One of the reasons Martin Cabot’s incarceration elicited so little comment among the town busybodies was that the busiest body of them all was taking the high road for the time being. By anyone’s measure, it was a fine path that Amanda Springer was walking, and it was frequently whispered outside of her hearing that she could not maintain the straight and narrow for long. What even her closest acolytes did not take into account was her considerable pride, and rather than air her frustration and disappointment that her son was courting Fedora Chen or remarking on Miss Chen’s unsuitability as a match for Hitchcock, Amanda kept her head up and acted as if there was nothing at all extraordinary about the pairing. It was Amanda’s rather significant insight when she realized that the longer she acted as if there was nothing extraordinary about the courtship, there was nothing extraordinary about the courtship.

  Ridley’s dinner party was a success, which surprised only Ridley. Ellie had nothing but admiration for the dining arrangement and enjoyed herself fussing over the children, who had their own table and comported themselves so beautifully that Lily was moved to wonder if Roen had bribed them.

  “Of course I did,” he said when she asked him that night. “I promised them a sleigh ride. It’s all been arranged with Hank Ketchum for tomorrow afternoon.”

  “You must have been sure they would do very well if you had the sleigh reserved.”

  “I set rather low expectations. Ham had to keep his shoes on. Lizzie had to keep her bottom on her chair and not climb up on her knees. Hannah had to help Lizzie cut her food into small pieces, and Clay had to keep his napkin in his lap and direct passing of the food.”

  “I am in awe,” she said. Lily leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. “Merry Christmas, my love.”

  As joyous as Christmas Day was with its candy-and-fruit-filled stockings and exchange of presents, the days leading up to New Year’s Eve grew increasingly somber. Roen was sensitive to the two-year anniversary of Jeremiah Salt’s death but uncertain what he should do, or even if there was anything he could do. Lily’s efforts to remain emotionally even were forced and Roen was not alone in noticing it. He observed Clay and Hannah watching their mother more closely. Lizzie and Ham took their cue from their older brother and sister and were clingy and needy. Roen had to remind himself it was not necessarily their father’s death they were remembering and mourning, but the trauma of the fire when they lost their home and almost lost their lives.

  “Am I right that you will not want to attend the New Year’s Eve party at the Butterworth?” Roen asked Lily when they were alone at the table after breakfast, finishing their coffee.

  She nodded. “The children can’t attend and I will not leave them alone.”

  “I understand. Don’t look at me as if you think I’m disappointed. I’m testing the water here, trying to figure what the right thing to do is, or if not the right thing, then the best thing.”

  “You probably wish I could help you. I can’t. I don’t know.”

  “What did you do last year?”

  “Nothing,” she said quietly, staring into her coffee cup. “We survived it.”

  “We can do better than that.”

  Lily’s smile was wan, but she did not dismiss the idea. “I’d like that.”

  “What do you think about a party for the children?”

  “A party?”

  “Nothing fancy. My parents used to allow us to invite a friend to sleep over. We never did it on New Year’s Eve, but it’s really the perfect night for it so now I’m wondering why we never did. Clay can invite Frankie. I’m sure Hannah and Ham will have someone in mind.”

  “Who would Lizzie ask?”

  “Her best friend. Fedora.”

  Laughter bubbled on Lily’s lips. It felt good. “What about Hitch?”

  “He’ll come, too. I don’t think they’re ready to go to the Butterworth as a couple. And Hitch is probably working tonight so Ben can have it free. He’ll be able to come and go. We’ll bring blankets and pillows down to the parlor and spread them out. I’ll make ice cream punch and you’ll make little jam sandwiches. We’ll play games and tell ghost stories and—” He stopped because Lily was frowning. “All right. Maybe not ghost stories, but you get the idea. They’ll all try to stay up until midnight and they’ll all fall asleep by ten.”

  “Optimist.”

