Page 23 of She Autumn Be Mine

“But it’s all crashing down now.” Her eyes closed. Tears came out from under the lids anyway. “You can’t fix this one. Not even you can save me from what’s coming.”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head, and the shake turned into round three with the porcelain god.

By the end of it she was done—a rag-doll in my arms, practically asleep while I wiped her face with a warm cloth, gentle. I carried her to bed, got her boots off, and put her under the quilt.

For a minute, I stood there in the dark while she burrowed in, one hand curling up under her chin. My heart went out to her.

I bent and pressed a kiss to her temple. She didn’t stir.

“I’ve got the watch. You rest, little Mama,” I whispered. Even now—wrecked, hair stuck to her cheek—she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever stood guard over. I kissed her temple once more and let my lips stay a second longer than a friend would.

I checked on Stetson—flat on his back in the crib, arms flung wide, king of everything, breathing those big honest baby breaths. His blanket didn’t need it, but I straightened anyway. Then I brought a kitchen chair into her room, set it by the bed where I could see them both, and settled in for the night, replaying the events in my head.

That’s when I noticed the manila envelope on the nightstand, half under a book from the library about parenting. The flap open, court papers half out. One peek and I made out a law firm’s return address on the outside.

A bad man found her today.

It all fell into place. The stranger from the Copper Cup had been looking for her for somebody so that today they could put an envelope in her hands, and turn a whole summer of laughing again into peach schnapps and bad karaoke.

She’d been served.

I sat in that chair for a long time without looking at it. It was hers. Her business, her fight, her right to tell me or not tell me. I made that argument to myself over and over—and finally lost.

I reached for it and slid the papers out, because she was going to wake up tomorrow ashamed and scared and armored up to her chin, and tell me it was nothing. But I could not protect her against a thing I’d never seen.

The caption did its cold legal talking—district court, suit for full custody. I shook my head because there was no way she’d ever give up Stetson.

There, typed plain in the middle of the page, was finally a name I could attach to her enemy.

Petitioners: Mr. And Mrs. Stuart Eaton.

No mention of the father.

My heart dropped through the floor around page two. Somewhere around page twenty it came back up different. Harder. I squared the papers, slid them back in the envelope, set the book over it the way I’d found it, and sat back in the kitchen chair in the dark. I counted her breaths, while the machine in me that had planned harder missions than this before, began quietly to turn.

They served her today, probably figuring she’d spend the weekend coming apart.

But they had no idea who was sitting in the chair beside her bed, watching over her.

SEVEN

Pictured

Autumn

I woke to the smell of grilled cheese, and the sound of my little Stetson somewhere in the apartment chatting away.

“That right? Well when your mama gets up, I’ll see what she has to say about it.” Jake’s voice?

I groaned and shifted onto my side. Moving turned out to be a mistake—my skull beat like a drum from the inside.

On the nightstand, I could barely see the outline of a glass of water and two aspirin. Maybe a sleeve of saltine crackers sitting at the ready.

Ugh. And the evil manila envelope some man had given me when I took the trash out before work last night.

Autumn Triggs? You’ve been served.