“There’s something I have to say,” Meryl announced. He looked over at his father-in-law. “Chase and Bobby and I spent some time in town today, sir, testing the temperature, if you know what I mean, and I would say that it’s hot, very hot. People are upset, they’re scared, and there’s some big talk going around about forcing Billy out of town. Some of it is just silly-egging his house, that kind of thing-but some of it is downright ugly. Setting fire to their house-”

“No!” Annabelle exclaimed, one hand flying to her mouth.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what we heard one old boy say.”

“We can’t control what other people choose to do,” Hugh Senior observed.

“No, we can’t, sir, and I’m not suggesting that we try. We can control what we do, however.”

“What does that mean?” Bobby asked, sounding irritated.

“It means that, speaking as your attorney, I want all of you to keep track of everywhere you go and everything you do and who’s there with you, for at least the next few days, until this maybe begins to die down.”

“Alibis?” Belle asked her husband with disbelief.

“Yes, alibis. Chase and Bobby, it might be better for you to go on back to your places sooner rather than later. If somebody shoots Billy Crosby between the eyes or runs him off the road, I want every member of this family to have a cast-iron alibi for that period of time, and I’d particularly like the two of you to be a couple of hundred miles away. I don’t care if all that happens is that somebody eggs his car, I want every member of this family to be able to prove you weren’t holding the empty carton.”

In the moment of fraught stillness that followed, Jody blurted, “I talked to him today.”

They looked at her with puzzled expressions.

“Talked to who, sweetheart?” her grandmother inquired.

Her heart pounding, she said, “Billy Crosby. I met him.”

Amid the outcries of consternation, it was Chase who exclaimed, “What the hell have you done?”

“I didn’t do anything,” she defended herself. “I’d just been at Bailey’s and when I was leaving you called on my cell phone, Uncle Chase. I was just standing there talking to you-”

“You hung up on me.”

“No, I dropped my phone because I heard him. And then I saw him.”

When she finished telling them about it, she looked across the table at Meryl. “You said I could ask you anything,” she reminded him.

“Shoot,” he told her.

“Why didn’t they test Billy Crosby’s blood alcohol level?”

Tensely, she waited for his answer.

He smiled wryly. “Because we only had one breath alcohol tester in the entire county and it was broken. Remember that, Chase?” His smile widened. “Some drunk kicked it to death, as I recall.”

“I remember,” Chase said, nodding.

Jody’s grandfather caught her eye and interrupted, impatient to say something. “I don’t want you anywhere near him, ever again.” She wanted to protest that she hadn’t meant to be around him at all, but kept quiet rather than be argumentative, because it wasn’t even the point. The point was his concern for her. She felt like crying out of sheer gratitude at being surrounded by strength and love that made her feel so much safer than she had after meeting Billy Crosby. When she felt Belle’s hand come over hers, she had to blink back tears.

Hugh Senior looked around the table at his family.

“As for the rest of us, we’ll do what Meryl wants us to do.” He gave them a small, grim smile. “It’s clear to me from the looks on your faces that you’d all like to kill Billy Crosby, so we’d better all get alibis.” His gaze rested on his wife’s beautiful face. “Even you, my dear.”

“How dare that man speak to her?” Annabelle looked frightened and worried as she stared across the long table at her husband. “How dare he say a single word to our Jody?”

“That’s the kind of man he is, Mom,” Belle reminded them all.

AFTER THE DISHES were put away, Chase joined his niece as she sat alone on the front porch swing listening to music on her iPod and looking up at constellations that couldn’t be seen in any city, but only in places as isolated and dark as the ranch was at night. When he sat down beside her, the swing jolted, rattling the chains that held it to the porch ceiling and breaking the rhythm until he got it going again with a push of one boot heel on the wooden floor.

“How long are you and Uncle Bobby going to be here?”

“Until we don’t have to be.”

“What does that mean?”

He didn’t answer, but lit a cigarette instead.

Jody removed the iPod buds from her ears.

“Why didn’t you bring the boys with you?”

He had three teenage sons whom she loved a lot.

“Because I don’t want them around any of this.”

“Can you ship me away, too?”

“I’d be happy to.”

“I wouldn’t go.”

“There’s a surprise.”

They swung silently for a while. He blew his smoke away from her when Jody waved a hand at it. Sometimes she liked her uncle Chase’s company more than anybody’s-when he was quiet and thoughtful and not bossing her around. She felt safe with him, although she didn’t quite remember why, and she trusted him to make things right. She wished he was a happier man, for his sake. Two wives hadn’t made it so; he seemed to come the closest to it when he was working cattle with his sons. She wished she had known him-or could remember him-when he was young and lighthearted and funny.

“What was my dad like?”

“I’ve told you a million times.”

“I like to hear it.”

He shifted in the swing, making it temporarily slide jarringly from side to side. Jody held onto the armrest on her side until the swing went in the right direction again.

“You like to hear it,” Chase said in his smoke-roughened voice. “And I like to tell it. Hugh-Jay was a big guy, bigger than any of us.” She heard a smile in his voice when he said, “But not nearly as good-looking.”

“You say that every time.”

“Can’t be said too often.” He chuckled, a low masculine rumble of amusement that she loved to hear. “But what he lacked in handsome, he more than made up for in decent.”

“Was he the nicest person you ever knew?”

“I think he was.”

“Nicer than you?”

He laughed. “Well, yeah, but how hard is that?”

Jody giggled. They swung in companionable silence while coyotes called to each other from hill to hill. A single bulb over the barn doors shed the only light at any distance from the house. Jody took solace in the beauty of the evening and pride in her father’s good character.

“What about my mother?”

“Hmm.”

“You always do that, you go ‘hmm’ when I ask about her.”

“Prettiest girl in the county.”

“Was she as nice as my dad?”

Usually Chase answered that by smiling and saying something like, “Nobody could be, but she made a damn nice blueberry pie.” This time he did something different. He stopped the swing with his boot so they were sitting still. Jody’s heart started to beat fast as she got a feeling she was going to hear something he’d never told her before.

“You mother was spoiled and stuck-up and a little mean.”

“What?” She felt shocked, even though she’d long heard allusions to her mother “wanting what she wanted when she wanted it.” But nobody had ever gone this far. “Are you kidding me?”

“I wish I were. But here’s the thing. She was young. If that bastard had given her a chance to live a normal life span, Laurie might have gotten humbled a few times and she might have grown up to be a nicer person. I always thought there must be more to her than what people saw in her because-after all-your father married her. That was the highest recommendation she could get, so I have to put some stock in that, since I put so much stock in him. Most people thought he married her for her looks and she married him for his money-”