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  “No. That’s a good whiskey.” Aldean touched the brim of his battered Stetson. “You’re only jealous because it’s not yours.”

  She was jealous. Twenty-four months ago Aldean was pouring Poisonwood whiskey into a barrel he had bought at the Burnville Flea Market, hoping that somehow aging Poisonwood in questionably cured wood would improve the flavor. Twenty-four months ago Marydale was in solitary—protective segregation, they called it—because a woman named Dixie-Lynn had tried to stab her with a shank fashioned out of a melted toothbrush.

  She poured the dregs of the Solo cup onto the dirt floor and tried her own three-month infusion.

  “Smooth. Slightly floral,” Marydale said. “High desert up front with a kind of sweet lost-youth aftertaste.”

  Aldean took her cup from her, sipped, and handed it back.

  “That’s a girl’s whiskey.” He clucked his tongue. “And I do like a girl who drinks whiskey.”

  Aldean gestured for Marydale to follow him, and they headed out to the fire. He picked up a metal grate and set it over the pit. From a cooler nearby, he produced a package wrapped in white paper. Soon two steaks were sizzling on the fire. Marydale settled down in a lawn chair. Lilith circled around the fire, sniffing for the meat. Aldean pulled a cigarette from behind his ear, lit it, and inhaled. In the firelight, his face was all cheekbone and rugged stubble.

  “So. What about the new girl?” he asked.

  “There’s a girl in Tristess you don’t already know?”

  “New to me. New to you.” He kicked his boots out in front of him. “She’s from the city. You know how they are.”

  “No, I don’t, and neither do you.”

  “I know how to rope a calf. Don’t matter where she comes from.” Aldean talked around his cigarette the way his Pops did, but he managed to make it look sexy. “You like her?”

  “No.”

  “She’s got that repressed-librarian thing going. Just makes you want to squeeze her.”

  “No!” Marydale laughed. “It doesn’t.”

  But the lawyer did have that repressed-librarian thing…No, it wasn’t repressed. It was focused. Marydale could see her with her tortoiseshell glasses, her brownish-blond hair that wasn’t any color and that she clearly didn’t care about dying. She always wore gray: gray suits, gray pumps, silky blue-gray blouses the color of winter skies. She was pretty the way the high desert was pretty: in muted shades. Marydale liked the way the lawyer concentrated on her phone or her papers, the way she hadn’t noticed the trio of rangeland firefighters who had admired her from their perch at the counter. She must have felt their gaze like a hand on her back, but she hadn’t looked up until Marydale had come by with a carafe of coffee. Then she had smiled shyly, a little embarrassed, like a good apostolic girl opening up her Bible on her lap. Well, Marydale, I’m so glad you asked about our Savior.

  “So you gonna hit it and quit it?” Aldean asked.

  “I asked her to move in with me.”

  “No!”

  “She can’t find a place to rent.”

  “That’s not how you hit it and quit it.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Marydale protested.

  Aldean stood up again and retrieved a set of tin plates from somewhere in the darkness behind the fire. Lilith followed him, her muscular, white body glowing in the firelight. He handed a plate, fork, and knife to Marydale, then sat down with his own dinner. Lilith sat beside him while he cut up his steak. When he had reduced the meat to the same pea-sized bites he cut for Pops, he scraped a quarter of the meat onto the ground for Lilith.

  “You spoil her,” Marydale said.

  “What did she say?” Aldean asked. “She gonna come look at your place?”

  “No.” Marydale stabbed the meat on her plate. “Of course she’s not going to rent from me. She’s the DA.”

  “You gonna do anything about it?”

  “No.”

  “I know,” he said. “This fucking town.”

  Marydale glanced over. Aldean nodded slowly, his eyes hidden in the shadow of his hat. Behind him the Firesteed Mountains stood in black relief against a navy sky.

  “Back in the day, you would’ve,” he said.

  “Back in the day,” Marydale said, “was a long time ago.”

  3

  Kristen stood in front of her boss’s desk, her pen poised over a notepad. District Attorney Boyd Relington hadn’t asked her to sit down, and the moment to sit anyway—because they were colleagues and she shouldn’t need an invitation—had passed. Now sitting felt like a statement.

  “These are your case files for next week,” Relington said.

  “Are these all the cases that came in?” Kristen asked.

  “We got a stack of cases from the police. The new chief sends everything our way.”

  Kristen was fairly sure she’d heard someone say that the “new” chief had been in his position for more than ten years.

  “Back in the day,” Relington went on, “some people knew when to leave well enough alone, but I went through the paperwork from the police. I’ll be prosecuting the O’Rourke case. You’ll be doing Alioto, Esso, Scappa, De La Pedraja.” He rattled off a few more names.

