Page 16 of Reluctant Bride

None of them will be able to trace it back to a single word I said. That’s the whole trick. My father taught me that the loudest room in Rimrock is the one where nothing gets said out loud.

I drive into town for groceries because my body doesn’t run on rumor and it doesn’t run on rage either, and I’ve got a marriage, a murder, and a man named Cruz to get through in one piece. That takes more discipline than satisfaction ever will. I need protein and sleep more than I need to watch Petrie’s face when his insurance bond disappears.

Eli finds me in the cereal aisle, of all places, holding a box like it personally wronged him.

“Sully.” He says it like an accusation. He’s called me that since we were fourteen and it’s never once stopped annoying me, which is probably why he keeps doing it. “You’re buying chicken breast, Greek yogurt, and spinach at eight in the morning like a man auditioning for a Marine Corps recruitment ad, and half the county thinks you’re an active homicide suspect. How are you like this?”

“Discipline.”

“Discipline’s a personality disorder with better marketing.” He drops the cereal back on the shelf, in the wrong slot, and I fix it without thinking, which earns me a grin I want to slap off him. “You hear what’s already going around?”

“I’ve heard three different versions since yesterday.”

“There’s a fourth as of an hour ago. Somebody at the bank’s saying Petrie lost his bond this morning and he’s blaming you personally, out loud, in front of God and the drive-through.”

“Is he?” I keep my face very still, the same face I used on Curtis the night before last, except now it’s just groceries and it still works on Eli, who’s known me since before either of us could shave.

“You didn’t.”

“I’m buying groceries, Eli. I’ve been in this store for at least twenty minutes.”

“That’s the least convincing alibi I’ve ever heard, and I once watched you talk a sheriff’s deputy out of a speeding ticket using nothing but eye contact.” He studies me, deciding whether to say the thing on his mind or let it go. He decides to say it. “You’re different since the wedding. Not the murder. Before that. Since her.”

“I’ve got a body count in a truck and a wife in a day, Eli. Different’s an understatement.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” He picks the cereal back up just to have something to hold. “You look like a man who finally stopped pretending he wasn’t starving.”

I don’t answer that. There’s no answer that doesn’t hand him more than I want to give away in a cereal aisle at eight in the morning. He lets it go like good friends do, loud, with a parting shot instead of silence.

“Tell Sage I said the county owes her a parade for what she did at Nell’s.” He’s already walking backward toward the register. “And tell your mother-in-law I’m still not apologizing for the toast.”

“Nobody’s forgiven you for the toast.”

“Nobody’s supposed to. It’s a legacy.”

I pay for groceries that will outlast this entire war and drive to the boundary house with dread and contentment fighting for the wheel. She’s going to be under my roof tonight. That’s a new tangle of knots I don’t have time to unpick before I’m parked in the drive.

There’s a horse trailer in the drive that isn’t mine, tack draped over the porch rail that isn’t mine, and Rae Calder, who’s run horses for both families since before either of us could saddle one, standing in my kitchen arguing with Maren about counter space like she’s lived here longer than I have.

“The oil goes by the stove,” Maren says, sliding a spice rack six inches left with the confidence of a woman who has never once lost an argument in this house or any other. “By the sink it’s a hazard.”

“It’s a system, Maren.”

“It’s chaos with good intentions.”

Neither of them looks up when I walk in. My sister doesn’t ask permission to rearrange a kitchen any more than she asked permission to marry a Blackwater, and there’s no version of me willing to be the man who tells her no.

Tate’s running cable for a security panel that wasn’t there yesterday. West is up a ladder wiring a camera into the hallway molding.

Tessa arrives twenty minutes later with three Pizza House boxes she absolutely didn’t need to bring and absolutely knew I wouldn’t turn away. Finn follows her through the door holding, inexplicably, a fondue set.

“Thanks, Tessa.” I take the boxes off her hands before she has to ask. “Sage is upstairs, if you’re looking for her.”

“I was going to make you suffer through small talk first, but fine.” She’s already moving for the stairs.

“Nobody asked for that,” I say, nodding at my brother who’s carrying a fondue set.

“Nobody asks for the things that end up mattering most. That’s the whole tragedy of gift-giving.” Finn sets it on the counter like a peace offering to a house already at war with itself. “Does Sage know about this?”