Chapter Text
The air hit him like a memory—sunbaked concrete, jet fuel, and something burnt and bitter, like old coffee left too long on the burner.
LA, he thought, always smelled like it was rotting under its own weight.
LAX at night wasn’t pretty. Flickering halogens buzzed overhead like dying insects. A baby screamed in the distance, someone cursed out a cab driver, and a man who looked half-strung-out stumbled past him mumbling to himself.
Tim Bradford stepped off the curb, a single duffel slung over one shoulder, the line of his back rigid with purpose. Thirty-eight years old. Staff Sergeant. Nearly two decades of deployment cycles, forward operating bases, and sand-crusted gear, and this—this ugly, overstimulating mess— was still the only place he’d ever call home.
A scar-torn smile pulled at his mouth as he breathed it in.
Home, sweet home.
Most trips back to the States barely counted. A week here. Ten days there. Long enough for paperwork, funerals, mandatory briefings, then right back onto another plane. Now, for the first time in a long time, he was on his own time.
He pulled out his phone. The screen lit up with a text from Genny:
You still coming? Don’t forget The Thing.
Tim snorted quietly.
“The Thing” was backup.
He still didn’t know exactly how bad things were.
But Genny had called him at two-thirty in the morning, voice shaking so hard he barely recognized it. Halfway across the world and she’d still sounded small somehow, like she was twelve again and he was sitting on the edge of her bed with a flashlight in one hand and a plastic baseball bat in the other, swearing he’d kill any monster dumb enough to come after his little sister.
She’d begged him to come home. Come help. Come make it okay again.
Could he come? Please?
He’d spent thirty minutes talking her down while pulling on boots and opening his laptop. By the time she mentioned the boys—how much they missed him, how sorry she was to ask, how she didn’t know what else to do—he was already filing leave paperwork and calling in favors.
He was already putting in the leave request before she finished the sentence and was arranging for someone to go check on her who wouldn’t take a minimum of 72 hours to get there.
That might’ve been the weirdest two a.m. text Eric Weddle had ever received, but Eric knew he owed Tim for teaching him how to throw a spiral without dislocating his shoulder in high school.
Or maybe for pointing scouts his way senior year.
Either way, Weddle had gone.
Tim’s squad had downtime coming anyway. He’d skip the leadership training, let somebody else suffer through desert survival recertification while he handled something that actually mattered.
Before wheels-up, he’d called in a few more favors. People owed him. More importantly, they trusted him enough not to ask questions first.
He thumbed out a reply.
On my way.
Then he flagged a rideshare.
The city passed in layers of grime. Billboards half-lit with peeling ads. Liquor stores with bars on the windows. A pack of teenagers loitering in a strip mall parking lot. They looked too young to be smoking but too old to be out that late and have someone waiting for them.
He’d been that age once, standing in parking lots and pretending like he had time. Like the world would wait for him to figure it all out.
Tim had been counting on football. A school somewhere far from their drunk of a father and a house that stank of sour beer and broken things.
Then came the playoffs—one blindside sack and a torn ACL.
The kind of injury you don’t bounce back from without money or miracles—and he had neither. The doctors said rehab would be long. His dad said pain built character, then he threw a bottle at the wall when Tim asked if they could maybe try to fix it.
After that, home got smaller somehow.
Tim had planned to limp through the rest of senior year on cheap painkillers, rage, and the classifieds folded in his back pocket.
He wasn’t stupid but bookwork made him want to smack his head against the wall till something fucking broke. He wasn’t going to be picky if it was the wall or his skull.
Football was it for him—the whole plan. Once football disappeared, so did every version of his life that made sense.
It wasn’t the first time that had happened.
After that, the future just… didn’t show up in his brain. Not in any usable way, anyway. There were only pieces—anger, habit, whatever was right in front of him.
And without that, there wasn’t much left to stand on.
