I pocket the phone with a shit-eating grin and head for my truck.
The diner sits on the county road that runs past Grace's vet clinic—technically still ranch property on one side, civilization on the other.
Five minutes from the main house if you don't hit the cattle guard too fast.
Grace is already in the booth when I walk in, the baby in a carrier on the seat beside her, and Dakota across from her stealing a piece of bacon off Grace's plate.
Shadow's not here. He's running an errand in town, something for the vet clinic, and Grace waved him off because she wanted breakfast with her sister and her father without her husband hovering.
"He hovers," Grace told me once, not quite complaining. "Like a six-foot-four shadow with a gun."
I slid into the booth beside the baby. My grandson.
Four months old and already built like his father. Solid, big hands, and dark eyes that track everything in the room. Shadow's boy through and through.
I touch his cheek with one finger and he grabs it, holds on with a grip that's stronger than it should be.
"Morning, Pops." Dakota slides a menu across the table. "You look less like death than you did last night."
"High praise."
"I try."
Grace studies me over her coffee.
She's got her mother's coloring—lighter, softer—but her eyes are mine. Sharp. Reading me the way she reads an X-ray, looking for the fracture beneath the surface.
"Dakota told me," she says. Simply. No judgment.
"I figured she would."
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
Grace and Dakota exchange a look. The look sisters share when their father says he's fine and they both know he's full of shit.
"You're fine?" Dakota repeats. "You officially dumped your ex-wife of thirty years yesterday and you'refine."
"She's not my ex-wife of thirty years. She's my ex-wife of thirteen years who kept acting like she wasn't."
"Pops."
"I'm fine, Dakota."
The waitress comes. I order the usual—eggs, bacon, toast, black coffee.
Grace orders a fruit plate because she's been on a health kick since the baby came.
Dakota orders chicken fried steak because Dakota has never backed down from anything in her life, including breakfast.
While we're waiting, I notice the intern.
She's at the counter. Alone. Ball cap off—her hair is down, and it catches the light from the window in a way that makes me look twice.
Red. Not bright red, not dyed red. A deep, warm auburn that reminds me of something I can't quite figure out.
I look away.
