CHAPTER 24 #3
Paloma called Wren's name, asking about ribbon lengths. Wren bent over a crate, measuring with a strip of twine, her hair slipping forward to hide her face. Public shame had a way of cutting inches off a person while everyone watched and claimed they saw nothing.
Colt moved toward her before he had decided to. Della saw him coming and went still. Paloma glanced between them, then took a bundle of flowers toward the far side of the yard with sudden purpose.
"Wren," he said.
She kept her eyes on the twine. "I have three more sets to measure, and Paloma is paying me by the job, so if this is about the feed store, I cannot do it here."
"I need to say I am sorry."
"Here?" She looked up then. Her eyes were dry. "In the middle of Della's chapel yard?"
He heard the warning and stopped. "No."
"Good."
"I should have spoken faster."
"Yes."
He nodded once, because arguing with that would make him smaller than he already felt. "I am going to correct it."
"You already corrected it. " Her fingers tightened on the twine. "After."
The word held the whole feed store.
Behind him, Beau laughed at something Della said, high and bright. Wren's gaze moved toward the sound. Sadness crossed her face before she smoothed it away and looked down at her work.
"She wanted to give you a sticker," Colt said.
"Please don't. " Wren's voice thinned. "Please do not bring Beau into this to make it gentler."
That one found bone.
"I am not."
"I know you are not trying to. " She wound the twine around her hand, then unwound it as if she had caught herself needing something to do. "That is the problem, Colt. You can be careful and still hurt me. You can be responsible and still leave me standing alone."
He could not answer. Not there, with Beau in view and the town sniffing for proof that Wren wanted something that was not hers.
Wren read his silence, and this time he did not think she was wrong to.
"I have work," she said.
He stepped back.
For the next hour, he did what the morning required and hated the part of himself that found relief in requirements.
Benches lined. Shade checked. A loose chapel step tightened with a screw from his truck kit.
Tuck called once to say the chained gate held.
Junie sent word through Della that the feed-store correction had started moving, which meant the gossip now had a second version chasing the first.
Beau stayed close. She handed clothespins to Della and sorted flower crowns by color with grave authority.
Colt watched her watch Wren. Children noticed what adults tried to bury under busyness.
Beau noticed that Wren smiled at everyone except Colt.
She noticed the silver star sticker still in her own hand.
Near noon, Della called a break before tempers and heat ruined the work. Colt loaded the empty flower-crown box back into the truck. Beau climbed in slower than usual, the sticker sheet folded in her lap.
He waited until he had pulled away from the chapel yard and the gravel had steadied under the tires before he looked in the mirror.
Beau was not humming now.
"Daddy?"
"Yeah, bug."
"Why did Wren look sad?"
There it was. The question he had earned.
He kept both hands on the wheel. The road shimmered ahead, patched with drying mud where floodwater had crossed two days before. He wanted to give her the easy answer. Grown-up stuff. Wedding stress. Too hot. Any little shield that would keep Beau's world simple for another mile.
But children learned truth by watching what grown people did with it. He had already shown her too much delay.
"Some people said something unfair about Wren this morning," he said. "I should have told the truth faster. I waited because I was scared and ashamed, and that hurt her."
Beau's eyes met his in the mirror. "You made Wren sad?"
"Yes."
The word hurt. It also stood straight.
"But you like Wren."
"I do."
"Then why?"
The ranch road opened in front of them, one way toward the low pasture gate and all the work waiting there, the other toward Sudie Crane's cottage and the woman he had left too long in a room full of judgment. Colt slowed before the turn. Dust rolled past the windows and settled again.
"Because liking someone does not fix it if you do not stand up at the right time," he said.
Beau looked down at the silver star. "Can you stand up now?"
Colt's throat worked. He thought of Harlow's star quilt folded on Beau's bed, of every promise he had made to keep his daughter safe, of all the ways safety could become a locked door if a man used it to avoid love.
He thought of Wren measuring twine with dry eyes.
Wren telling him careful could still hurt.
Wren walking through the bell's bright noise with her name wounded and her spine straight.
The low pasture could wait long enough for Tuck's chain to hold. The chapel had benches. The town had been corrected. None of that was the same as looking Wren in the eye before the day taught her his apology came after every chore.
He eased off the brake.
"Grown-ups have to tell the truth even when they are scared," Colt said, and turned the truck toward Wren.