The warning replayed in my head as I stepped back inside.
I didn’t have a framework for fatherly love. Or a reference point for what normal concern sounded from a parent because I’d never had one long enough to build one. Maybe this was just what it felt like.
I closed the door. They waited in the living room, bonds pulsing with varying degrees of concern, faces trying very hard not to look as suspicious as they felt.
“He seems… nice,” Percy offered.
Solomon didn’t dignify that with a response.
“He’s your father. I know you’d want to try reconnecting,” Lucian said. “But be careful. The man just suddenly appeared in your life.”
“Agreed,” Solomon said.
Be careful.
The same words sat in my chest.
Everyone kept telling me to be careful. The irony almost made me laugh.
But beneath the warnings, things were good. The kind of good I’d stopped believing existed back when happy endings only happened in the books I read under the covers with a flashlight.
Maybe I could finally hope for one of my own.
29
— • —
Lucian
Thiago Maxwell visited four times in five days.
Each visit followed the same pattern. He arrived mid-morning, unannounced, as if he memorized our schedule. He brought gifts. A tin of tea Mira’s mother apparently used to drink. A photograph of Mira as a toddler. A scarf in a shade of blue that matched her eye.
Each gift landed in the same place. The soft, unprotected center of a woman who’d spent years wondering why her father left.
But I watched him. We all did.
On the third visit, while Thiago sat on the porch with Mira and she laughed at a story about her mother’s terrible cooking, I pulled Solomon and Percy into the kitchen.
“Assessment,” I said.
Solomon leaned against the counter with his arms crossed. “His story holds. On the surface.”
“But?”
“No one drives back roads for two days on instinct and finds an unmarked cabin in the woods.” He let the implication sit. “He found us too easily.”
Percival sat on the counter, legs swinging, but the casual posture was deceptive. His hazel eyes were gold at the edges. “She’s happy, though. You can feel it through the bond.”
He was right. Since Thiago’s arrival, a warmth had settled into Mira’s frequency that I’d never felt before. An older ache, finally being addressed. A wound from before us.
“She told me about the foster homes last night,” Percy said. “Seven placements in twelve years. The last family returned her when she was sixteen because their biological daughter didn’t want to share a room.”
My jaw tightened.
“She said she stopped unpacking after the third placement.” Percy’s hands gripped the counter edge. “Kept everything in a bag by the door so she’d be ready when they sent her back. She was eight.”
The kitchen was quiet.
