CHAPTER 7
Wren
◆
Peach pie steam softened the feed store windows until the Dusthallow square beyond them looked like a watercolor left too close to a sink.
Wren stood behind Junie's borrowed folding table with a stack of menu cards under one palm and Paloma's cash envelope tucked deep in her tote, under a quart of car oil that smelled faintly metallic even through the bag.
Mineral dust rose every time someone shifted near the stacked salt blocks and feed sacks, powdering the warm sweetness of peaches, brisket sauce, and yeast rolls with the dry taste of the country around them.
It was an honest Dusthallow blend. Wedding pies beside wormer syringes. Bridal ribbon near fencing staples. A silver coffee urn beneath a bulletin board layered with pasture notices, babysitting offers, and handwritten ads for used tack.
Junie had called it a tasting, but the town had taken it as permission to gather.
By six-thirty, people had filled the aisles between the feed bins and the boot rack, balancing paper plates and judging barbecue sides as if the fate of Della's marriage depended on whether the beans leaned too sweet.
Della laughed near the coffee counter with Ruston at her shoulder, so bright that Wren kept looking away before envy could curdle into something mean.
Paloma's cash for the hand-lettered tasting cards should have made the evening feel steadier. Instead, the car's oil light had flickered on the way over, and the quart of oil, cheap funnel, and tape had already bitten into the money before Wren made it inside.
The old letters were still in her tote too.
They sat wrapped in a dish towel beneath the menu card samples, their paper corners making a hard ridge against the canvas.
Wren had told herself she carried them because Sudie's cottage did not have a lock she trusted.
That was half true. Leaving them behind made the attic feel as if it had a pulse.
She had skimmed them badly, barely properly.
She had looked enough to know Colt's handwriting, enough to see her own name, enough to find Odette's crisp old note folded where it should never have been.
Since then the packet had become weight, accusation, question.
It rode with her through wedding errands and pressed into every practical list she tried to build.
"Wren, honey. " Junie nudged a tray of tiny pie wedges toward her. "Put that hand to work before you worry a hole through my paper."
Wren looked down. Her thumb had creased the top menu card into a soft white line.
"I was checking alignment."
"You were pinching it like it owed you money."
"A lot of things do."
Junie's eyes flicked, quick and kind, to the tote at Wren's feet. The oil receipt peeked from the side pocket. Wren had never been as good at hiding arithmetic as she wished.
"Then eat pie," Junie said. "A person can do math better with peaches in her."
"That's not an accounting principle."
"It is in my store."
Wren took the plate because refusing kindness took more energy than accepting a bite. The peach filling was still warm enough to fog the plastic fork, cinnamon caught in the syrup and the crust flaking under pressure.
On the other side of the table, Beau Duvane stood on her toes to inspect the tasting options with solemn concentration.
She wore pink boots with her skirt, a denim jacket despite the heat, and a star sticker on the back of one small hand.
Colt stood behind her, close enough to catch the plate if she tipped it, far enough to let her choose.
He had his hat in one hand and rain in his attention, though no rain had started yet.
"That one has peaches," Beau told him.
"It does."
"That one has little green things."
"Chives," Colt said.
Beau considered the potato salad with suspicion. "Are chives spicy?"
"No."
"Are they grass?"
"Not for people."
Wren failed to stop the smile. Colt saw it, and the corner of his mouth moved, barely.
Longing was ridiculous in a feed store with car oil in her bag and old paper secrets at her feet. It moved through Wren anyway, light and painful.
Beau selected peach pie, no chives, and a roll with a careful stripe of sauce. Then she looked at Wren.
"Miss Wren, did you make the cards?"
"I did."
"They have fancy tails on the letters."
"That is a very professional design term."
Beau nodded as if she had meant it that way. "Can my flower crown card have a star?"
Colt's gaze sharpened with the parental calculation Wren had begun to recognize: cost, time, promise, disappointment.
Wren answered before the pause could become heavy. "I can draw a star on the sample for you tonight. Then Paloma can decide what belongs on the wedding table."
Beau accepted that compromise with the dignity of a judge. "A little star."
"The best kind."
Colt's look came to Wren then, quiet at first. Under it was unspoken gratitude, and under that, the caution of a father protecting a little girl's peace.
"You heading out before the storm?" Junie asked him.
Colt glanced toward the darkening square. "Soon as she finishes. Tuck is checking the north lot. If the rain sets in before daylight, sorting calves tomorrow is going to turn into a mud fight."
"Can calves fight mud?" Beau asked.
"Calves can fight anything when you need them to walk straight."
Junie snorted. "That is the truest thing said in this store all week."
Wren slid a stack of corrected labels into Paloma's folder and told herself not to listen too hungrily.
Ranch operations were not romantic when you were the one paying for diesel, fence wire, hay, and a truck battery that picked the worst week to die.
Rain meant slick pens, early hours, and sale money that might already be spent before it arrived.
Still, the way Colt named the work steadied the air. He sounded like a man tracking the next necessary thing.
She had once known that about him without having to think.
The thought scraped. Wren bent over the cards, lining them by sauce stain risk and ink color. Competence was easier than grief. It had corners.
Paloma came in from the back room with a florist's bucket tucked against her hip. "Della says the peach pie is winning unless the pecan makes a late comeback."
"Della would choose sunshine if you put it in a crust," Wren said.
"Can you make me six more of the small labels before Monday? Same rate."
Paid work, not rescue. Wren felt the words settle in her chest like a plank laid over mud.
"Sunday morning," Wren said. "Before chapel setup."
Paloma smiled as if she heard the stubbornness and chose not to bruise it. "Sunday morning works."
Another small job. Another envelope, if she did it right. Another few inches between herself and panic.
The bell over the front door clanged. A gust slid in, carrying the charged smell of rain not yet fallen and the street's hot dust lifting before it got pinned down. Cressie Ames stepped inside with a covered dish balanced in both hands and a smile polished sharp enough for cutting twine.
Wren felt the room notice. She hated that she noticed the noticing.
Cressie set the dish on Junie's counter. "I brought slaw, since somebody ought to keep this tasting from becoming all sugar and sentiment."
"Put it by the beans," Junie said. "And mind the spoon."
A small laugh moved through the nearby cluster. Wren busied herself with the pie labels.
It took Cressie less than a minute to find her.
"Wren Calloway," she said, drawing the name out as if testing whether it still fit. "Look at you, back behind a folding table like old festival days."
"Someone had to save Dusthallow from unlabeled condiments."
"Is that what they taught you in Austin?"
"Among other survival skills."
Cressie's eyes traveled over Wren's dress, her simple sandals, the tote at her feet. The inspection was quick enough to deny and thorough enough to sting. "I heard Austin did not end up keeping you."
The menu card under Wren's fingers shifted. "Austin is a city, not a husband."
"No, I suppose your husband did not end up keeping you either. " Cressie lifted her brows. "Or fiance. I forget what stage y'all stopped at."
Heat climbed Wren's neck. Around them, conversations thinned. Across the store, Della turned her head.
Wren would not let this touch Della's night or the bright little island her sister had fought to build with Ruston in the middle of Calloway weather.
"The stopping stage," Wren said, and made herself smile. "Very common. Terrible stationery implications."
Junie made a low sound that might have been warning or approval.
Cressie did not step back. "Well, folks wondered. You leave here for big work and a big life, then come back right before a wedding with no ring and no job anyone can explain. People get curious."
"People could take up quilting."
"Quilts do not answer questions."
"Neither do I, unless they are on an invoice."
That earned enough laughs for Wren to keep standing.
Cressie's smile cooled. "I only mean Dusthallow remembers things. Colt Duvane remembers things too, I imagine."
Wren's hand went still.
Colt was near the boot rack, helping Beau guide a fork through peach filling without dropping it on her jacket. He had not looked over, but Wren knew he heard. His shoulders had gone still.
"Colt can remember whatever he likes," Wren said.
"Can he?" Cressie glanced toward him now, inviting the room to follow. "Some men are too decent for their own good. A woman runs off once, breaks a heart clean across the county, and then comes home acting like a few pretty signs mean she remembers how to love a ranch."
The words landed too close to the letters in Wren's tote.
How to love a ranch. As if love were a skill she had failed to keep certified. As if she had walked away because cedar dust had offended her shoes.
Wren opened her mouth.
Colt spoke first, but softly.
"Cressie."
One word, soft enough that Beau did not startle and clear enough that the people closest to him did.
Cressie blinked. "I am only saying what folks already think."