“Good night, dear.”
I walked her through the dark cafe and hugged her before she started up to bed. “I love you, Nana.”
She just smiled and said she knew.
The night had cooled when I walked out to the dock to see if I could still spot the cabin on the north shore burning, but the fire was out. A chill moved over me. Jefferson’s Crossing had been made of the same materials-old wood and rocks. It could burn just as fast.
I didn’t want to think about losing my place in a fire. Better to have the lawyer drive up with papers ordering me out. He’d make some official announcement that he’d found the wrong Allie Daniels and give me two days to be off the property. As I packed, I would remind myself that leaving was far better than losing the place to a fire.
If Nana were here, she’d tell me to stop thinking of trouble coming. She’d say bad times never need to be called, they’ll come on their own. But for me, thinking of what might happen-walking through the worst possible outcomes-helped. Then, I could tell myself I could survive.
A movement caught my eye. I watched as Luke swung his powerful body up on the far end of the dock and walk in my direction. He wore his wrinkled trousers, old work boots, and a black T-shirt. The T-shirt was the first clothing I’d ever seen him wear that looked like it might belong to him.
“You see the fire?”
He nodded as he moved slowly toward me.
“I went over for a closer look.” I wanted to ask where he’d been the past two days, but feared he might say that it was none of my business. “I was worried about you. I thought maybe you’d been there. I thought…”
Without a word, he stopped an inch from me and put his arms around me. For a moment I didn’t react, then I closed the distance between us.
He just held me, secure in his arms. I hadn’t realized how dearly I needed to feel safe. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on so tightly I was surprised he could breathe.
“You all right, Allie?” he whispered against my ear.
“I am now. I was afraid you’d been in the fire.” I knew I was making little sense, but when I’d been over by the fire I could almost feel him near.
He leaned away from me and tugged my face up. “You were worried about me?”
I realized I’d been a fool to even think he might have been in the old place. But I didn’t know where he lived and his behavior sometimes didn’t make all that much sense.
I thought he was going to tell me he wasn’t my problem, but he brushed his lips against mine as he whispered, “It’s been a long time since anyone worried about me.”
I closed my eyes, waiting for his kiss, but he pulled away gently and disappeared into the night, leaving me turned wrong-side out with emptiness.
Chapter 21
I wasn’t surprised the next morning to wake up to the sheriff pounding on my door. Pulling on clothes as I walked, I managed to button everything before I opened the door.
There stood the law, all three hundred fifty pounds of him. “Good morning, Sheriff.” I squinted as the sun reflected off his badge.
He frowned. “Don’t know what’s good about it.” As usual, he stormed in without waiting for an invitation. Only this morning his son, Dillon, was right behind him. Dillon looked sleepy and bored so I guessed it hadn’t been his idea to ride along in the cop car this morning.
“Have you got any coffee?”
I took a deep breath and said, “I can smell it so Nana must have it ready. We don’t usually open the cafe for breakfast but I could if you need something to eat?”
Fletcher shook his head. “I’m here on official business. I’ll take the coffee and then I’ll be wanting some answers.”
I started to say that answers cost extra, but I didn’t think he’d see the joke, so I headed for the kitchen. Glancing back, I remembered his shadow. “You want anything, Dillon?”
The boy looked up, surprised I called him by name. He shook his head.
I pushed through the kitchen door, thinking the boy didn’t quite measure up to all his father’s bragging, but then if he had, he’d probably be able to walk across the lake.
Luke and Nana had their heads together at the little table. I could tell they’d been laughing about something.
“Sheriff Fletcher’s here,” I said, knowing they would have had to be deaf not to have heard him. “Why didn’t one of you answer the door?”
Nana giggled. “We were just flipping for it.”
Luke flipped a quarter. “Best ten out of nineteen.”
I frowned at him. “Why don’t you go in and talk to him. He said he had a few questions.”
Luke stood. “I’m out of here.”
“Coward,” I muttered as I watched Luke slip out the back door.
Nana sat down with her coffee and scrambled eggs. She didn’t like the sheriff and saw no need to greet him. I could smell cinnamon rolls baking and knew if the sheriff wasn’t gone by the time they were done we’d be out a few dollars’ worth of them.
So when I went back to the store I suggested we talk in the sunshine of the porch, hoping he wouldn’t smell the food.
He agreed as he pulled out a pad. “I’d like you to start with a detailed account of what you saw last night. I understand from another source that you were there.”
“Not much to tell,” I said as I sat on the newly painted porch swing. “Willie and I saw the fire. We went over in his boat.”
The sheriff looked at the chair next to me and decided he’d stand. “Did you see anyone leaving or running away from it?” He set his coffee on the porch railing and prepared to take down my statement.
“No,” I said, thinking I’d pay money to see if the lawn chair would hold under his weight.
He took a minute to write something, gulped his coffee, and asked, “Anyone suspicious at all, beyond the nuts who hang around here normally?”
“No.”
“Do you have any reason to believe it might have been set?”
“No. Willie suggested kids sometimes come out to drink in the summers, but except for a few beer bottles lying around I didn’t see any sign of that.”
The huge man slapped his notebook against his leg as he paced back and forth. Then he stopped suddenly and jotted something down.
While he wrote, I asked, “What did you find?”
“Nothing,” he said a bit too quickly. “I’m turning it in as a lightning strike. Anything else will bring strangers out here and we’ll know no more when they’ve finished poking around than we did before.”
He held his coffee cup up to me as he studied his notebook.
I took the cup, wondering if he did the same thing to his wife when he wanted another cup. If so, and I were his wife, I’d be giving him some serious lumps with his next cup.
I went inside and refilled his coffee, then stood at the door listening to the sheriff talk to Dillon. “There’s nothing but nutcases and losers out here, son. Half these people should be locked away somewhere. If the whole place burned down we could write it off as a beautification project.”
“What about that Miss O’Reilly? She seemed nice enough this morning.”
The sheriff swore. “She’s afraid of her own shadow. Couldn’t take people in town talking about her family. She’d fall apart if she had to deal with half the shit I have to put up with in this job.”
Fletcher lowered his voice. “I’m telling you, son, there ain’t nothing out here but losers and misfits. I could haul every one of them in for being a bother to civilization and no one would care.”
I missed a few words as the Landry boys’ boat puttered by.
