“It’s true,” Maggie said. “I’ve told you most of it. Why do think I loved spending summers with my grandmother here? It was about the only place me and my sister had some stability. Our house was up and down all the time. A damn powder keg between her and my daddy when my daddy came home off the road.”

“Was she unfaithful?”

“Always,” Maggie said. “I hated Friday nights. That’s when she’d leave me with my sister and head down to the joint on the county line. It always reminded me of the Boars Nest on the Dukes of Hazzard, a real redneck love shack. Most time we didn’t see her till late Saturday, coming home with a mind-splitting headache, contrite and small, curled up on the couch and trying to gather enough strength for Sunday service.”

“Did your daddy know?”

“He had to,” Maggie said. “My daddy wasn’t a stupid man. But I think he had his own favorite stops to pull in on the road. I always figured they’d come to some kind of agreement for the good of us girls. If I heard that one time in their fights, I heard it a thousand. I wish to God they’d just split up. Nobody should live that way. Sometimes when things got bad, I mean real bad, he’d knock that woman halfway across the room. Part of me got to believing she deserved it. That sounds awful. Doesn’t it?”

Quinn drank some coffee. He reached for Maggie’s hand.

Maggie looked comfortable and warm in sweatpants, white tank top, and a heavy hand-knitted sweater over her shoulders. She always made him feel warm and loved when he was with her, a real and authentic connection that he’d never had with Anna Lee Amsden. Anna Lee had been all fire and heat, but without any trust or warmth. From the time they’d been kids, Anna Lee had wanted nothing more than to get free from Tibbehah County and find a man who’d be a lot more than a sergeant in the U.S. Army. She’d finally gotten her wish when she married the town doctor and later moved up to Memphis to get away from Quinn for good.

“What are you thinking about?” Maggie said.

“How damn lucky I was to find you.”

“Shacking up with the bank robber’s ex,” Maggie said. “Making an honest woman of her.”

“You’ve always been an honest woman.”

“Now you’re just trying to get me into bed.”

“I wouldn’t fight you if you tried.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t fight you,” Maggie said, sliding from her chair, coming around the table and taking a seat in Quinn’s lap. She smelled musky and sweet, her skin salty as he kissed her neck and her mouth. It had been a long time.