Breaking Point

the silence. Their sound was forlorn and high-pitched, and it reminded her of babies shrieking. She stared at the light fixture straight overhead, vowing to take it down soon and clean the dead miller moths out of it. She felt extremely vulnerable and alone.
    She’d done all right through dinner, she thought, maintaining a cheerful veneer. She never mentioned the Saddlestring Hotel debacle to the girls and wasn’t sure they’d really understood the details of it anyway—how much it had meant to her.
    As she always did, she did a quick mental survey of where each member of her family was at that moment. It was something she did several times a day, and didn’t know if she’d ever be able to break the habit. Lucy and Hannah Roberson were downstairs, watching television. Hannah had asked, once again, if she could stay over. Sheridan was still out with her friends but would be due home soon. April was in her room, sulking, no doubt texting all her new cowboy friends since she’d become so popular with them. And Joe was out there somewhere in the mountains, helping to lead a manhunt for a family friend.
    Joe hadn’t called all afternoon or evening, and she assumed he was once again in a place with no cell service. Although she should be used to it by now, it was still tough to be completely out of touch with him. She hoped he felt the same way. He’d said he did.
    Throughout the day, Dulcie Schalk had kept her informed about what was going on in the mountains through texts to her phone. Marybeth knew that a command center had been established on the Big Stream Ranch, that Sheriff Reed had been marginalized (Dulcie was furious about that), and that Joe had been asked to lead a small team into the mountains where he’d last seen Butch Roberson. Butch claimed he had taken hostages, which ramped the entire horrible situation to a new level, not to mention that one of the hostages he had was ex-Sheriff Kyle McLanahan. There was some confusion about a report that an innocent hunter may or may not have been killed. Up until she heard about the hostages, Marybeth thought Joe might be able to concoct a way for it all to end peacefully.
    She tried not to consider a worst-case scenario where Joe and Butch would be at each other, trying to take the other out. If it weren’t for the worst-case scenarios she’d conjured up over the years that were subsequently dashed by events not quite as dire, Marybeth would have worried herself to death. She thought, as she often did, that wives who didn’t have husbands in law enforcement had no idea how wrenching it could be.
    —
    I T WASN’T SUPPOSED to be like this, she thought. Her mother, Missy, had married up five times and amassed a fortune in money and land. Missy had hoped her daughter would be practical and predatory, but instead she’d married Joe. Marybeth had steeled herself to defy Missy and her ways; to show that happiness and success could be achieved without guile and calculation. And for a while there, Marybeth thought she might win that argument.
    She imagined a life where she was back in business—a successful business—and Joe could change jobs. She knew how much he loved being a game warden, but frustrations with the bureaucracy and outright threats to their family over the years had taken a toll.
    Sure, the journey of their marriage and their prospects seemed to follow a pattern of one step forward, two steps back. But now, it seemed, they were backpedaling furiously. The Saddlestring Hotel project had offered hope and vindication.
    She sat up and rubbed her face with her hands. She hated to think like this. After all, she and Joe had two wonderful daughters they loved and who loved them, and a ward who might have recently turned the corner. The jury was still out on April, of course, and Marybeth hesitated to become too optimistic, but still . . .
    —
    W HEN HER CELL PHONE lit up on the bedstand, she scrambled to it, hoping to see it was Joe. Instead, it read: MATT DONNELL.
    She didn’t want to talk to him, and assumed he was calling to console her with his slick realtor talk. He’d wrecked their lives a few hours earlier, and he was the last person she wanted to talk with again. He’d probably be scheming about ways to get around some of the regulations if she’d just hang tight, but she was still too devastated. She let the call go to voicemail.
    Marybeth put the phone back down on the bedstand, listened to the chime indicating he’d left a message,