“What about Margot looking after Brooks?” Johnny asked.

Toby shook his head but said, “I had a chat with Dave. He really wants us to keep letting them look after him. Says Margot’s at her best when Brooklyn’s there. She’s not weak or spacy, but he doesn’t leave them alone. When the radiation starts, though, we’ll have to have another conversation. Addie’s down with that.”

Johnny nodded before he asked, “Is she gonna put more effort into getting in touch with Perry?”

“Already did. She called some of his friends yesterday. Apparently, he’s left Chattanooga. They say he’s in Nashville. Though none of them shared contact details and she thinks they know how to get hold of him, they just aren’t telling her. Which means he told them not to share. Which means he’s vapor.”

“Fuckin’ dick,” Johnny muttered.

“The longer he stays away and stiffs her for child support, the more ammo we got if he comes back and wants to cause trouble.”

“Yeah. He’s still a fuckin’ dick.”

“No argument there.”

Johnny locked eyes with him, and Toby knew immediately where his mind was at.

“We gotta—” Johnny started.

“We will,” Toby declared.

“Dave’s gonna—”

“We’ll be on it.”

“I thought at least Eliza would unravel,” Johnny said quietly. “After their mom . . .”

He didn’t finish that.

He didn’t have to.

Though he did say, “Granite and steel packaged up in goose down and kitten fur.”

“Say what?” Toby asked.

“You got soft leather and smooth whiskey and I got goose down and kitten fur. But under what we got, it’s granite and steel. Daphne made that. That’s her legacy. That’s what she gave us, what our kids will get. That’s why I know, as fucked up as it sounds, Margot’s good. Because she knows this too. So it’s gonna be about Dave. Because he’s Dad. He’s you. And he’s me. And if it goes down like that, we have to be prepared. Because without his woman, he’s gonna be nothin’ but empty.”

“Yeah,” Toby said quietly.

“But we’re on it,” Johnny vowed.

“Yeah we are,” Toby agreed.

They stared at each other a beat, both feeling the same thing, and in that moment not much of it was good.

Then the Gamble Brothers got back to work.

 

“You know, I fought for a full hour with Margot about that dinnerware, Lollipop. It’d suck you reduced it to rubble in my sink so I gotta go and find whatever artisan conned Margot so I can buy more,” Toby noted, having dishwasher duty with Addie because she didn’t give a shit where he shoved the plates and silverware.

She fortunately quit banging his plates around and turned to him, looking confused. “Why did you fight with her? This stoneware is rad.”

“One place setting cost a hundred bucks.”

Her gaze coasted down to the sink as she breathed, “Holy shit.”

“And I only know what the term ‘place setting’ means because Margot said it fifteen hundred times when we were arguing about those plates.”

She shot him a grin.

“She found it for me at some art festival in Owensboro,” Toby told her. “Texted me a picture. Said it went with my couches. So with full disclosure, we argued for forty-five minutes via text that I did not need over a thousand dollars-worth of dishes, seein’ as she said I had to have serving bowls and platters and shit too. We only argued on the phone for fifteen minutes.”

Addie held up a plate, looked to his couch, to the plate, which was matte black on the outside with some ridges, speckled like an egg on a blueish-gray cream on the inside, and then she looked to him.

“It does match your couch,” she noted.

He smiled at her.

She jerked the rinsed plate at him and declared, “I hate you have to talk to that woman.”

“Baby, you’re the one who said I should listen so I know all her shit is her shit.”

“I take that back,” she muttered to the sink.

“You were right and Margot’s right, and Johnny and I will listen and then it’ll be done.”

“I said that before we knew about Margot or the fact that woman would darken the town of Matlock imminently.”

“Well, that’s how it happened. We deal. We move on. It’ll be over by this time tomorrow.”

Or he hoped, since Addie had worked late that night, so now it was even later, and he had a feeling it would not be fun to have to rap with Sierra for much longer than, say, ten minutes.

“I hope so,” she said his thoughts out loud, holding some silverware his way without looking at him.

“Babe,” he called.

Her eyes turned to him.

“I get what this is. But Johnny and Izzy essentially have a two-room house, and you and Iz can’t huddle in the bathroom with Brooklyn so you can be close to your men while we talk to Sierra.”

“So meet the woman here,” she returned. “We’ll hang in the loft.”

Yeah.

That was what it was.

Both of them hated their men were facing this without them close.

“That mill was Dad’s.”

She shut up.

“We want that in her face.”

She picked up the handled scrubber that had dishwashing liquid in it and started to go to town on a pot.

She did this and muttered, “Whatever.”

He decided to move them along.

To do that, he shut the dishwasher door, leaned a hip against the counter and announced, “After we’re done here, I’ve got some ideas about what I wanna do to the shack. I want you to look.”

She again turned his way. “The shack?”

“I’m gutting it, for the most part.”

She stopped looking at him and started staring at him.

He just kept talking.

“New kitchen, new bathrooms, add a laundry room. Fresh paint through the place and maybe fresh carpet. Though I’m thinkin’ wood or maybe tile. And there’s space over the garage that’s unfinished. I wanna make it into a playroom and put bunkbeds up there. It’s only got two bedrooms. If we’re all there together, Johnny and Izzy start making babies, you and me add to that, they get older, we’ll want privacy, they will too, and the kids can hang together over the garage and have cousin time.”

She set the pot on the drying pad and turned to him. “There’s a lot to unpack there, Talon.”

“Sock it to me, Lollipop.”

“I’m not sure I understand the concept of the shack.”

Fuck.

Shit.

That was where Stu had taken Brooklyn when he kidnapped him.

Christ, Toby hadn’t even thought of that.

“You want me to get rid of it?” he asked carefully, only for her brows to draw together.

“Why would I want you to do that?”

Even more carefully, he said, “Because of Stuart Bray.”

She waved a wet hand in front of her face and went back to the last pot. “He caused enough drama, no reason for him to make you lose your man retreat.”

“That’s it?” he asked.