Making It Right (Most Likely To #3)

“That wasn’t your fault.”


“I’m not blaming me. It’s just hard. I don’t want to be the hard-ass all the time. I wanted to laugh when Principal Mason dragged me into his office to discipline Drew for connecting his phone to the TV as a remote.”

Mel’s eyes lit up. “Wyatt downloaded that app. Works great.”

“See? Kid was smart, and that shit was funny.” Glitter and glue forgotten, Jo sat back from Mel’s kitchen table, which doubled as a crafting zone.

“You’re up for election next year. Maybe you should reconsider running.”

She had, more times than Jo could count. “The thing is, I don’t mind being a cop. And now that I have someone in my life occupying my thoughts, it’s even harder to do my job.”

“I would think it gave you some stress relief.”

“How so? I haven’t left town since I got here. I can’t even get my car in for the recall. This weekend is the meet in Eugene. The first time I’ll have an opportunity to see how Gill really lives.”

“That’s a good thing.”

“I have to squeeze in a personal life. Even then I’ve gotten some slack from the fine churchgoing women in town asking me about my male friend.”

“Oh, no.” Mel had given up on the crafting.

“Oh, yes. Complete with enough snide comments to let me know that my father wouldn’t approve of me living in sin.”

“They didn’t use that term.”

“They did, and do. Part of the problem with my being everyone’s friend. I suppose they’d still call me out if I wasn’t. I’m not sure how my dad did it.”

“Your dad was a widower, it was different.”

“My mom died fourteen years before my dad. He’d celebrated his fifty-fifth birthday the fall before he died.” She stopped to think about that. “A forty-one-year-old widower . . .”

“I can’t even think about how that felt.”

“I remember him crying the day of my mom’s funeral. It all feels like a black-and-white still frame in my head. I remember hurting, and sleeping next to him for about a month. Then he forced me to my room.”

“Probably for the best.”

“Yeah. But still, forty-one. He never once brought a woman home.”

Mel stared at the wall across the room. “He must have really loved your mother.”

“He did. He talked about her all the time. But he was still a man.”

Mel moved her eyes to Jo. “What are you getting at?”

“I’m thirty and get turned on hearing Gill’s bike driving down the street.”

“You always were the wild one.”

“That’s not what I’m getting at. How long did you have between lovers?”

“Nathan was an ass. And I had Hope by then.”

Jo lifted her palms to the air. “That doesn’t mean you didn’t find the time to have sex at some point.”

“Yeah. But not often.”

Jo did the math in her head. “So you had Hope, were still with the ex-asshat for a while after. By the time you were back in River Bend and hooked up with Wyatt, Hope was seven, right?”

“Right.”

“And in between there was one, two lovers?”

“About.”

The details didn’t matter . . . the math did. “Even I managed a few as sheriff over the years, now Gill.”

“What are you getting at?”

“What is the likelihood that my dad didn’t have one single hookup in fourteen years?”

Mel leaned forward on her elbows. “You think he had a lover?”

“My dad was kinda hot.” Jo cringed when she said it, but Mel knew it was true.

“He was.”

He didn’t have tattoos, but he had been a big man who wasn’t afraid of hard work and building muscle. “If he had a lover, someone had to have known about it. It makes sense that he had someone. Even if it was casual.”

“Your dad didn’t strike me as a ‘casual’ guy.”

“Then finding his lover that was less than casual shouldn’t be that hard,” Jo said.

Mel made a whistling noise. “Finding a lover of a decade past, one who didn’t come out of hiding when he died, isn’t going to be easy.”

“It’s a small town. People talk. Gossip is a pastime best spent with a cold beer or cheap wine. Someone has to know something.” And if not, why was it such a secret? And if her father could keep it hush-hush, then there might be a link to how he died. It was the only new thing itching in her head in ten years, and Jo needed to follow the lead.

Mel stood and crossed the room to the refrigerator, pulled out a beer as if Jo was making a suggestion. Though Jo had to admit, a beer while talking about her dead father’s sex life was a fabulous idea.

“Why would he keep it secret?” Mel opened a bottle of sparkling flavored water for herself while Jo popped the top of her beverage.

“That’s easy to answer.” She took a drink. “This town is full of conservative individuals that feel as sheriff I shouldn’t be keeping the company of men.”

Mel’s look of astonishment should have been recorded. “I’m having a hard time with that.”

“Yeah.” Jo went on to give Mel names of the neighbors who’d approached her and those who said nothing with their mouths but everything with their eyes. “It’s only a matter of time before their respect of me drops in the toilet.”

“People can’t expect you to be Virgin Mary.”

“They want it hidden. Even Josie told me that when I stopped by R&B’s yesterday.”

“Josie thought you needed to hide your relationship with Gill?”

“No,” Jo corrected Mel. “She said in her years as a single woman in this town, she’d been told more than once that she shouldn’t be seen keeping men overnight. And she runs a freakin’ bar.” Jo pointed to her own chest. “I’m the sheriff. Next to Minister Imman’s family, I’m up there for censure.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Might be stupid, but it is what it is. I doubt it was any better ten years ago when my dad was alive.”

“It was probably worse. Your dad was a single father raising a daughter.”

“I didn’t think about it that way. I bet he had a lot of women telling him how to parent.”

Mel leaned back, placed her feet on an opposite chair. “Maybe one of these moms from Waterville who was in River Bend shuffling their kids was the lover?”

Jo glanced at the list again. “How many of these kids had single moms?”

“Or unhappily married moms?”

Jo shook her head. “An affair? That wasn’t my dad.”

Mel stared her down. “I wouldn’t close my eyes to that if I were you. If there was a lover, she didn’t come forward when he died. Why would a woman stay hidden?”

“Maybe she didn’t want people judging her.”

“Okay . . . or?”

Jo did not like the fact that Mel had a point. “I still think someone had to have known about a romantic relationship, if my father was having one.”

“What about Karl?”

Jo swallowed some of her beer. “Even if he did, the man wouldn’t tell me. Especially this month.”

“Would Glynis know?” Mel asked.