about, hung on hooks near the table. A lump rose in her throat and grew to the size of one of the crab apples growing on the tree next to the barn.
“Sheriff Donovan brought over a suit for ’im.” Merrick nodded at the closed pine box coffin sitting atop the sturdy table. The pale wood stood out in the dim confines of the office. Light struggled in through the dirt-encrusted window, adding a weak glow to the room.
“I’ll be sure to thank him,” she said. No doubt Hunter had given Doc the one suit he possessed straight out of his own closet. She shouldn’t be surprised. Hunter and Robert had been friends since they were young boys. They may have had a falling-out years before, but Hunter wasn’t the kind of man to hold a grudge past death.
Rachel touched the edge of the pine, letting her fingers trail over the smooth surface. The estrangement had been her fault. Both men had paid court and she’d chosen Robert. She wondered how different her life would have been had she made a different choice all those years ago. Funny how she had known both men most of her life, yet the man she buried today was more of a stranger to her now than on the day they’d married.
Maybe she had never really known him at all. It was a sad thought.
“Can you open it?”
Merrick started. “Open—oh, Rachel, you don’t want to do that. It’s been three days, and...well...” He shook his head, the bushy white hair bobbing with the movement.
“I know,” she said. She knew what happened to a body after death. “But I need to see.”
Merrick hesitated but Rachel fixed him with a hard stare until he relented.
“Here.” He handed her a stark white handkerchief.
Rachel took a deep breath, the scent of formaldehyde and whatever else the Merrick kept in those bottles, stung her nostrils. She placed the handkerchief over her mouth and nose, and gave him a nod.
It took Merrick a minute or two to pry loose the nails and slide the top toward him, revealing the body within from the chest up. Rachel took a step forward and peered down into Robert’s face.
Except it wasn’t Robert’s face.
At least, not the one she remembered. Robert had had a sense of animation to him, whether he had been angry or excited or somewhere in between. This man, this face, was still and gray, the eyes and cheeks already sinking into the hollows in the bone. Even his pale blond hair appeared stiff and lifeless, darker even, as though the sun’s reflection had slipped beneath a cloud leaving it cast in shadow. The body in the box was not Robert. It was an empty shell he’d once filled.
“The sheriff said he was shot.” There was no evidence of a bullet wound.
“One to the chest. Straight through the heart. Probably died instantly. Guessin’ it would have taken a man handy with a gun to manage such a thing.”
Rachel bit down, forcing the lump in her throat back. At least he hadn’t been shot in the gut. Whatever their differences, she would have hated to know Robert had suffered. She closed her eyes and nodded once again, waiting until Merrick hammered the lid back into place before reopening her eyes.
“I’ll bring him up to the church,” Merrick said. “Reverend said the service would start at ten. I’ll have him there before people start arrivin’.”
“Thank you,” Rachel whispered. Something hollow filled her chest. Sorrow? Regret?
She let out a long breath and straightened her shoulders. She had no time for either.
“The boys and I will be staying at the Pagget tonight. You can send the bill over there.” She turned and left the undertaker’s office. She’d figure out how she’d pay it tomorrow.
Today, she had a husband to bury.
Caleb stood against the side wall of the church, closer to the front than he wanted to be. It gave him too clear a view of Rachel Sutter. The new widow sat flanked on either side by two boys. One he guessed was around fifteen, too old to be her son. The other he doubted was more than six or seven. Neither bore any resemblance to her or Robert Sutter.
The church was packed to capacity. It seemed everyone in town had come to pay their respects despite the short notice. Several men lined the walls with him. A few cast glances his way, though none addressed him directly. Just as well. He didn’t plan on staying longer than necessary, and the fewer people who remembered his face, the better.
The reverend stood at the front of the church, the pine box to his right. He cleared his throat, signaling he was ready to start the service.
It was easier to think of it as a pine box. Nothing special. Not something containing a body or a man or a life that used to be.
But try as he might, Caleb couldn’t erase the image of Sutter’s face when the bullet slammed into his chest. There had been an instant, a split second when the shock registered on Sutter’s face and he knew he was going to die. Caleb had seen that look on a man’s face before, but it still sent a chill straight to his core.
Sutter was dead before his body hit the filth encrusted floor of the Broken Deuce Saloon.
Caleb wished he’d never sat down at the card table. Never witnessed the man’s death. Never ridden into Laramie at all.
The reverend’s voice droned on. “Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation, and thy gentleness hath made me great...”
Caleb recognized the passage. It was from the book of Samuel. His grandfather had spent many nights twisting its words to suit his ends. Caleb gave his head a gentle shake. How many years would need to pass before he could bury those memories?
He closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing, letting the wall take most of his weight. He wasn’t sure why he’d come here today. He hadn’t been inside a church for so long it was a wonder he hadn’t burst into flames the moment he passed through its double oak doors. He didn’t know Sutter outside the brief hours before he’d died and hadn’t particularly liked what he had known. He didn’t know the man’s family or the people in this town. He could have ridden in, handed over the body and disappeared into the sunset.
Except he still had business to attend to. And some things a man couldn’t walk away from, no matter how much he wanted to.
His attention drifted away from the reverend and rested on the widow. Dressed in black, she wore a small matching hat perched forward on the top of her head. Her hair, a deep mahogany, was twisted into a simple knot at the nape of her neck, but whatever held it in place seemed destined to give in to its weight. Strands had worked their way free and curled down her narrow back.
She stared straight ahead at some point over the reverend’s shoulder, away from the pine box containing her husband. Her stoic expression never altered. Caleb tilted his head to one side and studied her, surprised to find her beautiful, though certainly not delicate. Bold, graceful lines and dark, almond-shaped eyes shaded by the short veil of her hat held a man’s gaze captive, but it was the wealth of inner strength that radiated from her strict posture and the way she hugged the young boy to her that he thought would endure in the mind long after.
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