Big Sky River. Linda Lael Miller

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      “Bless your heart, honey, I know all about that,” she said. “Hutch told me. I won’t pretend I’m not glad the boys are back home, but I am so sorry it had to happen like this.” She paused then, squared her broad shoulders and shook a finger under his nose. “Times like now, prayer’s the ticket. It makes everything easier.”

      No prayers had made Corrie’s passing easier, not one whit, for her or for him, but he didn’t say that. Boone numbered himself among the former believers of the world, the disgruntled and doubtful ones, but that didn’t mean he could go around raining on Opal’s parade, so he kept his opinion to himself. After all, Opal was a churchgoing woman, and she did seem to get a lot of prayers answered. There was a rumor floating around that she might just marry up with the new pastor, Dr. Walter Beaumont, the two of them joining forces against the devil. They’d been seen fishing together and sharing a pancake special over at the Butter Biscuit Café, and just the other day, Slade had said he and Joslyn were on the lookout for another housekeeper.

      “I guess so,” Boone finally said, because he knew his old friend was waiting for an answer to her brief but inspirational message. “You’re an angel, Opal. Moving was a shock to my boys, sudden as it was, and they’re worried about their uncle, of course. It’ll make them feel better having you here.”

      She smiled and patted his cheek. “Let me just get breakfast on the stove,” she said. “There’ll be coffee in a few minutes, and you look like a man who needs some sustenance, pronto.”

      Boone nodded gratefully and went off to grab a shower and get dressed in his usual go-to-work getup of jeans, a cotton shirt cut Western-style and a decent pair of boots. He’d put on his badge and his service revolver later, he decided. Most of the time, he didn’t need either one, since everybody in Parable County knew who he was and no one was likely to behave in a way that would require shooting them.

      When he got back to the kitchen, Opal handed him the promised cup of coffee, and he inhaled the rich scent of it before he took a sip, savoring it as he took in the sight of his boys, sitting at the table in their cartoon pajamas, their feet bare and their eyes still puffy from sleeping hard and deep.

      “Are you mad at me?” Fletcher asked, right out of the chute, leveling a look at Boone. A blush pulsed in his freckled cheeks, and his voice dropped to a near whisper, as though Opal and Griff weren’t right there to hear every word. “For wetting the bed, I mean?”

      Boone shook his head. “Nope,” he said, taking another sip of his coffee before going on. “Stuff happens.”

      Fletcher looked relieved, but he was still holding a grudge, too. That much was abundantly clear. “I want to go back to Missoula,” he reminded his father.

      Boone let that one pass, since stubbornness ran in the family.