Someone to watch over me

around the mule, and slowly started north. The little boy’s eyes were as big as melons. At first he clutched the front of the sidecar. Eventually he relaxed and started looking around and giggling. Jack wished there were a way to put the cycle in the wagon and ride with Mary, but it would have taken too much time to lever it up onto the bed of the wagon, even if there had been room for it. He wanted to hear all about her trip. Where had she stayed? What had they eaten? Had the money he’d given her lasted long enough?
    But there would be time for all that later, when the family was home safe.

    The all-girl band was so successful that they managed to buy Cynthia a third-hand trumpet. Lily was glad to hear it. But after the initial thrill of having helped them started to fade, she got back to wondering about Donald Anderson.
    Did Roxanne suspect him of pursuing other women? Maybe not. Roxanne might have been too busy raising the children and growing her vegetables. She probably didn’t even have the leisure to wonder where her husband was and what he was really doing most of the time.
    Unfortunately, Lily knew that was feeble reasoning. Roxanne wasn’t dim. Mightn’t it be more likely that she knew and didn’t care, for some unimaginable reason?
    Lily admitted to herself that she was much younger, and probably still naive about some things. She found it impossible to read an older woman’s mind. Especially an older woman with a wandering husband and a houseful of growing children she was lovingly responsible for raising. Obviously most marriages weren’t perfect. When she was young, Lily had overheard her mother’s friends talk about how irritating they found some of their husbands’ traits.
    “He just comes home every night and listens to the radio until he falls asleep in his chair,“ one had said.
    “He never wants to go out to dinner and is a picky eater. I’m so sick of hiring one cook after another,“ another complained.
    “I can’t sleep for his horrendous snoring. I’m always tired,“ another woman said, not knowing a child was eavesdropping on her elders.
    But these weren’t the same things as Roxanne’s problem husband. His actions weren’t annoyances. They were outright betrayals of their marriage vows. And he’d barely tried to conceal them. Lily thought Roxanne must have known or at least suspected what sort of disloyal man she was married to. If Chief Walker thought so too, Roxanne was going to be in big trouble.
    But for all that, Lily simply couldn’t imagine such a forthright woman simply bumping off her husband. She didn’t want to imagine it. Lily had been half joking about turning into an Edith White. She was more interested in being the same sort of woman Roxanne appeared to be: hardworking, sensible, intelligent. Taking good care of her own children and her brother and his motherless daughter.
    There were probably quite a number of people who had been glad to be rid of Donald Anderson. Some of the women who’d been victims of his unwelcome advances. Husbands or brothers of those women who cooperated with him or complained about him. Perhaps even people he’d worked for or with. Or just drinking pals he’d offended. The possibilities were endless.

    On Sunday, Lily ran into Chief Walker on her way to church. She took him aside to say, “I need to talk to you privately. Would you have a few minutes later?“ So after church he was waiting down the block.
    The beat-up old black Ford the city provided and maintained for him had peeling white lettering saying CHIEF OF POLICE on the door. She slipped into the vehicle.
    “I’d love a ride home. Mr. Prinney went straight off after church to take his wife to visit one of their daughters for the day, and Robert didn’t feel like going to church at all.“
    “Is this what you wanted to talk about?“ Walker said with a smile.
    “Not exactly, but part of it,“ she said, smiling as well. “It’s about Donald Anderson. I don’t know how much you know about him—“
    “And I’m not sharing what I do know,“ he said bluntly. “But feel free to tell me what you think.”
    As they rode up the long winding road, she explained. “I’ve spoken to several women in town who told me he’d made unpleasant and unwelcome overtures to them. Sexual, I mean,“ she said bluntly, trying not to blush at saying the word out loud to a man—and a good-looking young man as well. “I can’t tell you who they were; they told me in