Harmony watched the same spot. “It’s really happening, isn’t it? Marcel’s appeal.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “It is.”
“And if he gets out…” Her voice thinned.
I tangled my fingers with hers. “He won’t touch you. Not again.”
She didn’t answer. Didn’t nod. Didn’t breathe for a moment.
Her eyes stayed locked on the ridgeline, snow drifting around her like the start of a storm.
“Eric?” she whispered.
“Hmm?”
“Do you ever feel like someone’s… waiting? Just out of sight?”
A shiver crawled down my spine.
“Yeah,” I murmured, pulling her closer. “Yeah, Sunshine, I do.”
She leaned into me, but her stare stayed fixed on the orchard and the ridge beyond, not afraid but clearly sensing something. Calculating something. Preparing for something. The back door creaked open again. Dad stepped outside, his shoulders dusted with snow, with a radio clipped to his belt. He looked tired in a way I didn’t see often; it wasn’t physical, but something deeper. The kind of tired that settled behind the ribs. His gaze landed on Harmony first, softening before shifting to me.
“Becket filled me in,” he said quietly. “Both of you inside.” He was clearly in police director mode with that tone.
Harmony nodded and slipped into the house. But he stopped me with a hand on my arm before I could follow.
For a second we just stood there, snow drifting between us.
“Eric,” he said, voice low, rougher than usual. “I need you sharp right now.”
“I am,” I answered.
He studied me the way he used to before hockey games when I was ten and trembling too hard to tighten my skates. The way a father looks at a son and sees everything he won’t say out loud.
“You love that girl,” he murmured.
It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t even an observation. It was a truth he was setting in my hands like a warning.
My jaw tightened. “Yeah. I do.”
Dad exhaled, slow and heavy. “Then you protect her. Even from herself if you have to.”
“I know.”
His voice dropped even lower. “She runs toward fire. You run into it after her. That’s how you’re built. But this. . .” He gestured out toward the orchard, the ridge, the shadowed tree line. “This isn’t a brushfire, Son. This is a man who’s spent decades building monsters who obey.”
Marcel. The name hovered unsaid, but we both felt it.
“If Marcel’s appeal moves forward… if people he worked with start circling…” Dad paused, swallowing something that looked too much like fear. “This town has seen darkness before. But not like the kind he brought into it.”
I nodded. “I won’t let anything happen to her.”
Dad’s throat bobbed. The snow kept falling, quiet and relentless.
“I know you won’t,” he said finally. “That’s what scares me.”
The words hit me in the chest. He wasn’t doubting me. He was afraid of what it would cost.
