"You're my mother."
"Eat. The. Sandwich. In fact, I’m not leaving until you do.” Hank crossed his arms over his chest and hunkered down as if he was prepared to sit there all night.
Reno scowled. The only person on earth more stubborn than one Steele brother was another Steele brother.
He ate the sandwich.
The deputy at the other end of the alley changed shifts at four. The new one waved at Reno through her windshield as she drove by, recognizing the truck. He waved back. The sky started its slow shift from black to gray, and he polished off the last of his coffee.
Nobody had come.
His knee had stiffened up to the point where shifting his weight made him hiss between his teeth. His knee declared its intent to make him pay for tonight tomorrow and possibly the day after that.
At five-twenty, Mary walked down the alley from the other end and stopped at the bakery’s back door.
She had keys in one hand and a thermos in the other. He watched her go inside and the door click shut behind her. A light came on in the kitchen that pushed a thin yellow seam under the door. He pulled out of his parking spot under a big spreading oak tree and pulled around front to wait for Grace.
A few minutes later, she drove up and parked down the block in front of an unoccupied storefront, leaving the spaces in front of her shop open for customers.
She wore jeans and an oversized jacket that he was pretty sure had belonged to a man taller than her, and her hair was in a braid over one shoulder. She carried two coffees across the street toward him.
He rolled down the window before she got to him and said, "Mary's already inside, and you shouldn't be out here."
"I shouldn't be a lot of things." She handed one of the cups through the window. The handoff was brief. Her fingertips brushed his and her cheeks turned pink. Neither of them looked at each other.
"Have you slept at all?" she asked.
"Hank came and sat with me for a while last night. I got a decent nap."
"That's not real sleep."
He shrugged.
She said in her best stern mommy voice, which was cute but surprisingly effective, "You're going to drive home, take off the brace, eat something hot, and sleep until afternoon. Preferably late afternoon."
"Yes, Ma'am.” He flashed her a grin.
"That isn't a request."
"No Ma'am."
"And tonight, you’re not coming until midnight. The deputy can cover things until then.”
"Are you giving me orders?" He tried to keep the amusement out of his voice but failed.
"I'm giving you boundaries."
He felt a small burst of gladness that startled him into mumbling, "All right."
“Good.” A pause. Then, stiffly, “And thank you.” She crossed the street to the bakery and didn't look back. He watched her unlock the door and disappear inside.
The sky had come the rest of the way out of the dark while he wasn't watching and was pink as the sun got ready to clear the eastern horizon.
He took a long sip of the coffee she’d brought him. It was the best thing he'd put in his mouth in three days.
The voice he'd been carrying for three years, the one that came with the stricken faces and the woman in the front row, was distant tonight, like a radio playing in another house. He could still hear it if he stopped to listen hard. Tonight, he didn’t stop.
He drove to Dillon’s place tiredly, and it took every bit of the caffeine in the coffee Grace had given him to get him there awake. Walter was waiting on the porch when he pulled into the drive. The dog met him at the top of the steps and stood there in the cold morning watching him approach, his tail wagging slowly.
