My mother stared at me from across the breakfast table, but my father didn’t seem to have noticed. He watched the news on the television and ate in silence, just as he’d done every morning of my entire life. The only difference was that there was no newspaper. He’d stopped taking the paper five years ago when Ruth bought him a Kindle that delivered newspapers from all around the world every morning with more reliability than the local newspaper delivery boy had ever done.

“I want you in the field today, Matthew,” he said, breaking the long silence. “I don’t suppose you’ll sell many car ports with your face looking like that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’re installing in Lorenzo today. Two residential jobs, a single car and a double.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Miguel’s in charge. But I’d like you to keep an eye out. I think he’s been helping himself to some of the aluminum screws. They’ve been disappearing faster than they should be.”

“Of course.”

“Good.”

Father got up, dropped a kiss on the top of Mom’s head, and disappeared through the garage door.

I sat back, picking at the bacon that still sat on my plate, wishing it didn’t hurt so much to chew.

“Do you want some applesauce?”

I looked up, caught my mother wincing at the sight of my face. “I’m good.”

“You’ve hardly eaten.”

“I’m sorry. It’s good, I just—”

“I’ll get some applesauce.”

She went to the refrigerator and poured some of her homemade cinnamon applesauce into a small bowl, setting it in front of me as she gathered my other dishes. She touched my shoulder, a heavy sigh escaping her lips.

“It’s okay, Mom. It’ll heal.”

“They shouldn’t have done that to you. It wasn’t necessary.”

“They have to make sure I’m going to be loyal.”

“Beating you makes you loyal?” She grunted. “Beating a dog doesn’t make it loyal. It makes it dangerous.”

“Are you calling me a dog?”

She turned, a defensive look on her face until she saw that I was teasing. She tossed a dish towel at me and turned back to the sink. I sipped the applesauce off my spoon for a few minutes, grateful for the ability to eat without having to move my sore jaw. The sweetness was nice, too.

“Have you seen Ruth? How is she?”

It seemed like an innocent question, but I could hear the longing and the pain in my mother’s voice. She hadn’t set eyes on her only daughter in five months. It must have been hard for her. She and Ruth had always been close.

“She’s good, Mom. Happy.”

“Is she?”

“She’s very happy. Spending all day buying and setting up things for the baby’s room.”

My mother stood very still, holding on to the edge of the sink, her head hung low. It took a moment for me to realize that she was crying. I got up, moving slowly, a hand pressed to my ribs, and went to her.

“Mom?”

She sighed heavily. “My daughter’s pregnant, and I can’t be with her to give her advice and to share in every little ache and pain, and the kicks and…”

I rubbed her shoulder lightly. “No one says you can’t go to her. She’d love to see you.”

“Your father would never forgive me.”

“She’s your child. You have every right to go see her if you want.” I pulled her around, let her press her forehead to my chest. “Father doesn’t need to know.”

“I can’t lie to him.”

“You’d only have to lie if he asked. But he won’t ask if he doesn’t have reason to suspect anything.”

She was quiet for a long moment. “Do you really think Ruth would want to see me?”

“I do.”

She looked up, her eyes bright with tears and emotion. “Maybe we should call her, just see if she would mind if I stopped by.”

“I think you should just go over there. I know she’s home in the mornings because she gets morning sickness and doesn’t like to be too far from the bathroom.”

Mom smiled at that. “I was the same way with her. Maybe it’ll be a girl?”

“Maybe.”

Her smile broadened, but then she saw the dishes. “I really should—”

“I’ll do them.” I turned her around. “Go! Stop by the grocery store on the way back, and you can tell Father quite honestly that you spent your morning doing errands.”

“You’re a bad boy, Matthew.” She slapped my arm, but she was still smiling. An ear-to-ear grin that made my heart full. “Thank you.”

“Go!”

I watched her leave the kitchen, suddenly full of energy as she bounced around, collecting her key and her sweater and her purse. Then she was gone, blowing me kisses as she backed out the garage door. I laughed, a painful experience but worthwhile. The moment she was gone, her car pulling out of the drive right past the kitchen window, I ducked down the hall to my father’s office.

My father was a bishop in our church. As such, he was required to serve on several committees that helped govern the church and its community of members. My father was the church treasurer, in charge of monies going in and out of the church’s coffers. And he kept those records here at the house.

I hadn’t lied to my mother. Ruth did want to see her. But maybe I’d used that knowledge to get her out of my way for a little while.

I sat behind his massive desk, thinking of all the times I’d come in here and sat on the floor, playing with trucks when I was small, doing homework as an older child. My father would rarely engage me in conversation during those sessions, but we’d sat in companionable silence, and it had been comforting.

I wondered what he would think if he could see me in here now. He’d probably throw me out of the house again.

I began opening drawers, feeling more like a criminal than I ever had in all my guilt over Harry Cravits. I knew I deserved to be in jail right next to Tyler. I also knew that Jack had pulled strings to keep me out of jail after I gave a detailed confession to that lawyer he’d hired. It was because my confession put Tyler where he was that everyone looked the other way when it came to my complicity in the crime. But I knew I belonged in jail.

But this? This felt more like a crime than that had. That had been murder. This was more. This was patricide.

I was killing any trust my father might have had in me with this act. Not only that, but I was afraid I was killing my own innocence.

What if my father had known about the scheme to buy up all the property around Ellaville? What if he was part of this attempt to kick all the local ranchers out of the area, especially the ones who weren’t members of the church? What if he knew what this unknown outside leader of the Guardians was up to, and he was helping to cover it up?

My heart broke at the mere thought.

I found the records in a locked drawer of his desk. The key was hidden under the pencil organizer in the middle drawer, the same place my father had kept it since I could remember. I had watched him take it out dozens of times when I was little, watched him put a finger to his lips and promise me to secrecy. It was a game he liked to play.

