Carolina Moon

for someone else. That I was waiting for someone else. Look at me, Tory.”
    “It’s all so fast. You should take more time.”
    “Twenty years or two months. Time’s never been the point for us. If you can’t believe and trust what I say, if it isn’t enough to steady you, look at what I feel.” He lifted her hand to his heart. “Look in me, Tory.”
    She couldn’t refuse or resist. And the heat of it slid into her. Warmth and strength. And hope. His heart beat steady under her palm, his eyes never wavered from hers. Trust, she thought. He was trusting her with all that he was. The next step was hers.
    “I wish you could look in me, because I don’t know how to tell you what I feel. Scared, because there’s so much of it. I never wanted to be in love with anyone again. But I didn’t know it could be different. I didn’t know it could be you. You’re so steady, Cade.” Smiling now, she lifted a hand to toy with his hair. “You steady me.”
    “Marry me.”
    “Oh God.” She took a deep breath, had to take a second. “Yes.” She looked down as he slipped the ring on her finger. “It’s beautiful. I get dizzy looking at it.”
    “It’s a little big.” He ran a thumb around the gold band. “You have delicate hands. We’ll have it sized.”
    “Not right away. I want to get used to it first.” She closed her hand into a fist, then let out a sigh. “She loved him.” Her eyes swam as she lifted them again. “Your grandmother. She loved him. Her name was Laura, and she was happy.”
    “So will we be,” he promised.
    She let herself believe him.
    Carl D. kept the siren on and the speedometer at eighty straight up 1-95. It wasn’t called for, of course, but it did give him a nice little kick. And God knew it entertained J.R.
    He shut it down as they approached their turnoff.
    “Maybe we oughta be doing this on Sundays instead of fishing.”
    “Gets the blood moving,” J.R. agreed. “Hard to feel like an old fart when you’re highballing down the road.”
    “Who you calling an old fart? Tell you what I’ll do, J.R., if you think it’ll make it smoother for you. I’ll drop you off at your sister’s place, then I’ll go on and check in with the sheriff. Give you time to talk to her and for her to get her things together.”
    “I appreciate that.” J.R.’s mood plummeted, but he did his best to bolster it. “She’s not going to want to budge, so it’ll take a little doing. I figure I’ll tell her we’re pretty sure Han’s still around Progress, so she’ll be closer to him if she comes on along with me.”
    “It may just be the truth. And that being the case, I’m going to put extra patrols on your street. I want you to start using that fancy alarm system Boots talked you into a couple years back.”
    “Been using it since you found the Bellows girl. Boots says she doesn’t get a minute’s rest unless we got it on.” He thought of his town, the streets he could walk with his eyes shut, the people he knew by name. And all who knew him. “That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.”
    “No, but sometimes that’s the way it is. You and me, J.R., we grew up one way. We’ve seen the changes come into Progress, and most of them’s good. We bend to them, maybe lose a little something when they plant houses in a field where we used to play ball, or put up another Jiffy Mart and talk about goddamn strip malls outside of town. But we bend. Some changes you have to meet another way altogether.”
    J.R. smiled a little. “What the hell does that mean?”
    “Damned if I know. This the turn for her place?”
    “Yeah. Road’s rough. You’re going to want to mind your oil pan. I’m ashamed for you to see how she’s living, Carl D.”
    “Put that aside. We’ve been friends too long for that kind of shit.” The cruiser bumped, scraped. Wincing, Carl D. slowed to a crawl. Then peering ahead, his eyes narrowed. “What the hell’s this? Goddamn it. There’s trouble. Goddamn it,” he repeated, and hit the gas so they took the rest of the rutted road in wild bumps.
    Two cruisers sat nose-to-nose outside the house. Yellow police tape was stretched around the scruffy yard. Even as he hit the brakes, the uniform standing on the sagging porch stepped down.
    “Chief Russ outta Progress.” He fumbled out his ID, held it up for the uniform to scan. “What happened here?”
    “We had an incident, Chief Russ.” The officer’s face was pale and coldly set, his eyes concealed