Chapter 39
By the time Jenna and Luke drove back through the gate, Jenna felt every hour of the day in her bones.
The rest of the drive from town had been quiet. Luke had kept his eyes on the road and his hands at ten and two. Jenna had watched the muscle work in his jaw, and she’d known he was still back in that courthouse replaying everything he’d said and every conversation.
The kids spilled onto the porch the second the truck stopped—Cora first, then Jonah, with Liam following at his more careful pace. His mom appeared in the doorway, a dish towel over her shoulder.
She walked over to meet them as they climbed from the truck. “Naomi called. They stopped for some ice cream. But she gave me the update.”
“So you know the hearing got continued—two weeks,” Luke said.
“I do.”
But they all knew two weeks wasn’t a win. It was a stay of execution.
Jenna climbed the porch steps, and Cora wrapped both arms around her waist and held on. Jenna pressed a hand to her daughter’s hair and tried to let the warmth of her little girl thaw some of the cold the day had packed into her bones.
While she stood there holding Cora, her gaze fell on Freya.
She’d seen her several times now—on the porch with Cora, a brown shape at the edge of the yard, there and gone since the night Jenna arrived. There’d been too much else crowding her mind to give the animal much thought.
The dog sat at the corner of the house where the porch met the yard, half in the long shadow of the eaves.
She wasn’t playing with the children. She wasn’t begging at the door. She only sat at the edge of everything and watched, her amber eyes moving over the group on the porch with a wariness Jenna felt echo somewhere beneath her own ribs.
Then the dog’s gaze found hers.
And held.
Freya didn’t wag her tail, didn’t rise, didn’t so much as shift her weight. She only looked at Jenna across the gold evening light, steady and measuring, as though she were deciding something.
Jenna stood where she was and let her decide.
She, of all people, knew better than to rush a decision like that.
Then Luke’s phone buzzed.
He pulled it out, read the screen, and went still in the way that meant the news wasn’t small.
“It’s Micah,” he said. “Emily’s awake.”
Jenna’s breath caught. She turned toward him.
“She’s talking.” His eyes came up to meet hers, and something in them made her chest go tight. “She told them the man who attacked her was asking questions about a patron who’d been in the restaurant that afternoon. A woman.” He paused. “Dark hair. Hazel eyes. Came in with a man and a dog.”
The porch went quiet around them. Cora’s arms were still around her waist. The evening light still lay gold across the yard. Freya still watched from the shadow of the eaves.
None of it felt the same as it had thirty seconds ago.
Jenna had sat at that table. She’d ordered French dip and answered Wes’s questions and let a kind young woman bring her chamomile tea. She’d smiled at her. Thanked her by name.
And someone had been watching the whole time.
“She’s going to be okay,” Luke said. Quiet. Careful.
Jenna nodded. She was glad. She was so glad.
But Emily had ended up in a hospital bed for no reason except that she’d been kind to the wrong person on the wrong afternoon.
Jenna knew how that worked. She’d spent two years knowing exactly how that worked.
She pressed her hand against Cora’s hair and held on.
Jenna slipped out onto the porch for a minute of air while everyone else was occupied.
The house was full and warm, and she’d needed one clean breath before she went back to face any more of it.
Freya still sat at the far end of the porch with her head on her paws. She lifted it when the screen door clicked but didn’t get up. She only watched Jenna cross to the railing.
Jenna didn’t reach for the dog. She’d learned a long time ago that the surest way to lose a frightened thing was to grab for it.
The screen door opened behind her, and Ruby came out with two mugs of decaf, handing one over without asking. “I see Freya likes you.”
“What’s her story?” Jenna glanced down at the dog.
“She belonged to a woman who stayed with us.” Ruby’s voice softened. “She named the dog after a warrior goddess. One who rode into battle and was the goddess of love, both at once. I think the dog was the only protector she had for a while, so she gave her the biggest name she could find.”
Jenna’s throat tightened. “What happened to her? The woman?”
“She got out. Found somewhere she could start over.” Ruby looked at the chocolate Lab. “But she couldn’t take Freya where she was going. Broke her heart. She made us promise we’d keep her until she could send for her.” A pause. “A month later, we’re still keeping the promise.”
Jenna looked at the dog with new eyes.
A creature named for a fighter by a woman who’d had no one else to fight for her. A dog left behind, through no fault of her own, by someone who’d loved her and couldn’t stay. A dog that lived at the edge of a family who fed her and sheltered her.
Waiting, all this time, to be claimed.
Jenna knew that animal. She understood her better, maybe, than she understood herself. “I remember you said earlier she doesn’t take to people.”
