Her golden hair sparkled in the shaft of morning sunlight coming through the living room window. The melody of her gentle laughter echoed down the hall as she glanced back over her shoulder at him.
“Where are you going?” he asked. He stood with a towel wrapped around his waist, one foot in the bathroom, the other in the hall, watching her dance away from him. She wore only one of his old shirts, the long tail and scooped sides emphasizing her slender legs.
“That storm door is banging again. Didn’t you hear it? Thought you were going to fix that. I’m just going to close it.” She was looking back at him with a fetching smile and a wink as she turned the knob.
An alarm went off in his head. How many times had he told her not to open the door without checking first? He started to say it again, but what he saw was the dull gleam of the shotgun barrel, then the shaggy blond mane of the man behind it as he leveled the gun upon them.
“Bonnie!”
She turned back and he leapt toward her, but it was a reach too far and his world exploded.
He awoke with a start as he had dozens of times, a hundred times since that day. He longed for the moment of innocence that came on mornings like this, just before he opened his eyes, when he could still feel her beside him. He lingered a few moments more in the sultry warmth of the sheets before rolling out of bed.
The last streaks of crimson were fading at the eastern window. He took a hard look in the mirror, washing, reaching for the razor. He was always surprised by the fact that he did not look as old as he felt. There was no gray in his chestnut hair, although life had done its best or worst to put it there. He wasn’t forty yet but more than the beginning of some serious wrinkles could now be seen around his eyes. Laugh lines, his mother used to call them. Maybe. Once.
The radio crackled in the next room, bringing him back to the world that waited. He climbed into his gold pickup truck, still listening to the radio, and decided to get coffee at work rather than on the way. The telephone was ringing as he came through the door and he reached over the front counter and snatched it off the hook.
“Crossland County Sheriff’s Department.” He listened a moment before speaking again. “Yes, this is Sheriff Harper, Mrs. Davis. I appreciate that those boys are a headache to you. I’m sure I can convince them to put up a new mailbox for you. Yes ma’am, to replace the one they tore down. Yes ma’am, living in the country is hard sometimes, I know. Take care now.” He hung up the phone as a tall, rawboned redhead in tight blue jeans and a fitted checkered shirt rounded the corner from the back room.
“Morning to you, too,” she shot at him while chewing a large wad of pink bubble gum. “I guess you’ve heard the radio this morning. Big wreck out on the highway. Weldon Johnson is in the drunk tank again. Came in about four this morning and Freddy Ganst got mad and stopped up the toilet in cell three and flooded everything, so they put him downstairs with Weldon and moved the boys out of cell three into two other cells. Now everyone’s crowded and complaining. And Commissioner Ravens called and---.” She stopped in mid-sentence.
“Uh-huh,” he murmured as he looked over the jail roster in one hand and the radio log in the other. His eyes never left the clipboards that held each as he nodded slightly in rhythm to what she was saying.
“It’s been all I could do to get some coffee made this morning. You want some or not? Have you been listening to a word I’ve said?”
“Yes, Wanda. You said the sergeant is already out on the highway, helping with traffic. And they wanted Jimmy out there, too, but you told them he’s on vacation out to Arizona.”
“I never! Well, yeah, I did. But that was twenty minutes ago on the radio!” Her tone rose with her level of exasperation.
“You asked if I was listening. People who don’t speak English out there, I gather?”
“Best I could tell a trucker fell asleep and turned over his rig. The car he run off the road had a woman and her son in it who were headed south. The trucker and the boy both left the scene by ambulance but they was having a hard time explaining it all to the mother. I don’t think she’s hurt, just shook up. The sergeant is bringing her here.”
“Hmm. And are you going to talk to her? Has Jimmy been giving you lessons or something?”
“Don’t you think I’m smart enough to learn that lingo?” She deliberately batted her eyelashes at him in time to the gum chewing.
He laughed unexpectedly. “Wanda, I think you and I do good to speak English and we’d best leave the other languages to folks that can, like Jimmy.”
A county cruiser pulled into the carport outside the front door. A short, dark-haired woman was escorted inside by Sgt. Roy Baker. The officer lifted the breakaway portion of the front counter up and to the left, and whisked the woman to a seat in the back. Wanda handed her coffee in a Styrofoam cup, which she accepted with a weak smile. She took a sip and then began to cry softly, obviously not for the first time that morning.
“¿Dónde está mi hijo? ¿Cómo está? Quiero ir con él. Por favor.”
“I tried to explain things to her, but without Jimmy to speak Spanish to her...” Sgt. Roy Baker shook his head in exasperation. “The ambulance guys wouldn’t let her ride in the back….