The Widow's Relay Station

• Chapter 1 Dust and Deed
• Chapter 2 The Noon Stage
• Chapter 3 A Stranger with a Greener
• Chapter 4 Broken Springs and Bitter Coffee
• Chapter 5 Shadows on the Jornada
• Chapter 6 The Weight of Brass Keys
• Chapter 7 Smoke on the Ridge
• Chapter 8 Whispers in the Stables
• Chapter 9 Lantern Light Confessions
• Chapter 10 The Gambler’s Warning
• Chapter 11 Scars from the War
• Chapter 12 Wheels in the Mud
• Chapter 13 Unspoken Truces
• Chapter 14 The Rustler’s Moon
• Chapter 15 A Shot in the Arroyo
• Chapter 16 Mending Wounds
• Chapter 17 The Wayfarer’s Trust
• Chapter 18 Wolves at the Gate
• Chapter 19 Secrets in the Strongbox
• Chapter 20 Desert Tempest
• Chapter 21 The Price of Solitude
• Chapter 22 Siege at Sundown
• Chapter 23 Smoke and Powder
• Chapter 24 Reckoning at Dawn
• Chapter 25 Unhitched Regrets
• Chapter 26 The Final Outrider

The wind in the Jornada del Muerto did not merely blow; it scraped. It carried with it the fine, red grit of the New Mexico desert, a relentless sediment that found its way into the seams of dresses, the teeth of gears, and the very marrow of those stubborn enough to dwell there.

Clara Vance stood on the sagging porch of the Ojo Caliente relay station, a damp rag pressed to her mouth to keep from inhaling the worst of the dust. In her right hand, she held a heavy iron key, its surface pitted and cold despite the dry heat of the afternoon. The key belonged to the padlock on the grain shed, but to Clara, it felt like the anchor of a ship that had long since sunk beneath the desert sands.

She was twenty-four years old, and for the last three months, she had been a widow.

"You don't have to stay here, Clara," her brother-in-law, Arthur, had told her back in Santa Fe, his voice dripping with the kind of condescending pity that made her spine stiffen. "It’s no place for a woman alone. Sell the land to the butterfield syndicate for pennies, come back to Ohio, and live in our parlor. You can help Martha with the children."

The memory of that offer made Clara squeeze the iron key until her knuckles turned the color of lard. She had looked at the prospect of Martha’s damp, crowded parlor, the endless mending of someone else’s socks, and the quiet, suffocating death of her own independence. Then she had looked at the deed to the Ojo Caliente station—the only thing her late husband, Thomas, had left her besides a stack of unpaid bills and a reputation for foolish dreams. She had chosen the desert.

The relay station was a sprawling, low-slung structure built of thick, sun-dried adobe bricks. It sat in a barren basin, flanked by the dark, jagged spine of the San Andres Mountains to the east and the shimmering, heat-miraged flats to the west. It was a vital link in the southern overland route, a place where coaches swapped tired mules for fresh ones, and passengers gulped down bitter coffee and scorched beans before hurrying away from a landscape that felt hostile to human life.

Clara lowered the rag and took a shallow breath. The air smelled of dry creosote, parched earth, and the sharp, ammonia tang of the stables. Behind her, the heavy timber door of the main house creaked open on dry hinges.

"Missus Clara?"

Jedediah, the elderly ostler who had worked the station since before the war, hobbled out onto the porch. His face was a road map of deep-set wrinkles, darkened by decades of exposure to the southwestern sun, and his left leg dragged slightly from an old encounter with a runaway mule. He was clutching a battered tin coffee pot.

"The water in the well is tasting sulfurous again," Jedediah grunted, squinting out at the horizon where the road vanished into a haze of heat. "We’re down to three good sacks of barley, and the red mule in the third stall has got a limp. If that noon stage is late, the passengers are going to be cranky, and if it’s early, we ain’t ready."

"We’re as ready as we can be, Jed," Clara said, her voice remarkably steady despite the fluttering anxiety in her chest. She tucked the iron key into the pocket of her faded gingham apron. "Did you grease the axle on the water wagon?"

"Did it yesterday. But that don't change the fact that we’re running low on grub. If the supply wagon from Las Cruces doesn't show by Friday, we’ll be feeding the travelers boiled leather and cactus fruit."

Clara managed a small, wry smile. "Let’s hope they have strong teeth, then. I’ll go check on the stew."

