very innocent look was back. “Didn’t say you weren’t,” Midge replied.
She looked at the deputy as she walked past his desk. Tim McGuire hardly looked old enough to shave despite the fact that he was edging his way toward his twenty-second birthday.
“Tell your mother and father I said hello,” she told him.
“Sure will,” the deputy cheerfully assured her. As he spoke, a golden crumb broke away from the muffin he was in the midst of consuming and fell onto his shirt. Looking down sheepishly, Tim laughed and brushed the crumb—and several others—off. “You sure do bake the best things, Mrs. James. I wish you’d teach my mother how you make these.”
Unlike her son, Midge absorbed praise, fully enjoying each compliment.
“I’m sure she does fine without my input, Tim.” Her bright blue eyes danced as she paused at the door, one hand on the doorknob. “But I can teach you anytime you’d like.”
“Me?” the deputy asked incredulously.
He glanced up at the sheriff’s mother, stunned. Tim was the stereotypical male who had yet to master the art of boiling water—not that he felt he had to. He still lived at home and thought that was what mothers were for—among other things.
“Nothing wrong with a man knowing his way around a stove, Tim,” Midge told him.
Cole rolled his eyes. “That’s all I need,” he grumbled. “A deputy in an apron, his face smeared with blueberries as he’s burning the muffins he’s trying to make.” With a shake of his head, Cole slanted a sidelong glance toward his mother. And then he raised another muffin as if to toast her with it. “Thanks for bringing these.”
“Don’t mention it. And don’t forget about dinner tonight,” she pressed, opening the door. “Six-thirty. Don’t be late.”
“Or what, you’ll start without me?” Cole teased.
“Don’t get fresh,” his mother warned. But she was smiling at him as she said it. “Goodbye, Tim,” she called out.
“Goodbye, Mrs. James,” Tim responded with enthusiasm.
“Your mom really is a nice lady,” the deputy said with feeling, his eyes on his task. He was preparing to eliminate his third muffin.
Cole marveled at the way Tim could put food away and still look like a walking stick. Had to be all that enthusiasm he kept displaying, Cole thought.
“Yeah, I know,” he replied.
He took a bite out of his muffin, thinking. It occurred to him that this wasn’t the first time his mother had mentioned stopping by Amos McCloud’s place. Seemed to him that she was doing that quite a lot.
He made a mental note to ask her about that the next time he got a chance. He didn’t recall his mother and Amos being all that close before.
But then, loss had a way of bringing people together, and his mother wasn’t the type who liked being alone. He could recall her taking part in whatever needed doing around the ranch, never worrying about getting her hands dirty or complaining about having to work too hard.
In that respect she was a lot like Ronnie, he mused, breaking off another piece of the muffin.
Except that, growing up, Ronnie had been even more so. Part of the reason, he knew, was because she’d grown up without a mother. Margaret McCloud had died shortly after giving birth to Ronnie. Never a strong woman, according to his mother, one morning Margaret just didn’t get out of bed. When Amos came in to see why she wasn’t up yet, or at least tending to the baby, who was screaming her lungs out—Ronnie was loud even then—Amos found that his wife was dead.
The doctor who had to be called in from the neighboring town said she’d suffered from a ruptured aneurysm. Just like that, she was gone.
Life could change in an instant.
Cole got up. “I’ll be back in a while,” he told Tim as he walked out.
“What’s ‘a while’?” Tim called out after him.
“Longer than a minute,” Cole called back. And then he was gone.
Chapter Four
Ordinarily, patrolling Redemption and the area just outside its perimeter helped Cole clear his mind whenever he found it too cluttered.
Ordinarily.
But not this time.
This time the tension he felt from the moment he merely thought he saw Ronnie had increased and refused to dissipate. This would take a lot of patience. He would just have to wait it out, work through it and give himself some time.
What bothered him the most was that he couldn’t simply shake the effects of seeing Ronnie off or block them out. The feeling hung in there, wrapping its tendrils around him like a vine determined to grow a hundred times its size.
Ronnie had always been his Achilles’ heel.
Everybody had a cross to bear and this was his.
As he drove slowly up one street and down another, patrolling the town, everything seemed to be in order—rather an interesting aspect seeing as how his whole world had been turned upside down. But nothing was going on in Redemption today that required his attention.
No visible disputes to mediate the way there sometimes were when tempers flared up between friends and neighbors. Not even Mrs. Miller’s damn cat to coax out of a tree.
As he passed the woman’s Prized Antique Furniture Shop, Cole could see Lucien, Mrs. Miller’s smoke-gray Persian cat, curled up on a rocking chair just to the left of the large bay window. Lucien was sound asleep.
He’d lost count how many times that cat had to be rescued out of a tree. And the one time he needed the feline to act accordingly, it was sleeping.
Figured.
Cole sighed impatiently. There was nothing to divert his mind from—
The string of muttered curses scissored through his thoughts. Had he not had his windows down, Cole was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to hear them. But he definitely would have noticed the distressed looking store owner outside of the Livestock Feed Emporium, kicking one of the tires of the truck that had the store’s logo painted on the side.
Cole stopped his vehicle in front of the all-too-recent scene of the assault on his soul.
It was obvious that Ed was at odds with the store’s truck.
Cole stuck his head out of the driver’s-side window. “Something wrong, Mr. Haney?” he asked the man mildly.
Ed’s head jerked up. For a second, he appeared surprised that he’d been overheard. And then he scowled. Deeply.
“Two somethings,” he corrected, annoyed. “First the truck won’t start, and then Billy calls in. He only works part-time for me,” Ed explained. “Says
