Free Carolina Home by Virginia Kantra

open another beer and stared at the sky until the burning in his eyes went away.
    That haze around the moon meant dust in the air. A high pressure system. That should keep the clouds away.
    “Another clear day tomorrow,” Luke said.
    Matt glanced at his brother, surprised by the echo of his own thoughts.
    But despite their differences in age and temperament, they were brothers, bound by blood and memory, by a thousand inside jokes and shared experiences. You couldn’t escape family.
    How many nights had they gone out together with their father, grandfather, and watched the moon?
    Matt set down his beer, untasted. “You didn’t drag me out here your last night home to talk about the weather.”
    “No.”
    Matt waited. He wasn’t comfortable putting his emotions into words. But at least he had some experience dealing with feelings, some practice at being a parent. Luke didn’t.
    The silence stretched.
    “You get the kid settled down all right?” Matt asked at last.
    “I said good night.” Luke’s tone was defensive. “She’s a little old for bedtime stories.”
    Maybe so. Matt couldn’t remember at what age he’d stopped reading to Josh. But he remembered the wriggly warm weight against his arm, the tousled head against his shoulder.
    Luke had missed all that with his daughter.
    Why? Why hadn’t Dawn told him about the child they’d supposedly made together? Sure, they broke up in high school, but why hadn’t she come after Luke for child support? The Simpsons had never had any money.
    “We had to move her,” Luke said abruptly. “Mom needed the room for some guests coming in late tonight. She made up a bed for Taylor in the old sewing room.” The small room at the top of the stairs off the kitchen. “The kid looked at me like I was making her sleep in the crawl space.”
    “You could have given up your room,” Matt said.
    Luke shook his head. “The sewing room is right above Mom and Dad. I didn’t want to leave her alone in a guest room next to a bunch of strangers.”
    “Isn’t that what you’re doing anyway?” Matt asked quietly. “In her eyes, we’re strangers, too.”
    Luke’s jaw set in a mulish expression Matt recognized. “We’re her family.”
    Matt held his brother’s gaze. “You sure about that?”
    Luke expelled his breath. “I had a paternity test done first thing. There’s a place in Texas that’ll get the results back in twenty-four hours if you pay them enough.”
    “What did you do?” Matt asked dryly. “Hold her down and draw blood?”
    “I didn’t have to. Dawn’s lawyer made sure I was appointed Taylor’s interim guardian until the court determines final custody. That gives me the right to take her to a doctor on base.”
    “Jesus. No wonder she’s hostile.”
    “Hey, I didn’t tell her why,” Luke said. “I picked her up, told her she needed a physical before school started. Which she does. Anyway, while he was at it, the doctor did a…” Luke waggled his finger next to his cheek.
    “Swab,” Matt guessed.
    “Yeah. Then I checked us into a motel and waited for the DNA results. I wasn’t bringing her here until I knew.”
    Matt tried to picture it, his brother holed up overnight with a scared, snotty ten-year-old, waiting to find out if he was a dad. What a nightmare. For both of them.
    “Why the hell didn’t you just take her back to Dawn’s parents?”
    Luke dug in his front shirt pocket. “The lawyer said it might not be so easy to pick her up the second time. The Simpsons want to keep her.”
    O-kay.
    Matt sympathized with Luke’s situation. To find out you were a father after ten years, to be given a chance to reconnect with a child you never knew you had…
    But the child’s interests trumped a father’s feelings. Not to mention what
she
must feel.
    “Maybe you should think about that,” Matt said. “The kid just lost her mother.”
    Luke tapped a cigarette from the pack. “And I’m her father.”
    “You’re also deployed, for