“What happened at the gate last night?” Harlan asked, sliding a hot plate of breakfast in front of Dallas. He’d tried to refuse about ten times, saying that sitting for a meal wasn’t his style, but in true stubborn fashion she ignored him. Her mother still wasn’t feeling well, although Harlan knew it had far less to do with any kind of flu and more to do with being rattled by the excitement of the perimeter breach. Those things shook her nerves and usually kept her in bed. “Once I saw you were down there I ran the bath. You’d have tripped the alarm if it was anything serious.”

“It was Ry—” He hesitated as he looked over at the girls who were pouring far too much syrup on their pancakes. “R-Y-L-I-E” he spelled, knowing that trick.

“I just wish . . .” Harlan said, sinking into her chair and pushing her scrambled eggs around.

“I sent him somewhere to get help. It’s small, effective, and he’d have a good shot at recovery if he really wants that.”

“Why?” Harlan asked, mixed emotions flooding her. Rylie getting better, even the hope of him recovering was something she had hoped for but never really let herself believe.

“Because he needs it,” Dallas said matter-of-factly between bites of bacon.

“Oh,” she said, tilting her head and eyeing him skeptically. Dallas was on her brothers’ short list of trusted friends; he’d proven himself reliable and effective. She hadn’t prepared for him to be a good man too. How could all of that be in one person? If marriage, her life really, had taught her anything it was that the old adage too good to be true was profoundly reliable. “Thanks for doing that. You didn’t have to.”

“I know,” Dallas said. “You didn’t have to make me breakfast. So we’re both going above and beyond.”

“Can we watch television?” Anna asked, her plate already in her hands ready to run to the other room.

“Fine,” Harlan sighed, smiling at her daughters as they snuck away. “We should get back to our own house, our own routine. I’m caving to them on everything. I feel bad our lives are so upended that every time they ask for something I’m saying yes.”

“There are worse things.” Dallas shrugged, demolishing his breakfast at lightning speed. “This will pass. You’ll get your bearings again.”

“I hope so,” Harlan said, refilling his glass of orange juice. “But until then let them eat in the living room. Let them stay up a few minutes more. And while they do that we can work on Tim’s case, right?”

“Right,” Dallas agreed. “I’ve got a few ideas for that. I put in some calls to people, and I think digging deeper into Angus is the way to go. I looked into Larry thoroughly over the last few months. I know he was mixed up in a bunch of petty crimes and spent most of his time at a pool hall at night. His parents had cut him off a few months earlier, and he had started driving for a car service. One of those drive-your-own-car things where you pick people up. There isn’t much to find from him. Maybe if we find out more about Angus, why someone might want him dead, we can connect the dots.”

“I agree,” Harlan nodded. “Do you think he stayed the night? You think he’s going to take it seriously?”

“Angus?” Dallas asked, his face twisting up in confusion.

“Rylie,” Harlan corrected, blushing. It was complicated to be playing this tantalizing game with Dallas while also hoping Rylie could get himself together. She was unsure how that must look to Dallas.

“I’m expecting to hear from Lilly sometime this morning. She’ll take good care of him if he’s serious about cleaning himself up. It’s his best shot.”

“But he has to take it,” she gulped. “He has to want to get himself back on track.”

“Oh,” Dallas said, lighting with recognition. “I hadn’t thought about how that must feel.”

“What?” she wondered, hardly able to articulate her feelings herself.

“The idea that this is his best shot, but only if he takes it. Not taking, walking away, that’s choosing his problems over his family. It’s making a conscious choice that he’s not ready to stop, and his children aren’t worth changing for.”

“Stop,” she begged, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “I, I would rather talk about the case. I shouldn’t have brought this up.”

“Shit,” Dallas said, dropping his fork down. “I’m an asshole. I didn’t mean it like that. Sometimes I forget about the emotional side of things. Everything is just what it is.”

“You’re right,” she nodded, patting her eyes dry quickly. “It’s pretty cut and dry.”

“But people have feelings,” Dallas said, still chastising himself. “I need to remember that more.”

“Angus,” Harlan announced, clearing her throat and fidgeting nervously. “How can we find out more about him? I’ll see what I can find online. Everything I pulled up so far was pretty superficial. He’s a longtime resident, lives a few streets over from the house he grew up in. I’m sure he’s well known in the neighborhood. Maybe someone can tell us something.”

“You feel like playing private eye?” Dallas asked, his coy, playful smile returning.

“I’d love to, but I’m playing Mom today. The girls have a cookie bake sale for dance school, and I’ll be rolling out dough with them today.”

“You know you’re rich, right? Like insanely wealthy. You can buy cookies, gourmet cookies. Hell, you can buy the dance school if you wanted to instead of raising a few bucks for it.” Dallas polished off the rest of his juice and leaned way back in his chair, eyeing her as though he were dissecting her.

“I grew up rich,” Harlan said, fiddling with the locket around her neck. “I grew up with a nanny, a chef, and loads of people available to do anything I wanted. The only problem was they couldn’t give me the one thing I really hoped for. Some flour on my hands, while my mother and I burnt a batch of chocolate chip cookies. I wanted to dirty up my clothes out on the playground. I wanted to dance at some tiny little school that only kept the lights on because the parents were willing to get together and sell baked goods.”

“And see I wanted to be a billionaire who didn’t have to cut lawns to make sure we had enough money for groceries. I wanted to go to a school that didn’t have windows so old the snow blew in.”

“I guess we all want what we don’t have,” she said, averting her eyes as he scrutinized her face.

“I think it’s great that you’re making things the way you want them. You are making your life the one you want.”

“Right,” Harlan laughed. “The world is my oyster.”

“From the outside, if I only saw you today, with an apron on cooking these scrambled eggs and singing to the girls before you knew I was here watching you, I’d say you were doing all right.”

“Life’s just a big book. You’re walking in on the middle of a chapter. You’re looking at the pages that feel good to read.”

“You’re the author,” Dallas said, pushing his chair back from the table and standing. “Write yourself something good. Be happy, and before you know it you’ll have plenty of reasons to be.”

“So simple,” she smiled, sorry to see him heading for the door. “Good luck tracking down information on Angus. I’ll spend time this afternoon looking around online again.”

“When I went to visit him at the prison the other day, Tim was asking about you,” Dallas said, standing in the kitchen doorway, half in and half out. “He saw you at the appeal and he wanted to know who you were.”

“What did you tell him?” Harlan was anxious to hear how Dallas described her to a friend.

“I told him the truth,” he winked, flashing a dimple.

“The truth?” she asked, raising a challenging brow in his direction.

“Yep,” he said, snapping his lips shut and heading out the front door, leaving her with more questions than answers.

“Mom,” Logan called from the other room. “Anna spilled syrup on the carpet.”

“It was her fault,” Anna bickered.

“Okay, okay,” Harlan said, taking one more bite of her now cold eggs. “Mom’s coming.”