The first time he remembered feeling like that, their mother had walked out without a word when he was eight. Genny had only been five. He still remembered holding her hand while their father screamed and the front door slammed hard enough to crack the frame.
After that, Tim became protector by default. A kid with a broken body and no real plan except surviving long enough to keep Genny safe.
Truth was, there hadn’t been a whole lot tethering him there for a long time.
But Genny still needed him.
He couldn’t leave her.
By fourteen, Genny was barely home. Straight A’s, part-time babysitting, crashing at the Donnovans’ more than her own bed. She had her eye on a scholarship—an actual future.
A month after everything went to shit, he dropped out. Forged his dad’s signature, passed the physical with a flex-tape knee brace, and enlisted.
Before he left, he told Genny to run. Keep running as far as she needed to. Stay with whoever would let her.
He showed her where their mother used to hide emergency cash and gave her the code to the bank account he’d been quietly filling since middle school.
Dog-walking money, mostly.
She didn’t need to know about the horse race bets.
Then Tim kissed her on the forehead and walked to the recruiter’s office in boots half a size too small.
The Army never asked why he enlisted at seventeen with a bad knee and somebody else’s signature.
The Army didn’t care about your family. It didn’t ask why you needed out. It gave you a haircut, a number, and a rifle—and for the first time, someone told him he was good at something. He liked that - being useful and needed.
It was easier than trying to be loved.
The rideshare pulled up outside a narrow house in Hawthorne, the garage door half-open. The lights inside spilled yellow onto the driveway, where a familiar figure leaned against the side wall.
Reyes hadn’t changed much. A little broader in the shoulders, a little grayer at the temples, but the smirk was the same.
Reyes looked him up and down and shook his head. “Jesus. You get older, or is the haircut just worse?”
Tim rolled his eyes, shouldered his bag. “Still better than yours.”
“Lies and slander. Come on, get in here before you turn into a pumpkin.”
They stepped inside the garage apartment, which clearly doubled as where Reyes went when his wife was unhappy with him. A workbench sat along one wall, covered in random projects, and a pegboard hung above it with outlines for every tool—none of which matched what was actually there.
The only other furniture was a mini-fridge that looked like someone had taken a bat to it in a fit of rage, a duct-taped recliner in the corner, and a fold-out couch that had seen some shit.
Tim dropped his duffel and turned just in time to catch the beer Reyes tossed him with one hand.
“You look like hell,” Reyes said with no small amount of satisfaction.
Tim popped the cap off with his key ring and took a long drink before answering. “I’m indoors. Not getting shot at. That’s a win.”
Reyes snorted. “Damn, Bradford. You always were an optimist.” He leaned back against the counter. “So. How long you staying?”
“Three months. Give or take.”
Reyes raised a brow. “That’s a long time for you to sit still.”
Tim huffed a quiet laugh, more in his nose than his voice. “Yeah, well.” He rolled the bottle between his hands. “Genny called. She needed me.”
Reyes's features turned serious and his voice pitched low.
“You say the word, we’re in.”
Tim looked at him, and something in his expression eased just slightly. “I know,” he said. Softer. “I know you are.”
And he did. That’s why he was here—why he wasn’t bunking on base somewhere or disappearing into a hotel for a weekend where the coffee was awful but the sheets were clean. This was family - his family - Genny and Reyes both.
Tim took a long swig and stared at the ceiling fan spinning lazily above them. LA was hot, loud, familiar in all the wrong ways.
Genny had called him—terrified.
The part of him that didn’t belong in civilian life stirred awake, waiting.
God have mercy on the man who made her feel that way.
Tim sure as hell wouldn’t.
==
The courthouse was barely stirring when Tim arrived, too early for crowds but too late for breakfast. The air still held that cold, institutional chill that no amount of sunlight ever seemed to reach. He parked Reyes’s car two blocks away. Years of not wanting to advertise where you were headed, even to yourself.
He told himself it wouldn’t take long, just a signature on a life already left behind.
