Page 55 of Reckoning

Lilith grinned. “Yes, we do. Abel, will you please clear the table while I get dessert?”

“Anything for my sweetheart!” he said, and was carrying their plates to the sink when Briar’s phone rang.

She glanced at caller ID and frowned. “It’s Dad. I should answer.”

“Absolutely,” Tate said.

She got up from the table and walked a short distance away. “Hello? Dad? Is anything wrong?”

“Hey, honey. I was about to pay some bills online and I can’t find my credit card, and I don’t remember the number. Do you have it?”

“No. You never gave it to me for anything,” she said.

“Crap. I’m gonna be so pissed off at myself if I’ve lost it,” Roger said.

“Wait! Tate might be able to help,” Briar said, and went back to where Tate was sitting. “It’s Dad. He’s lost his credit card. Do you think…”

“Let me,” Tate said, and took the phone out of her hands. “It’s me, Mr. Lowe. Just say my name so I can connect.”

Roger blinked, thinking he was crazy for even falling for this, then did it anyway. “Tate.”

Tate closed his eyes. A few seconds later, he answered, “You used it for a bookmark. It’s inside a book beside the table where you sleep,” and then he handed the phone back to Briar.

Roger was already on the move, running for the living room to the sofa where he spent his nights. And there, on the table, was the book he’d been reading before he went to sleep last night. He opened it, turned it upside down, and shook the pages, and the credit card fell out.

“Dad, it’s me again. Did you find it?”

Roger sighed. “Yes. Good grief. How the hell does he do that? Tell him thank you for me.”

“Yes, I will,” Briar said, and hung up. “Tate, Dad says thank you, and how the hell do you do that?”

Tate shrugged. “I’m hardwired. Do you want ice cream on your dessert?” he asked.

She nodded. “Yes, please.”

After dessert was eaten, Tate and Briar went out back to the porch swing and sat down in it. He pulled her close with his good arm, kissed the top of her head, and pushed off in the swing with the toe of his shoe.

The familiar creak of the swing set off the tree frogs. Night had come to Star Ridge, and the nightlife with it.

“Your mother…she hurt your feelings, didn’t she?” Tate asked.

Briar leaned her head against his shoulder. “My whole life with her has been an apology for not being the son she wanted. No matter what I did, it was wrong, or not enough. She saw me as less than, but as I grew up, she began treating me like her competition. Our bond was something she couldn’t control and, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t break. So, she targeted your mother instead. In my head, I know she’s a narcissist and an alcoholic. She’s never been able to see past her own point of view. But it didn’t make growing up her child any easier.”

Tate listened, just letting her talk, because he knew in all those years Mariah had never once said, “I love you,” to her daughter.

Night held them within the shelter of darkness, blurring their faces and making it easier to say what they were feeling. “I love you. I cherish you. I honor you. You are my everything,” Tate said.

“I thought I understood love until I almost lost you,” Briar said. “When you passed out in the storm shelter and I couldn’t wake you up, I knew it would be the end of me too. I don’t understand the bond we have, but I know it’s unbreakable.”

And then from inside the house, the strains of a song filtered out into the night. At first it was just single notes from a guitar, then a woman with a haunting voice singing barely above a whisper.

Tate knew the song. “Lullaby.”

Lilith loved the song because it was played on with an Omnichord and guitars, like music from the mountains.

The singer’s voice rose with the melody of the song.

Tate reached for her then, cupping the side of her face.