Big Sky River. Linda Lael Miller

stove,” she said. “There’ll be coffee in a few minutes, and you look like a man who needs some sustenance, pronto.”

      Boone nodded gratefully and went off to grab a shower and get dressed in his usual go-to-work getup of jeans, a cotton shirt cut Western-style and a decent pair of boots. He’d put on his badge and his service revolver later, he decided. Most of the time, he didn’t need either one, since everybody in Parable County knew who he was and no one was likely to behave in a way that would require shooting them.

      When he got back to the kitchen, Opal handed him the promised cup of coffee, and he inhaled the rich scent of it before he took a sip, savoring it as he took in the sight of his boys, sitting at the table in their cartoon pajamas, their feet bare and their eyes still puffy from sleeping hard and deep.

      “Are you mad at me?” Fletcher asked, right out of the chute, leveling a look at Boone. A blush pulsed in his freckled cheeks, and his voice dropped to a near whisper, as though Opal and Griff weren’t right there to hear every word. “For wetting the bed, I mean?”

      Boone shook his head. “Nope,” he said, taking another sip of his coffee before going on. “Stuff happens.”

      Fletcher looked relieved, but he was still holding a grudge, too. That much was abundantly clear. “I want to go back to Missoula,” he reminded his father.

      Boone let that one pass, since stubbornness ran in the family.