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Halfway through, Shiloh falls asleep.

Maverick doesn’t notice right away. He reads two more pages before he glances up, sees his son’s mouth slack and his fingers loose around the brontosaurus, and his voice trails off in the middle of a sentence.

Neither of us says anything.

The nightlight hums. Down the hall, the colored lights blink.

“He’s asleep,” Maverick says quietly.

“I know.”

Another pause.

Neither of us hangs up.

“You should go to sleep too,” I whisper. “You look exhausted.”

Something tugs at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile.

“So do you.”

“I’m not the one who’s been in twelve thousand meetings.”

That gets it. The smile. Small and crooked and gone almost as fast as it came.

“Goodnight, Noelle.”

“Goodnight, Maverick.”

I end the call before I can think too much about how much I didn’t want to.

Then I sit there in the dark beside his sleeping son, holding a tablet that’s still warm, for a lot longer than I need to.

chapter

eight

Maverick

I extend the trip by four days. I don’t want to. Frankly, I’m ready to just sell my business and go home to raise turnips. I don’t even know if turnips grow in Tennessee, but this trip has been one shit show after another.

The inspection issue turns into a contractor issue, which turns into a financing issue, which turns into me seriously considering firing all of the people.

All of them. The contractor. The lender. The inspector, who I’m fairly certain I don’t have the authority to fire, and the lender’s junior analyst, who has used the phrase “circle back” eleven times this week. I’ve started keeping a tally on the corner of my legal pad.

By Wednesday afternoon, the tally has been joined by a column of numbers that don’t add up, a phone number I don’t recognize, and a small, angry drawing of a gallows that I hope no one saw.

I tell Dottie first.

She doesn’t say anything for a long time. Then she says, “Well,” in the voice she used when I was sixteen and backed my father’s truck into the mailbox.

That’s all. Just well. It’s somehow worse than yelling.

Then Shiloh.

I wait until bedtime so I can see his face when I say it. I tell myself that’s the right thing to do. Up close, on a screen, instead of a message Dottie has to read to him.

Then I watch his face crumple, and I’m not sure anymore.