She’d knocked several times. Edith wasn’t answering.
“I’m going to stay out here until you open this door,” Mims called out. “We need to talk.”
Edith opened the door in her pink terry-cloth bathrobe. “Slut! Whore! Floozy!”
Mims had been prepared for an attack but Edith’s words still stung. She tugged down her fishing vest and squared her shoulders. “You said you wanted to know the details. If that’s true, come along.” She turned and walked to her car.
“I’m not dressed.” Edith slammed the door.
Mims took that to mean she was to wait for her. Good thing she’d brought coffee. To pass the time, she watched the birds flit through Edith’s apple tree searching for bugs, appreciated the colorful sunrise, and braced herself for another round of insults.
Fifteen minutes later, Edith dropped into the front seat, wearing blue jeans, a neatly pressed neon-yellow T-shirt, and a scowl that knotted her entire face. “Did you have a love nest, like Lola’s man? Is that where we’re going?”
“No. Don’t talk until we get there.” Or Mims might just change her mind, pull over, and leave her alongside the road.
“Whore.” The slur popped out of Edith’s mouth like burnt toast from a new toaster. “You were my friend once. I feel so betrayed.”
“Don’t talk,” Mims warned again.
“Jezebel.” Edith was incapable of being silent. “Do you remember our freshman year of high school?”
Mims rolled her eyes and shook her head, slowing for a turn.
“That’s when I knew Charlie was mine, you floozy.” Edith grabbed onto the handle above the door, as if Mims drove like Clarice. “You’d dated him all summer but come September, he was mine.”
Mims held her tongue.
“Slut, slut, slut.” Edith couldn’t hold hers. “We used to do things together. We used to go to the movies and make cookies for the football team.”
“You forget what happened after you professed your love to Charlie.” Mims’s vow of silence didn’t just break. It shattered. “You didn’t want to hang out with me. You only wanted to do things with Charlie. You went to the movies together. You went shopping together. You had a baby together.” There. She’d said it. She’d said what she’d kept inside for more than fifty years. And then she said more. “You weren’t married. You didn’t finish high school, and neither did he.” Edith had trapped Charlie more completely than Mims ever could, because Mims had wanted to wait to have sex until after marriage. “You won Charlie but it wasn’t fair and square.”
“He loved me,” Edith said mutinously.
“He did,” Mims agreed, accelerating onto the highway heading out of town. “He loved you despite your insecurities.” He’d probably loved her because of them. Charlie liked being needed. He hadn’t been Mims’s emotional rock out of kindness alone. He’d treated Mims as if she needed a man to survive. She didn’t. But in her extended grief over Hamm, she’d forgotten.
“I am not insecure,” Edith shouted, tugging at the handle.
“You have got to be the least confident person I know.” Mims was shouting now too. “It’s why you barge in and pretend not to notice you hurt other people’s feelings. You don’t let anyone else get a word in. I can’t have a conversation with you—I have to yell at you. That’s why we stopped being best friends fifty years ago. It had nothing to do with Charlie and everything to do with you being insecure and annoying!”
“Stop the car. I want to get out.”
Mims accelerated. “You wanted to know what we did.”
“I lied.” Edith was pale. Tears streamed down her red cheeks. She wiped them away. “I don’t want to know. I only said that because of Lola.”
“Lola is a brave woman.” Impetuous but brave. “I wouldn’t be doing this if not for her.” Mims turned down a side road toward the river. She parked by a shallow bend. “Get out.”
“I don’t understand.” Edith backed up against the door. “Are you going to shoot me? Is this a hit?”
“You watch too much TV.” Mims got out and opened the back hatch of the Subaru. “You want to know what we did? This is what we did.” She took out her waders and put them on. “We fished. We sat in duck blinds. We hunted.”
Edith opened the door and scowled at the river. “I hate the outdoors.”
“Exactly.” Mims got out her tackle box and began tying a fly to her line. “Charlie did everything you enjoyed with you. But you did nothing he enjoyed with him. Charlie and Hamm and I used to hunt and fish together. After Hamm died, Charlie and I hunted and fished together.”
