If she was lucky, then Glen had seen Billy coming. He wasn't the type to step in where he wasn't wanted, and if she wanted to see her husband then he would stay out of it. Both of them knew that she didn't.
"Well, aren't you happy to see me?"
The way Billy said it, she would have believed that he was genuinely surprised to hear that she wasn't. As if the years of waiting for him hadn't all added up. As if he hadn't walked away with nearly ten years of her life and all the money she'd ever had in the world.
"Get out of here, Billy."
"I'm here for my family, Catherine. I'm here to provide for you, and for the girls. And Cole."
"You don't care about them, and you don't care about me."
"You know," he said. His hands were shaking, his knuckles turning white where he was gripping the back of a chair, trying to look casual. "I don't like when you talk like that, hon. You're my wife, and I don't think it's proper that a wife should talk like that about her husband."
Where was Glen? Why hadn't he shown up yet? Time seemed to stretch out in front of her. What couldn't have been more than ten seconds felt like she'd been pressing herself back against the counter for eternity.
"Billy, just get out of here. This ain't your home any more."
"Now that's where you got me. See, some guy stole my copy of the deed, and now I hear he's running around claiming I sold him the place."
A voice called out from the door. "That's not how I recall it, Bill."
Glen stood there. His hands hung at his sides, not making any moves for the weapon at his hip. But the way that his arms hung, natural and loose—Catherine could see the threat there. That any moment he could pull the gun free and leave a Billy-shaped mess on the floor. Like a rattlesnake ready to strike.
"You know what I don't recall? I don't recall saying that you could carry on with my wife, regardless what else I said."
Glen's face remained neutral, but the time it took to respond told Catherine that he hadn't taken the remark well. She wanted to hit him for it. Wanted to scream.
More than anything, though, she just wanted to leave. Wanted him to be gone, and to never come back. She wanted it to be as if he had never walked through that door in the first place.
That wasn't an option, though.
Glen stepped inside, squared up his shoulders.
"Bill, I think you need to leave my property."
"This is my house."
"Not any more, it isn't. You left, and you sold me the property. I've got all the paperwork, done up real nice and everything. Now you can leave, or I can make you leave, but you ain't gonna be staying."
Billy looked at her for a moment, and for an instant she thought that he might thought he might have a sympathetic bone in his body. He looked, above all, tired. She couldn't bring herself to feel bad for him, not after everything that had happened.
But if he felt one little bit sorry for what he'd done, then at the very least it might save his sorry soul. She saw his hand pulling back the long coat he wore, and where he was reaching, an instant before he put his hand on the pistol.
Everything after that seemed to happen in slow-motion. She never doubted for a second who he was going to shoot. Glen was an inconvenience, but not one that would last long. Not with the kind of money that Billy seemed to have come into.
She saw his fingers wrap around the handle, saw him pulling it free. She saw him bringing it up, turning it when it was still at his hip. No reason to make it last any longer than it had to. As long as she didn't have to live with him again, anything was better than that.
The loud bang made everything speed back up again, double-time to make up for the loss. Glen already had the pistol back in its holster by the time Billy had hit the ground, screaming bloody murder. He dropped his pistol to the floor.
Catherine ran up and kicked it into the corner before he could reach for it a second time.
"Put your hands over your head, Howell."
He didn't. Billy wa
s too busy clutching at his thigh, where the bullet had ripped a hole in him. Blood was seeping into the floor that Catherine had spent so much time working to clean.
"Put them up, or you'll wish you had."