  “We’ll give them breakfast in the morning and send them home.” He waited for Lily to give him an indication that she was on board or preparing to throw him off the train. She did neither. Though she had not moved, it struck him that she was suddenly far away, so deep in thought that she was oblivious to her surroundings, to the cup she clutched tightly, to the tremor of the saucer, to him. When she spoke, it was so softly that he wasn’t certain that she meant for him to hear.

  “I killed him.”

  Arrested, Roen stared at her while she continued to stare into her cup. “Lily?”

  “You heard me. I can’t say it again. I promised Ben and Ridley and Hitch I would never say it once, and now I have. To you. I’ve said it to you.” A tear leaked from her right eye and rippled the smooth brown surface of the coffee. “It’s yours now. My guilt is your burden, too. You must do what you think is right. Not what is best. What is right.”

  Roen took the cup away from Lily and then he took her by the hand. “Come with me. We can’t talk here.” He tugged and without any real effort brought her to her feet. He led her out of the kitchen, down the hall, told the children they were going upstairs and not to be disturbed, and nudged Lily to take the first step. When they were in their bedroom, he closed the door and leaned against it. Lily stood alone, all at sea, and then slowly sank to the edge of the bed.

  “He was drunk,” she said. She spoke quietly, without inflection, a storyteller with nothing vested in the story she was about to tell. “As drunk as I’d ever seen him. I was sleeping when he came in, but I woke when he closed the door. He stumbled toward the bed. Toward me. He was carrying a hammer in one hand and tongs in the other. He brought them from the forge. I could only imagine he was going to use them on me. Why else would he have them? I flung myself out of bed but not away from him. I went at him. He dropped the hammer. I picked it up. I hit him with it like Mr. Cabot clubbed Solomon, like you clobbered Mr. Cabot. He went down. Sprawled on the bed. I think I must have stared at him for a time. I seem to remember that I did. Then I dropped the hammer and ran. I knew what I had to do, where I had to go.”

  She stopped abruptly.

  Roen waited for her to go on. She didn’t, and he realized there was not time enough in the world for her to continue without prompting. “What is it that you had to do, Lily? Where is it that you had to go?”

  “Turn myself in, of course. I went to the jail. I left my children and went straightaway to the jail.”

  “But the fire . . . what happened?”

  “I don’t know. I swear I don’t know. I was sure I killed him. I hit him so hard. Swung the hammer as if I were John Henry. Hitch and Ridley and Ben say no. They say he wasn’t dead and that he must have tipped the bedside lamp struggling to get up. Ridley says a burning beam struck him in the head when it fell. She says she could tell because she and Hitch found his burnt body buried under it. I’m supposed to believe her. They want me to believe. It’s supposed to be my story now, the way I’m supposed to remember it and retell it if I have to. But I don’t know, Roen. I hit him so hard. He didn’t stir and I knew he was dead and I ran. I might have knocked over the lamp myself. The fire. That could be on me. I left my sleeping children with their dead father and there was a fire and they might have died if not for Hitch raising the alarm, and Clay’s quick thinking to save Ham, and Ben risking his life to save Clay in turn and then risking everything again to save my girls. I was safe, asleep in a cell, and they might have died, and that would have been because of me, because of what I’d done.”

  Roen pushed away from the door and knelt at Lily’s feet. He took her hands in his. “Oh, Lily. My sweet, courageous Lily. The burden you have shouldered. I know of no one who would not be stooped under the weight of it. That is not you. You are brave, Lily. You are . . .” He paused, searching for the word that would show her the truth that was in his heart. “You are heroic.”

  Lily lifted her downcast eyes from Roen’s beautifully capable hands enfolding hers. She stared into his eyes, lost herself in them. His face blurred, but it didn’t matter because she knew the angle of his cheekbones, the slant of his eyebrows, the slope of his nose, and the cast of his jaw. She knew the elusive dimple that would appear at the left corner of his mouth when he smiled at her. It was not there now. Roen was not smiling. His features were marked by earnestness, by gravity. She was heroic. That’s what he’d said, and he meant it. Whether or not she believed it about herself, it was the truth he held.

