I chose none of them.
Because Mom had asked me once, in a hospital room that smelled like antiseptic and lemon ice, to keep Mason from becoming our father.
Not with words.
With choices.
So I stood.
Slowly.
The table looked smaller from my feet.
“Mason,” I said, “Dad is proud of you.”
His jaw flexed.
“He doesn’t say it.”
“He never learned how.”
“That’s convenient.”
“It’s true.”
“You don’t get to come back and translate him.”
“No,” I said. “I get to come back because somebody used his name on an envelope tied to a dead operation.”
That stopped him.
Maddox’s eyes snapped to my jacket.
“What envelope?”
I ignored the question.
The black pickup across the street rolled forward six inches.
Stopped.
A man in a gray hoodie stepped out from the passenger side and crossed toward the bar with his hands in his pockets.
