CHAPTER 24 #2
"I know," Colt said to Beau. "And I am going to come. I have to do it the right way."
"With sorry?"
"With sorry. And with truth."
Beau considered that with the seriousness she gave boot buckles and whether toast should be cut into triangles. Then she held out the sticker sheet. "This one is shiny."
He took the silver star because refusing would have hurt her. "It is."
"Wren can have it when she is not sad."
"Yes, ma'am."
He stood. The room had started moving again in false little starts. Cups lifted. Paper rustled. Cressie slipped the seed packets back into the rack, her mouth pressed thin.
Colt wanted to say something harsher, but Beau was watching, and Wren was already gone. A public whipping would still leave Wren carrying the bruise.
So he said the only useful part.
"You will correct it."
Cressie blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Every place you repeat that story, you correct it. Wren did not know. She did not come for money. You say that as clearly as you said the rest."
"People ask questions, Colt."
"Then give them the truth."
His voice did not rise. Cressie looked past him, maybe to see who had heard. Enough had. Too little, too late, but something.
Junie pushed the receipt across the counter. "I will see that the coffee crowd hears it before lunch."
"Thank you."
"Do not thank me yet. Go fix what is yours."
He gathered the twine, the receipt, and the flower-crown box. The envelope stayed under his thumb. He did not hide it this time. Beau took his free hand, and they stepped out into white morning heat.
The feed store porch boards gave a dry groan under his boots. Across the road, Wren's old car was already gone. Dust hung where she had pulled out too fast, pale against the ditch grass.
Della's truck remained at the chapel turnoff. Colt knew better than to chase without knowing where Beau fit in the next ten minutes. Fatherhood had trained that into his bones. The trouble was, fear had learned to use the same habit as cover.
He buckled Beau into the truck and set the flower-crown box where she could guard it. His phone buzzed before he could climb in.
Tuck Saddler.
Colt answered. "Yeah."
"Low pasture gate is sagging. I can hold it with chain, but it wants a proper hinge."
Of course it did. The ranch always found the weak place when his hands were full. "Chain it for now. Keep the pairs off that corner until I get there."
"Chapel benches?"
"I am on my way."
Tuck was quiet a second. "You sound like you hit wire."
"Something like that."
"Need me at the chapel or the gate?"
Colt watched the road Wren had taken. Then at Beau in the rearview mirror, touching the flower-crown box with one careful finger.
"Gate first," he said. "Then chapel. I will cover what I can."
"All right."
The call ended.
He should have gone straight after Wren.
The thought came hot and simple. Then Beau kicked one boot heel against the seat, trusting him to know the shape of the morning.
He could not drag her through an adult apology, and he could not let the day carry him from errand to errand until apology became another thing postponed for chores.
That was how he had built the whole damned problem. One responsible delay at a time.
He drove to the chapel because Beau had a flower-crown box on her lap, Della had a wedding in two days, and Wren's paid work deserved to be delivered. The road bent past cedar and flood-flattened grass. Every place he looked, something needed righting.
The chapel yard was already awake. Ruston and a couple of ranch hands were unloading benches from a flatbed.
Paloma stood near the limestone steps, pointing toward the shade with a bundle of stems under one arm.
Della was there too, her eyes red and her chin lifted.
Wren stood beside Paloma with the ledger hugged to her chest. Her face had been washed clean of whatever had happened between the feed store and here, which made it worse.
Beau leaned forward against her belt. "There's Wren."
"I see her."
"Can I give her shiny?"
"Not yet."
"Why?"
"Because she is working, and I need to talk to her when I can do it right."
Beau sighed, put-upon and five. "Grown-ups talk a lot."
"We do."
"Sometimes wrong."
He parked under the patch of shade nearest the road. "Yes."
The chapel bell rope hung visible through the open side door, a pale line in the dim stairwell. Friday light hit the limestone and showed every patched crack. Colt got Beau out, handed her the small box, and walked toward the setup with Bennet's envelope tucked in his back pocket.
Ruston saw him first. The man's expression did not change much, but he shifted the bench weight to one hand and looked toward Wren, then back at Colt. Della must have told him enough.
"Need those on the south side?" Colt asked.
"South side," Ruston said. "Shade line first. Guests will cook if we miss it."
Colt nodded and took the other end of the bench.
Work gave his body somewhere to put the first wave of guilt.
Lift. Turn. Watch the uneven ground. Set the legs where they would not rock.
He had done that his whole life: met panic with tasks, grief with repairs, love with whatever practical thing kept his hands from shaking.
But each bench only replayed the feed-store doorway.
Wren's hand on the ledger. If you have to think this hard.
Around him, wedding prep moved in choppy currents. Paloma asked for receipt totals. Wren gave them, voice level. Della sent someone for clothespins. Ruston measured chair rows by boot lengths. Beau sat on the chapel step with her box and watched the flower crowns.
Colt caught three looks in ten minutes: a whisper near the water cooler, a ranch hand who stopped talking when Wren passed, Della's head snapping up in warning. Cressie's story had already outrun the feed store porch. The mineral money had gone public as Wren's supposed motive.
He had handed the town a knife by hiding the handle.
On the third bench, Ruston set his end down and wiped his forearm across his brow. "Della is trying not to come apart."
"I know."
"Wren told her to focus on the wedding."
"She would."
Ruston studied him. "That does not make it all right."
"No."
Steady disappointment sat heavier than anger. Ruston glanced toward Della, then toward Wren.
"Fix it where you broke it," Ruston said.
"I tried."
"After she was bleeding."
Colt took that because it was true.