“Rafe,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Tell me about summer up here.”
I looked at the ceiling. “Short. Maybe ten weeks of real warmth. The whole valley goes green at once—like it’s been waiting and then it just goes, all at once. Wildflowers above the treeline. The creek runs fast from snowmelt until July.”I paused. “It’s loud in summer. Winter’s the quiet season. Summer everything’s moving.”
“I want to see it,” she said.
“I know.” I turned my head to look at her. “You will.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then: “I’m going to call Bree today. Start building the foundation prospectus for real. Not in my head—on paper, with numbers.”
“Good.”
“She’ll have something to say about all of it.”
“You’ll enjoy that.”
She laughed. “I really will.” She sat up, pulling the sheet around her, and looked at me. “And I’m reapplying to Wharton today. I want it said out loud in the daylight. To a person. Not just in my own head.”
“You just said it out loud to a person.”
“I did.” She turned her hands over in her lap, once. “My father’s going to push back.”
“He can push back all he wants,” I said. “It’s not his call.”
She went still. Her chin came up a fraction and something moved across her face—not resolved, not fixed, but different from the version that had been managing around Warren Grant her entire life.
“Nobody’s ever said that about him to me,” she said. “About it being my call. Not once.”
“It always was.”
She reached out and touched my jaw, one hand, brief. Then she got up and went to find her clothes.
I lay there another minute and looked at the ceiling and thought about what was waiting on the other side of tomorrow: the drive south, the city, Warren’s world closing back in around her. She was going to walk back into all of it. The question was what she’d do once she got there.
I already knew the answer. I’d known it since the drive-through, since she’d tracked the hawk and gone quiet over the dry lake bed and stood under the mountains with her mouth open.
I just needed to be along for it.
Warren called while London was on the porch.
I heard the call connect through the open door.
“London.” Warren’s voice carried in the cold air, compressed and certain, the voice of a man who considered follow-up questions a character flaw. “The threat’s been cleared. Be ready to return tomorrow.”
A pause.
“I’m fine, Daddy.” Her voice was even. Not placating—just true.
“I trust you’re intact.”
She looked out at the valley. “More than intact.”
A beat. Warren didn’t know what to do with that. She didn’t help him.
“Be ready at seven.”