He hadn’t gone to Genny’s yet. She’d be getting the boys ready for school. This was not a conversation they'd want to have with the kids present and he didn’t want to show up with the papers crumpled in his hand still hanging over him.
Loose ends needed tying before he went home and dealt with the rest.
Tim signed in at the family court desk, offered his ID, and slid the paperwork across to the clerk like it was something he’d picked up off the floor—unwanted but necessary.
The clerk—a woman in her fifties with dark curls pulled back in a claw clip and readers perched halfway down her nose—flipped through the file, her fingers tapping out a rhythm against the counter.
“Okay,” she murmured, eyes scanning the pages. “Looks like your ex didn’t contest anything.” She flipped to the final signature page and paused. “This was signed... two years ago?”
“Yeah.”
He remembered the letter she’d sent—folded up in an Army-issue envelope, no return address. He’d read it by flashlight in a tent during a sandstorm, the canvas walls rattling around him, mortar fire somewhere beyond the walls like distant thunder.
Dear Tim,
I don’t know how to start this except to say I’m sorry.
I met someone. It wasn’t planned, and I’m not proud of it, but I also can’t pretend it didn’t happen. Things have been hard for a long time—we both know that. You’re always gone, and even when you’re home, it’s like part of you never is. Maybe that’s my fault too. Maybe we just got too used to being apart.
I don’t want to fight about this. I’m not trying to make things harder than they already are. I just want to move on—start fresh, I guess.
Take what you need. Just… leave the past where it is.
Please don’t come looking for me.
I’m happy now.
-Isabel
It had gutted him at the time, not the divorce itself but the timing.
He had known it was coming. They had never been good at the same time. That had always been the problem.
Ten years reduced to a few paragraphs while he was halfway across the world trying to keep people alive, running patrols on no sleep, breathing in sand and heat that felt like it never left your skin.
He had stared at it for a long time before folding it back up.
And in the end, he’d done exactly what she asked.
Gave her the house. The furniture. The rest of the wedding china still boxed from the last move. Everything but the accounts he'd never merged, his storage locker… and the dog.
Kojo had never liked her new boyfriend anyway.
“That’s not a problem,” she said quickly, catching the tension in his voice. “The signature’s still valid, and there’s no motion to vacate on file. We can file it today, if you’re ready.”
“I’m ready.”
She glanced back at the monitor, adjusting her glasses. “It says here you’re represented by... Carl Weisman? Looks like he filled out most of this for you.”
Tim nodded. “He did.”
“Alright then,” she said with a small smile, the kind reserved for people holding pieces of their lives in manila folders. “It won’t go through until Monday, but once it’s stamped, it’s official.”
She tapped in a few things, before something clearly caught her attention.
“She didn’t update her address, still got her listed at that house on Dunsmore.”
“She’s not there anymore,” Tim said. “She’s in county lockup.”
The woman blinked and looked up. “Oh.”
“Something drug-related her boyfriend got her into,” he added. The words were flat, factual. Not bitter, just… inevitable. The slow-motion collapse of something that had already cracked long before.
“Well,” the clerk said, carefully, “I guess that explains why she didn’t contest anything.”
Tim gave a dry, humorless huff. “Would’ve been a pain to process while I was overseas if she had.”
Her fingers paused over the keyboard. “You were deployed when she filed?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry,” she said gently—not just for the paperwork, but for the picture it painted. “Glad you made it back.”
Tim offered a small nod. “Thanks.”
She printed off a confirmation slip and handed it to him along with a set of instructions, even though they both knew he wouldn’t need them.
“Wait out there,” she said, gesturing toward a side hall. “Judge is signing off on a few batches this morning. Shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes later, it was done.
Just a manila envelope stamped Dissolution of Marriage, and a clerk who handed it over like it was routine paperwork and told him good luck like she meant it.
