It smelled like fried onions, spilled bourbon, leather jackets, and rain steaming off asphalt.
I had not wanted to go.
I told Mason that twice.
He had called me at 6:40 that evening while I was standing in the guest bathroom of our father’s house, pinning my dark hair back with the same plain black clip I had worn through three deployments nobody in my family knew about.
“Come out,” he said. “My guys want to meet the mysterious big sister.”
“They don’t,” I said.
“They do if I say they do.”
“Mason.”
“Harper, don’t make it weird. Dad’s already asleep. You’re just sitting there pretending to read old mail.”
That part was true.
Dad was asleep in his recliner with one hand curled around the TV remote and a folded VA letter resting on his chest.
And I had been reading old mail.
Not because I cared about electric bills from six months ago.
