Near the outdoor table, Brynn looked up from the chair her husband had attempted to make her sit in for the third time in fifteen minutes. Wyatt slept against her chest in a soft wrap, one tiny fist tucked beneath his cheek, and her expression suggested motherhood had not dimmed her appetite for violence.
“Summer,” she said, “if you say bottleneck one more time, I’m going to throw a slider at you.”
Jerrick slid a plate into Brynn’s hand before she could weaponize anything. “Eat first.”
“I am eating.”
“You're threatening.”
“Multitasking is a leadership skill.”
Nick stood at the grill beside Max, one hand resting near the handle, the other holding tongs he had not needed for at least three minutes. Max had arrived from Rome with Rayann two days ago and had taken silent command of the outdoor cooking situation within ninety seconds.
Nick had allowed it, which told me two things: he respected competence, and he was nervous in the nearly invisible way only someone who knew how to read him would notice.
Nick did not fidget or fill silence, and he never made restless laps through a room just to prove he had somewhere to put his energy. Instead, his tension lived in smaller places: the angle of his shoulders, the way his thumb brushed once along the side of the tongs, and the quiet inventory his eyes kept making as they moved from the grill to the patio doors, then to the edge of the pool, before landing on the fourteen-year-old girl standing near Daisy with a laminated badge in her hand.
Sofia arrived two days ago with a backpack, a duffel, three books, one pair of aggressively blue sneakers, and the calm, assessing stare of a person who had inherited her father’s observational skills and absolutely none of his interest in pretending not to judge. Two of the books were fantasy. I said nothing, because I was an adult woman with excellent restraint and only a minor tightening around my glass to betray me.
She'd met me before. Spring break three months ago, over dinner at Nick’s townhouse and one deeply tense walk along the waterfront where both of us had tried so hard not to perform that we had nearly become pre-programmed hospitality bots.
We didn't hug each other, and we both respected that, which was how I knew we might survive each other. This, however, was different. Sofia was meeting the full Wilder family ecosystem, and no one should have to experience that without protective equipment. Daisy, apparently, agreed.
Sofia stared down at the badge hanging from a lanyard around her neck. “Wilder Horizons Junior Crisis Consultant.”
“Temporary title,” Daisy said. “Mostly ceremonial. Also legally meaningless.”
Sofia looked from the badge to Daisy. “What does it authorize me to do?”
“Survive dinner.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s the advanced placement version.”
Sofia’s mouth twitched, and Nick saw it.
He looked away before anyone else could catch him watching. Too late. The tiny breaks in his restraint had become familiar now: the near-smiles, the lowered lashes, the way his face softened when Sofia forgot to hold herself apart for half a second and became a girl instead of a carefully armored adolescent testing the edges of her father’s new life.
Six months in Maris Key had changed him in ways most people would miss.
He still woke early, moved quietly, preferred direct answers and clean sight lines, and stored knives where knives belonged. He looked slightly offended by decorative pillows and deeply suspicious of people who said “circle back” without imminent threat.
But there were shirts in his closet now that were not field khaki, technical gray, or black. There was a pair of flip flops by his front door he had once called “structurally unserious” and now wore without comment. Sofia had a room at his townhouse now, with her books on the shelf, a ridiculous flamingo throw pillow she'd bought specifically to irritate him, and a small framed photo from her spring break visit tucked on the desk. Nick and Sofia at the beach, both squinting into the sun, both pretending they hadn't enjoyed themselves.
He had gone to D.C. four times since January. Sofia had come to Florida once in March and now again for the start of summer. The calendars were complicated, the flights were annoying, and phone calls had become sacred territory. Easy had never been the goal. Real mattered more.
“Are they always like this?” Sofia asked.
I stepped beside her near the patio doors, where the air smelled of grilled pineapple, sea salt, sunscreen, cut limes, and expensive cologne losing a brave fight against the humidity.
“No,” I said.
Near the grill, Rayann was explaining something to Max with both hands, full-body emphasis, and the kind of volume usually reserved for evacuation orders.
Sofia watched her for three seconds. “Worse?”
“Much.”
