[Closed Starter for @huntresscaraquinn ]
Thread :: The Djinn Job ::
Chicago wears autumn like a secret it's still deciding whether to tell, gold leaning into gray, the wind carrying the particular hush of a city easing itself toward evening. Lee stands on the sidewalk beneath a canopy of maples gone the color of good whiskey, the kind he doesn't touch anymore, not since the tour started keeping him too busy to need it. Behind him, a black car idles at the curb with his bags in the trunk and his bandmates already three drinks deep at the hotel bar, but he's dismissed the driver for the evening. Some things a man handles on his own two feet.
The house sits back from the street with the settled confidence of something built to outlast its owners; wraparound porch, gingerbread trim, a door painted the deep, unapologetic red of a woman who has never once in her life second-guessed a choice. Cara's house. Cara's life, built brick by careful brick the same way she builds everything—with intention, with patience, with a kind of quiet strength most folks mistake for gentleness. He's got a birthday bouquet cradled in one arm, something extravagant and a little absurd, the florist's idea of what a country music star buys for the woman who's like a sister to him. In the other hand, wrapped in brown paper and twine because he never did trust gift bags, sits a set of teacups he found in an antique shop outside Nashville—delicate, hand-painted things, the kind she'd spend twenty minutes just turning over in her hands before she ever thought to use them.
He climbs the stone steps slow, savoring it. Through the front window, gauzy curtain pulled back just enough, he catches sight of her: curled into the corner of a deep armchair, newborn tucked against her shoulder, a slim volume of poetry balanced open on the chair's arm like she's been reading it one-handed between rocking the baby to sleep. Her hair's come loose from whatever knot she'd twisted it into that morning. She looks tired in the particular, luminous way new mothers look tired—like exhaustion has simply become another color she wears well. Something in Lee's chest goes soft and unguarded at the sight of her, at all of it—the porch light warm against the coming dusk, the smell of someone's woodsmoke drifting from a neighboring chimney, the whole tableau of a life she built for herself out of nothing but kindness and love. He thinks, not for the first time, that of all the people he's ever known, she deserved this most.
He knocks gently, two knuckles against red-painted wood, and waits.
When the door swings open he's already got his hat in hand, pulling it from his head in one easy motion, grin spreading slow and familiar across his face.
"Howdy, Darlin'. Miss me?"
2087
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