Tim checked the time, then headed toward Highland Park, where Delgado had been watching Kojo for him. Said she didn’t mind; Kojo was good company even though he still slept curled up by the door like he was waiting for someone even two years later.
Kojo.
He’d been just a wiggly, oversized-headed puppy when Tim trained him to deliver the ring—trotting across the living room with a velvet pouch clipped to his collar, tail wagging so hard his back legs slipped out from under him. Isabel had cried when she saw him and said yes before Tim even got the words out. That had been his first leave home, when everything still felt possible.
Delgado greeted him with a grin and a slap on the shoulder. “He’s gonna lose his damn mind when he sees you.”
And he did.
The moment Kojo heard Tim’s voice—just a low “Hey, boy”—the Pit Bull barked once, then he charged out the door in a blur of tan and white, launching himself across the porch and colliding with Tim’s chest hard enough to knock him back a step.
“Easy,” Tim huffed, laughing under his breath as Kojo wrapped his front paws around his shoulders like a hug and buried his snout in Tim’s neck, tail going like a propeller. “Missed you too, buddy.”
He crouched and Kojo followed him down, nosing under his chin, whining like it hurt to be apart that long. Tim scratched behind his ears, then under the collar, fingers finding the familiar tag he hadn’t touched in years.
“You been good?” he murmured. “Keeping watch?”
Kojo sat back, panting, head tilted like he understood every word. And maybe he did.
Delgado handed over a small bag of toys and treats. “Food’s in the trunk. His leash is in there too, but good luck needing it—he hasn’t let me walk him more than a block without trying to double back. Think he always knew you were coming home.”
Tim swallowed the lump in his throat and gave a quiet nod. “Thanks for looking after him.”
“Anytime,” Delgado said, and meant it. “You gonna be around for a while?”
“Yeah,” Tim said, his hand never leaving Kojo’s head. “I think I might.”
Kojo jumped into the passenger seat like he’d never left it. Circled twice, then flopped down with a snort, satisfied.
Tim stood beside the car for a beat before climbing in. Hand on the keys. The other resting on the dog’s back, warm and steady beneath his palm.
Divorce finalized. Dog by his side.
And still a few hours before Genny would be free.
Tim glanced down at Kojo. “Wanna see if the park on Glenmont still has that doggy fountain?”
==
Tim’s footsteps echoed softly up the front porch steps, knocking on the red door scuffed from shoes and time. He almost smiled as he saw the silhouette his sister made through the windows, then squinted as Genny peered through the peephole, hunched over herself in the middle of the day.
Presumably she saw it was him because the door was thrown open, and he barely had time to set his bag down before she was on him.
“Hey—hey, careful, I’ve still got shoulders, you know,” Tim said, huffing a short breath as she clung to him.
“You’re late,” Genny muttered against his shoulder.
“Traffic,” he replied, one arm still loosely around her.
“That’s not an excuse,” she said, though there was no real heat in it.
“It is if I’m the one who drove it,” Tim shot back.
She let out a shaky laugh that didn’t fully land, but she still didn’t let go right away.
After a beat, Genny finally stepped back, wiping quickly at her face like she hadn’t done it.
“Come in before I change my mind about letting you in,” she said, voice tight but trying for normal.
A breath of something like a laugh escaped her again, smaller this time. She shut the door behind him.
Tim straightened, eyes scanning the room. The house was clean but unsettled—furniture slightly off, like it had been hastily reset. Bleach hung in the air, sharp over something faintly metallic beneath it.
“Kitchen’s this way,” she said, guiding him toward the back. “Want something to drink? Soda… iced tea?”
Tim let her guide him, eyes still on the house and his sister's obvious distress. “I’m good,” he said, voice low. “Genny… why did you call me?”
She hesitated, back still to him, busying herself with a mug she didn’t need. “No big reason. I just thought it’d be good to catch up. We haven’t seen each other in a while.”
“The boys miss you,” she added quickly, like that was safer ground. “They ask about you all the time.”
