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“Yeah, I know, which is why you should’ve called me back. Plus, Murph had one of his nightmares. I was kind of stressed.”

“I’m sorry.” I reached for her other hand gripping the strap of the fabric tote bag she’d slung over her shoulder and squeezed. “Is he okay?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t a bad one, but you know how I worry.”

“What’s the therapist say about it?”

“She thinks it’s his way of dealing with all the trauma he went through when he and his mom were homeless. All that anxiety and the unknown. But she wants us to talk about it. Demystify it, you know? Make it normal and comfortable for him to open up. I think it’s working.”

“Good,” I said. Murphy was like a nephew to me. I hated to think about him struggling. “Sam, this is Deputy Fitts and Deputy Draven. They’re new.” To Dan and Roxanne, I said, “Sam’s married to Deputy Sims, who y’all met this mornin’.”

“Oh, hi,” Sam said. “I heard we were getting some fresh blood. I hope you’re settling in okay.” She smiled at Dan and Roxanne. Roxanne smiled back, extending her hand for Sam to shake, but Dan only nodded.

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Roxanne said.

Sam chuckled. “Please, just call me Sam. Nice to meet you too. I’m sorry to run, but I need to get back. I just came to make some copies. The copy machine at the library’s broken.” She hefted her bag higher on her shoulder. “But Abey, you’re coming to book club, right?”

“Uh, I dunno. Not sure if I’ll have time today. I’ll try.”

“Try hard,” she said. “We’re starting a new book this week. It’s a fantasy romance.”

“What, like with fairies and elves and all that bullshit?”

Sam scoffed. “Yes, and it’s really good, so you better not back out.”

“I won’t,” I admitted.

I’d never do that to her, but I really wasn’t looking forward to reading about made-up creatures. I liked the real-life romances better, even if they were between a man and a woman.

Out of all the books we’d read since starting book club, my favorite had been a male-female hockey romance. Now there was a legitimate sport, with broken bones, blood, and fist fights. It made me want to go to a game. I hadn’t been since my daddy had taken me to see the Yellowstone Quake at the University of Wyoming when I was a girl.

“A book club?” Roxanne asked.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “You’re welcome to join, Deputy. It’s a good time to do it, too, since we’re starting a new book. You like to read?”

“Love it,” Roxanne said.

“What kind of books?”

I could feel Roxanne stiffen beside me, and behind her sunglasses, she side-eyed Dan. “Fiction,” was all she said.

Sam nodded. She understood Roxanne’s hesitance. Some people still referred to the romance genre as “lady porn,” but as I had learned in the last year, it was so much more than just steamy sex scenes.

Even as a gay woman reading straight romance, it could be empowering. And sometimes, I even felt like I’d learned to voice what I wanted out of life better from reading the stories Sam assigned every month. We hadn’t read a lesbian romance yet, even though I bugged her about it as often as I could, but Sam told me she was still searching for the right one to fit the overall book-club group. We had some picky members. Little did Sam know, a couple of those ladies would probably love a lesbian romance, no matter which one Sam ended up choosing. I’d already read a few on my own and loved them. It was the coolest thing to read about a character that represented who I was on the inside.

“Join us then,” she told Roxanne. “You can meet a bunch of local women, and we always have a good time.”

“Thank you.”

“Sorry, Deputy—what’s your first name?” Sam asked Dan.

“Daniel Draven, ma’am,” he said, finally shaking Sam’s hand.

“Nice to meet you. I was saying sorry, we don’t have a book club yet that men can join because a few of the women have requested that the romance book club stay a man-free zone. I’ve been trying to talk Frank into starting one, but yeah, that’ll never happen.”

“Not much of a reader anyway, ma’am,” Dan said.

She nodded, smiling at his brusqueness. “Alright, well, I’ll see you two later, right, at book club?”