He just shook his head. “I have to go back to my place and get a razor. I’ll be right back. Lock the door,” he told Michelle, “and don’t open it for anybody. If Bert Sims shows up, you call me at once. Got that?”

“Got it,” she said.

“Okay.”

He left. Carlie got up from the sofa, where she’d been perched on the arm, and hugged Michelle. “I know this is hard for you. I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too.” Michelle gave way to tears. “Thanks for coming over. I hope I’m not putting you in any danger.”

“Not me,” Carlie said. “And neither of us is going to be in danger with that tall, dark, handsome man around. He is so good-looking, isn’t he?” she added with a theatrical sigh.

Michelle dried her tears. “He really is. My guardian angel.”

“Some angel.”

She tried to think of something that might restore a little normalcy into her routine. Roberta was lying heavily on her mind. “I have to do dishes. Want to dry?”

“You bet!”

Chapter 5

Carlie and Michelle shared the double bed in Michelle’s room, while Gabriel slept in Roberta’s room. Michelle had insisted on changing the bed linen first. She put Roberta’s clothes in the washing machine, the ones that had been scattered all over the room. When she’d washed them, she planned to donate them to charity. Michelle couldn’t have worn them even if she’d liked Roberta’s flamboyant style, which she didn’t.

The next morning, Gabriel went to the local funeral home and made the arrangements for Roberta. She had an older sister in Virginia. The funeral home contacted her, but the woman wanted nothing to do with any arrangements. She and Roberta had never gotten along, and she couldn’t care less, she said, whether they cremated her or buried her or what. Gabriel arranged for her to be cremated, and Reverend Blair offered a plot in the cemetery of his church for her to be interred. There would be no funeral service, just a graveside one. Michelle thought they owed her that much, at least.

Reverend Blair had invited Michelle to come and stay at his house with Carlie, but Michelle wanted familiar things around her. She also wanted Gabriel, on whom she had come to rely heavily. But she couldn’t stay with Gabriel alone. It would not look right in the tiny community of Comanche Wells, where time hadn’t moved into the twenty-first century yet.

“Sara will be here tomorrow,” Gabriel told the girls as they sat down to supper, which Michelle and Carlie had prepared together. He smiled as he savored hash browns with onions, perfectly cooked, alongside a tender cut of beef and a salad. “You two can cook,” he said with admiration. “Hash browns are hard to cook properly. These are wonderful.”

“Thanks,” they said in unison, and laughed.