  “Can I see the rest of the files that came in from the police?” Kristen asked.

  “Not every arrest warrants a prosecution.”

  Everything Relington said was a counterargument. He was like all law students she had gone to school with and then taught in first-year legal writing, only older and untempered by the constant influx of more brilliant, young legal minds.

  “I mean is there a selection process?” Kristen had rehearsed her speech. I trust your judgment, but I’d like to select my own cases.

  “Do you really want to discuss this now?”

  Relington checked his watch. It was Friday, four thirty. The afternoon sun cut through the sagging venetian blinds, illuminating the Tristess memorabilia that filled Relington’s office: football jersey behind glass, a set of old stirrups. It was like the Western-themed Silver Rush Bar in Portland…only not ironic.

  “Yes,” Kristen said. “Now is fine.”

  “Okay. What’s this about, really? Sit.”

  “I’d like to select the cases I try.” Kristen lowered herself into a chair.

  “These are good cases.” Relington leaned forward and tapped the stack of files on his desk. “I selected them.”

  “I’m sure they’re good cases.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “About a month.”

  “And how long are you planning to stay?”

  Kristen had lain awake for the past week, working on the equation. Leaving in less than a year would negate the benefit of having deputy DA on her résumé, but two years would be more than plenty.

  “I don’t have any plans to leave,” she said.

  Relington snorted. “Do you know why I hired you?”

  Kristen could feel the insult coming.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “What matters is that I’m here, and I want to do my job. I want to serve this community, and I want to help you.”

  “This community.” Relington rose and walked over to one of the framed photographs on the wall. “That’s my father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather. This man here—” He pointed. “That’s Ronald Holten.” He spoke the name reverently. The municipal building that housed the court, the elementary school, and the nearby penitentiary all bore the name Holten.

  “Tristess is my family,” Relington went on. “Every case we try, I know them. I know what happened to them as children. I know their parents, their grandparents. Let me ask you, Ms. Brock, if you got in trouble and you had to go to court, would you want someone who’d been in town for a whole month deciding your fate, or would you want someone who knew your story? Some of these guys, if they go to jail for a week, they don’t get their herd in for the first round of auction. Their hay goes sour. They’re not there to call the vet for a breech. People don’t have mone
y here, like they do in the city. Honestly, tell me what you’d want?”

  Kristen felt her face flush. “I’d want the law to decide.”

  “We are the law,” Relington said in a tone that said I not we. He pushed a slip of paper across the desk. “Speaking of Mr. Holten. He heard you were having trouble finding a place to rent. Meet him here at twelve thirty tomorrow.”

  “Ronald Holten?” Kristen asked, but Relington’s expression told her the conversation was over.

  4

  Saturday noontime found Kristen gazing up at a three-story Victorian sandwiched between a nail salon and a used tire dealer. If she narrowed her field of vision, it looked exactly like what she had optimistically hoped all of Tristess would be: elegant and windswept, with just a touch of Wild West brothel. Kristen took out her phone, cropped out Sandy’s Nails and the tire shop, and texted the picture to Donna. Donna loved architecture. She’d gone through a whole mansard-roof period.

  Kristen heard an engine come to a stop behind her. She turned. A man had just pulled up in the largest, shiniest pickup truck she had ever seen. He stepped out of the enormous vehicle.

  “She is a beauty, isn’t she?” he called out, nodding toward the house. “It is so good to finally meet you. I’m Ronald Holten.” Holten came toward her, hand extended. “Please call me Ronnie. Everyone calls me Ronnie.” His wide, sunburned face opened in a smile, but his teeth were perfect and shadowless, like dentures or the carefully filed teeth of actors.

  No one calls you Ronnie, Kristen thought.

  “I know a girl like yourself is perfectly capable of finding her own apartment, but I hated to think that you’d found Tristess unfriendly. Come.”

  They climbed the front stairs. At the door, Holten reached into his pocket, feigning surprise at the discovery of a key. Kristen offered him a smile, but it felt like a grimace.

  “See what you think,” he said.

  He unlocked the door and stepped aside so she could precede him into the house. Inside, a stained-glass skylight bathed the foyer in amber light, and a curving staircase wound its way up to the next floor.

  “It’s amazing,” Kristen said with real awe.

  “My great-grandfather had this place built.” He ushered her into a large, furnished parlor. “Now, I know you may be looking for something a little more modern.” The room had chair railings—Donna had taught her that term—and armchairs with dragons carved into the legs.

