birthday, Richard. You were out late last night. Get into any trouble?”
Dad’s eyebrows lift a fraction. “Not so much. Surprised to see you boys here already… You always show up for people’s birthdays at eight in the morning?”
“Only for you.”
He grunts, unimpressed, and sets his keys in the bowl by the door before swinging it shut.
I can already see the slight narrowing of his eyes, the tilt of his head, the gears turning behind that calm expression.
When Eli insisted the guys stay for breakfast, I’d counted on Dad’s voluntary shift at the station to dull his senses, maybe even keep him too tired to care about details of Grant, Dean, and Callum already being here, but it didn’t save us from scrutiny.
Eli squeals, sliding out of his seat and bouncing across the room.
His socks skid on the hardwood.
For a second, I think he’s going to crash straight into my father’s knees but instead, he stops just in time and thrusts a folded piece of construction paper up into the air. “Grampy! Look! When Dean was making breakfast, I made you a card!”
Dad’s expression doesn’t change much, but I see the exact moment the information registers.
The slight straightening of his shoulders as he takes the card from my son and reads it.
It’s the same look he always gets when something doesn’t add up.
“Dean made breakfast, huh?” he repeats, tone deceptively mild. “How early did you all get up?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Grant stiffen.
It’s the smallest flex of his shoulders betraying his instinct to step in. And of course he does, smooth and unflappable as ever.
“We came by early to take you out. Thought we’d surprise you with breakfast for your birthday, but you were still out. So we ended up making breakfast for Noelle and Eli instead.”
His delivery is flawless, said like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Like the three of them have been showing up at our house at dawn for decades in the name of tradition to cook Dad breakfast.
But my dad isn’t just anyone.
He’s spent thirty-five years as a fire chief running headfirst into burning buildings and dealing with people at their most panicked, most reckless, and most human moments.
He’s built a career on reading people, on noticing what they don’t say and what their actions do when they’re lying.
On what their eyes flick toward when they’re hiding something they don’t want known.
