I rest my hand over my stomach again, the gesture no longer feeling strange. “I’m okay.”
She exhales, relief written plainly across her face. “I worry.”
“I know. You always have.”
She sits beside me, close enough that our shoulders touch. “I just want you to be happy, Katie.”
The nickname tugs at something deep and old. “I am,” I say, surprising us both with how true it feels. “Not in the way you probably imagined. But I am.”
She smiles, eyes shining. “I never imagined much beyond you being safe.”
The room falls quiet for a moment, filled with the soft hum of the city outside and the faint rustle of shopping bags settling into place.
“You know, when you were little, you used to make me read you gossip magazines before bed.”
I laugh. “More like you loved reading me those magazines before bed.”
“I did,” she admits. “They were ridiculous and dramatic and full of lives that weren’t ours. It was an escape.”
“And now I write them.”
She nudges my knee. “You made a career out of bedtime stories. I’m proud of you.”
Emotion wells up unexpectedly, thick and warm. “You did the best you could. I know that.”
She reaches for my hand, squeezing. “So will you.”
Mom asked about the father once, and I told her the truth. It was a one-night stand. I didn’t tell her about Somalia; she was mad enough that I went there without telling her. She accepted it without second thought, and I’m grateful for that.
Later, after she’s gone to bed and the apartment settles into its nighttime quiet, I wander through the living room, picking uptiny socks and placing them into a basket, straightening things that don’t need straightening.
I pause by the window, city lights reflecting at me, and press my palm to the glass, thinking about James. I’ve done everything I can to find him, and he’s determined not to be found. The realization isn’t bitter—it’s calm.
He didn’t stay. He didn’t promise. He didn’t soften the truth to spare my feelings. In his own brutal way, he was honest, and that honesty changed me in ways I’m still uncovering.
“This is going to be okay,” I whisper to myself as much as to the life growing inside me. “I’m going to do right by you. I don’t know how yet. But I will.”
Outside, a siren wails briefly before fading into the distance. Life continues. Always has. Always will.
James is out there somewhere, moving through the world like a shadow, doing things I don’t want to imagine. He exists beyond my reach, beyond my understanding, and for the first time since Somalia, that truth doesn’t feel like an open wound.
It feels like closure.
12
RYDER
Dawn comes slow in the mountains, light bleeding into the valley. I move through it without hurry, boots quiet against frost-hardened ground, breath steady, senses open. This is the hour I prefer—the thin line between night and day, when the world hasn’t decided what it’s going to demand yet. The air is sharp, clean, and cold enough to sting but not enough to bite.
The rifle sits easy in my hands, familiar as my own weight. Out here, there’s no rush, no countdown ticking in the back of my skull. I track because I enjoy it. It reminds me what patience looks like when it isn’t weaponized.
A bird startles from a nearby branch, wings beating hard.
“Easy,” I murmur, not lifting my head. “I see you.”
The sound of my own voice doesn’t feel strange out here. It never has. I talk to the trees when the wind shifts through them, to the dogs at my heels, to the animals I hunt and thank when I take them. Not because I expect an answer, but because silence doesn’t need to be empty to be respected.
The dogs range ahead of me—lean bodies moving through brush with the kind of quiet purpose that only comes from good breeding and better training. German Shorthaired Pointers—built for distance, endurance, and focus. I raised them from eight weeks old, trained them myself, shaped every instinct with patience and repetition instead of force.
