Luke sighed. “I know, y’all. But she’s my wife. I’ve got to know that she’s all right.”

“Well, eat an orange roll and let’s think about this for a few minutes.” I pushed the basket toward him.

Luke is a nice-looking man. The older he gets, the more I see a resemblance to my father, his uncle. Papa had a square jaw that neither Sister nor I inherited, but that Luke picked up from the Tate gene pool. Luke and Papa also had the same dark auburn hair, which had turned white by the time they were fifty. Luke’s beard, I noticed as he leaned forward to take a roll, still had a lot of red in it. He had pulled off his jacket and was wearing a blue plaid flannel shirt that made his eyes, bloodshot as they were, look the same blue as Papa’s. And the same blue as both of my boys. Damn.

Virginia has never been one of my favorite people. She’s a “sizer-upper,” one of those women who walks through your house and doesn’t miss a thing. The kind who knows more about your medicine cabinet than you do.

But here was her husband, my papa’s look-alike, sitting at my kitchen table asking me to help him. Saying he needed to know if she was all right.

Well, damn. What choice did I have?

“Tell us what we can do,” I offered.

“Like I said, help me find her. She’s been gone ten days.”

“No problem,” Sister said.

Chapter Three

Chapter
Three

Luke fell asleep on my guest room bed as soon as his head hit the pillow. He looked so sick, I wondered if we ought to take him to a doctor.

Sister said no. “He’s just torn up about Virginia. Just goes to show.”

She was still sitting at the kitchen table finishing up the last of the orange rolls.

“Show what?” I put Luke’s coffee cup in the dishwasher and held up the coffee pot. She shook her head no, that she didn’t want any more.

“That the man doesn’t have biddy brains wanting that woman back. She puts on airs so, it’s unbelievable.”

I sat back down at the table.

“Virginia’s not the most likable person in the world,” I agreed. “But Luke loves her, and he’s hurting.”

Sister licked her finger and stuck it into the crumbs on the roll plate. Then she sucked the finger thoughtfully.

“I don’t know what good finding her will do. She probably won’t come back.”

“Maybe not. But you told him we’d help, and he needs to know that she’s all right.”

“Sounds like she’s better than all right.”