She turned and went inside, the cool darkness of the adobe interior offering a brief, blessed relief from the glare of the sun. The main room of the station served as a dining hall, a post office, and occasionally a sleeping floor for travelers stranded by washed-out arroyos or broken axles. A long, rough-hewn pine table ran down the center of the room, flanked by mismatched benches. In the corner, a large cast-iron stove radiated a dry heat of its own, supporting a massive blue-enamel pot that bubbled with a mixture of salt pork, dried beans, and wild onions.

Clara stirred the pot with a long wooden spoon, her mind drifting back to the deed currently tucked inside the small cedar chest in her bedroom. The paper was crisp, bearing the official seal of the New Mexico Territory. It declared Clara Vance the sole proprietor of the Ojo Caliente station, along with the surrounding sixty-four acres of land.

To the lawyers in Santa Fe, it was a routine transfer of property. To the local land-grabbers, it was a target.

Only last week, a man named Henderson—a representative for a cattle outfit that seemed to think the entire territory belonged to them—had ridden in. He hadn't offered to buy her out; he had simply suggested, with a oily smile and a tip of his hat, that a young widow might find the nights out here very long, very dark, and very prone to accidental fires.

"Accidents happen to solitary folk, Mrs. Vance," Henderson had said, his eyes scanning the dry timber of the stables. "Especially when they don't have a man around to keep the peace."

Clara had escorted him off the property at the business end of Thomas’s old double-barreled shotgun. She hadn't loaded it—she wasn't entirely sure she knew how to do so without taking her own fingers off—but the twin dark circles of the barrels had been eloquent enough. Henderson had left, but his parting glance had promised that he would return, and next time, he wouldn't be alone.

She set the wooden spoon down and wiped her brow with the back of her sleeve. A sudden, sharp whistle from the porch shattered the midday silence.

"Clara! She’s coming!" Jedediah’s voice cracked with excitement. "Dust cloud to the north! Looks like the Butterfield!"

Clara’s heart did a familiar, nervous dance. The arrival of the stagecoach was the lifeblood of the station, a brief, chaotic burst of humanity that brought news, coin, and the terrifying responsibility of keeping the wilderness at bay for thirty minutes.

She hurried out to the porch, shielding her eyes. Far down the white, dusty ribbon of the trail, a dark speck was rapidly growing larger, trailed by a massive billow of yellow dust. The faint, rhythmic rattle of heavy wheels and the crack of a whip carried over the desert floor, growing louder by the second.

As the stagecoach neared, Clara felt a familiar sense of awe. The Concord coach was a magnificent beast, its heavy red-painted body suspended on thick leather thoroughbraces that allowed it to swing and sway over the rough road like a ship on a choppy sea. Six muscular mules pulled the heavy vehicle, their chests lathered in white foam, their hooves striking the earth in a thundering, syncopated rhythm.

"Hold up! Whoa, you beauties, whoa!"

The driver, a leathery old-timer known to everyone as Barnaby, leaned back in his high seat, hauling on the reins with both hands. Beside him on the box sat a second man, his hat pulled low, a short-barreled shotgun resting across his knees.

The coach lurched to a halt in front of the porch, the heavy iron brakes shrieking in protest. A thick cloud of dust rolled over the station, enveloping the mules, the carriage, and Clara herself in a choking fog.

"Lord Almighty, Barnaby!" Jedediah coughed, spitting a glob of dark tobacco juice into the dirt. "You trying to bury us alive?"

"Ain't got time for pleasantries, Jed!" Barnaby yelled down, his beard white with road dust. "We’re running twenty minutes behind, and the road through the canyon was rougher than a cob. Get these mules unhitched! I want a fresh team in ten minutes flat!"

Jedediah was already moving, his limp forgotten as he grabbed the lead mule’s bridle. Clara stepped off the porch, her apron fluttering in the hot breeze, ready to welcome the passengers who were already spilling out of the coach’s cramped cabin.

The door swung open, and three travelers descended, looking dazed, sore, and thoroughly coated in the red dust of the Jornada.

The first was a stout gentleman in a soiled linen suit, clutching a leather valise as if it contained his very soul. He looked around the desolate station with an expression of profound regret. The second was a middle-aged woman in a sweat-stained bonnet, who immediately began vigorously brushing her skirts and muttering under her breath about the lack of civilization. The third was a young man, likely a clerk, who looked green around the gills from the violent swaying of the coach.

