“Yes.”
She nodded as if a complicated equation had finally balanced. “Good.”
June came running back and climbed into his lap even though she was getting too big for it. “Can we leave snacks on the porch?”
“What kind of snacks?”
She looked scandalized by the question. “For anybody lost.”
Mason stared at her.
Joy added, “So if someone’s hungry, they know this house is nice.”
He looked from one girl to the other. Their hair had grown longer. Their cheeks were fuller now. Their eyes were still that impossible shade of sea green. They no longer looked like ghosts dropped by the woods. They looked like children who expected the world to answer them with care.
And suddenly he understood that this, more than the legal decree or the new bedrooms or even the word Daddy, was the clearest proof of healing:
they wanted to pass safety on.
His vision blurred.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “We can do that.”
So they made a small plate of buttered bread and apple slices and set it on the porch rail as dusk settled over the mountains. It would probably be eaten by raccoons or birds before midnight. That wasn’t the point.
The point was the offering.
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