Tim watched as her gaze darted again—this time to a basement door tucked behind the pantry. The little “Home is where the heart is!” sign hung crooked above a six-digit padlock that didn’t belong in a house like this.
“I'm looking forward to seeing them later,” he said. “They’re good kids.”
“Yeah,” she said too fast. “Tyler’s growing like a weed, and Austin—he’s always building things, I swear, he’s going to be an engineer or something—”
She moved to the upper cabinet to grab tea bags, voice speeding up, trying too hard. Nervous chatter spilled out in fits and starts—about school projects and lost lunchboxes, about the neighbor’s cat and how they’d been saving up for new bikes. The sound of boiling water started behind her, a sharp hiss filling the space.
When she reached for the sugar, her sleeve slipped.
Tim saw them. Faint, raw-looking bruises at her wrist—thin and distinct, like rope or wire.
A cold punch hit his gut. The same pattern he'd seen on prisoners in makeshift cells outside Fallujah. On women too scared or broken to speak after they were rescued. On kids frozen in fear when the medics came near.
Protective anger boiled quietly beneath his calm exterior. She was his little sister, and no one had the right to hurt her
“Genny,” he said quietly. “Is everything really okay here?”
Then turned back with the cups already in hand, smile rebuilt but shaky at the edges. “It’s been a hard year. You know how things get. You wouldn’t—” She stopped herself. “It’s fine. Really.”
Tim reached out a gentle hand to circle her wrist and rubbed a light circle on a welt there.
She looked away, biting her lip. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Tim stepped closer, voice softer but insistent. “Try me. You called me. That means you want help, let me help Gen-Gen.”
His hand itched to reach out, to pull her into that fierce, protective embrace he’d been offering her since they were kids. But not yet—not until she was ready.
She glanced around nervously, eyes flicking toward the stairs and down the hallway, making no one else was around to hear.
“Rob lost his job last year. At first, I thought it was just a rough patch—a few tough months, a little rougher around the edges. But lately… Tim, I don’t recognize the man I married. I love him, I really do. And it didn’t start like this, I swear. But now… I just can’t. I can’t—It’s been bad for a while.”
Her voice cracked, breaking as the weight she’d carried alone spilled out. She told him about the control, how it wrapped tighter every day like a noose—his constant checking of her phone, tracking her every move, deciding who could visit and when. The sudden, terrifying rage that flared whenever she even mentioned leaving, the whispered threats in the dark that chilled her to the bone.
She spoke of the bruises she’d hidden for months—faint marks on her arms and ribs, and a shadowed spot on her cheek she hurried to cover with makeup. The holes punched through drywall. The nights locked away in her bedroom, slamming the door, pushing a heavy dresser against it, then slipping out through the bedroom window at dawn.
So this is what she thought he wouldn’t understand.
“And he still has keys,” she said finally, smaller now. “Sometimes he comes by late. If I don’t answer fast enough… he gets worse about it. Shouting at me to let him see his kids! The boys didn't know it was him but they were so scared of the noise. I don't know what to do.”
She didn’t mention the padlock on the basement door. Tim knew there were some things he wasn’t ready to hear yet.
She swallowed hard, tears trailing down her cheeks. “I filed for divorce months ago,” she whispered, voice barely audible, “but I’m scared to press charges. He’s got friends in the neighborhood. I’m afraid he’ll come back... take the boys, hurt them.”
Tim’s throat tightened, a fierce mix of rage and helplessness knotting in his chest. “Why didn’t you call me sooner?”
Her eyes lifted to his, glassy. “Because I knew you’d come running. No questions. No hesitation. That’s what you do.” Her breath shook. “But I was scared, Tim. Scared you’d do something reckless… something violent. I couldn’t lose you too.”
Tim swallowed, and his mind snapped back — ten years old, scraped knees bleeding through torn jeans, a split lip, ragged breaths that burned his lungs. He stood trembling between their father’s fury and Genny’s wide eyes, every inch of him smaller than the rage barreling forward.
