“Don’t think this is the last you’re going to hear from me,” Voland warned as he turned his key in the ignition. The Bronco’s engine roared to life.

“No,” Joanna said. “I don’t suppose it is.” As soon as the heater fan caught hold, another cloud of rancid air blasted into Joanna’s face. “Are you sure you should be driving’?” she added. “It’s possible you’re still drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” he insisted. “Besides, who’s going to stop me? You? I don’t think so.”

Voland rammed the Bronco into reverse and then stepped on the gas. Joanna had to sidestep out of the way in order to keep from being creamed by the outside mirror. He drove off, leaving Joanna in a cloud of dust.

Fleeing into the house, it was all she could do to press her door key into the lock. She dropped the letter on the dryer and then ran weeping through the house. She threw herself across the bed and buried her face in the covers. Joanna hadn’t cried that way for months. A wild fit of racking sobs came from deep inside her and shook her whole body. Her tears didn’t have their source in any one thing. It was everything: Dick Voland quitting. Eleanor bossing her around. Butch asking her if being sheriff was what she really wanted. Lewis Flores blowing his brains out right in front of her. And that was not all. There was also the fact that Joanna had lost her nerve and hadn’t actually told Jenny what was really going on with Butch. Now, thanks to Marliss Shackleford, everyone else in town already knew about it or soon would.

Eventually the combination of tears and exhaustion caught up with her. Joanna fell asleep. The next thing she knew, she and Butch were standing together at the altar of Canyon United Methodist Church. Butch, wearing a tuxedo, was grinning from ear to ear. Junior, standing beside him, was evidently best man, although the badge he wore in place of a boutonniere looked a little out of place on his tux.

Looking down, Joanna discovered that she, too, was dressed for the occasion. She was wearing her wedding dress-the same dress she had worn years earlier when she and Andy were married. Beside her, as maid of honor, stood Angie Kellogg, the ex-hooker Joanna and Marianne Maculyea had rescued from the clutches of a sadistic drug-enforcer. Living in Bisbee, Angie had achieved a certain kind of respectability, but in Joanna’s dream she had regressed. Standing in front of the church, the lushly voluptuous Angie looked anything but prim. One hip was cocked at a suggestive angle. She looked like a hustler standing on a street corner and waiting for her next trick to show up and make her an offer.

In front of them a smilingly oblivious Marianne Maculyea looked past the bridal party toward the rest of the congregation. “If anyone here present knows of any reason why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony,” Marianne in-toned, “let them speak now or forever hold their peace.”

Behind them, at the far end of the aisle, the church door slammed open. Joanna turned and looked back, but in her dream Canyon Methodist’s beautifully varnished mahogany doors had vanished. In their stead, separating the sanctuary from the entryway vestibule, was a shabby swinging door straight out of the Blue Moon Saloon and Lounge in Brewery Gulch, where Angie Kellogg now worked as relief bartender. And in front of the door, posing with his feet apart like some latter-day gun-slinging John Wayne, stood Dick Voland.

“I object,” Voland said. “I saw her first and that makes her mine. If anybody here disagrees with that, I’ll be happy to meet him outside and settle this man to man.”

That was all it took. Butch Dixon turned and strode down the aisle, leaving Joanna standing alone. “Come back,” she called after him. “This is stupid. Don’t do this.” But he just kept on walking. He didn’t even look back.

Joanna awakened with a start. One hand, trapped under her cheek, felt as though it were made of wood. As soon as she moved her weight off it, circulation began returning, sending a painful tingling all the way from her fingertips up to her elbow.

Turning over, Joanna glanced at the clock. It said one-thirty. That meant she had been out of it for over four hours. Her clothing was wrinkled. There was a wet spot on the bedspread where she had drooled in her sleep. She was thinking about getting up and maybe making herself something to eat when the phone rang.

“Mrs. Brady?” a voice asked.

That was strange. Joanna wasn’t used to being called Mrs. Brady any more. Most people addressed her as Sheriff. “Yes,” she said. “Who’s this?”

“Enid Sutton,” was the reply. “I’m the principal at Lowell School.”

Enid Sutton was new to Bisbee, but Joanna remembered meeting her once at a school open house. She hadn’t been particularly impressed one way or the other.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to come pick up your daughter,” Mrs. Sutton continued.

“What’s wrong? Is Jenny sick? Hurt?”

“She’s not hurt, but I am putting her on a three-day suspension.”

“Suspension!” Joanna gasped. “What on earth for?”

“For fighting, Mrs. Brady. I’ve tried to get to the bottom of it. She claims that some of the boys were teasing her at lunch. Apparently it was something about your upcoming marriage. I can certainly understand how a child might feel upset and threatened at having to deal with that sort of thing, but I’m sure you can see my position. We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to violence on the school grounds. Jenny bloodied one boy’s nose and tore the other one’s shirt right off his back.”

Drowning in Enid Sutton’s words, Joanna closed her eyes and let the guilt wash over her. Once again she had failed her daughter. She had been so busy trying to save the world-trying to rescue people like Lewis Flores and Karen Brainard from their own foolishness-that she had left Jenny, her own precious daughter, vulnerable to attack from none other than the likes of Marliss Shackleford. It wasn’t at all a fair contest, and the awful realization of Joanna’s own culpability left her shaken.

How could I have done such a thing? she wondered. All it would have taken was a few minutes on her part-a few minutes and a few meager words of explanation to Jenny-and none of this would have happened. Jenny would be sitting in class at the end of her school day instead of being locked up in disgrace in the principal’s office.

How could I have been so cowardly and neglectful? Joanna demanded of herself. Instead of giving Jenny what she needed, Joanna had thrown her child to the wolves. It was unthinkable. Inexcusable. And totally unacceptable.

“I’ll be right over to get her,” a repentant Joanna Brady whispered into the phone. “Tell my daughter I’ll be right there.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Jenny said as she climbed into the Blazer. “I know you don’t like me fighting, but I couldn’t help it. They made me so mad!”

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Joanna returned. “I should have told you that Butch had asked me to marry him, Jenny. I never should have left you hanging like that. You should have heard it from me, and not through some second-hand newspaper story. I meant to tell you about it last night. That’s why I wanted just the two of us to go out for pizza-so we could talk. Then the call came in. Rather than make a bad job-a rushed job-of telling you, I decided to wait until a better time.”

“You mean it is true then?” Jenny demanded.

Joanna nodded. “It’s true.”

“You and Butch really are getting married?”

“Yes. But Marliss had no business putting it in the paper before we were ready to make an official announcement.”

“Why did you tell Marliss before you told me?” Jenny asked.

“I didn’t tell her, and neither did Butch.”

“How did she find out then?”

Jenny’s pointed questions made Joanna feel as though she were in the hands of some trained interrogator. Jennifer Ann Brady would make a hell of a detective someday if that was what she chose to do.