Ruby nodded. “Not for our lack of trying. She’ll let the kids close sometimes. But mostly she keeps her distance. Decided it’s safer that way, I think.” She set her empty mug on the railing. “Can’t say I blame her.”
“I get that,” Jenna murmured. “Where does she sleep at night?”
“We had her in the kennel at first. But we don’t like to leave dogs there for an extended period. We tried to bring her inside, but she seems to prefer wandering outside on her own instead. At night, on mild days, she likes sleeping on the screened porch.”
“It is nice out here.”
“That it is.” Ruby squeezed Jenna’s shoulder. “I’ll give you some time.”
She went back inside, and the screen door swung shut behind her.
Jenna stayed at the railing, the warm mug cradled in both hands, and she watched the tree line go from blue to black.
There, alone in the dark with no one to perform for, the thing she’d been holding down all day finally rose.
The fear and the bone-deep exhaustion.
And her eyes burned before she could stop them.
She heard the soft click of nails on the boards.
A pause.
Then she felt the warm, unhurried weight of a body settling against her shin.
Jenna went still.
Then she let out a breath that shook on the way out, and reached down—slow, careful—and laid her hand on that soft, brown head.
Freya didn’t pull away.
Two wary survivors, keeping each other company at the edge of a house full of people they weren’t sure they were allowed to belong to.
The screen door eased open behind her again. She didn’t turn. She knew that step.
Luke.
He crossed the porch and stood beside her at the railing.
His gaze dropped to the dog pressed against her leg. “She won’t let me within ten feet of her. All this time, and she’s never once come to me.”
Jenna kept her hand on Freya’s head. “Maybe she’s just waiting to be sure.”
“Of what?”
“That whoever she lets close isn’t going to leave.”
The words were out before she’d weighed them, and she felt them land in the space between her and Luke—who had been left, who had every reason in the world not to come close again.
He didn’t answer.
But he didn’t move away, either.
The screen door opened a third time.
Softer footsteps. Careful, the way he moved when he wasn’t sure of his welcome.
Liam.
He stopped just outside the door, his hands in the front pocket of his sweatshirt, looking at the two of them and the dog at her feet. He was so much like his father that it still caught her off guard—that same stillness, that same measuring look before he committed to anything.
“Hey, buddy.” Luke’s voice was easy. Giving him room.
Liam didn’t answer right away. His eyes moved to Jenna. Then to Freya.
“She came to you,” he said.
“She did.” Jenna kept her voice gentle. “Surprised me too.”
He was quiet a moment. He came to the railing on Luke’s other side, close enough to be part of the group, far enough to still be deciding about it.
“Grandma says she doesn’t go to anybody.”
“That’s what she told me.”
Another silence. The night sounds filled it—frogs somewhere down near the water, wind moving through the top of the pines.
“I was mad at you,” Liam said. Not accusing. Just stating it, the way he stated everything—plain, careful, making sure it was true before he said it out loud.
Jenna looked at him. “I know.”
“I’m still a little mad.”
“That’s okay.”
He glanced at her sideways, like he’d expected her to argue. When she didn’t, something in his face shifted.
“Dad said you left because you were scared,” he said. “Not because you wanted to.”
She held his gaze. “That’s true. I was scared for all of you. I thought if I went, the danger would go with me. I was wrong about some of it. And I’m sorry.”
He turned that over a moment, looking back at the dark yard. “Miss Brenda—my counselor—she said sometimes people who love you still hurt you. And that doesn’t mean they stopped loving you.”
Jenna’s throat tightened. “Miss Brenda sounds like a smart woman.”
“She is.” He was quiet again. Then: “Freya kind of did the same thing. The lady who had her left her here. And she’s still sad about it. But she’s okay.”
He said it like he was working something out, not like he was making a point.
Jenna waited.
Liam pushed off the railing and moved to her side of it, crouching down in front of Freya. The dog lifted her head and regarded him with her amber eyes. She didn’t move away.
“Hey, girl,” he murmured.
Freya’s tail moved once. Slow. But it moved.
Liam looked up at Jenna from where he was crouched. “I don’t want to be mad forever. It’s really tiring.”
A sound came out of Jenna that was almost a laugh, almost something else entirely. “It really is.”
He stood up and, without making anything of it, leaned against her arm the way he used to when he was small—just for a second.
Then he straightened and looked at his dad. “Can we have hot chocolate?”
“Yeah.” Luke’s voice came out a little rough. “Yeah, we can do that.”
Liam went inside, letting the screen door close quietly behind him, and the night settled back around them.
Jenna stood very still.
Luke didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say that the moment hadn’t already said for itself.
She reached down and laid her hand on Freya’s head again.
For the first time since she’d come through that gate, she let herself hope that some things, given enough time and a steady hand, could be coaxed back.