  Lily caught her breath on a dry sob. Her lower lip trembled. She sucked it in and bit down until she knew she could hold it steady. “Mr. Cabot asked me why I cared that Miss Headley had been murdered, and I said it was because she was a human being. His voice was positively arid when he replied. ‘Barely,’ he said. And then I told him she deserved better, and he said, ‘Again, barely.’” Lily’s shoulders heaved on a second dry sob. It ended with a hiccup. “It reminded me that I thought of Jeremiah in precisely that same way. Barely human; barely deserving better. Mr. Cabot is in jail awaiting trial and I have been free these last two years just as if I weren’t guilty of the same crime.”

  “But you haven’t been free, Lily.” Roen squeezed her cold hands. “You haven’t been free a single day, and you don’t know that Ridley and Ben and Hitch were wrong. If they have an explanation they can accept, why can’t you? You survived. You deserve to survive.”

  “But—”

  Roen stopped her with a look. He removed one of his hands from hers and reached under the blankets to give her one corner of a sheet to dry her eyes. She accepted it, sniffled, and touched it to each eye in turn.

  “Lily,” Roen said gently. “It is an honor you’ve given me, allowing me to hear your story. A great privilege. I’m not sure you can appreciate that now, but someday I hope you’ll know how heartfelt the sentiment is. To entrust me as you have, that is a great gift, and I mean to prove to you that I am worthy of it.”

  “Oh, but you are. You are!”

  His faint smile caused the dimple to appear and vanish in the blink of an eye. “You’ll have doubts from time to time. That’s to be expected. But you mustn’t close me out, Lily. Come to me with them.”

  She regarded him with something akin to wonder. “I thought . . . that is, I was afraid . . . I thought you’d put me away.”

  Roen’s brow puckered as he frowned deeply. “Put you in jail, you mean?”

  “No. Put me away from you. I couldn’t bear that, but I also couldn’t bear you not knowing who I am and what I did.”

  “I know who you are and now I know what you think you did, and that is all I need to know. I will never put you away from me, Lily. That talk of divorce was just talk, a way for you to feel at ease because you’d believe there was a way out. There never was a way out. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “Say you understand,” he said. “I need to hear you say it.”

  “I understand you’ll stand by me. There is no way out.”

  Roen’s chuckle rumbled pleasantly. He got to his feet and sat beside Lily on the bed. “You know you said that as if it were a life sentence handed down by a judge.”

  She looked at him askance, smiling faintly. “Wasn’t it?”

  “All right,” he said agreeably, nudging her shoulder with his. “Maybe it was.”

  Lily nudged him back. It seemed wildly inappropriate that she should have an urge to laugh, but it was exactly a laugh that was tickling the back of her throat. Roen was right when he said she hadn’t been free a single day since Jeremiah’s death, and the laughter she felt bubbling against her lips was proof that her life was different now. She would live it unburdened by oppressive guilt and relieved of secrets that sometimes made it difficult to draw a breath.

  Lily leaned into him, kissed him full on the mouth, her hands cupping his face. “It is a happy talent you have, Roen Shepard, making the ridiculous seem reasonable, but I will never regret listening to your nonsense and somehow hearing the sense in it.” His cheeks grew warm under her palms. “You’re blushing. Are you blushing?”

  Instead of answering, Roen removed her hands and folded her fingers. He pressed his lips to her knuckles and then to the soft undersides of her wrists. “I would very much like to see you blush.” It wasn’t what he said but the way he said it that brought pink to Lily’s cheeks. Roen chuckled. He kissed her lightly on the mouth. “We have a party to plan, children to invite, little jam sandwiches to make, but you keep entertaining wicked thoughts and I will make every effort to oblige you tonight.”

  Lily pushed at his chest and stood. She stepped away from the bed before he could pull her back. His deliciously roguish chuckle followed her all the way downstairs.

  * * *

  • • •

  The guests at the annual New Year’s Eve party at the Butterworth arrived in their finery to celebrate with their neighbors and friends. They danced and drank and ate dainty triangle sandwiches with no crusts and elegantly iced cakes topped with pink and yellow rosebuds. They all laughed, some sang, and a few revelers congregated in the lobby to share jokes too ribald for mixed company. There were only two fights, and only one of those drew blood, so all in all, as the midnight hour approached, the evening was already judged to be a splendid success.

