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She didn’t know Billy Preston well, and she wasn’t interested in him in that way--she had a boyfriend after all--but she enjoyed how they always exchanged a feords He’d been a lieutenant in the Oakland PD before being recruited as sheriff for Sierra Falls, and she loved his occasional -city life

An idea hit her "Hold on," she said, and darted back into the kitchen She’d baked bread the night before, and the last thing she needed was thathim a small foil-wrapped bundle "It’s not a frittata, but my apple cinnamon bread is a close second"

"Sorry," he deadpanned, patting his belly "We law enforcerin, she pulled the bread out of his reach, doing her best to look offended "See if I ever try to feed you again"

"On second thought, it shed and snatched it frohed with hi that she’d been the one to draw out the humor For the first tiht relax

A hideous sound caused her to seize right back up again

Outside, there was the long whine of creaking timber, followed by a loud crash

She and the sheriff locked eyes For the flicker of aof corateful she wasn’t in it alone

Which was crazy, of course She didn’t even know the hts ca out the door, Billy and the rest of their patrons hot on her heels

Two

Billy Preston’s first thought was that somebody had crashed a car into a tree His second was of his wife

Every other thought was

Only this tiuilty when thea few friendly jokes with a pretty wouy

But he wasn’t a regular guy Three years ago, his wife had been struck and killed by a bus while biking to work And he hadn’t been there for her

There was never any predicting ould return hi when the odd questions would creep in to haunt his like, what had she eaten for breakfast that day? Had she looked at the newspaper before she’d left that ue hi from outside that called her back

Norht hours It let hi them for the wee hours But he’d met Sorrow’s eyes, and the raw connection there startled hi for an instant

Spinning back to those days when he drove his wife to work every day Every day except for that day He’d been up late the night before with paperwork--police did reams more of it than they showed on TV--and Keri had insisted he snag the extra twenty minutes of sleep

A beat cop delivered the news hours later, just as he was racing out to grab a bite for lunch It’d taken that long to identify Keri, to track hi, and swilling back the rest of his tepid coffee, conte hisshave, his wife had been on the side of the road, dying While he’d been bitching to the guys about paperwork, she was already gone

He’d endured sixit in, and countless hours at the gy till the muscles in his arms trembled, before an old buddy hooked him up The small town of Sierra Falls had lost the sheriff they’d known for decades, and did Billy want to step in to fill his shoes? Like that, he was tapped for the ballot, running uncontested, and before he knew it, he was packing up his belongings and heading to the et away from the city, fro in the shadow of the Sierra Nevadas, a part of Billy was able to find so that mo that, locking eyes as they had, she could see into his soul, reading his guilt, his pain

Billy shoved such silly notions to the back of his mind He bolted up from his booth Ran out the door

Sheriff once more

He and Sorrow stood shoulder-to-shoulder, and it took only a second to realize what’d happened A tree branch had crashed through the roof of the Big Bear Lodge

Billy shook his head slowly A goodly chunk of the roof had caved in, and it was now one devastatedIf he craned his neck just right, he could see through the hole clear to the atticon the other side

"Oh, shh"--Sorroed the tail end of the curse--"sugar"

"Go ahead and say it Looks like you could use a good round of swearing" It seeed uessed this would fall square on her shoulders, too

Her arht fly apart if she let go "It’s the Sorrow thing"

"The what?" If she was speaking about herself in the third person, maybe she was more upset than he’d realized