“So there’s no love shack? You didn’t sneak off to some sleazy motel in Greeley?” Edith looked disappointed.
“No.”
“Okay.” Edith blew out a breath. “You can take me home now. I still hate you but I’ll see you at the board meeting later.”
“I don’t think you understand.” Mims gritted her teeth. It really would be easier to shoot her. “You’re going to fish with me today.”
Edith crossed her arms. “Fat chance of that.”
“As a way to honor your husband, you’ll do it.” Mims used her stern voice, the one that had kept many a hungry schoolchild in line. “And if this is the last time you fish, so be it.” She held up a pair of waders. “You honored Charlie your way with that bikini. Now honor him his way.”
Edith hesitated instead of firing back. She eyed the river. “If I fall in—”
“You’ll get wet.”
“If I drown—”
“You’ll be with Charlie in heaven.” She wouldn’t let her friend drown.
Edith’s eyes narrowed. “I hate you.”
“I know.” Mims sighed. “I’m sorry I leaned on Charlie after Hamm died. But now it’s just you and me. Get your waders on.”
* * *
Today was the day Drew would become bulletproof against Jane.
Of course, he was nervous. There were unknowns, and the Saddle Horn was busy, even for a Sunday.
Still, he and Becky had the same seats they always had, next to Iggy. Jason was out on the road, trying his best to win another belt buckle for bull riding. Crazy thing, bull riding. Drew would have gladly switched places with Jason. Not that he had much skill at handling two-thousand-pound bulls, given he couldn’t handle a three-hundred-pound pig by himself.
Beside him, Becky was perfecting her beard-making skills with a tall mug of hot chocolate, same as she did every Sunday.
There should have been comfort in the usual but something was off.
Pearl had harrumphed when she poured his coffee. The entire Widows Club board had frowned at him when he walked in. Even Norma Eastlake had looked away when he smiled at her.
Drew spun his mug in a slow circle with sweaty palms. His bad Saturday was turning into a worse Sunday. He’d gotten a call from Rupert last night. Jane was trying to work the system to her advantage, calling Drew reckless in his care of Becky because of Rosie. Drew had fought back this morning, reporting to Rupert that Jane hadn’t spent the night camping out in the cemetery. His part-time deputy, Emily, had checked every two hours, starting at midnight. No Jane. Rupert claimed that wasn’t enough, not if Drew wasn’t married.
The bell over the door rang. Drew jumped, expecting Wendy.
Eileen charged inside instead and slugged Drew’s shoulder. “How could you? Rosie doesn’t belong on a farm.”
“She’s on a ranch.” Drew tilted out of slugging range, ruing his childish need to teach his sisters how to take care of themselves. He’d taught Eileen to hit hard. “And a ranch is exactly where Rosie belongs.”
“In a pigsty.” Eileen choked on a sob. “I just saw her, Drew. How could you do that to her?”
“I heard she nearly killed Becky,” Iggy said, nosy as always.
“Stay out of this,” Drew growled.
“Daddy said Mr. Bodine wouldn’t eat Rosie.” Becky spun in her stool to face Eileen, wearing a heavy whip beard. “But that new mama said that’
s what people do. Eat animals.” The bulk of the beard plopped into her lap.
Eileen gasped. A tear spilled down her cheek.
The bell over the door rang, and Wendy entered. She headed for the empty seat next to Drew without looking at anyone, not even Becky and her lap of whipped cream.
“Eileen, come on.” Drew tried to reach for her arm. “Be reasonable. Tom said he could have Rosie down to fighting weight in a few weeks.”
“And you believed him?” Eileen looked around the coffee shop, gathering support.
“That pig was so sweet,” Norma said from a side booth. “Say you aren’t going to eat her.”
“Sweet?” Iggy scoffed. “It took the two of us to take her down one day.”
“And you say that with pride.” Eileen clenched her fists.
Becky hadn’t wiped any of the whip off her lap. She stared at Drew with wide eyes. “Rosie’s going to be okay, isn’t she?”
