“When it comes to kids, I’m a hundred years old.”

She’d been involved with child advocacy too long not to know what cops faced, and in the dim light she thought he looked haunted. “I saw too many dead bodies,” he said. “Not just teens but infants—five-year-old kids who hadn’t lost their baby teeth. Kids blown up, missing limbs.” She cocked her head. “I saw parents on the worst day of their lives,” he went on, “and I’ve promised myself I’ll never have to go through that. Best decision I ever made. It’s hard to do your job when you wake up every night in a cold sweat.”

“You saw worst-case scenarios. What about the millions of kids who grow up just fine?”

“What about the ones who don’t?”

“Nothing in life comes with a guarantee.”

“Wrong. A snip here, a snip there. It’s a damn good guarantee.”

The sky lit up with the grand finale, the bangs, crackles, and whistles ending their conversation. She respected people who understood themselves well enough to know they wouldn’t make good parents, but instinct told her that wasn’t the case with Panda.

Her Lucy-ness was getting in her way again. This had nothing to do with her, other than serving as an omen, a harsh reminder that a lot of men felt the way Panda did about fatherhood, and despite what she’d done to Ted, she still wanted to get married and have children. What if she fell in love with a man like Panda who didn’t want to be a father? One of so many variables she wouldn’t be facing if she hadn’t bolted from that Texas church.

Temple scrambled back from the bow to join them, and they headed home. Panda stayed behind on the boat, so Lucy and Temple walked up to the house together. “There’s something about fireworks,” Temple said as they reached the top of the stairs. “They make me sad. That’s weird, right?”

“Everybody’s different.” Lucy didn’t feel all that cheery herself, but the fireworks weren’t to blame.

“Fireworks make most people happy, but there’s something depressing about watching all that color and beauty die out so fast. Like if we’re not careful, that’s what will happen to us. One minute you’re blazing hot—on top of your game. The next minute you’re gone, and nobody remembers your name. Sometimes you have to think, what’s the point?”

The porch screen door dragged as Lucy opened it. Light from the fake Tiffany lamp hanging in the kitchen spilled out through the windows. “You’re depressed because you’re starving. And by the way … I think you look terrific.”

“We both know that’s not true.” Temple threw herself down on one of the chaises Lucy had covered with a crimson beach towel. “I’m a pig.”

“Stop talking about yourself that way.”