She pulls back enough to look at me.
Tears on her face.
Fire underneath.
“Good,” she says.
One word.
Not permission.
Not approval.
A warning.
Good.
The woman is still standing.
Outside, Widowmaker waits in the driveway with rain drying on her black tank and a stupid dinosaur keychain hanging from my keys inside.
Inside, my house smells like cereal, fear, and a war starting.
Jeremy Vale has just put his hand inside my home without opening the door.
I’m going to break every finger.
Chapter Fifteen
Derby
The next morning the dinosaur sits on my kitchen table like a dead thing.
Blue plastic. Big teeth. Stupid yellow eyes. A toy meant for a little boy, meant to make him smile, meant to look innocent enough that anybody else would call us paranoid for treating it like evidence.
I know better.
So does Amelia.
So does every man in my house.
The note sits beside it.
Daddy knows best.
Three words.
Three plain, smug, limp-dicked words that make my vision go clean around the edges.
I don’t lose my temper the way people think I do. Not really. I run my mouth. I threaten. I swing when swinging makes more sense than talking. But real rage, the kind that settles down deep and stops making noise, that is different. That kind of rage doesn’t shout.
It plans.
August is in the bedroom now with Lottie and Janie. Lottie got him out of the kitchen fast, talking about snacks and dinosaur court appeals like she wasn’t white around the mouth. Janie followed with Blue Rex, leaving the new dinosaur on the table because none of us are letting that thing near the kid until Wildcat strips it apart.
Amelia stands near the sink, arms wrapped around herself, staring at the note.
She hasn’t cried since August left the room.