“She’ll be fine.” Drew grabbed a handful of napkins and wiped Becky clean. “She went to fat camp, that’s all.”
Eileen made a noise of disbelief and ran out the door.
Lola came in before the door could close again. She wore those sky-blue leggings again—the ones that would stop Drew in traffic if he were behind the wheel. She carried her thermos. No doubt, she was working on Marcia Stephens this morning. Augie and Rowena had returned from their vacation early. He’d seen their truck at the mortuary on his way to the coffee shop.
“What happened to your window display?” Wendy asked Lola, unusually chatty.
“I took it down.” Lola glanced at Drew and then away.
All eyes seemed to turn to Drew.
“I didn’t make her.” What was wrong with people? Half his complaints the past week had been about Lola’s window.
“Well, you asked me to do it.” Lola handed Pearl her thermos. “Lots of times.”
Drew heard a guttural sound and realized it’d come from his own throat. “Why now?”
Lola tilted her head toward one shrugging shoulder. “I decided you were right.”
“Next thing you know,” Pearl said, topping off his coffee, “you’ll be telling me to be nice to people.”
“Can you do that, Daddy?” Becky stopped messing with the whipped cream.
“No.” Drew scowled.
“He sure can.” Iggy laughed.
“What is wrong with you people today?” Drew said to no one in particular.
“You fired Gary, for one.” Iggy settled his straw cowboy hat farther back on his head. “He’s a town legend, the first person from Sunshine to make it on the state record books.”
There was a synchronized wave of head nods.
Drew scowled. “You told me to fire Gary when he pulled you over a few days ago.”
“Gary’s an…” Iggy’s gaze caught on Becky. “Gary’s a little green around the edges but he means well.”
The bell over the door rang, and Drew’s mother entered. She never came to the Saddle Horn on a Sunday anymore. Never.
“This is how you treat family? You fire your cousin? You sentence a pet to death? You don’t answer your phone when your mother calls?” She shook her finger at Drew, spun around, and left.
Okay, Drew got it. He’d made some hard decisions over the past twenty-four hours. But he didn’t deserve to be treated like he’d sold the town downriver. Everything he’d done had been in Sunshine’s best interests.
“No one gets it.” Anger coiled around his lungs, and Drew struggled to fill them with air. “You can’t have it both ways, people.”
“It’s okay, Daddy.” Becky patted his shoulder. “Do you want to go for a walk? You’ve got your angry face on.”
“Count to ten,” Pearl said.
“Deep cleansing breaths,” Iggy said.
“Are you okay?”
Although his back was to her, Drew recognized Lola’s voice.
“I’m fine,” he said wearily, because nothing was going to play out the way he wanted it to but he’d never been a quitter. “Or I’ll be fine when this thing with Jane is under control.” He’d come here today not just to spoil Becky but to close the deal with Wendy. He turned to her and got down to business. “How’d you like to get married?”
There was a collective gasp in the coffee shop, and then everyone went silent.
Wendy sat very still, so still he almost thought she’d stopped breathing.
Pearl had been pouring coffee in Lola’s thermos. It overflowed. At the Widows Club booth, forks clattered. Even Iggy had nothing to say.
Wendy blew out a breath. “Um, wow. I wasn’t sure we were dating, and…” She lifted her sweet gaze to Drew’s. “I was going to tell you this morning that we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”
“You’re…breaking up with me?” Drew’s vision tunneled, and he swayed on the stool.
Wendy nodded and got to her feet. “And I’m turning down your proposal of marriage.”
A few minutes later, Drew pushed out the door, tugging Becky behind him.
“But I wasn’t finished,” Becky whined.
“You’ve had enough whipped cream for one day.” He needed a backup plan. He should have had one to begin with.
The bell rang behind them. It was Lola.
“Don’t say a word.” Drew yanked open the cruiser’s back door for Becky to climb in.
Lola followed, giving him a wide berth. “You shouldn’t drive like this.”
“Like what?” He leaned in to buckle Becky’s seat belt and then straightened to face Lola.
