Jean Colson placed the platter of fried pies on the center of the kitchen table and walked over to the coffeepot to help herself. The old place where she’d been born and raised always felt warm and familiar, a lot more now that Maggie had joined the family. When it had just been her aging brother, Hamp, the place was nastier than a rat’s nest. And with Quinn it had been so pin neat, it seemed as if no one lived there at all. But now there was color and life, the sound of laughter and grandchildren tromping up and down to the old loft, reminding Jean of what it had been like when she was a kid, all those years ago.

“You smell like smoke,” Jean said. “Thought you were cutting out those nasty cigars?”

“I’ve cut down some,” Quinn said. “And I’m running again.”

“That’s good,” Jean said. “Especially for a man who could barely walk this time last year.”

“He’s a work in progress, Miss Jean,” Maggie said. “He’s wearing a twenty-pound vest on his runs and even hung a pull-up bar in the barn.”

“Yep.” Quinn grinned. “Even cut down on the whiskey.”

“Good,” Jean said. “Are you still finding those old bottles my brother hid around the house?”

“We found two this summer,” Maggie said. “Stuck up under the house and wrapped in newspaper from the seventies. Your brother really went to great lengths to hide his drinking.”

“Only person he was hiding it from was his wife,” Jean said. “To everyone else it was plain as day.”

Jean’s brother had been eighteen years older, a man she barely knew but knew all too well at the same time. Like Quinn, he’d gone into the Army, fought overseas, and came home to work for the sheriff’s office before becoming sheriff himself for decades. He’d been a good man with plenty of failings, the sum of those years ending with him shooting himself in the head out of guilt not five feet from where she was sitting. God. She was so glad for the bright cheery paint and new windows Maggie had added to the house.

“Do you mind picking up Brandon from school?” Maggie asked Jean. “That’s during Halley’s nap. And Quinn’s been hit hard this week.”

“I know,” Jean said. “Poor Gina Byrd.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Quinn said. “It’s a real mess.”

“She and that McCade boy really do it?” Jean asked.

“Maybe,” Quinn said. “Maybe not. Not too many kids kill their parents. And Gina Byrd didn’t exactly keep the best company in Tibbehah County.”

“I heard those kids were charged with murder?”

“Not much else we could do,” Quinn said. “Some evidence was discovered at their trailer. And those kids fled town.”