Chương 2
“I’m not angry.”
Hale glanced at him.
Daniel’s jaw flexed.
“All right,” he said. “I’m angry.”
“You put him through a table.”
“He threatened my daughter.”
“And I heard enough of that to deal with him. I also heard you announce you were locking an entire room full of witnesses inside your house.”
“They’re not witnesses if they leave.”
“They are witnesses whether they leave or not.”
The red indicators disappeared from all but two doors. Hale unlocked the main exit, then turned to the guests.
His voice changed.
It became the voice Evie had heard him use at county fairs when children got separated from their parents and once, years ago, when a drunk man had climbed onto the roof of the feed store.
Calm. Flat. Meant to be obeyed.
“Everybody stay where you are for a minute. The doors are open. Nobody is being detained. I’m asking you not to leave until I get names and contact information. If you need to go, tell me. Don’t start calling people across the room. Don’t crowd anyone.”
A murmur spread through the conservatory.
Grant laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Evie knew that laugh, too.
“Well,” he said. “This is humiliating.”
She looked at him.
He seemed genuinely offended.
That almost made her smile.
Instead she tasted blood again.
Hale saw it.
“Evie.”
She focused on him.
“Are you hurt anywhere besides your face?”
Grant turned toward her.
Daniel moved half a step, blocking him.
Hale noticed.
“Dan, don’t.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You’re thinking loudly.”
Under different circumstances, Evie might have laughed. Sheriff Hale had known her father since before she was born. Their arguments had always sounded less like arguments than two men stubbornly trying not to admit they enjoyed each other.
Nothing in the room felt familiar now.
Celeste finally moved.
“Evelyn.”
Evie flinched.
Her mother stopped.
It was small, almost invisible. But Celeste saw it.
So did Daniel.
Celeste’s lips parted, then closed. She looked down at her own hands as though they belonged to somebody else.
Hale approached Evie without touching her.
“Can you stand?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want help?”
“No.”
Grant made a sound under his breath.
Evie stood too fast and the glass roof tilted.
Daniel’s hand came up.
She jerked away from it.
His hand stopped in midair.
That hurt him.
She could see it.
Good, a mean little part of her thought.
The thought shocked her less than it should have.
For months she had been the person everyone described as gentle.
Gentle Evie. Artistic Evie. Sensitive Evie.
The family words for qualities they admired as long as none of them created inconvenience.
She steadied herself against the banquet table.
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not,” Daniel said.
“I know.”
His mouth closed.
That was the first useful thing anyone did for her.
Grant wiped his lip again.
“I’d like to leave.”
Hale looked at him.
“No.”
Grant’s eyebrows rose. “You just said no one’s detained.”
“You are.”
“For what?”
“I personally heard a threat that could reasonably be interpreted as a threat of serious physical harm. I personally observed an injured woman within arm’s reach of you, immediately after you kicked her property away from her while she was on the floor. I also watched her father assault you, so congratulations, this room contains more than one problem.”
Daniel exhaled through his nose.
Grant pointed toward him.
“You heard that.”
“I did.”
“Arrest him.”
“Maybe.”
Daniel looked at Hale.
Hale shrugged once.
“I told you not to put him through a table.”
“He was standing.”
“He was standing before you put him through the table.”
“It was barely through.”
A laugh escaped from somewhere among the guests.
Then another.
It died quickly.
Grant’s face tightened.
Evie lowered her gaze.
There it was again, that terrible human instinct to laugh when nobody was supposed to.
For weeks she had believed fear would make everything solemn.
It did not.
Fear made people strange.
Hale took his radio from his belt.
Grant’s shoulders changed.
Only slightly.
But Evie saw that too.
He had understood something.
This was no longer family.
No one could put the moment back inside the family.
Not Daniel with his money, not Celeste with her guest lists, not Grant with the careful sentences he used in private after losing his temper.
Hale called for deputies and medical assistance, then looked at Evie.
“I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer without looking at him.”
Her eyes went to Grant anyway.
He gave her the smallest possible shake of his head.
It was almost nothing.
No one else would have understood it.
Evie understood perfectly.
Don’t.
Hale waited.
Evie looked back at him.
“Do you feel safe going home with your husband?”
The question entered her like cold water.
Grant spoke immediately.
“She’s upset.”
Hale lifted one hand.
Grant stopped.
Evie stared at the white roses lying in spilled water on the table.
One stem had snapped.
“Evie?”
She opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
Grant’s face softened.
There it was.
The second face.
The one that had apologized outside restaurants. The one that had knelt beside the bathtub after gripping her hard enough to leave thumb marks. The one that said he was terrified of becoming his father, though Evie had never met his father and had long ago stopped knowing which stories about the man were true.
Grant spoke quietly now.
“Baby.”
Daniel turned toward him.
Hale said, “No.”
One word.
Not angry.
Just no.
Grant pressed his lips together.
Evie thought of Tuesday.
She had not planned to.
Tuesday came because Grant’s thumb moved across his wedding ring.
He always did that after a fight.
Tuesday night, he had sat at the kitchen island and rotated the ring while telling her she had embarrassed him by staying too long at her mother’s house.
“You make me chase you,” he had said.
May you like
Evie had been drying a plate.
She remembered the blue dish towel more clearly than the conversation.