“Don’t touch her.” His voice cracked like dry thunder, barely more than a whisper. Then louder, raw and jagged, the sound of a boy standing on the edge of breaking. “Don’t touch her! Don’t you dare touch my sister!”
Tim reached forward, wrapping an arm around her trembling shoulders in the here and now.
“You don’t get it,” he said quietly.
Her brow creased, confused.
He exhaled through his nose, softer but steadier now. “I didn’t protect you so you’d have to understand any of this. I protected you so you wouldn’t. I understand Genny, I understand.”
He drew back just enough to look her in the eyes so she knew he meant it.
“You don’t have to ask—never have to ask. You’re my sister. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. We’re going to fix this. Get you and the boys somewhere safe where he can’t find you. I called some friends earlier—people I trust. You’re not doing this alone.”
==
Tim’s phone buzzed one last time. Everyone was on the way. Reyes was already cruising slowly around the block in the decoy moving truck, engine humming steadily. Delgado and Thrasher pulled up behind the empty one, their expressions tight but ready.
“Alright, team,” Tim said, “We have two hours to pack and move my sister and her two children from this house. Focus on essentials—clothes, important documents, electronics, meds - but assume a second trip will be high risk low reward. New place is ready. Marvin’s confirmed it’s furnished and secure.”
Delgado cast a glance toward the front of the house, where Tyler and Austin peeked around a hallway corner, wide-eyed and fidgety. “I’ll manage packing, make sure nothing important gets left behind. Do the boys know how to get help if they need it? What about your sister?”
“I was going to send her your info, and Mickey’s.”
Delgado raised an eyebrow. “That’s a good start but…”
“But?”
“There are going to be things she needs that only another woman’s going to get. And I can’t always be on call.” She adjusted the strap on her bag, already halfway planning contingencies. “I know someone at the firehouse—Bailey Nune. EMT, Army Reserve, teaches self-defense, once took down a rabid grizzly with a tire iron.”
Tim blinked. “That real?”
“She’s humble. I had to Google it. Think Genny would do better with someone like that in her corner?”
“Yeah,” Tim said. “More backups never hurt.”
Thrasher loomed quietly beside them—massive with the sort of calm you only earn from parenting three daughters and surviving. “I’ll take the heavy stuff. Nothing gets past the stairs without me.”
Genny hovered near the doorway, hands fidgeting, caught between frantic and grateful. Tyler and Austin darted through half-packed rooms, all knees and elbows, knocking over boxes as they whispered confused questions.
They'd returned from school in the middle of all this and had been viewing it as a fun adventure so far, thrilled to be travelling with their uncle, but as more and more things were packed away doubt began to seep in.
“Mom,” Austin asked, clutching a battered toy robot under one arm, “why do we have to leave the big house?”
Genny knelt, brushing his hair gently from his forehead. “Because we need to be safe, sweetheart. We're going to go away a little while with your uncle Tim and Kojo.”
Tim crouched beside them, trying to pull his smile all the way up to his eyes and mostly failing. “Yup! You'll be sick of me before you know it. I know this is a lot but I promise it'll be okay."
Austin’s lip wobbled hard enough that Tim opened his arms before the kid could decide whether or not he was too old for it. Austin crashed into him immediately, clutching fistfuls of his jacket.
Tim held him close, one hand rubbing slow circles between his shoulders. “Hey,” he murmured softly. “I’ve got you. Both of you.”
Tyler lingered near the hallway corner, trying very hard to look unaffected in the particular way only eleven-year-olds could manage.
Tim reached out blindly and hooked two fingers through the front of Tyler’s hoodie, tugging him closer. “C’mere, tough guy. You too.”
Tyler rolled his eyes like the invitation was deeply embarrassing, but after a second he stepped in anyway. Tim tucked him against his side, holding both boys there for a quiet moment while Kojo pressed warmly against their legs.
