She had confidence in her movements, so much, it was better described as power.

She stopped at the hood of the car and leaned against it, crossing her feet at the ankles, her arms on her chest.

Willie approached Lee and Eddie and got a lot closer.

He, too, stopped.

“Thought you boys might wanna meet Dynamite,” he said.

And then one side of his lips curled up in a smile.

*  *  *

Axl

It was only two days after he saw Hattie’s sculpture of them before it was delivered.

And this time, Elvira didn’t give any shit about it like she did when Boone got his.

Neither did any of the guys.

Now, when it happened, it was what it was.

He’d just returned to the office from being out in the field and it was sitting at the head of his workstation.

Light blue plastic, white words, slid into an aluminum stand.

Cheap.

Simple.

Everything.

The plaque said,

AXL PANTERA

“THEN AND NOW”

He got out his phone immediately and texted Hattie.

I love it.

Hattie texted back in less than a minute.

Good.

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Chapter One

A Perfect World

Pepper

My phone chimed with the eleventh text I’d gotten in an hour and I just managed not to pull it out of my purse and throw it in the nearest garbage can.

Okay.

All right.

Deep breath and…

Center.

Bottom line: I needed to get over it because I didn’t want to be a hater. Hating was such an ugly thing. I didn’t like how it made me feel and I didn’t want it around my daughter. And when the world at large was so full of negativity and hate that it was pushing in sometimes on an hourly basis, the best way to keep that kind of thing from burying my little girl was, when I had her, do my all not to be a hater.

So I had to guard against the hate.

Even if the holidays were coming up and it always got bad during the holidays.

Bad in the sense of these texts I was currently getting from my sister, because she (and Mom and Dad) always thought holidays were the perfect time to win me around to their way of thinking.

Or, to be blunt (and honest), indoctrinate me and Juno into their way of life.

A way of life I’d turned my back on years ago.

You had to hand it to them, they never gave up.