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“I lost my appetite,” Derek muttered.

“Then get it back. This is Bethie’s homecoming dinner, and your mother wants all her children sitting around her table and behaving themselves for once. Go splash some water on your face. Put that dog in one of the bedrooms so he doesn't get underfoot.”

Derek sighed. “Let me get a beer first.”

“You coming, West?” Jasper asked, already hobbling inside.

“Naw,” West said, settling himself down on the steps and picking up his last ear of corn. “I’ll just watch the kids for a spell.”

The door snapped shut behind him, hanging awkwardly by its newly broken hinge. West draped his forearms over his thighs and hung his head. Between the worn toes of his boots, a vine beetle dragged itself on three broken legs. West watched as it pulled itself in defective circles, unable to hold a straight line. Then he lifted one heel and crushed it, putting it out of its misery.

CHAPTER TEN

“Lord have mercy! Who did that to you, child?”

Florence Bonnard caught the shop door and held it open before it could swing back on West's bad shoulder. His hands were already full, juggling a stack of UPS boxes under one arm and a wriggling fluff of puppy in the other.

Derek had spent the entire dinner mad enough to chew nails, and by the time the cobbler was dished up, he’d already booked it, leaving the puppy behind. James and Susan had vanished like puffs of smoke after that. Crazy how quick parents could move once their kids lit up on a new pet. Bethany was only home long enough to give her ex-boyfriend time to clean his things out of the duplex they shared near the university, and his parents had lost interest in caring for anything—even themselves. So somehow, West had gotten stuck babysitting.

“Thanks, Miz Bonnard,” he said, shooting her a grin that usually put some color in her papery cheeks. But not today. She clung to the door and clapped one hand over her mouth.

“Just look at your poor nose!” she exclaimed, wide-eyed and appalled. “Whoever did that deserves to be horse-whipped!”

“Probably Sutter.” August French sat on a stool by the register, squinting at the playing cards clutched in his arthritis-twisted fingers. “He’s been madder than a wet hen ever since the boys at the Triple M started spreading it around that he set that fire.”

“West doesn’t work at the Triple M,” Flo objected.

August shrugged and threw down a ten of spades. “Everybody knows he’s one of ‘em, anyway.”

“Well, bless him for it!” Flo twittered like a bird, shooing West across the threshold and shoving a rubber stopper in the door to keep it open. “Michael Whittaker has done a lot of good for this town—including giving your grandson work every spring, Auggie.”

“It just don’t sit right with me, ruining a man’s reputation with no evidence.”

“Full house, Auggie,” Gus interrupted, laying out his cards. He gave West a sharp look from over the frame of his eyeglasses. “Is that the new dewormer you ordered?”

“Naw. That came in last week.” West crouched and set both the boxes and the puppy on the floor. The cardboard stayed where he’d put it, but the puppy went nose-to-the-floor almost instantly and wandered off exploring scents.

“Some hound in that pup,” August speculated, lifting an empty soda can to his lips and spitting.

West stripped the shipping tape off one of the boxes and dug around in packing peanuts until he came up with a garden gnome carved out of a single piece of wood.

“What the hell is that?” Gus demanded, wandering up to peer over his shoulder. He’d once been nearly as tall and broad as Michael, but age had sunk his chest and his cheeks. He’d been old for as long as West could remember, but he was still as intimidating now as he’d been when West only came up to his knee. “Did you get my shop confused with Anna’s Geegaws next door?”

“Nope.” West strolled over to the display window filled with show bridles and set the gnome front and center. “We get so many confused tourists in here thinking we’re another hokey gift shop, I figured it couldn’t do any harm to give them something to buy while we’ve got them.”

Gus screwed up his face. “You know what my friends will say when they see me selling that junk?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. I’m the only friend left this side of the pearly gates,” August cackled.

“I think they’re precious,” Flo piped up. “Gus, add one to my order.”

Gus looked between Flo and the gnome, taking in its round tummy and pointed hat and rolling his eyes in disgust. “Do what you want, son. You’ll be the one stuck looking at it when I retire.”

“You been retiring for twenty years. Ain’t nobody who believes it anymore,” August said, licking his thumb and dealing out a new hand of cards. The puppy sat beneath him, toying with the tattered hem of his jeans and pulling threads loose with her sharp little teeth.

“Yeah, well, this time I mean it.”

“I’m bringing the car around,” Flo interrupted. “Can you load the trunk for me, West, dear?”