Tim glanced up at Genny over the boys’ heads. She looked exhausted. Relieved, maybe, but exhausted more than anything.
So he loosened his grip first, ruffling Austin’s hair before nudging Tyler lightly with his shoulder. “Alright,” he said, voice gentler now, “I think I’ve got the most important mission in the house. Something I can only trust the two of you with. Kojo’s got gear to pack—leash, food, that fuzzy blanket he won’t sleep without.”
The boys traded glances, then took off in different directions with all the enthusiasm of a secret mission. Kojo followed close behind, tail wagging like a metronome.
Inside, packing was all momentum and muscle memory. Delgado zipped from room to room like a storm in combat boots, clipboard in one hand, sharp voice cutting through the noise.
“Photo albums?”
“Just this one,” Genny replied, holding up a faded red binder, then letting it go with shaking fingers.
“Kitchenware? Grandma’s china? Appliances?”
“No. Nothing breakable. Take the coffee maker if it fits.”
“Clothes? Toiletries?”
“Everything, if we can manage.”
“Toys, stuffed animals, electronics?”
“One box per kid. No books. All phones, chargers, my laptop, the iPad.”
“Basement?”
Genny’s eyes flashed - with terror or rage Maria Delgado could not say. “No.”
Neighbors arrived in waves, most of them friends of Genny’s—teachers, a nurse, a woman from the community garden. They lifted furniture, shuffled boxes, and kept a steady watch. Tyler and Austin tried to help but mostly got in the way, drawing half-smiles and quick, amused scoldings from Thrasher.
“Watch your feet, Tyler. Hey—Austin, don’t touch that knife. Gracias.”
When Austin stumbled into a stack of boxes, Kojo padded over and nudged him upright again, giving a soft huff that seemed to say, Take it slow, kid. He got a lot of head rubs and back scratches that day.
The last box was sealed just as Reyes’ truck pulled back toward the rental, decoy work done. Tim signaled, and the makeshift convoy rolled toward their new home — smaller, simpler, but locked tight with new keys and cameras that glared from every angle.
The new rental was small, clean, and tucked at the end of a quiet street shaded by jacaranda trees. Beige stucco walls, a narrow front porch, and a worn welcome mat that read Home is where you make it. The inside was modest: two bedrooms, one and a half baths, hardwood floors dulled by age, and a living room that smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and paint. The blinds were new. So were the locks. Every window had a view of nothing important, and the cameras outside blinked silently from their perches.
Genny walked slowly through the space, fingertips brushing walls like she was trying to coax memories into being. In the boys’ room, two twin beds waited with clean linens and mismatched comforters. A stuffed giraffe had been left on one of the pillows like a peace offering.
That night, Genny fell asleep for the first time in weeks without clutching her chest in the dark. The boys passed out on the couch after a movie—blankets tangled, popcorn half-eaten, toy robot cradled in Austin’s arms.
Kojo lay at the foot of the bed like a sentinel, breathing steady, eyes half-lidded but always paying attention.
Tim leaned in the hallway doorway, one shoulder against the frame, arms crossed tight across his chest. The boys were knocked out on the pullout couch, limbs tangled in blankets, mouths open, finally relaxed. A soft blue night light glowed from the wall, just enough to keep the shadows at bay.
This was usually when the bad dreams hit—when things snuck in quiet and heavy, especially for kids who’d had their world pulled out from under them.
Kojo could handle the nightmares. Tim would handle everything else.
He started to hum—low, almost under his breath. Not a lullaby he’d sung before, but one that had stuck in his head.
Close your eyes,
Have no fear...
Kojo’s ears perked, tail giving a soft thump like he remembered it too.
The monster’s gone,
He’s on the run...
Tim’s voice hitched for a second, but he kept going. He looked toward Genny’s room, saw the light off, the door cracked. She was sleeping, finally. Really sleeping.
And your daddy’s here.
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy…