CHAPTER 7 #2
"Then folks can think quieter. " Colt set Beau's plate on a nearby crate, crouched to wipe sauce from her wrist with a napkin, and kept his tone even. "Wren is working. Della is celebrating. Neither one owes the counter a confession."
Colt kept his eyes off Wren while he said it. Somehow that made it better. He gave the room a boundary without putting her beneath his arm or making her the rescued girl in a story she had no say in.
Wren had defended herself. Colt defended the line.
Cressie's face tightened in the places powder could not soften. "You always were loyal."
Colt stood. "I try to be fair."
The distinction passed through Wren with an ache so clean she almost hated him for it.
Junie clapped her hands once. "All right. Anybody bleeding from the slaw yet, or can we return to food like civilized people?"
Conversation restarted in uneven patches. Della came to Wren's side under the cover of reaching for a tasting card.
"I can say something," Della murmured.
"Do not you dare. This is your pie night."
"It is a barbecue side night too, technically."
"Even more sacred."
Della's mouth trembled. She squeezed Wren's wrist once, whispered, "I hate her a little," and went back to the debate over whether the brisket sauce needed more pepper.
Wren turned to straighten the cards again and found Colt's gaze on her at last.
Thank you, she wanted to say.
Why did you do that when you have every reason not to, she wanted to ask.
What did you write me eight years ago?
The packet in her tote seemed to heat through the canvas. Wren looked away first.
Beau finished her pie and announced, "My hands are sticky."
Colt cleaned her sleeve while Junie handed over a damp cloth. Then a preschool aide who sometimes helped during store events leaned in from the doorway and told Colt the children's chalk table was being moved under the square awning before the rain started. Beau's whole face lifted.
"Can I go see?"
Colt looked toward the window, then at the aide, then back to Beau. "Ten minutes. You stay where she can see you. When I come get you, we leave."
"What if my star is not done?"
"Then it will be a short star."
Beau considered this injustice, then accepted it because chalk had already won. At the door, she looked back at Wren. "Do not let them eat all the peach."
"I will stand guard."
Beau ran out under the aide's umbrella before the first drop had fallen.
The store changed after she left.
Quietly, then. Less careful.
Wren felt it in the way the adults let their voices settle lower, the way Cressie regained her spot near the slaw, the way Colt's attention tracked the door even while Tuck stepped in and murmured about the north lot and the low pasture crossing.
Wren caught enough. Rain before morning. Sorting pens dusty on top and slick underneath if the clouds opened hard. Calves that needed moving early. A gate that might hold if the first wash was light and might not if the water came fast.
Colt's jaw set. "We will check it before dawn."
"Going to be ugly," Tuck said.
"Then we start earlier."
There was nothing showy in it, only the cost of livestock and weather and work that did not pause because a roomful of people had opinions.
Wren studied her own hands. Ink smudged her thumb. Pie sugar glimmered on one knuckle. The callus from design pens had faded since she lost the Austin job, as if even her skin had started letting go.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
Odette.
Of course.
Wren stepped into the narrow stockroom hallway before answering, passing shelves of twine, fly spray, and mineral tubs. The air back there was cooler and harsher, with less peach and more iron. Through the thin wall, the tasting blurred into a murmur.
"Hello."
"You are at Junie's," Odette said.
It landed as a verdict. Odette had a talent for making knowledge sound like ownership.
"It is Della's tasting."
"It is also a public room."
Wren let her lashes fall. "Most rooms in Dusthallow are public if Cressie is standing in them."
"Then you understand me."
"I rarely do, but I am sure you will continue."
A pause sharpened the line. "Do not be flippant with me tonight."
Wren's fingers found the edge of a shelf tag and worried the corner until it bent. "What do you need?"
"Remember why you are home. Your sister deserves peace this week."
"I agree."
"Then keep your distance from Colt Duvane."
There it was, polished as concern.
Wren stared at a stack of mineral tubs, their lids scuffed from work gloves. "That has nothing to do with Della's wedding."
"It has everything to do with it if you make yourself the story."
"I am lettering cards and counting pie slices. Very dangerous work."
"This isn't childish gossip. " Odette's voice thinned. "Colt has a child. He has grief. He has a reputation. You can't drift back into his life because Austin disappointed you and expect there to be no damage."
Wren's fingers stopped moving.
The letters were twenty feet away in her tote. Old paper. Old ink. Odette's old handwriting pressed into a fold that should have belonged to Wren.
"For everyone's good," Odette said, softer now, which made it worse, "do not encourage him."
Wren had built client presentations around colors that lied politely. Her mother's voice had the same expensive finish, meant to keep the structure underneath from showing.
"Did you call to protect Della," Wren asked, "or to protect a version of the past?"
Silence.
Then Odette said, "You are tired. You are embarrassed. I understand why you want to make old things dramatic."
The shelf tag cut into Wren's thumb, a small bright line of pressure. "Do you?"
"Come home after the tasting. Do not linger with him in the square. Do not give that little girl ideas you cannot honor. And Wren?"
Wren did not answer.
"You left once. Be careful what you ask people to survive twice."
The call ended.
For a moment, Wren stood in the stockroom hall with the phone still against her ear and the feed store breathing around her. Peach steam at one end. Mineral dust at the other. Rain waiting above the tin roof like a hand full of coins.
She should go back in, finish the cards, drive to Sudie's with the oil light hopefully appeased, and put the letters back in their towel until she was strong enough to unfold them. Instead, she pressed her hand over her pocket and let herself feel the size of the fear.
Odette knew exactly where to push because she had installed some of the buttons herself. Wren could survive town gossip, Cressie, even a broken engagement carried with composure while her life slid off the table.
But Beau was not a social consequence. Beau was a child.
And Colt...
Colt was not hers to lean toward just because the past had started making noise.
Wren walked back into the store before the thought could hollow her out.
The first rain hit as she reached the tasting table.
It started with three hard taps on the tin awning over the sidewalk. Then came a scatter, then a rush, washing the windows into silver streaks. The ranchers looked at one another, doing the same math Colt had done all night.
Wren found Colt by the front display, phone in hand, reading a message with his mouth set grim.
"Bad?" she asked before she could convince herself not to.
He looked up. The brim of his hat cast his eyes in shadow. "Could be fine. Could make tomorrow meaner."
"Sorting?"
"Sorting, loading, getting them through without tearing up the lot. " He glanced past her toward the room. "Nothing that needs fixing tonight unless the low crossing comes up."
"You make that sound normal."
"It is normal."
"That doesn't mean it's small."
The line between his brows eased a little, enough to make Wren wish she had earned the right to smooth it with her thumb.
"You all right?" he asked.
She gave him the answer that fit in public. "I have survived slaw commentary and a maternal weather system. I may need a medal."
"Your mama called."
"Does the whole room know?"
"No. " His eyes stayed on her face. "You get a look after."
Wren tried to laugh. "That is terrible news. I thought I had upgraded from readable to enigmatic."
"You were never unreadable."
The rain thickened. Conversation rose to compete with it. Near the counter, Cressie laughed at something too loudly, the sound cutting over the awning's drum.
Wren's tote sat between her feet. The letters inside seemed impossible now. How could paper weigh this much and still be so fragile?
"Colt," she said.
His attention changed. Focused. Waiting.
Wren bent and lifted the tote strap onto her shoulder because her hands needed a task. The quart of oil knocked against the wrapped letters, dull plastic against old paper. "There is something I found at Sudie's."
He went very still.
The store moved around them. Plates, forks, rain, boots on old boards. Wren could see Della laughing with Paloma. Junie refilling coffee. Tuck watching the weather through the glass. Cressie pretending not to watch Wren.
"Something from before," Wren said.
Colt did not press. That was worse than pressing. He gave her room, and the room filled with every cowardly excuse she owned.
What if the letter said he had loved her and she had left anyway? What if Odette had done exactly what Wren feared, and the truth only proved how easily Wren had let herself be led away?
Odette's warning slid under her skin. Do not give that little girl ideas you cannot honor.
Colt's eyes flicked once toward the square, toward where Beau had gone under an umbrella. Father first, always. Wren loved that about him before she could stop herself from naming the feeling, and the naming frightened her more than Cressie ever could.
"Wren," he said, low enough that only she could hear, her name held carefully.
She opened her mouth.
The first word was there, bitter as peach skin.
Then Beau came running through the feed-store door, hair damp and star sticker shining on her sleeve, and Colt dropped to one knee to catch her in his arms.