  Lily and Roen were equally pleased with the outcome of their celebration. They stood arm in arm on the threshold of the parlor and regarded the sprawl of blankets and bodies carpeting the floor with satisfaction. Lizzie had been the first to succumb to sleep, not at all disturbed by the giggling and teasing of her siblings and their friends. Fedora had stayed awhile longer to be sure Lizzie did not wake and find her gone, but when Hitch showed up on his last round through town before midnight, Lily helped her on with her coat and gave her no choice but to accompany the deputy. Ham and his rascal friend were sure they would be awake when the church bell announced the new year, but they carried on too energetically in the early hours to make it until the late ones. Frankie Fuller arrived bearing good news in a telegram for Roen that Solomon Winslow had received earlier in the day. Northeast Rail had accepted his proposal for the new route that bypassed the questionable property lines of the Frosts and the Hardys by using Thunder Point. He was given authorization to proceed with hiring, purchasing, and finalizing land contracts. Now Frankie was snuffling softly in his sleep, his face turned precariously close to Clay’s stocking feet. Clay was lying on his side in the opposite direction, and equally undisturbed by the suspicious odors emanating from Frankie’s feet. Hannah and her friend Sarah lay cuddled on cushions that they had pulled from the sofa and chair, exactly as Roen had done his first night in the house. Hannah looked up when Roen turned back the last lamp and smiled drowsily.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and then promptly closed her eyes and was asleep.

  When the church bell struck its first note, Roen and Lily were on the stairs. On the second note, they were on the landing. Lily was in Roen’s arms for the third, fourth, and fifth as he carried her to their bedroom. On the sixth he was laying her down, and on the seventh, he was following her. He kissed one corner of her mouth on the eighth and the other corner on the ninth. On the tenth she clutched his head, wound her fingers in his hair, and kissed him back in the manner she thought she deserved. He apparently thought so, too, because that kiss lasted through the swell of the eleventh and to the very last echoes of the twelfth.

  And so they greeted the new year as they meant it to go on, loving well and most often wisely, sharing what was mutually satisfying and deeply held in their hearts, and finally finding the ridiculous to be sublime when even Roen couldn’t make it seem reasonable.

  Turn the page for a preview of Jo Goodman’s

  A Touch of Flame

  Available now from Berkley

  Frost Falls, Colorado

  September 1898

  Ben Madison tipped his chair until he had it balanced on its two rear legs. The top rail rested against the wall behind him, so he was of the opinion that he was not in danger of an embarrassing collapse. He stretched his long legs and casually set his boot heels on top of a keg that he’d cut in half to make the perfect stool. Ten minutes of shut-eye, he promised himself. He tugged on the brim of his pearl gray Stetson and pulled it forward to cover his eyes and the bridge of his lightly freckled nose. Positioning the hat in such a way meant uncovering more of the back of his head and exposing his carrot-colored hair to passersby who’d known him all their lives and still seemed to think they were the first to comment on it.

  Nothing about being the newly elected sheriff of Frost Falls changed that.

  Under his hat, Ben closed his eyes. Ten minutes, he reminded himself. There was a gentle hum of movement up and down the wide thoroughfare unimaginatively named Main Street. No one was in a particular hurry this afternoon, least of all him. He could identify the voices of the Saunders brothers deep in conversation outside the land office. Mrs. Fish, the owner of the town’s only dress shop, announced to someone that she was closing for a half hour while she visited the apothecary. Ben swore he heard her turn the sign on her door from OPEN to CLOSED.

  The boardwalk vibrated gently under him as folks went on about their business. No one came close, which he appreciated. Even the children returning to the schoolhouse after lunch gave him a wide berth. He made out the sounds of some playful shoving and whispered teasing, but none of it lingered, and when the schoolmaster rang his bell, it was only to call in the last stragglers.