“Let me take another look.”
She rounded the bed where Irv was semi-reclined and handed him the primer. He studied the crudely drawn etching, tilting both his head and the workbook to various angles. Then a laugh began deep inside his chest before burbling out.
“What? What is it?”
He closed the primer and passed it back to her. “Go to bed, Laurel.”
“Not on your life!”
“Turn out the light. Everything’s fine. I know where they’re at.”
* * *
He refused to talk about it further, saying that morning would come soon enough. Frustrated, but exhausted, Laurel turned out his bedroom light and pulled the door shut on her way out.
Bone-weary as she was, she took a bath before retreating upstairs to her room, where she pulled on a fresh nightgown, took the pins from her hair, and gave it a good brushing. She plaited it loosely into her customary bedtime braid. She was about to extinguish the flame in the lamp when she saw his reflection in her dresser mirror.
Gasping, she spun around, her hand at her throat.
Forty-Three
Don’t raise a ruckus.”
“What do you think you’re doing? Get out of here!”
Thatcher came into the room and quietly closed the door.
“If you don’t leave in two seconds, I’ll shoot you.”
“With what? You keep your pistol in the pocket of your skirt.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve noticed you’re always patting at it.”
Intending to mend and wash her tattered and soiled skirt in the morning, she’d left it on a hook on the back of the bathroom door, her pistol forgotten in the pocket. She didn’t believe Thatcher meant to harm her, but she wished she had the Derringer to reinforce her point about his audacious intrusion.
?
??As you’re well aware, Irv has a shotgun,” she said. “He’s right downstairs.”
“Sawing logs. I could hear his snores as I passed through the kitchen.”
“If you don’t leave now, I’ll yell for him.”
“No, you won’t. You don’t want me confronting him with this.”
“This what?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he took off his well-worn black felt cowboy hat and set it on a table. Then he took off his jacket and folded it over the back of a chair.
“Pick those right back up,” she said. “I did not invite you to stay. In point of fact, I’m sick of you sneaking around me and my house. What gives you the right to do that, to show up at all hours of the night?”
“When you always seem to be awake. Awake and wound up like a top. I wonder why that is.”
“If I’m wound up it could be because you appear out of nowhere and catch me unfit to receive a visitor.” Yes, this was twice, wasn’t it, that he’d caught her wearing only—
She didn’t finish that thought, because, somewhat recovered from the shock of his being in her house, her bedroom, she realized that his demeanor was particularly solemn.