The Blizzard #3
The drive to town took twenty minutes. The heater in the Chevy blew lukewarm air that smelled of dust and the mouse nest he'd found in the vent last spring.
Maeve sat against the passenger door, her hands folded in her lap, the blue dress spread across the seat like a spill of water.
The valley opened dark around them, the fence lines swallowed by the dusk, the irrigation ditches running silver where the last light caught the water.
Cattle stood in shapeless mounds on the hills, their breath rising in small clouds.
The road hummed beneath the tires, a low drone that matched the vibration of the Ford's engine at forty miles per hour, a rattle that traveled up through the seat and into his spine.
He held the speed there, steady. The inspector waited ahead, a man in a gray suit with a notebook and a pen that never stopped moving.
The Grange lights burned yellow in the distance, and the fiddle reached them through the open window, a thin sound carried on the wind.
Maeve's hands tightened in her lap. The blue dress shifted with the motion of the truck.
The frost heaves in the road lifted the wheels and dropped them, a rhythm that matched the knocking in his chest. They were driving toward something neither of them could control, a performance that had to convince a man who counted lies for a living.
The mint on her breath filled the cab when she exhaled.
The coffee on her lips. The distance between them ached.
He pressed the accelerator and the truck knocked harder, the rattle climbing his spine, and he held on because holding on was all he knew.
The Grange sat at the end of Main Street, a barn converted in 1962, the siding still red where the paint hadn't peeled.
Light spilled from the high windows, yellow and warm against the dark, and the fiddle reached him before he cut the engine, a high lonesome sound that climbed the scale and fell back, climbing again.
Cars and trucks lined the dirt lot, mud on the tires, the chrome catching the light from the door.
He parked at the far end, away from the cluster, and sat for a moment with the engine ticking as it cooled.
Maeve didn't move. She looked at the building, at the light, at the door where Ruth stood in a green dress that matched the shutters.
"He'll be inside," Maeve said.
"I know."
"He'll be watching."
"I know."
She turned to him. The dashboard light caught the ring on her hand, the gold dull and warm against her skin. "Then we give him something to watch."
The heat inside The Grange hit them like a wall, thick with the smell of pine floor polish and sweat and the cinnamon rolls Ruth had set on a table by the door.
The room was already crowded, ranchers in clean jeans and pressed shirts, wives in dresses they'd worn to weddings and funerals, children running between the legs with sticky fingers.
The inspector sat in the corner near the wood stove, a man in a gray suit that looked like it had been bought for a city, not a valley.
He held a notebook on his knee, a pen in his hand, and his eyes moved across the room with the flat assessment of a man who counted things for a living.
Cattle. Acres. Debt. He'd counted them all, and now he was counting the distance between Cole and Maeve as they walked through the door.
The wood stove behind him threw heat against the wall, and the inspector's shadow stretched long across the floor, a dark shape that reached almost to the dance space, as if the bank itself had sent a piece of its shadow to watch them.
Ruth met them with a tray of biscuits. "Took you long enough," she said. "Fiddler's been tuning for twenty minutes."
"Truck runs slow," Cole said.
"Truck runs fine. You run slow." Ruth looked at Maeve, at the dress, at the boots that peeked out from under the hem. "You look like a bride, Maeve Callahan."
"I look like a woman in a dress."
"Same thing tonight." Ruth's eyes slid to the corner, to the inspector, to the notebook. "He's asked three people if you touch in public. Three. I told him you can't keep your hands off each other. He wrote it down."
The music started. The fiddle sang. The washtub thumped.
Couples moved onto the floor, boots scuffing the pine, and the room swayed with a rhythm that had nothing to do with the bank or the debt or the lie.
Cole took Maeve's hand. Her palm was cool, the calluses rough against his fingers, and she let him lead her to the center of the floor.
The inspector's pen hovered above the page. The room watched. The lie waited.
Her breath came warm against his chin. Quick and shallow as their mouths met, and he'd meant it to be brief, to be light, to be only a display for the inspector and the room and the notebook in the corner, but her lips were dry and slightly parted, and she tasted of coffee and the mint she grew in a pot on the cabin windowsill.
The lie cracked open like a bad seam, and he couldn't remember why he'd ever thought he could touch her and remain untouched.