“When?”
“Wednesday afternoon.I also timed the drive and calculated the optimal arrival window for watching the sunset.”
She wiped the tears off her cheeks.“Grayson Lawton.You’re telling me you calculated the optimal arrival window for a sunset.”
“Seven-twenty.Twenty-two minutes of pre-sunset light followed by the full color display.”
“The full color display,” she repeated, shaking her head.“You are the most ridiculous man I have ever met.”
“So I’ve been told.As recently as yesterday, in fact.By your daughter.”
“She adores you, you know.”
He answered without thinking, “I adore her, too.”
He looked up quickly.“I’m sorry.They’re your children.I don’t mean to overstep.”
“You’re not.And it goes without saying the Noah worships you.”
Gray grinned.“Those questions of his are going to be the death of me.The day’s coming soon when I’m going to have to scramble to stay ahead of him and know the answers.”
He set up the camp chairs in the back of his truck and carried the cooler, thermoses, and bag of food to the tailgate.He also tossed the blanket in the truck bed so they could sit under it later without freezing.Then he hopped up beside Bonnie, who was still sitting on the tailgate.Their legs hung over the edge, boots dangling above the mud.
“What did you bring to eat?I’m starving,” she announced cheerfully.
“Lemon chicken,” he said, opening the cooler.“And roasted potatoes with, and I quote Noah, little bits of green stuff sticking to them.There’s pecan pie for dessert.Noah briefed me on your preferences.”
“My seven-year-old briefed you.”
“He was extremely thorough.He also told me you always say you shouldn’t get the pie and then get it anyway.So I skipped moderation and just brought the whole pie.”
Her gaze softened with a flicker of wonder.“He’s not wrong about the pie.”
“Noah’s not wrong about much.He just delivers information without any filter between the data and the output.”
“You realize you just described yourself.”
That was fair.Mostly.“I’d like to think I have marginally better filters than Noah.”
“Marginally.”She pulled the container of pie out of the cooler.“I’m eating a slice of this first.”
“From a nutritional standpoint, the order in which you consume the food doesn’t materially affect ...”
“Gray.”
“Yes.”
“Give me a fork.”
He produced two forks.They sat on the tailgate of his truck eating pecan pie straight from the pan while the sunset blazed in front of them and the mud field reflected the light like hammered copper.She ate with the unguarded enjoyment of a person who’d spent far too many years denying herself things she wanted.
They ate the chicken and the potatoes, and they talked but not about the investigation, not about the mayor, not about the evidence that was on its way to Helena.They talked about everything but that.
Instead they talked about the kids.About Noah’s latest question, which was whether butterflies remembered being caterpillars, and Gray admitted he’d spent forty minutes reading lepidoptera research papers because the question had genuinely bothered him.This made Bonnie laugh again.
They talked about Cassidy’s voracious reading habit, how she consumed books the way Gray did, compulsively, completely as if unanswered questions were a personal insult.
“She gets that from me,” Bonnie said.Then she paused, surprised by her own words.“I used to be like that.Before the fire.Before my marriage went south.Before I had two young kids.I used to read for fun.Novels, history, science.I used to be curious about everything.”