"Welcome to Ojo Caliente," Clara said, forcing a warm, hospitable tone. "There is hot coffee and a pot of stew inside. Washbasin is around the side of the house. Please, make yourselves comfortable."

The passengers did not need to be told twice. They shuffled past her like refugees, eager for the shade of the adobe walls.

Clara turned to watch the horses, but her gaze was drawn back to the stagecoach box. The man with the shotgun had not moved. He sat perfectly still, his eyes obscured by the wide brim of his Stetson, watching the surrounding hills with an intensity that made Clara’s breath hitch.

Unlike the passengers, he did not look travel-worn or weary. He looked like part of the landscape—hard, weathered, and dangerous.

"You coming down for coffee, mister?" Clara called up to him.

The man slowly turned his head. He tilted his hat back, revealing a lean, angular face with a sharp jawline darkened by several days of stubble. His eyes were an striking, icy blue, remarkably clear against his sun-darkened skin.

"No, ma'am," he said, his voice a low, gravelly baritone that seemed to carry the quiet weight of the desert. "I’ll stay up here and keep an eye on the horizon. This stretch of the road has been known to host uninvited guests."

Before Clara could ask what he meant, he stood up, swung his long legs over the side of the box, and dropped lithely to the ground. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and moved with an easy, predatory grace that suggested he was entirely comfortable with the heavy Colt revolver strapped to his thigh. He carried his double-barreled shotgun—a formidable weapon with its barrels sawed short—in the crook of his arm as if it were an extension of his own body.

He looked at her, his gaze lingering for a brief second on her widow’s weeds before settling on her face. He did not smile, but there was a quiet, assessing intelligence in his blue eyes that made Clara feel suddenly very exposed.

"Name's Wyatt Vance," he said quietly, stepping closer so his voice wouldn't carry to the passengers.

Clara froze. The name hit her like a bucket of well-water to the face.

"Vance?" she whispered. "Are you... are you any relation to Thomas?"

"He was my cousin," Wyatt said. He reached into his vest pocket, pulled out a folded piece of parchment, and handed it to her. "And according to his last letter, he wanted me here."

Clara took the paper with trembling fingers. She unfolded it and immediately recognized Thomas’s messy, looping handwriting. The letter was dated just two weeks before his death.

Wyatt, the letter read. The station is doing well, but the wolves are circling. Henderson and his crowd are looking for a way to squeeze me out. If anything happens to me, look after Clara. She’s got a spine of iron, but she can’t fight a pack of wolves alone. The deed is her only security. Don't let them take it.

Clara stared at the ink, her throat tightening. She looked up at the stranger, this shotgun messenger who shared her late husband’s name, standing in the dusty yard of her precarious empire.

"He never told me about you," she said, her voice barely audible over the clinking of the mule harnesses.

"Thomas was a man who kept his troubles to himself," Wyatt replied, his eyes scanning the ridgeline behind the stables once more. "But he knew when he was outmatched. I’m here to make sure you aren't."

Clara stared at the parchment until the ink began to swim before her eyes. The desert wind caught the edge of the paper, fluttering it against her fingers like a trapped moth. Thomas’s hand had been distinctive—cramped, hurried, the stroke of a man whose thoughts always ran three steps ahead of his pen. Seeing it now, fresh and clear against the cream-colored sheet, brought a sharp, unwelcome knot to her throat.

"He wrote this in April," she said, her voice barely carrying over the sound of lathered mules stamping their hooves into the dirt. "Before the dysentery took him."

"He sent it by an independent rider heading north to Denver," Wyatt replied, his voice a steady, low rasp. "Took two months to catch up with me in Abilene. By the time I got the word and rode down to Santa Fe, the funeral was over and you were already out here."

Clara lifted her chin, meeting the hard blue of his eyes. "I didn't need a guardian then, Mr. Vance. And I don't need one now."

Wyatt didn't blink. He reached out with one long, leather-gloved hand and took the letter back from her, folding it with deliberate care before tucking it into his vest pocket. "Thomas didn't ask if you needed one, ma'am. He asked me to be here. There's a distinction."

