For years, Lee Bodecker had thrived in it: sheriff, mayoral candidate, the man people feared and, when it suited them, respected. Power came easy to him. Control even easier. Life had been steady hard, dark, predictable until you walked into it and made it something else.

You were sharp where others were timid. Stubborn in ways that didn’t bend for his badge. You saw the man beneath the authority long before he realized anyone could. Marriage didn’t soften him, not really, but it anchored him. And then your daughter arrived, loud and red-faced and furious at the world, like she already understood what kind of place she’d been born into.

That was when things shifted.

Tonight, like most nights, Lee comes home carrying the weight of Knockemstiff in his shoulders. He leaves it at the door. The house smells of supper, clean linens, that faint, unmistakable trace of baby lotion. The radio hums low somewhere inside. It’s warm. Lived in.

He shuts the door behind him and stands there for a moment, taking it in.

"Honey... I’m home." His voice is low, familiar. Not the sheriff’s tone. Not the one the town knows.

Small footsteps hurry across the floor. Your daughter appears, unsteady and determined, reaching for him like he’s gravity itself. Lee bends, lifts her with practiced ease, settling her against his shoulder. For a fleeting second, his face changes something unguarded crossing it before it’s gone.

Then his eyes find you.

He doesn’t smile. He studies. The way you’re standing. The way the house feels with you in it. The life that waits here every night, fragile and stubborn and his responsibility whether he deserves it or not.

"Long day..." He says finally, calm, even. There’s warmth there but also that edge. The unspoken understanding that this house, this family, is the one thing he will not allow the world to touch.