I was hoping the reason he hadn’t moved the key was because he had nothing to hide.

There were reams and reams of paper in the drawer, all of it a careful accounting of the church’s business dating back seven years. Just like my father to keep just enough to satisfy the IRS, but nothing more.

I had no idea what I was looking for. I wasn’t an accounting major, wasn’t even capable of balancing my own checkbook. But Jack had made arrangements for that.

I carefully scanned each piece of paper. It didn’t take as long as it sounds, not with this funky piece of equipment Jack had given me. All I had to do was slide it over the sheet and move on to the next. But it took long enough for the egg yolks to congeal on the breakfast dishes I’d left in the kitchen sink. An hour. Maybe slightly longer.

It was all going to Malaika Gray over at the bank. Jack said that we could trust her, that she’d put her life in danger in order to find the name she’d given to him as the possible identity of the Guardians’ mystery leader. I hoped he was right.

I put everything back the way I’d found it, careful to make sure I left no evidence behind. As I moved to close the center drawer, the key back where it belonged, I saw the edge of a photo poking out from a corner of the drawer. I pulled it out, surprised to find a picture of Ruth and myself when we were small children.

My father was not the sentimental type. It wasn’t like him to hold on to something like this.

What was it?

And then I found another and another. All the same snapshot.

Why would…was this some sort of threat? Was someone threatening my father?

But why?

I slid the photos back into their spot, my brow furrowed as I tried to imagine what reason someone would have to collect that many of the same picture. It had been taken more than fifteen years ago, an Easter Sunday. We were dressed in our Sunday best, ready to head home and dig into that fine ham dinner Mother always had waiting for us. There was nothing special about that particular photo. It was just one of those sorts of things, the kind of picture parents took as a keepsake of a nice day, nothing more.

Why that photo?

I got up and headed into the kitchen, still puzzling over the whole thing. I ran water in the sink and prepared to do the dishes, my thoughts so full of that photograph that the doorbell ringing made me jump.

“Whit?”

Her eyes widened as she took me in, studying the bruises on the side of my face, the strip of tape across my nose, the swelling in my jaw.

“What happened?”

She was dressed in another little summer thing, wide straps barely covering her tan shoulders, the skirt falling gently over her full hips. It made me remember that afternoon in the back of my car, the feel of her soft cotton panties against my hand.

“Matthew!”

She stepped into the house uninvited, her hand moving over my jaw and the lump that was still intensely sore. I jerked back from the pain, catching her wrist before she could try to touch me again.

“What are you doing here?”

“I…I was looking for your father.”

“Why?”

She shook her head, her eyes still taking in the results of my beating. “What happened to you?”

“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine. You look like you took a hell of a beating.”

“And you look like you’re expecting anyone but me to be standing in my own doorway.”

“I didn’t know you still lived here.”

“Didn’t you?”

She pulled away from my hold on her wrist, sliding her hands into pockets on either side of her skirt that I hadn’t noticed before. “I went to your father’s office, and they said he was still at home. I just…I wanted to talk to him about something.”

“About what?”

“Matthew…” She stepped closer to me. “I can’t think about anything but those bruises on your face! What happened? Was it a car accident? A fight?” She bit her bottom lip, one hand coming close to me, but stopping midway. “You don’t seem like the type to get into barroom brawls. You never even fought on the football field, as I recall.”

“It’s a complicated story.”

“Does it have something to do with that group you were telling me about the other day? The Guardians?”

“Did I mention what they were called?”

“You must have because I know.”

She stepped even closer to me, standing so close that I could smell the incredible scent of her perfume. I couldn’t help but be drawn in by her obvious concern. I brushed a thick strand of her hair behind her ear and rested my hand against the side of her face.

“I thought we weren’t doing this anymore.”

“Did I say that?”

“You told me to get my priorities straight.”

“Maybe I was hoping you had.”

“Is that why you’re here? To talk to my father about my priorities?”

She shrugged, refusing to look up at me. I took that as an affirmative.

“That’s sweet,” I said softly, moving to steal her lips. Pain rushed through me at the pressure on my torn and swollen lips, but I didn’t care. It was worth it.

“You’re bad news for me, Matthew Pearce,” she said against my lips. “A distraction I can’t afford.”

“I could say the same for you.”

I pulled her into the house, kicking the door closed with the tip of my shoe as I did. She came easily, sliding her hands around my waist. We were good as long as she kept her touch away from my ribs, but when she tried to pull me closer, pain ricocheted through my entire body.

“Sorry,” she cried as I backed away from her.

“Not your fault.”

“How bad is it?”

I tugged at my shirt, lifting it to show her the bruising that extended from just below my collarbone down to the sharp edges of my hips. She hissed, her fingertips brushing gently against a few of the worst ones.

“I hope someone’s in jail!”

I dropped my shirt and kissed her again, holding her hands down at her own sides.

“I love that you care that much.”

“You’re the nicest person I’ve ever known. Only an evil person could have done this to you.”

“Maybe I did it to myself.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“You’d be surprised.”

She pulled back, her eyes rounded with emotion. She touched my bottom lip and kissed it softly. Then my swollen jaw. Then my still blackened eye. She lifted my shirt and continued across my chest, moving to each bruise, her lips gentler than a baby’s touch. I closed my eyes, my hands on the back of her neck as she slowly made her way down to the very last bruise.

“Thank you,” I whispered when she returned to my lips.

“Kisses are healing.”

“Yours definitely are. I feel better already.”

“Liar.”

But she was smiling when she said it, lighting a spark in my heart.

Maybe we could make this work. Maybe…maybe everything would work out. Somehow.

Miracles did happen, right?