Like growing up around the oil fields with her daddy. The heavy and sooty sky above the rigs, the whole world gray and black, and his own skin, too.

Like the night Murfee burned and Buck Emmett died, where she’d stood outside Earlys and caught that first bit of flame on the wind. It had made her search the night, staring into the dark, trying to find it.

A warning.

Or maybe it was the Big Bend itself.

Maybe in all the desert and scrub and unbounded emptiness, there was always something burning out there, somewhere.

—

MEL WAS THINKING ABOUT SMOKE as Chris finished telling her about the old man and the girl.

She’d been nursing Jack when Chris came in—a feeling of closeness or completeness that as a woman she had no words to describe, that a man would never truly understand anyway—and the baby was asleep now. She had the bedroom window cracked open and Jack cradled soft and quiet in her arms, and all she could think about was smoke.

There on the wind, blowing through the window. Faint and then gone again. A campfire somewhere far off.

She prayed that’s all it was.

“Tell me how I’m supposed to feel about this, Chris. Tell me and I’ll do my best to convince you that’s how I really feel.”

Chris stood in the door of their bedroom, arms crossed. He hadn’t yet come to sit next to her and Jack on the bed.

“You think I’m wrong.”

She admired how he still wanted to make everything a question of right and wrong, as if there was ever a way to do that so neat and clean. Ben had never believed that, and the two men had always argued about it. Sheriff Ross had definitely not believed that, and it nearly cost Chris his life. Yet here he was again, trying to make the case, even if it meant being on the wrong side of it this time.

That’s what she thought.

“It’s foolish. It’s dangerous. This man’s a threat to Amé and this town. He’s a threat to you, to your career . . .”

“Hell, babe, I might not have a career much longer.”

“Don’t use that as an excuse. You’re still the sheriff now. And if you’re doing this because you truly believe he’s the man he says he is, let that sink in. Remind yourself what that has to mean.”

Chris stayed silent, struggling. He had thought about it, and the weight of it was crushing him.

“But you’re going to do this anyway . . .”

“I’m still deciding,” he said.