Trent stood in the middle of his driveway and watched the people who’d tried to destroy him—and who’d a hand in taking away his father twenty years ago—get what they deserved. He knew this was only the beginning. He knew how the law worked. Charges would be filed, both local and federal. Dutton and Courtney—they’d fight them. And they had the means.
Karl? Something told Trent that Dawson might be able to get him to turn on them for the right reduction of his sentence, and he hoped that would be the play. Why Trent still had a soft spot for Karl, he had no idea, but he did. He supposed years of running barefoot together in a place as special as the Glades did that to people.
Trent rubbed the back of his neck and glanced around. Three generations of Mallors had worked this land. His grandfather had carved it out of the Glades with nothing but stubbornness and a tolerance for heat. His father had loved it enough to testify for it, to die for it—or to disappear for it, which had turned out to be the same thing. His mother had kept it alive through grief and tight budgets and sheer refusal to quit.
And now here it was. Still standing. Still his.
Dove stepped up beside him. She didn't say anything. Just stood there with her shoulder against his arm and the morning light catching gold on the side of her face where the bruising had started to settle in around the cut.
His father appeared on his other side.
The three of them stood there watching Dawson's people work, watching Cullen joke with Buddy near the moat, watching Dolly drift past in the water below like nothing had happened, like she hadn't just taken a bullet and kept moving.
"Hell of a morning," his father said.
"Yeah." Trent looked at the moat. At the house. At the land running all the way down to where the Glades opened up and went forever. "It was."
Dove laced her fingers through his.
He looked down at their hands. Then up at his father, who was watching him with the same expression he'd had in the kitchen that morning—warm and quiet and twenty years of an absence that had finally found its way home.
“Your mother had the most beautiful wedding dress,” his father said.
“Excuse me?” Trent stared at his dad. “We nearly died, and you’re thinking about mom’s wedding dress?”
“I’m wondering if that dress is still in the closet because ever since you were born, she kept telling me that she was never gonna be the mother of the bride, and she just hoped that maybe your bride would humor and wear that dress.” His father laughed. It wasn't boisterous. Or loud. Or even humorous. But it was real and it was the same laugh Trent had been carrying in his memory for two decades even if it was slightly worn around the edges with grief but still recognizable.
“Um, we’re not discussing this right now. Or any time all that soon,” Dove said. “I think we need to let things settle for a bit.”
Trent leaned over and kissed her unbruised cheek. “Mom tried to get me to realize how much I cared for Dove the moment she learned she could cook chicken and rice soup.” Trent smiled. “Mom was always right about everything.”
“She told me within the first two hours of us meeting that we were gonna get married. I thought she was crazy. We were married three weeks later.” Jack looked out at the water. “Your mother was always right. Always.”
Trent had nothing to add to that. He just held onto Dove's hand and stood between the two of them in the morning sun on the land that was still his and let that be enough.
Chapter Twenty-Four
A month later…
A month ago, Dove would have said she wasn't a dock person.
She'd have said the humidity was oppressive and the bugs were relentless and the sounds the Glades made at night were the kind that kept a person's nervous system alert long past the point where alert was useful. She'd have said that sitting on a wooden dock in the dark, surrounded by water that contained animals capable of removing limbs, wasn’t her idea of a good evening.
She'd have been wrong.
The sky over Mallor's Landing was doing something she still didn't have words for—the way the stars came out here, without any artificial light to compete with them. The water caught the reflection and held it, and the entire world turned into something that looked like it had been painted by someone who'd never learned restraint.
Her mother sat beside her in one of Trent's Adirondack chairs, a glass of wine in her hand, her eyes open wide.
"I have to say," Rose said. “This isn’t how I pictured this place. It’s more spectacular than you described.”
"It is," Dove agreed.
Her father, Stanley, had positioned himself as far from the edge of the water as the dock would allow and was doing his level best to look casual about it. He'd spent eight years in the Army and had done things that would make most people's hair go white. But he was deeply, genuinely concerned about the alligators.
"They can't get up here," Trent said, for the third time.
"You said that about the bank," Stanley said.