Before Clara could form a sharp response, a flurry of shouts erupted near the hitching posts. The lead mule in the fresh team—a stubborn, black-snouted bastard of a beast named Devil—had decided that the midday sun was far too bright for labor. He reared back against his bridle, his ears flattened to his skull, letting out a harsh, rasping bray that rattled the windows of the station.

Jedediah cursed, his limp making him too slow to dodge as the mule swung its broad side into the trace chains. "Get down, you ugly son of a hide-buyer! Clara, fetch the twitch!"

Without a word, Wyatt stepped past Clara. He moved with a quiet, efficient economy, neither rushing nor lingering. He tossed his sawed-off shotgun to Barnaby, who caught it effortlessly on the box, and swung himself into the thick of the dust around the lead team. He didn't yell or strike the mule. Instead, he grabbed the cheek strap of the bridle with his left hand, buried his right elbow into the angle of the animal's jaw, and exerted a sudden, relentless downward pressure.

The mule blinked, staggered, and found its front hooves firmly planted back on the earth. Wyatt leaned in close to the twitching long ear, whispering a quiet, gravelly string of words that Clara couldn't hear. The beast sighed, a long, shuddering breath, and lowered its head, suddenly as docile as an old carriage horse.

Jedediah stared at Wyatt, wiping sweat from his red, leathered forehead with the back of a filthy sleeve. "Well, damn me," the old man grunted. "You got a way with bad-tempered jackasses, stranger."

"Used to break mules for the Union Army in '64," Wyatt said briefly, stepping back and brushing a streak of yellow lather from his buckskin jacket. "They aren't mean. Just opinionated."

"Ain't we all," Jedediah muttered, though there was a new note of grudging respect in his eyes as he threw the leather traces over the singletree.

Clara turned toward the dining room door, her apron catching the grit-laden breeze. "The food's getting cold," she called out, though it was directed more at the lingering dust cloud than anyone in particular. She needed a moment away from Wyatt Vance's sharp, measuring gaze. She needed the familiar, mundane chaos of hungry travelers to anchor her feet to the floorboards.

Inside, the station's main room was thick with heat and the lingering smell of salt pork. The three passengers were gathered around the long pine table. The stout man in the linen suit had already unbuttoned his waistcoat, his neck bulging over a wilted collar as he blew aggressively into a tin mug of boiling coffee.

"It's uncivilized," the middle-aged woman was saying, her bonnet trembling with indignation as she poked at the brown stew with her pewter spoon. "Absolute barbarism. Three dollars for a seat in a box that shakes the teeth right out of one's jaw, only to be dumped in the middle of a wasteland to eat wild onions and gristle."

"The beans are fresh, ma'am," Clara said pleasantly, walking over with a fresh loaf of sourdough bread and a heavy knife. She sliced off thick, steaming slabs and dropped them onto wooden trenchers. "And the coffee is boiling. That's more than you'll get at the dry camp twenty miles south."

The young clerk looked up, his face pale and spotted with red dust. "Is it true about the raiders, Mrs. Vance? The driver said there were men spotted near the canyon yesterday."

Clara paused, her knife resting against the crusted edge of the bread. She kept her tone light, though her pulse gave a tiny, telling leap. "Barnaby likes to tell stories to keep his passengers awake, sir. The only thing you'll find in the canyon is rattlesnakes and hot wind."

"And Henderson's men," a voice chimed from the doorway.

Wyatt stood in the threshold, his frame blocking out a substantial portion of the blinding white light from the yard. He had removed his hat, revealing thick, dark hair dusted with silver at the temples, cropped short in the military style. Without the shadow of the Stetson, the lines around his eyes seemed deeper, carved by years of staring across wide, empty distances. He carried his saddlebag over one shoulder and his shotgun held loosely in his right hand.

The stout passenger paused, his mug halfway to his lips. "Who is Henderson?"

"Nobody you need to concern yourself with, sir," Clara snapped, shooting Wyatt a look that could have stripped varnish off a sideboard. She pointedly picked up a bowl and filled it with stew from the iron pot, setting it on the table near the end bench. "Your lunch, Mr. Vance."

Wyatt didn't take the invitation to sit. He set his saddlebag down against the heavy timber wall near the front door, leaning his weapon against the adobe corner where he could reach it with a six-inch twitch of his arm. Then he crossed the room, his spurred boots making a measured clack-clack against the hard-packed dirt floor.

