He held up a hand. “Let’s talk about this at home.”

“Right.” Clara darted a glance at Eve and Maya—it was as if she’d forgotten that she and Sawyer had an audience—and her face turned pink. “It’s so embarrassing,” she muttered as she moved toward Sawyer. He pulled her into a hug.

She had probably meant the observation for her brother’s ears only, but Eve heard, and her heart broke a little. Clara seemed mature beyond her age—Eve supposed you had to be when you didn’t have functional parents—but she was still a teenager.

After a few moments, Sawyer pulled away from his sister and made eye contact with Eve. He looked at her really intensely and said, quietly, “Thank you, Eve.”

He got the name right this time. That was…good. That was what she wanted. Right?

“No problem,” she croaked.

“We’ll get out of your hair.” Sawyer slung an arm over his sister’s shoulder. His biceps were too big, objectively speaking, for the sleeves of his shirt.

And…she was getting the tinglies over that uniform. Dammit.

“Come on, Clare Bear.”

Eve stifled a sigh as she saw them out. So, okay. Maybe she was going to have to do a little exorcism on her wayward tinglies, too.

“Why don’t we ever talk about Dad?”

Sawyer had said they would talk at home, but clearly Clara didn’t want to wait that long. “We talk about Dad.”

“No, we don’t,” she said firmly. “You tell me to stay away from him. You freak out if he comes within a mile radius. I get that he was a bad dude. I mean, I guess.”

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “He was a bad dude.”

“So you say.”

“Clara.” Her name came out like a warning.

Which she ignored. “We talk about Mom. We have that picture of her on the mantel. But we never talk about him. It’s like I have a dead mother and a hole where there’s supposed to be a father.”

He didn’t mean to wince. At least not outwardly. But did that ever sting.

“Oh, Sawyer, I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.”

He glanced at her as they rolled to a stop at a stop sign. Her eyes were filling with tears. “It’s okay.” And, really, she wasn’t wrong. When it came to their father, his approach had always been to stonewall. Keep him away from her. And she was right in that when that didn’t work—like that time he’d shown up at her store drunk—Sawyer tended to lose his goddamn mind. When he actually thought about it with his higher intelligence and not his animalistic brain, he could admit that maybe that wasn’t the best way to handle things anymore. Clara was almost grown up.