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Ruby got it and nodded enthusiastically. “So you’re saying Buck Larsen is Bear’s kin. ”
Emerald looked aghast. “Bear skin?”
Pearl patted her sister’s hand. “Bear Bailey. They’re talking about his ancestors. ”
Marlene couldn’t take the circus anymore. What this crowd needed was a spectacle. She cleared her throat and spoke in her best assembly voice. “Sorrow Crabtree was one of the early residents of Sierra Falls. It looks like she had…an affair. With
Buck Larsen. She had his baby. ” She paused dramatically to let that sink in, and sure enough, another wave of female oohs and ohhs swept the room.
The meeting fell apart from there, the excitement too great to get any more business done. Marlene spotted Billy Preston waiting at the back of the hall and quickly wrapped it up.
Standing to put on her coat, she turned to Edith. “You never did tell me what the sheriff was doing at your house to be offering you a ride. ” The buzz in the hall drowned out her voice, and she leaned close to speak into her friend’s ear. “Seems Billy Preston has an awful lot of business to tend at that tavern of yours. ”
Edith puffed up. “He just happened to be there. ”
“Mm-hm. ” Marlene buttoned up. “Lucky you. Or should I say, your lucky daughter. ”
Edith was winding her scarf around her neck, but her hands froze in midair. “Sorrow, you mean?”
“Yes,” Marlene said impatiently. “Sorrow. ” First she caught the sheriff toting around her apple bread and now this. “Seems to me like I’ve seen the two of them together a lot lately. ”
“Oh no, not him,” Edith said. “He’s a widower. ”
“Well, that’s a silly thing to say. It’s his wife who died, not him. ” They both studied the man. He stood like a cop, straight and tall. His sheriff’s jacket made his broad shoulders look even broader. “Seems to me, he’s still a young man. Not hard on the eyes neither. ”
Edith made a little hmm sound. “No, he’s not hard on the eyes, is he?”
Marlene squinted her eyes to focus better. “He reminds me of…I don’t know…a cowboy from a TV movie. ”
Edith finished tying her scarf around her neck. “Not as handsome as Damien, though. ”
“Maybe not,” said Marlene. “Though he makes Damien look like a kid in comparison. ”
“Damien isn’t a boy. He’s Sorrow’s age, and I say twenty-three is old enough to start thinking about settling down. ” Edith’s eyes drifted back to the sheriff. “Are you saying he’s looking to remarry?”
“I didn’t say marriage. ” Marlene abruptly began to gather her papers into her handbag.
All this talk of spouses made her think. If she’d been a widow, would she have remarried? Would the pain have been this deep? Sometimes, when she was feeling small-hearted, she wished she were a widow. That her husband had died instead of divorcing her. In her low moments, she told herself that burying him would’ve been easier to bear than the shame of his leaving.
Pearl approached the table. The woman wore a contented smile—the meeting had been as dramatic as promised. “Are we leaving now?”
The other two Kidd sisters were close behind, still bundling up. Marlene’s elderly mother was having trouble with her coat sleeves, but before she could help, Billy appeared at the woman’s back.
“Let me get this for you,” he said, guiding Emerald’s arms into the sleeves. “You got all turned inside out. ”
“What a gentleman,” Ruby exclaimed.
Edith met Marlene’s eyes, a significant question there. Was there something between Billy and Sorrow?
Marlene studied him. Whether or not he was a widower, whether it was Sorrow or somebody else, someday, some lucky woman would find herself turned inside out by this sheriff.
Twelve
Billy felt kind of awkward. He’d gone home to change—nobody wanted their guest to show up for dinner wearing a sidearm—but he worried he looked as though he were trying too hard. He refused to think on the fact that simply thinking on such things was the very definition of trying too hard.
Was he trying?
Of course he wasn’t. The last time he’d tried with a woman had been with Keri. For years, they’d been colleagues, then friends, and it was a slow courtship that’d turned them into lovers. He’d bought flowers. Symphony tickets. Dinners at the latest in restaurants. Things he didn’t necessarily enjoy but had thought his wife would. Sitting through a three-hour avant-garde opera? Now that had been trying.