“You shouldn’t drive when the spring-thaw madness is at its peak. Walk Becky over to the park. Stroll down the block to the movies.” Lola moved closer, close enough to touch, close enough that he couldn’t see her long legs without looking down. And then she laid a palm across his cheek. “It will get better.”
Drew wanted to snarl and shout and thrust her hand away. He wanted to speed and take corners too fast. He wanted to rant about injustices. He wanted to rail about employees who didn’t wield the rules wisely. He wanted to howl about ex-wives who tried to bend the rules to their advantage.
Instead, he stared into Lola’s blue eyes and was calmed by her gentle touch.
“It’s a beautiful day, Sheriff.” Lola’s gaze and touch fell away. “A wonderful day to be alive.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Get dressed,” Lola said to Avery when she opened the door to her small apartment. “We’re going to Shaw’s.”
Avery tugged up the sweats she’d cut off at the knee and stared at Lola’s black Keds. “You don’t like Shaw’s.”
“I know, but you do, and it’s Sunday and I need a drink.” Lola wasn’t proud of those words.
It was Sunday afternoon. Augie had come back yesterday to prep Marcia’s body because Barbara had decided against an autopsy.
Lola had finished working on Marcia, and she couldn’t stand to go home alone. It had nothing to do with Drew (almost) proposing to Wendy and everything to do with prepping the body of her husband’s lover. Oh, at first it’d been hard not to make Marcia look like a Kardashian. And then, as they’d listened to eighties classics, something odd had happened. Lola had read Marcia’s file and begun to get a feel for the woman’s personality.
Marcia had had a baby in high school and married a much older man. She’d been a devoted mother and most likely a good wife. Widowed early, she’d taken the insurance money, to spend not on a midlife crisis but on the youth she’d cheated herself of. And then along came Randy (that part wasn’t in the file). He might have thought she was grieving (a damsel in distress), or he might have thought she was ready for a rebound. And then because Marcia was ready to settle down and was a great person, they’d stuck. And then because her daughter had aspirations of the White House in her future, Marcia couldn’t go public with a much younger man. And then because Lola had an overactive imagination, she’d forgiven her husband’s mistress.
That was a lot of and thens.
; “I’m sorry we had a food fight over a man. I really need a drink.” The Marcia-Randy epiphany had been profound but having to watch Drew propose to Wendy had hurt. Because while he set a record for making the most awkward proposal ever for the best of reasons, Lola had realized something.
She loved Drew.
It wasn’t the insta-love she’d felt for Randy, a love that had grown over time. It was the unhurried kind of love, built on the solid foundation of finally knowing him inside out.
Until a day ago, Drew had always taken care of everyone in the right way at the right time. Siblings, mother, deputies, townspeople. Even a slightly overreactive young widow who’d lost her way. He took his job seriously and let only a few people in on a secret—he had a sly sense of humor to go with that big heart.
Love. Lotta good it did Lola.
“I’m sorry I didn’t explain about my one night with Randy,” Avery said. “You know I don’t like everyone in my personal business, but I should have told you. I should have told you a long time ago.” Avery wasn’t being as hard of a sell on reconciliation as Lola had thought she’d be. “Let’s go to Shaw’s. It’s Ladies’ Day, you know.” The afternoon was reserved for female customers.
“I know.” Lola shrugged. “I figure a lot of my critics will be there.” Mary Margaret, for sure.
Interest sparked in Avery’s eyes. “And you want to face them because…”
“I deflated Randy and Candy.”
Avery pulled Lola inside and shut the door. “Don’t tell me you found all the women Randy slept with?”
“I found enough. I’m not looking anymore.” It was too painful, as was applying Marcia’s makeup. That woman had flawless skin.
“So why do you want to go to Shaw’s?” Avery studied her, suddenly skeptical.
“Because you like it.” Lola tugged Avery’s necklace out of her purse. “Isn’t that what friends do? They do the things the other likes.” And there it was. The question that would confirm whether they were still friends. Lola held her breath.
“Yes.” Avery didn’t hesitate. She hugged Lola fiercely, not even taking the necklace. “Would you think I’m a wuss if I admitted I missed you?”
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