Page 26 of Deacon

Frustration burned through his chest. He would remain inside this night if it was all he had left of her. He would live within it and replay every touch until the rest of the world decayed beyond its edges.

But her voice kept finding him through the dark.

Beneath the anger and panic, a terrible truth began pressing closer. Something was calling him out of the memory.

Something was taking her away again.

8

Lila

By Sunday evening, I had almost convinced myself one family dinner would not kill me.

That optimism lasted until I pulled into my father’s driveway and saw Matty’s truck parked out front. Beside me, Jade looked up from the sketchbook in her lap, took one glance through the windshield, and sighed with the kind of suffering only a dramatic sixteen-year-old could make look sincere.

“If Uncle Matty puts me in a headlock and asks what I’m drawing, I’m reporting his truck stolen.”

I snorted. “You are not.”

“He knows I’ve hated Doodles since middle school.”

“He’ll retire it when he dies.”

She shut the sketchbook and dropped her head against the seat. “So never. Great.”

A small, real laugh escaped me, easing some of the tightness in my chest before I opened the door. My father’s house looked exactly as it always had, neat brick and trimmed hedges, everything orderly enough to suggest the people inside should be too. It was the kind of house that treated chaos like a personal failure. Growing up there meant learning to carry discomfort quietly enough that it passed for good manners.

Jade grabbed her sketchbook and climbed out beside me. “You ready?”

“No.”

Her mouth twitched. “Good. Me neither.”

Matty opened the door before we could knock. “There they are.” His light-brown hair was pushed back in the same careless way he had worn it since high school, and the soft scruff along his jaw did nothing to hide the easy grin that made him look younger than he was. He still carried the broad shoulders of the athlete he had once been, though life had settled him into them now instead of daring him to use them.

He hugged me first, easy and automatic, and for one second it still felt like being twelve and safe and home before life grew clever and complicated. Then he spotted Jade and lit up the way he always did around her, as though every eye roll she had ever thrown at him only made him more determined to adore her.

“Hey, Doodles. Whatcha been doodlin’?” Before she could escape, he hooked an arm around her shoulders and dragged her into one of the half-headlock hugs he had inflicted on her since she was small enough to find them funny.

“Uncle Matty, stop.” She shoved at him with the edge of her sketchbook. “My hair.”

He laughed and tightened his arm for another second. “What? You too grown up for your favorite uncle now?”

“Yes.” She smacked his arm harder, and Dad’s voice carried from deeper in the house.

“Leave the girl alone.”

Matty released her with a grin that promised he had learned nothing. Jade immediately began fixing her hair with the offended dignity of someone who had been grievously wronged in public.

Dad appeared in the foyer a second later, silver threaded heavily through his neatly cut hair and close-trimmed beard. Age had sharpened the lines around his pale eyes without softening the assessing look behind them. He wore a pressed shirt and the same controlled expression he had carried through most of my childhood, every inch the man who had once worn a badge and never learned how to stop expecting the world to line up when he gave it a look.

He kissed my cheek, brushed another kiss over Jade’s temple, then looked at me. “I tried making your mother’s pot roast. Go see if you can save it.”

I stared at him. “Hello to you too.”

His mouth almost twitched. “That was hello.”

I had barely turned toward the kitchen when the doorbell rang. Dad glanced toward the foyer and said, “That must be him.”