of it that way, but you’re probably right.”
“I know I am. I got away, and amazingly enough there’s a whole world out there where women don’t have to bow and scrape, where people can actually have a good time without feeling like sinners. Of course, I’m just waiting for him to tell me none of this would have happened to me if I’d just stayed home like a good girl. That sin brought this all down on me.”
Rage began to seethe in Jake, and he could feel every muscle of his body tense. “If he ever, ever, says that to you, let me know. I’ll have more than a few words for him.”
Her look grew forlorn. “What if he’s right? What if I hadn’t gone to Minneapolis?”
He cussed then, words he was sure her father wouldn’t like. Maybe words she still wasn’t used to hearing. He didn’t give a damn. “Bad things happen to good people. They just happen because life is random. Blaming yourself for being in the wrong place makes as much sense as blaming yourself for being born. Trust me on this, Nora. It could have happened to anyone, including a nun. So don’t even edge near those thoughts.”
“It’s hard to avoid them.”
He figured it would be. He had ten years of experience in law enforcement, and he’d heard that kind of self-blame before. In Nora’s case it was augmented by the blood-and-thunder pulpit pounding she had grown up with. God rewarded the good and punished the bad.
“I’ve seen a lot of good people get hurt,” he said evenly. “Kids. Kids who never had a chance to do anything wrong. What does a six-year-old do to deserve leukemia?”
She didn’t answer, but sat staring down into the mug on her lap. Finally she asked in a small voice, “Then how do you figure it?”
“Bad things just happen. If there’s ever any fault, it’s with the person who does the bad thing. It certainly isn’t with the people they hurt.”
“But I don’t even know why that man attacked me!”
“You may never know. He may never explain it. His lawyer is sure going to tell him to be quiet about it.”
“So how do you explain people like him?”
“I have to believe there’s something wrong with them. Most of us stop ourselves from doing bad things even if we happen to think of them. A few of us don’t. The whole difference is whether we act on those things. This guy acted. And he’s going to prison for a long time.”
“I hope so.”
He fell silent, realizing that she had to work through this in her own way. Hammering it for her wasn’t going to help.
But it made him furious to think he might take her home today to a man who could blame her for this. Her own father, for the love of Pete. The one person who should be on her side more than anyone else.
The phone on the table beside him rang. “Excuse me.” He answered it and immediately shifted into another gear.
“Nora, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to take you home. Something’s come up at work.”
Something he sure as hell didn’t want to tell her about.
* * *
Nora arrived home with enough rice and pulled pork to feed both her father and herself a large dinner. Rosa had insisted, and Nora hadn’t wanted to argue. It was a generous offer, and might take some of the sting out of her dad when he got home, probably still angry that she had refused to come to work for him today. As if she could have stood at a register for much more than ten or fifteen minutes.
She guessed he thought life was going to carry on as if she had never left. Of course, it couldn’t. Any chance of that had died when he’d blamed her for her mother’s death, claiming she had died because Nora had gone away to college and hadn’t been able to take care of her.
Nora knew better than that, but the ensuing fight after the funeral had been ugly enough for an entire lifetime.
What the hell had she been thinking, coming back here? Surely she hadn’t hoped the man had changed. As a psychologist she knew how unlikely that was. Could she have even for one foolish moment have thought he had? All she knew was that she had become desperate, and maybe she hadn’t been thinking clearly at all.
But she couldn’t stay in Minneapolis, not while that man was still there. Not when he’d whispered more threats on the phone to her. Panic had driven her more than anything. And where else could she have gone? When she got well enough, she was going to find another job, far away from here, but in the meantime... In the meantime, her resources were too limited.
She sagged in a chair at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands. For a little while today, with Jake, she had tasted a normal life once again. She had enjoyed herself riding Daisy. She’d had a normal conversation with someone, although she was still a little surprised it had been with Jake.
Just yesterday she’d been appalled at seeing him, wishing as she had wished so long ago that she never had to see him again. Then today... Well, today had certainly been a surprise.
Although perhaps no surprise that he had offered to defend her against her father. He’d done that kind of thing so often when they were in school. In that regard he evidently hadn’t changed: defender of the weak and picked on.
But she absolutely couldn’t imagine how he could stop Fred Loftis from being Fred Loftis. The man was as set in his ways and his beliefs as if they’d been poured in concrete at his moment of birth.
And she wished something hadn’t come up, that she could have ridden Daisy once more today. Somehow it had carried her out of herself to a place she had almost forgotten, a place where she was glad to be alive.
But Jake had promised they would do it again soon. She was counting on that.
* * *
Jake walked into the sheriff’s office, still in mufti because he hadn’t wanted to upset Nora by putting on a uniform. He was immediately waved back to Gage Dalton’s office.
Gage sat behind his desk, one side overloaded with a stack of papers, the other side burdened by a computer. In between there was a battered nameplate that identified him as sheriff and looked as if it had fallen to the floor countless times.
“You’ve taken an interest in Nora Loftis,” Gage said without preamble.
Well, of course, the whole damn town probably knew by now. If he hadn’t been seen picking her up, if folks didn’t know he’d gone to Denver to get her, Maude still would have mentioned to someone that they’d been in the diner together last night. Life was like that here.
“I’ve known her all my life,” Jake answered, settling in one of the two wooden chairs in front of Gage’s desk.
“I’m not questioning you, Jake. Fact is, I have only a vague memory of her as a child. She seemed to blend into the woodwork and say very little. But I do know Fred Loftis. Nora gets my sympathy for that alone.”
“He’s a harsh man.”
“To put it mildly. Now to the point. After you expressed interest in the case, I very nicely asked the Minneapolis
