Gerald observed all of this from beside the salt shaker. His button eyes was fixed on us with what I could only describe as smug satisfaction.
I looked at him for a moment. Then I looked away.
Lily's grin widened. "I'll tell him you said so."
Later, after she was in bed, I stood at the kitchen sink and looked out at the dark garden and thought about twelve years of moving from one place to the next, of packing in eight minutes and leaving without looking back. I had always chosen the next rig or the next town over any version of a life that might actually ask something of me.
I'd always been a bit lost. I knew that. Had known it for a long time, had just gotten good at moving fast enough that it didn't show.
But this.
This made it worth it.
All of it—the rigs, the years, the cold, and the noise. Every long, flat horizon going nowhere was just a road I had to take to stand in this kitchen. I was here with a five-year-old asleep upstairs who had her mother's laugh and a rabbit with opinions.
And it was worth it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Madison
I’d been on since seven and it was now half past six. All I wanted was something I didn't have to cook for more than twenty minutes. The supermarket was quiet at this hour, the after-work rush thinning out, leaving a few tired people moving through the aisles with the focus of those who hadn't eaten since lunch.
I was in the cereal aisle, looking for the one thing I actually needed, when I saw her.
Lily was standing in front of the children's vitamins display with a bottle in each hand. She was reading the labels with a frown of concentration that was completely out of proportion to the task. She was still in her school uniform, her backpack on, a long, plush rabbit's ear poking out from the top of the zipper.
I looked up.
Jack was two metres away. He was standing in front of the lunchbox aisle with the look of a man who had been there a while and wasn't getting anywhere. He hadn't seen me yet.
I had a clear path to the next aisle. I could have been gone in ten seconds.
"It's the doctor lady," Lily said.
Jack looked up.
For a second, nobody said anything. Then I walked over.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi," Lily said. She held up both vitamin bottles. "Which one."
I looked at them. One was a standard children's multivitamin. The other was a gummy version with twice the sugar and half the actual vitamins. "That one," I said, pointing to the first.
She put the other bottle back with the decisiveness of someone who had just been waiting for a second opinion to confirm her own. "I told him that one," she said. She gave Jack a look that suggested this had been a significant point of contention.
Jack looked at me. His expression was weary, the look of a man who had been outmatched by a five-year-old for the better part of an hour. "They looked the same to me."
"They’re not," I said.
"Apparently not."
I looked at his basket. It was reasonable enough: pasta, tinned tomatoes, bread, apples, eggs. But he was rooted in place in the lunchbox aisle, staring at the shelves like he was trying to solve an equation that didn't add up.
"Problem?" I said.
"She needs packed lunches," he said. "Starting Monday. School sent a list."