He took the bowl from Clara’s hand, his broad fingers brushing against hers for a fraction of a second. His skin was rough, calloused, and radiated a dry, intense heat that startled her.

"Thank you, Mrs. Vance," he said quietly. He took a single bite of the stew, chewed thoughtfully, and added, "Needs salt."

"Then feel free to leave it," Clara replied, her voice sweet as vinegar.

"Now see here," the stout man broke in, dabbing his dripping chin with a spotted handkerchief. "I am Mr. Horace Higgins, late of Philadelphia, now representing the Territorial Improvement Society. Is there some manner of danger on this road? Because if the stage line is endangering its fee-paying clientele—"

"The road is fine, Mr. Higgins," Wyatt cut in, his voice cutting through the man's pompous babble like an axe through soft pine. He didn't elevate his tone, but there was an iron weight to it that made the banker clamp his mouth shut mid-sentence. "Barnaby will get you to Fort Selden by nightfall, provided you spend less time complaining about the bread and more time eating it. You've got five minutes before he blow the horn."

Higgins reddened, his jowls quivering, but one glance at Wyatt’s cold blue eyes and the heavy Colt sitting low on his hip convinced him to return his attention to his trencher.

Clara moved behind the counter, her hands busy with the brass key to the small lockbox where she kept the stage company's receipts. She felt a strange, warring mixture of irritation and relief. Wyatt Vance was infuriatingly arrogant, barging into her station and issuing declarations as if he owned the soil beneath his boots. Yet, she couldn't deny the shift in the room's atmosphere. With him standing near the door, the looming threats that had been keeping her awake for three weeks—the shadows at the edge of the scrub, Henderson's oily warnings, the sheer, crushing solitude of the Jornada—felt slightly less suffocating.

From out in the yard, the blare of a tin horn shattered the quiet.

"All aboard!" Barnaby’s voice bellowed through the open windows, followed by the metallic clatter of trace chains and the stomp of fresh hooves. "Five minutes is up! Move your tails or get left for the buzzards!"

The passengers scrambled to their feet. Mr. Higgins hurriedly dropped a greasy silver half-dollar onto the counter, grumbling under his breath, while the nervous clerk swallowed the last of his coffee with a gulp that looked painful. The middle-aged woman adjusted her veil with a sharp snap of her wrists and marched out the door as if she were stepping onto the blood-soaked floor of a Roman coliseum.

Clara swept the coins into her apron pocket and followed them onto the porch.

The heat outside hit like a physical weight after the dim cool of the adobe. The six mules were hooked to the coach now, their coats slick with sweat, stamping nervously in the thick dust. Barnaby was already up on the box, holding the six reins laced through his gloved fingers, his long whip resting in the socket beside him.

"You coming, Vance?" Barnaby called down, peering over the edge of the boot at Wyatt, who had followed Clara out onto the shade of the overhang. "I need a guard through the Pass. That stretch near black ridge is looking mighty quiet today, and quiet usually means trouble."

Wyatt leaned against one of the cedar posts supporting the porch roof, his thumbs hooked casually into his gun belt. "My contract with the line ended at Ojo Caliente, Barnaby. You've got two armed passengers inside and a clear sky. You'll make Fort Selden before the sun dips."

Barnaby spat a dark brown stream of tobacco juice over the wheel. He looked from Wyatt to Clara, then back to Wyatt, his bushy eyebrows knitting together beneath his sweat-stained hat. "You staying here?"

"I am," Wyatt said.

"That ain't what the division agent said in Santa Fe," Barnaby grunted. "He said you were signed on through to El Paso."

"The agent isn't my cousin," Wyatt replied simply.

Barnaby stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then he shrugged, a slow movement of his round shoulders under his dust-caked coat. "Suit yourself, Wyatt. But if Henderson finds out you're sitting on this water hole, he ain't going to send you a Christmas card."

"I'll be sure to save him some stew," Wyatt said, without a trace of humor.

"Right then." Barnaby gathered his reins, sat back in his seat, and cracked the long leather whip over the ears of the lead team. "Hah! Get up, you lazy skinbags! Move!"

With a thundering surge of muscle and bone, the team lunged forward. The heavy red coach lurched, its iron tires grinding against the bedrock before finding purchase in the soft sand. Dust rose in a massive, blinding billow, swallowing the vehicle, the passengers, and the road in a churning cloud of gold and rust.

