“No!”
“Then why so much anger? You’ve always been so cool, calm and collected—like your mother. Today, I saw a whole other side of you, Brynne. A stranger.”
“First Eli lectures me, now you. I’m a human being, with feelings.”
“I’m not lecturing you, honey,” Miranda said, resting a hand over Brynne’s. “Of course you’re human and of course you have feelings. But in all the years I’ve known you—since you were knee-high to a lawn sprinkler—I’ve never seen you so upset.”
Brynne wanted to cry again, but she managed to stem the flow. After all, she was no weakling, and she was country proud. She raised her face from her hands and looked directly at Miranda.
“What should I do now?” she asked the older woman, in a very small voice.
Miranda smiled, squeezed Brynne’s hand again. “Nothing,” she replied kindly. “Nothing whatsoever. Wait. Think things through. If you keep your head, well, when it’s time for the next step, you’ll know exactly what to do.”
Brynne drew a deep, restorative breath, let it out again. “Thanks, Miranda,” she said.
“Hey,” Miranda replied, still smiling. “I promised your mom I’d look after you while she and your dad were away. I’m a woman of my word.”
Brynne leaned across the counter to plant a quick kiss on Miranda’s cheek. Then, straightening, she told her friend about the phone call from her parents. Between picking up her art supplies from the shed in their backyard, the unexpected confrontation with Clay and the subsequent disastrous conversation with Eli, she’d forgotten to mention it.
Miranda was clearly pleased that Mike and Alice were coming home early; like pretty much everyone else, she’d missed them and, she’d complained more than once that was tired of the cold weather and wanted to spend a few weeks with her sister, down in San Miguel de Allende. Soak up some sunshine, enjoy some true Mexican cuisine, she’d often said, and stop thinking that two people had died recently, within mere days of each other, and there was bound to be another death to round things out.
“You really believe that?” Brynne asked. “That deaths come in threes?”
“Around here,” Miranda said, “they do.”
Brynne thought about Eli’s theory, but she saw no point in outlining it for Miranda.
Mostly because she didn’t want to let Eli occupy any real estate in her head.
She did miss Festus, though.
“I’ve always thought so, too,” she finally confessed. “But it does seem like superstition, doesn’t it?”
“Call it what you will,” Miranda said, gathering her dog-eared deck of cards and tucking them into an equally battered box. “I’ve lived in this town all my life, and I’ve seen it happen over and over again.”
“But isn’t it possible that, well, our minds just automatically sort deaths into groups of three?”
Miranda sighed, stood up, straightened her apron. Her shift would be over soon, and she’d leave for the little house on Willow Road, where she had lived since birth. When she wasn’t at work, or at church, she holed up in the shed behind her house and spun clay into pots and vases, plates and bowls.
She lived alone—had never married—and Brynne wondered if, as busy as she kept herself, she ever got lonely.
From there, it wasn’t a big leap to imagining herself as an older woman, living in the Pine Street house, like her parents before her, splashing paint onto canvases or watercolor paper.
No husband, no children. Just herself, and maybe a dog, or a few dozen cats, whiling away the sunset years of her life.
Much as she loved painting—not to mention dogs and cats—the image saddened her deeply.
Caught up in that revelry, she still managed to shift her imagination to another scenario entirely—herself, but this time, with Eli. Both of them aging, comfortable with each other. In this version of the future, they had grown children, and grandchildren, too, though Brynne didn’t see them in her mind’s eye.
She only saw herself, silver-haired, happy, and Eli, also gray, but still as strong and able as ever.
Before she could succumb to another emotional meltdown—was she premenstrual, or what?—Brynne took charge of herself and focused on doing the next right thing, which was to help Frank restock the shelves of liquor behind the bar.
The evening waitresses, Sally and Joan, arrived, and Miranda went home.
Harry replaced Frank in the kitchen and, when necessary, behind the bar.
Brynne retreated to her apartment, fed a loudly meowing Waldo and took a long, hot shower.
Afterward, she dressed in her oldest pair of jeans and a raggedy T-shirt, went into the guest room where her art supplies were stored, found a midsize canvas and propped it up on the giant easel.
It was bad planning, she supposed, to start playing with acrylic paint in such a close space—the easel was wedged in between the bed she’d bought for Davey and a chest of drawers, and the floor was carpeted—but she needed color, and plenty of it.
For as long as she could remember, Brynne had hungered for bright splashes of color, woven them like broad, gleaming ribbons into the very fabric of her soul.
She brushed a magenta stripe across the center of the canvas, then a turquoise one, followed by a splash of vibrant orange.
Soon, she was happily lost, and the only image occupying her mind was the one in front of her.
* * *
IT TOOK A WHILE to shake off the distractions—seeing Brynne so undone by the presence of a man she’d clearly loved, listening to Sara declare him the official village idiot—but by the time he’d reached the office, sat himself down in the chair behind his desk and gone through a sheaf of messages, Eli was back in work mode.
Dan arrived right on time, bringing coffee from a drive-through joint, and Eli was grateful for the java. It was better than the often-scorched stuff he usually drank on the job. Connie firmly maintained that she’d been hired as a dispatcher and receptionist, not a waitress, and Melba was equally adamant: she wasn’t going to brew a single pot of coffee unless the male deputies took their fair turns.
All this distilled down to the unfortunate fact that only Amos Edwards, the lowest man on the totem pole, ever attempted to brew the sludge he called coffee.
Everyone else, including Eli, tolerated the stuff.
Thus, he welcomed the brand-name concoction Dan brought in.
The big man took a seat across from Eli, popped the little tab on his own cup and took a cautious sip. Then he made a satisfied sound and grinned.
“Melba hates it when I do that,” he said happily.