“This is an intimate domestic disagreement inside a private home!” Agnes shrieked at the threshold. “You have no legal right to barge into our residence like common trespassers!”

Frank Callahan walked straight through the entryway, his broad shoulders completely filling the frame of the door.

PART 3: The Only Person Who Asked About the Baby

My father stopped three steps inside the foyer. He did not raise his voice.

He did not reach for Agnes or Lucas. His gaze went straight past them to me, standing barefoot beside the sofa with Paisley in my arms.

“Corinne,” he said, “are you safe to walk?”

It was such a simple question that I nearly cried.

In the twenty-seven minutes since coming home, nobody in that house had thought to ask it.

“Not very far,” I admitted.

“Then you won’t.”

He turned toward the two men behind him.

Wyatt, my forty-year-old brother, had my father’s sturdy build and a habit of speaking only when words mattered.

Jesse, my cousin, was a former paramedic who had been helping Dad set up the crib and stock the refrigerator for our homecoming.

Neither was the sort to mistake intimidation for strength.

“Wyatt, get the discharge bag.

Jesse, find a chair she can sit in while we work this out.”

Agnes looked at their work boots with undisguised horror.

“You people are tracking mud onto my floor.”