Page 111 of Claimed By My Biker Daddies

He takes the glove and checks the cuff where the hand stitch climbs.

He shakes his head once. “This is personal. Not trophy work.”

Marisa wipes her hands and stays by the sink like she knows better than to crowd the table. “Tell me that means less trouble,” she says.

“It means older maps,” I tell her. “I know who drew them.”

Roman lifts his gaze.

There is steel in it, yes, but also the piece of him he hides that does not like that this is happening in front of a woman holding a dish towel.

“We are not being stalked by outsiders,” he says.

“No,” I answer. “We are being hunted by someone who called this place home.”

Isla’s tower leans then rights itself with tiny potato heroics.

She looks between us, sees too much, and makes a decision that would shame some adults.

“I will make lunch,” she announces, and Cara kisses her head and says the world is in good hands.

I do the small things because small things keep big things from chewing on you.

I fix the loose knob on the drawer by the stove because Marisa’s hand goes there when she is thinking.

I rehang the porch bell one link higher.

I put three screws into the third stair where the rise complains, not because the sound is loud but because a different sound will tell me if a stranger touches it after dark.

I erase and redraw a line on the chalkboard map where the south trail meets the old logging road, because whoever came through last night knows the lines, and I want ours to be truer than theirs.

We eat lunch like people who intend to continue.

Oatmeal baked with brown sugar and apples, a pan of eggs that emerge puffed and proud, leftover beans crisped in bacon fat, a bowl of sliced pears dusted with cinnamon that makes Isla sigh like a poet.

The twins fall asleep mid-argument about who owns which fist.

Cara claims a twenty-minute nap and wins it. Marisa keeps her smile steady by force and I hate that she has to.

I step back out once more, fast, just to look at the place where the glove lay.

The fog has lifted and the sun is a dull coin behind a paper sky.

The birds are louder.

I am not superstitious, but I listen to animals whose lives depend on having fewer opinions than ours.

They sound like normal.

That is the most dangerous sound of all.

Inside, I rinse my boots, hang them just so, and walk into the kitchen with the bag in my hand.

The glove sweats one last bead of melt that runs like a tear across the plastic.

I put it down on the long table, wet circle printing the wood.

I go to the door, turn the deadbolt, then the chain, then the second deadbolt we installed after the war in miniature seven winters ago.