Chapter 34

“I feel a lot better. I mean that. Thank you, Goose. You, too, Patrick.” Tate’s smile was sincere, this handsome man who looked like Daniel Porter, Jr, at least to some of us. “If something else comes to me, I’ll hit you up.”

“Okay. Same here.”

“Is he gone?” Shelby asked, when the Facebook chat ended.

“Tate?”

“Daniel.” She looked all around. “If he was a messenger for Garret, and now we know about Garret and Davis being in love…”

“Oh. I don’t know.” Goose cast his gaze up into the tree above us. “Maybe.”

“What are you looking for?” I aimed mine upward as well.

“You know.”

“A cardinal.”

Goose touched an oak leaf, one hanging low enough to reach.

“You do expect Daniel to return to Heaven now, don’t you?”

“Not without Jefferson,” Goose said. Still, he kept looking. Shelby and Rip did the same. I did, too.

“What if they have to stay down here, but they can’t be together?”

I took Goose’s hand. “I hope that doesn’t happen.” It was better to just keep staring into the branches.