Seated in side-by-side chairs were a man in a deputy’s uniform and a man with a pale complexion, a dark five o’clock shadow, and wavy hair. The instant he saw Thatcher, he came hurtling toward him like he’d been shot from a cannon. If the deputy hadn’t acted swiftly to restrain him, Thatcher thought for sure the man would have gone for his throat.

“Gabe!” the sheriff barked. “None of that business. Scotty, haul him back and keep him back.”

“Yes, sir.”

Though the man resisted, the deputy managed to wrestle him back into the chair.

The mayor went over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Found him sleeping like a baby, Gabe. Can you believe that?”

Glaring at Thatcher, the man said, “Has he told you where she is?”

“Not yet, but he will.” The mayor brusquely signaled the deputy, Scotty, up out of his chair, then the mayor sat down in it.

Thatcher, wanting to ask what the hell was going on, thought better of saying anything just yet. Harold shoved him down into a chair. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at the blood dripping from his now misshapen nose. One of his eyes had almost swollen shut.

Thatcher returned his glare with a mask of indifference and said, “I still owe you for the clout on the head.”

The deputy gave him a fulminating look, but he walked away, slung Thatcher’s duffel onto a table across the room, opened it, and began to paw through the contents.

No longer wearing his hat, Sheriff Amos drew up a chair and stationed it in front of Thatcher’s, pulling it close enough that Thatcher could see the individual whiskers in his thick salt-and-pepper mustache. He said, “Son, save us all a lot of time and trouble. Tell us right now where Mrs. Driscoll is.”

Ten

Laurel had been awake for most of the night, walking a fussy and feverish Pearl around the shack, trying to soothe her infant even as she fueled her resentment against Derby’s selfish suicide, her present plight, her unknown future, and her absent father-in-law.

She had whipped herself into a high snit by the time she heard his truck clattering up the incline shortly before dawn. As soon as he cleared the door, she lit into him. “Where in the world have you been?”

He looked haggard and none too agreeable himself. “That’s my business.”

“It’s my business, too! I was worried to death, afraid something had happened to you, in which case Pearl and I would have been stuck here. What have you been doing all night?”

She was accustomed to his being away most days, all day, often from sunup to sunset. This was the first time he had stayed away all night. Though she would rather die than own up to it, she had been afraid to be alone after the sun went down. With only a sliver of a moon, even the surrounding limestone hills had become indiscernible. She couldn’t see the road from the shack. The darkness had been all encompassing, except for the lantern she had kept burning all night.

He plopped down on his seat on top of the barrel and rubbed his bad hip, wincing with discomfort. Mollifying her tone, she said, “I saved you some cornbread and bacon.”

“I ain’t hungry.”

Laurel stood directly in front of him, making it impossible for him to ignore her. “I believe I deserve an explanation, Irv.”

“You kept me occupied half the day teaching you how to drive. Trying to teach you how to drive.”

The series of lessons had been intermittent, carried out during Pearl’s brief naps between bouts of coughing. Laurel had never sat behind the steering wheel of an automobile. The sequence of necessary steps one had to perform with both hands and feet had been more difficult to coordinate than she’d anticipated. She was right-handed, so naturally she’d reached for the crank with that hand, when Irv had told her repeatedly to always use her left on the crank unless she wanted her “damn arm broke.”

They had wound up being frustrated and fractious with each other.

She asked now, “Did you stay gone all night to punish me for not mastering how to drive?”

He gave her a withering look. “What do you take me for?”

“Then why didn’t you come home?”

“I had a project to finish up.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“How’s Pearl?”

“She’s sick, Irv. What project?”

“Putting up a wall inside an old house. It was just sold to a family moving here from Waco. The wife wanted to divide one room into two so that her daughter would have a space separate from her brothers.”

“You’re lying.”

He glowered and looked guilty at the same time.

“You went into too much detail,” she said. “Just like Derby did when he was lying.”

He got up and headed for the other side of the room, but she caught him by the arm.

“What?” he asked, pulling his arm free.

“Do you have a… Is there a woman you see?”

He huffed a humorless laugh and continued on his way over to the sink where he pumped water into a glass and took a long drink. Laurel waited until he’d turned back to her before quietly apologizing. “I’m sorry. I had no right to ask that. It isn’t any of my business.”

He gave that same dry laugh. “I’ve loved only one woman in my lifetime. Derby’s mama. And it damn near killed me to watch her die in misery. Don’t go thinking I’ve got a romance going.”

“No project, either, I’m guessing.”

Looking done in, he returned to his seat and bent down to unlace his shoes. “No, I had a project all right.” He looked up at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “That fellow that came here this morning.”

“What about him?”

“I don’t know, and that’s why I’m worried. What the hell was he doing way out here?”

“I told you, he—”

“I know what he claimed, but I ain’t buying it. I went around tonight, checked in with people I know, asked if they’d seen him.”

“What people?”

“People.”

She let his curt reply pass. “Had anyone in town seen him?”

“Nobody I talked to.”

“He probably hitched a ride on the highway and is long gone.”

“Maybe,” he grumbled. “But him snooping around gave me an itch I can’t scratch.”