“What?” Quinn slammed on the brakes, the lap belt caught her around the hips, and even though they weren’t going very fast, Jenna braced her hand against the dashboard to keep from knocking her head.
“The Mustang, when it goes by the house, the reverberation from its muffler rattles the old windows in their frames. The second set of lights—no vibration. That time it wasn’t him. It was someone else.”
“Speaking of someone else…”
What? Following Quinn’s gaze toward the barn, Jenna saw a white Chevy Caprice, with some official-looking emblem painted on the door. “Uh-oh.”
Before the Mustang came to a complete stop, Jenna popped her door open.
“Who is it?” Quinn asked.
Already halfway out, Jenna leaned back into the car. “If I’m right, someone from the state agency overseeing the program. That they would send someone in person can’t be good, though.”
“Hold on a sec, and I’ll go with you.”
He cut the engine, popped his seat belt, and opened his door before she could say, “No, you go on.”
“You don’t have to do this alone.”
“Better this way. I know how you hate to see a grown girl cry.”
“Jenn—”
“Kidding,” she managed before the lump forming in her throat cut the word in two.
Quinn hesitated, then closed the door, his face falling a little, like a kid whose mom had only given him one scoop of ice cream when he’d expected two. He restarted the engine. She closed her door and waited for him to pass before stepping toward her office in the barn, her stomach climbing higher and higher until it threatened to choke her.
A shadowed figure from inside the barn stepped out the sliding front doors. A man. Wait, no, a woman. Tall enough, broad enough, to be mistaken for a man at a distance.
“Jenna Nash?” the woman said, her voice leaning more toward baritone, probably the cigarettes talking.
“You can’t smoke here,” Jenna said by way of greeting.
The woman stepped out from the overhang and into the sun, which had finally decided to show up for the day. She crushed the cigarette beneath a sensible shoe, then, after three seconds of Jenna’s pointed look, picked up her butt and pocketed it.
If Jenna was politically savvy, she’d hold her tongue—and her cutting looks—and do her best to butter up the bureaucrat who held the power to butcher her dreams.
“Joan Rivers.” The lady held out a large, blunt-fingered hand. It went without saying this person was the government official and not the comedian. This woman wasn’t old, funny, or dead.
“Jenna.” Jenna shook the offered hand, disappointed by the limp-wristed shake.
“Somewhere we can talk?” Rivers asked. Not wasting a moment on pleasantries or other such apparent nonsense.
“My office.” Jenna pointed back toward the barn, and Rivers fell into lockstep behind her.
Jenna had taken over the caretaker’s room for her office. It had a single window that overlooked the birthing stall. A refrigerator and a sink with a short run of cabinets were situated along the back wall, as they had been in the old barn before it had burned down. Under the window, Jenna had moved her old school desk from her bedroom. A laptop sat on the corner.
Without apology, Jenna retrieved a folded camp chair for her uninvited guest and claimed the wood chair behind the desk. “What can I help you with?”
“In light of the death of one of your program’s participants, the state has suspended your license application until further notice.”
Jenna snatched a pencil out of the cup on her desk and tapped it against her thigh. “Which in English means…?”
“Until there’s an official ruling on the cause of death and any findings of negligence on your part have been cleared, we can’t proceed to full licensure.”
“Our application expires in three weeks. If we don’t have a cause of death by then…” Jenna didn’t want her fears creeping into her words. Tap, tap, tap went the pencil.
“Then you’ll have to start the whole program proposal and certification all over again.” Rivers’s expression remained as bland as cottage cheese—no emotion, no spice. Maybe she was dead after all.
“Over. Again.” The steady tapping stopped. “It has taken me eighteen months to get this far. Eighteen months of proposals and supporting documents and jumping through hoops of fire like the government’s own treat-trained dog. The veterans who want my help, who need my help, some of them might not make it another eighteen months without this program. Effectively, canceling my program could amount to a death sentence for them.”
“Or,” Rivers said, “your client might be alive today if we hadn’t granted a provisionary license.”
“Kurt’s death is not my fault.” Jenna said it as if she meant it. Even if the declaration hit her like a lie.
“We’ll see about that. You might want to give your other program participants due notice.”
“What happens if Kurt’s death is ruled a homicide?”
“If you’re not found at fault for his death, there is no reason the state won’t grant your license.” Rivers stood. “I’ll find my way out.”
Jenna tossed the pencil onto the desk and followed the woman out as far as the barn doors to make sure she was well and gone.
Dink trotted in from the pasture, his tongue lolling, his eyes bright, as if he had a terrific joke he wanted to tell her. As she scrubbed her fingers through his scruff, the distinct smell of something dead wafted off his coat, making Jenna’s eyes water. Breathing through her mouth, she led him over to the wash rack and leashed him to the tie ring.
“Seriously?” Jenna said to her dog as she took the hose and wet his coat.
Dink didn’t reply. He didn’t even look contrite.
From outside came the slow, rhythmic thump of an ax as it split log after log. She emptied half a bottle of shampoo over Dink’s back, working it into a lather while trying to come up with what she would say to the three veterans who were ready to come to the S in less than a month.
How could she take hope away from someone who possessed so little hope to begin with?
She lingered over the dog, washing his coat far longer than she needed to, but she never came up with an answer. In the end, Jenna decided the veterans didn’t need practiced speeches or dull, well-meaning platitudes.
They needed the truth from her heart.
She toweled off Dink, and when she couldn’t procrastinate any longer, she trudged back to her office, found their contact numbers, and started dialing.
* * * *
Sweat ran down Quinn’s back, his chest, his forehead, and into his eyes. The muscles in his back burned, the grip in his right hand had almost lost all strength, and an elephant-sized blister had formed in the web between his right thumb and index finger. He raised the ax over his shoulder and took aim at another log.
In his peripheral vision, movement flashed, and as he focused on Jenna leaning against the back side of the barn, he knew he’d made a terrible mistake. The ax handle slipped from his loose grip, and the sharp head glanced off the log, then off the stump beneath.
Too much weight, too much momentum.
Quinn had no hope of stopping the downward arc with only his left hand on the end of the handle. At the last second, he