“I’d rather keep my hands busy,” she admitted.
So the toddlers drifted off to sleep in the bedroom, Peg went outside to read in the shade and Jane stood in the center of that office with a cardboard box in one hand and her heart feeling heavy for the father-in-law she’d never properly met.
Beau Marshall had made his share of mistakes, it seemed, and the family he’d left behind had never properly forgiven him for them. Maybe he’d never wanted forgiveness, and they’d sensed that. Jane put the box down on the office chair and picked up some papers from the desktop. Some looked like old bills, others were doodles and notes he’d taken that meant nothing to her. Who knew if these papers would be necessary later for his taxes or something? So Jane gathered them up into a neat pile and started filling the box.
After a few minutes the desktop was clear, and she opened the side drawer. There were pens, paper clips, scraps of paper, broken elastic bands... Most of it was garbage, but deep in the back of the drawer, she pulled out a yellowed envelope.
Inside were a few old snapshots. They were all of Beau and Sandra, by the looks of them. The photos started out with them as a couple in their early forties, both looking serious and some distance between them, but as she worked her way through the pile, the couple got younger and the distance between them shrank; sometimes they were even touching each other in some way. The last photo was their wedding picture, and she was amazed by how much her own husband had looked like his father. Beau and Josh could have been twins in Beau’s younger years—the chiseled jaw, the bright red hair, the ice-blue eyes...
And in that wedding picture, Sandra had looked blissful. Just as blissful as Jane had looked on her own wedding day marrying their son. She flipped through the other photos again, looking at those aging faces, and her heart hammered in her throat.
“Would that have been me?” she whispered to herself. If Josh had lived, and if she’d stuck with him because she didn’t believe in divorce any more than his mother had...would she have been the sad woman next to a bitter man? Would this have been their future?
Jane sighed, and as she tucked the pictures away she saw a handwritten note. She pulled it out, but before she even saw the signature she knew it was Josh’s writing:
Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.
Only that. So their son had collected those pictures. Maybe he’d hoped to do something more with them, and to Beau’s credit, he had kept them in his desk. Or shoved them there. For whatever reason, a couple that had started out happily enough had turned chilly and distant.
What would a marriage like Beau and Sandra’s do to the children? If Josh and Jane had ended up the same way, what would it have done to the girls? It was an awful thought, and she shivered in spite of the warmth.
Maybe it was better not to dwell on what-ifs.
Jane opened the next drawer. This one was more cluttered, and she pulled out a tattered old map, a half-full box of tissues, a few different pads of writing paper, a box of staples... And underneath it all, a handle of some sort glimmered in the light. She reached down and grabbed it, pulling up a pearl-handled handgun. She looked down at it in shock. It was awfully tarnished. If Beau had antiques, why didn’t he take better care of them?
A sound behind her startled her, she spun around, the gun still in her hand and she saw Colt in the doorway, a surprised look on his face. He raised his hands slowly.
“You want to put that thing down?” he asked, his tone low but cautious.
“Sorry.” She put it onto the desk with a short laugh. “Do you think it’s loaded?”
“No idea. I just don’t like guns pointed at me,” he said.
“It’s your uncle’s?” she asked.
“Yeah, he had a few around the house.” Colt came into the office and picked up the gun, turning it over in his hand. He opened it, shook out a bullet and held it up.
“Oh!” she gasped. “It was loaded!”
“Beau always said that when he needed a gun, he needed a bullet, too,” Colt said, and he put the gun down again. “Sorry about that. I thought I’d found all his handguns. If I thought there was a gun rattling around here with kids in the house—”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You sure there aren’t any more?”
“I’ve checked everywhere,” he said. “Still, we should stay vigilant with the girls.”
She nodded. “I always do.”
Colt met her gaze and he held it for a moment. “You want some help in here?”
“I wouldn’t turn it down.” She tossed the old, folded map into the box. “I thought you said you’d be busy.”
“I am.” He gave her a rueful smile, then picked up a box from the corner and looked inside. “But I’m the boss now.”
She wasn’t going to complain. It would be nice to have some company as she rooted through the remnants of a stranger’s life. She’d thought she wanted some time to herself, but now that he was here she realized she was glad.
Colt hadn’t exactly planned to come sort through the office with Jane, but he’d been thinking about her all morning and when he found himself with a couple of hours to spare...well, he found himself headed back to the house. He’d told himself he should lend a hand in clearing things out, but it was more than that. He missed her.
Colt glanced over at Jane, and she looked tense. Her gaze was clouded and she tossed items from the drawer into a box with more force than was necessary.
“You okay?” he asked after a moment.
She shut the drawer and looked up at him. “Beau and Josh—they looked
