Dawn Patrol

RAIN.

The girl's name.

Bastard, Petra thinks. He never told me he had a daughter. He never even mentioned that he'd been married. Maybe he wasn't. Maybe the girl is a love child and Boone never married her mother. Still, he might have mentioned it. Be fair, she tells herself. He had no obligation to tell you.

She digs deeper.

More pictures of the girl. Carefully preserved in plastic sleeves. Photos of her playing, at a birthday party, opening presents in front of a Christmas tree. Oddly, not a single photo of Rain with Boone. Not a single daddy-daughter shot that one would expect.

And the pictures seem to stop when the girl is around the age of five or six.

So Boone Daniels has a six-year-old daughter, Petra thinks. Whom he clearly adores but doesn't talk about.

Disregarding the better angels of her nature, Petra digs under the photos and finds a file folder. She opens it, to see some pencil sketches, “artist's renderings” some would call them, of a girl as she would look as she got older.

Her name is Rain.

“Rain at seven,” “Rain at eight,” “Rain at nine”…

Is Boone not allowed to see his daughter anymore? Petra wonders. They're so sad, these sketches-all he has of his little girl.

There are other files in the drawer, all labeled “Rasmussen.” Must be another case he's working on, Petra thinks, although Boone hardly seems to be the type to bring work home.

You are full of surprises, Mr. Daniels, she thinks. Feeling ashamed, she quickly puts everything back in order and goes into the living room.

“I've been told I belong in the bedroom,” Tammy says. She gets up from the couch, goes into the bedroom, and shuts the door behind her.

“She wants to talk with Teddy,” Petra says, sitting down on the couch.

“She mentioned that,” Boone replies.

The sweatshirt-a black Sundowner-is huge on her, and she's had to roll the legs of the sweatpants way up. But Boone thinks she looks prettier than hell.

“You look good,” he says.

“You're a liar,” she says. “But thank you.”

“No,” he says. “You should go with that look.”

“Hardly lawyerly.”

“Maybe that's it.”

The doorbell rings.