Page 27 of Deacon

I stopped in the middle of the room. Matty did too, and Jade went still at my shoulder, reading the change in me before I had decided what I felt about it. Dad didn’t need to say the name. Only so many men from my childhood still struck him as the perfect answer to a question I had never asked.

He opened the door.

Jude Mallory stood there with a bottle of wine in one hand and the same polished smile he had worn since we were teenagers, as though he had spent years practicing how to look harmless and interested at the same time. He was handsome in the clean, respectable way my father appreciated, with a steady job, neat hair, good posture, and the confidence of a man who understood which doors opened more easily when people approved of him.

Matty spoke first. “You comin’ off shift?”

It sounded casual enough. It wasn’t a welcome.

“No. Your dad and I ran into each other at the store.” Jude stepped inside anyway.

“I invited him,” Dad said as he shut the door. “He remembered your mother’s pot roast.”

Of course he did.

Jude looked at me and smiled. “I haven’t had one of these dinners since we were kids.”

That was true. He had known us long enough to make belonging look natural. He had grown up circling the edges of our lives through summer cookouts, holiday drop-ins, graduation parties, and random afternoons when Matty dragged half the neighborhood through the backyard. He worked with Matty now, which made it even easier for Dad to slide him into place. Familiarity had always been Jude’s strongest card, and he played it like a man convinced it would eventually pay out.

“Family dinner is usually family, Dad.”

Dad looked at me as though I were being difficult for sport. “Jude is not a stranger, Lila.”

“No,” Jade said dryly. “That’s kind of the issue.”

A laugh nearly escaped me. I swallowed it and touched her arm in warning, mostly for appearances.

She glanced up at me with wide-eyed innocence. “What? He’s still doing this?”

Jude laughed, though something in it pulled tight. “Still sharp, huh?”

“She comes by it honestly,” Matty muttered.

Jude crossed to him and pulled him into a quick, familiar hug that landed heavier than Matty seemed to invite. It wasn’t exactly awkward. They worked together and had known each other too long for the gesture to be strange, but I caught the brief stiffness in my brother’s shoulders before he smoothed it over and stepped back.

Jude turned toward me next and opened his arms as though I were the natural next stop.

Jade moved first. She caught my wrist and said brightly, “Mom, you were going to show me how to save Grandpa’s roast before it became a crime scene.”

She tugged me toward the kitchen with such determined sweetness that I almost smiled. I let her pull me away.

The second we were alone, she turned on me. “Why is Grandpa like this?”

I lifted the lid from the roast, mostly because I needed something to do with my hands. Steam rolled upward, carrying beef, onions, rosemary, and a scent I knew well enough to make my chest ache before I tasted anything.

“Because your grandfather still thinks life can be fixed with enough planning.”

“That was not an answer.”

“It was the answer.”

Jade leaned against the counter and folded her arms. “No, really. Why him?”

I kept my attention on the pan. “Because your grandfather thinks I should be married, and Jude looks safe on paper.”

Her expression sharpened. “We are fine.”

“I know.”