Clara stood on the edge of the porch, holding her skirt against the draft caused by the coach's departure. She watched until the vehicle was nothing more than a dark speck rapidly receding down the long, dry trough of the valley, trailing its plume of dust behind it like smoke from a locomotive.

The noise faded quickly, swallowed by the vast, oppressive silence of the desert. The only sounds left were the slow creak-creak of the windmill behind the stables, the faint buzz of a horsefly, and the steady, rhythmic breathing of the man standing three feet away from her.

Jedediah hobbled over from the corral, carrying an empty wooden bucket. He looked at Wyatt, then at Clara, his old face completely devoid of expression. "I'm going to see if that sulfur water cleared out," he announced to nobody in particular. "If I ain't back in an hour, the red mule ate me."

He dragged his bad leg across the dirt yard, leaving Clara alone with her late husband's cousin.

She turned to face him, crossing her arms over her chest. The afternoon wind pulled loose a strand of her dark hair, blowing it across her cheek, but she didn't brush it away.

"You had no right to tell Barnaby you were staying," she said, her voice tight and precise. "This is my station. I run it. I didn't hire you, Mr. Vance, and I certainly can't afford to pay a shotgun messenger's wages."

Wyatt didn't move from his position against the post. He reached down, pulled a thin blade of dry grass from the dirt near his boot, and put it between his teeth.

"I didn't ask for wages, Mrs. Vance," he said softly. "And I didn't come here to run your station. I came here because Thomas was my kin, and he died worrying about what would happen to you when the vultures moved in."

"I can shoot," Clara said, her chin rising half an inch. "I drove off Henderson's men last week."

"With an unloaded gun," Wyatt said.

Clara flushed, a hot color creeping up her neck. "How did you—"

"I looked at Thomas's double-barrel sitting in the corner by the stove when I was inside," Wyatt said, his blue eyes locking onto hers with uncomfortable clarity. "The hammers are rusted shut from damp salt air, the left firing pin is missing, and there wasn't a box of brass shells within ten feet of it. You were bluffing. A man like Henderson's foreman will spot a bluff like that once. Next time, he'll walk right up the steps and pull the triggers himself just to see what happens."

Clara opened her mouth to argue, to hurl every ounce of her pride and independence back into his calm, stubborn face. But the words died in her throat. He was right. She knew he was right. She had spent the last three weeks jumping at every night-sound, every shift of the adobe walls, sleeping with an iron poker beside her bed because she didn't even know how to load the heavy brass cartridges into the shotgun's breech without jamming the mechanism.

"Why are you really here, Wyatt?" she asked, her voice dropping its defensive edge, leaving only the weary truth beneath. "Thomas hadn't seen you in five years. You didn't come to his wedding. You didn't write."

Wyatt looked out over the vast, shimmering expanse of the Jornada, toward the jagged black tooth of the mountains rising against the cloudless sky. For a second, a flicker of something old and dark passed across his features—a shadow deeper than the shade of the porch roof.

"Thomas helped me once," Wyatt said, his voice dropping an octave, becoming almost lost in the steady scrub of the wind. "A long time ago. When I came back from Virginia and didn't have a roof over my head or a nickel to my name. He gave me a horse, fifty dollars, and didn't ask me any questions about where I'd been or what I'd done."

He turned his eyes back to Clara. They were hard again, clear as mountain ice.

"He asked me for one favor in return, thirty days before he died," Wyatt finished. "I'm paying my debt."

Clara looked at him—this hard-bitten, dangerous man standing on her porch with a sawed-off gun and a soldier's posture—and realized with a strange, heavy certainty that he wasn't going to leave. Whether she yelled, argued, or locked the doors, Wyatt Vance had set his roots into the dry dirt of Ojo Caliente.

She took a long, deep breath of the hot desert air, tasting the red grit on her lips.

"The room off the harness shed has a cot," she said crisply, turning back toward the main house. "It leaks when it rains, but it doesn't rain often. You'll eat what I cook, you'll help Jedediah with the water wagon, and if you bring any trouble to my door, Mr. Vance, I'll find a gun that does work and shoot you myself."

Wyatt’s mouth twitched—just a small, almost imperceptible lift at the very corner of his mustache.

"Fair enough, Mrs. Vance," he said, touching the brim of his hat. "What's for dinner?"