What did that smile mean? Relief? Maybe. Though with Abilene, a smile could just as easily precede her bursting into tears, so he wasn’t banking on it. He stood and grabbed his beer off the coffee table, just for something to do with his hands.

She headed for the baby first, leaning down to touch her in some way Casey couldn’t see.

“So?” he prompted, dying of impatience.

“You want me to take her?” she asked Miah.

“Nah, she’s settled now,” he said. “You two need to talk in private?”

She nodded and turned to Casey. “My room?”

He was already striding for the steps.

“Holler if she starts fussing,” Abilene called back.

“Will do.” Miah clicked on the TV, the drone of the news offering a little extra discretion as Casey and Abilene entered her room. Casey sat on the edge of the bed, clenching his hands so tight between his knees his knuckles went white.

She shut the door and turned to him, pulling his cell from her hoodie’s pocket. “Thanks.”

“Sure.” He took it. “So what happened? How’d it go?”

“Could you hear anything?”

“Only that you were talking, not yelling.”

She sat cross-legged at the end of the bed. Casey turned and did the same so he could face her.

“Tell me.”

“He was angry. Frustrated.”

“What’d he say to you?”

“That he wants to see her. Both of us. That I owe him that.”

“He scare you?”

She took a moment to reply, staring thoughtfully at his feet. “Yes and no. I don’t think he wants to hurt us. And I don’t think he wants to try to take the baby away from me. He’s mad, but mostly because I kept so much from him. He’s an in-charge kind of guy, and I don’t think he handles feeling helpless very well.”

“Clearly not, if he came around here last night. What’d he have to say about that?”

“I didn’t ask. I almost did, but by then he seemed way less angry, and I thought maybe it was best to keep him that way. Keep him talking.”

Casey nodded. “I’m dying to know who told him where to find you.” Perhaps he could make that information a condition of a face-to-face meeting. Casey still needed to have a little chat with John Dancer, and maybe a second, depending on whether the person who’d spilled about Abilene’s location had done it for a payoff, or simply to keep all their bones unbroken.

“Miah’s gonna have words for your ex,” he said, thinking aloud. “Fuck with his property and his business, and that charming cowboy shtick falls away real fast. Maybe I’ll leave that to him, and you and I can just focus on establishing some kind of civil discourse, or whatever, with Ware.”

“I told him I’d see him. That I’d call him tomorrow to arrange a time, after I checked with the Churches.”

His heart kicked back into third gear. “You sure you’re ready?”

“I’m sick of hiding—I know that much. I’m sick of being afraid of him, and the unknown. And I want to be able to go back to work soon, get back to normal.”

He nodded. “Course you do. Tomorrow, huh?”

“For the call, maybe the meeting, too. It’s up to Miah and his folks, ultimately, if James is going to meet me here.”

“And you’re going to let him see the baby?”

“If it goes well, I said. If he keeps his cool.”

“And you’re sure you’re ready?”

“Yeah.” She curled up on her side, hair falling over the edge of the bed. “I’m ready.”

“I’ll stay close, and we’ll make sure either Vince or Miah can be here, too.”

“You going to eavesdrop?” she asked, something cagey in her expression.

Casey shook his head. “I’ll stay close enough to hear if you call for us. We’ll probably need to pat him down and hold his car keys, too. Hope he can handle the prisoner treatment.”

“He’s had enough practice,” she muttered.

Casey sighed, sensing her weariness and registering it in his own bones. He lay down, too, body curled the opposite way as hers, so they were face-to-face, upside down. A small silent laugh hitched her shoulders, a gesture of exhaustion, not amusement.

“It’s going to be okay.”

“I hope so.”

He reached up to take her hand, their fingers twining. “It’s a shame he couldn’t have explained himself to Vince, saved us all the trouble of putting you in lockdown.”

“We were . . . We’ve got an intense history. He’s mad about more than he must be comfortable sharing with anyone but me.”

Casey nodded, ignoring the way his stomach soured.

In nearly no time, he’d grown possessive of this girl, and hearing her say those words—history, intense—made his insides squirm in a way he wasn’t used to. His relationships had all been so frivolous, he’d rarely gotten close enough to a girlfriend to feel jealous this way. He’d been in love, or thought he had been. He’d said those words to a couple women over the years, and meant them. But could it really have been that deep, when he’d barely registered a fraction of this sting before, and when it had always been so easy to move on, once the fun faded and the expectations began to weigh him down?

By all accounts, Abilene should have him running for the hills. She was dependent, to say nothing of her child. She was a train wreck in ways he couldn’t entirely pinpoint, and her baggage was big enough to cram an ex-con into. Whatever else was in there, he was afraid to know. And he didn’t need to know. They weren’t a couple, wouldn’t ever be; plus nobody was a completely open book. There were always a couple pages glued to the cover. Always a few unknowns.

He chanced one last squeeze of her fingers before letting them go. “I’m real proud of you for talking to him.”

She shrugged. “I’m real ashamed of how scared I was. How much worry I put everybody through, avoiding it for so long.”

“You did your best in a fucked-up situation.”

“Doesn’t feel like I did.”

“Honey, if you could see all the shitty decisions I’ve made in my life, or Vince, or Raina . . . Anybody except Miah, basically. You’d think we were all the biggest dumb-asses you ever met. Fucking things up is just part of life. The best you can hope for is that you get most of it done before you hit thirty.”

“I have a child, though.”

“Well, fine. Thirty or parenthood, whichever comes first.”

And even thirty was pushing it—Casey hadn’t begun to clean up his act until last summer, after all, and how old had Vince been the last time he’d been put away? Thirty-two, probably.

Way out of left field, Abilene whispered, “Do you believe in God?”

He shook his head against the covers. “No. You do, though.”

“Yeah. I used to wear a cross, even. Constantly. In the shower, to bed, all the time. It was silver, on a silver chain. I lost it last winter, right around the time some things started going extra-wrong.”

He smiled. “You think God was punishing you, for losing it?”

“No, more like maybe somebody upstairs decided I didn’t deserve to wear it anymore.”

“Now, that’s just nonsense.”

“It’s how I feel . . . I think I’d like to start going to church again. Not a church like I grew up in, but something, I dunno, low-key.”

“There’s a Unitarian place downtown. Aren’t they supposed to be pretty liberal?”

“Maybe I’ll check it out. I don’t think I’ve gone more than a dozen times since I left home. It used to be such a huge part of my life . . .” She trailed off, eyes unfocused, thoughts folded up deep inside. After a minute or more she said, “I think I might like to get another one. A cross, I mean. Save up a little money.”

“Like a reminder to keep your shit together, when you look in the mirror?”

“Something like that.”

He smiled. He’d wanted to be able to buy her something, something not too gift-y, but more meaningful than the diaper rash cream or hair elastics she might ask him to pick up at the drugstore. Was she thinking of the plain old cross kind, or a hard-core crucifix with the tiny suffering Jesus and all that . . . ?