When he does it's quiet, the way he gets quiet right before something stops being a question.
"When did you find it?"
"Twenty minutes ago."
"In the tack room?"
"In my saddle bag."
He looks at Spur. "Church. Ten minutes."
Spur nods.
Pops looks at me. The eyes I have been calling mine my whole life. Sharp. Reading me. Looking for the fracture under the surface and finding it.
"You okay, baby girl?"
"I'm pissed, Pops."
"Good. Stay pissed. Don't be scared. The men in this club are about to make this somebody else's problem."
He stands and kisses the top of my head on his way out the door.
I sit at the table.
Marlena slides Cal into his high chair, gives him another piece of toast sliced into pieces, and pours me a coffee from the pot on the counter.
She fills the tumbler I brought in with me, sees what's etched on the side and doesn’t comment.
She slides the tumbler across the table to me. "You okay, Kota?"
"I will be."
"He'll handle it."
I almost say I know, or thank you.
I almost say a lot of things to this woman in the kitchen that used to be my mother's. With my baby brother on her hip—the half-brother I have spent nearly half a year learning to love.
I drink the coffee.
For the first time in almost a year, I sit at this table and I don't get up and walk out.
Marlena turns back to the sink.
She doesn't push, doesn't fill the silence.
* * *
I'm on the front porch with Cal asleep in a swing when church lets out.
He's asleep on me and he's heavier than he has any business being for a baby who weighs twenty-two pounds.
Marlena left him with me because she had to run something out to one of the brothers and I said I'd watch him without thinking about whether I wanted to.
I'm sitting on the porch with my brother on my chest and his fist closed around the hem of my tank top, and my mind is running a marathon.
I'm thinking about the note, Buckley, and about Spur's face when he read it.