  “My wife would love to move into town, but we’ve got grandsons. They need a place to run.” He touched his thumb to the corner of his eye. When he spoke again, there was a manly roughness to his voice. “And family comes first for us. Always has, always will. Of course, we wouldn’t expect you to pay rent while you’re serving the county. Just take good care of the place and pay the utilities. You’d be doing us a favor.”

  The tour of the house was an hour and a half of Tristess history, which was also Holten family history. When they finished, Holten led her back to the kitchen, where a bottle of Poisonwood whiskey rested on a silver tray with two snifters.

  “Looks like someone got you a housewarming present,” Holten said with a look of contrived surprise, as though the bottle were a mysterious apparition.

  Kristen wondered if he had stopped by the house earlier to drop it off or if he had staff or a wife in a lacy apron to run his errands for him.

  He pulled the foil from the cap, poured two shots, and handed one to her.

  “What do you think of the Poisonwood?”

  Kristen took a sip. The liquor seared her tongue like some medicinal poison pioneers used to cut the pain of childbirth or dentistry. Kristen remembered her last year in college: she had briefly dated a philosophy major who’d claimed that microbrews and art films were bourgeois traps. He had taken to drinking Mad Dog and watching kung fu movies on VHS. He would have liked the Poisonwood, Kristen thought.

  “It’s nice.” She choked down another sip.

  “This town’s seen some good times and some bad times,” Holten said. “I guess that’s true everywhere, but here you can feel it. It’s a community, and that’s worth protecting.”

  “I am here to do my best,” Kristen said.

  Holten held his glass up to the light coming through the kitchen window.

  “There’s a lot you can learn from a man like Boyd Relington, and I’m not just talking about the law. I’ve seen young DAs like yourself come in here and think they can change things,” Holten went on. “They think they should change things, without understanding the town. But I have a good feeling about you. I think you know what I’m saying.”

  I think you know what I’m saying. It was the kind of thing her mother’s boyfriends said right before she dodged out from under their boozy embrace, but her mother had a type, and it wasn’t the type who owned Victorian houses. Her mother liked strip-club bouncers and ex-felons. Holten had power.

  “Tristess is a real special place.” Holten said it the same way he’d said the house was a beauty. He owned it, and he was proud.

  “This is a lovely house,” Kristen said. “May I have just a day or two to think about your offer? I…” She searched for a lie. “I should have mentioned this.” Kristen fumbled for words. “I promised my friend I’d move into her place, and this is so much nicer, but I need to make sure I’m not leaving her in the lurch with the rent and all.”

  “A woman who fulfills her obligations,” Holten said. “I like that.” But his sunburned smile had lost its sunshine. “Let me know.” He held out the bottle of Poisonwood. “Welcome to Tristess.”

  5

  The lawyer did not come by the next day or the day after. Marydale tried not to notice. She’d told herself it was fine to have a crush. A crush was fun. She imagined a shiver of electricity passing between them when she refilled the lawyer’s coffee. Just thinking about it made the twelve-hour shifts go faster. But when the lawyer didn’t come in after Marydale offered her a room to rent, the disappointment Marydale felt made her chest ache.

  She paused in her round of coffee top-offs and extra napkins to lean on the counter where Aldean was eating a piece of Frank’s lemon chiffon pie. Across the street, the Almost Home Motel sat motionless.

  “So. That lawyer,” Aldean said between bites.

  Marydale felt her cheeks flush like a teenage girl caught fawning over a photo of the high school quarterback. The lawyer would never look up at her and whisper I’ve been waiting for you, Marydale, the way she did in Marydale’s daydreams. The lawyer probably didn’t remember her name, and even if she did…a girl couldn’t have those dreams in Tristess. Marydale had learned that lesson the hard way.

  “You gonna tap that?” Aldean asked.

  Marydale tried for an easy smile. “Aldean!” She slapped his wrist.

  He set his fork down. “I’m giving you first dibs.”

  “You said she looked like a repressed librarian.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not a bad thing, and she’s from the city. She can’t be that repressed. We’re not going to have to do it with the lights out and her mother’s doll collection up on the dresser.”

  “Jaylen from the Burnville Walmart?”

  “She was hot, but then she told me all their names, and they were just looking at me. I had to turn the lights out.”

  “You’re such a dog.” Marydale slouched lower on the counter.

  “Excuse me!” It was sixteen-year-old Tippany in her hand-embroidered apron. “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.” It was probably some sort of resolve Tippany had made with her friends at the Tristess High Values Club. She was going to stand up to wrongdoers. “A job is a privilege, not a right.”

  “Sorry,” Marydale said slowly. “I was just looking for the Moguls. It’s a biker gang.”

  Tippany hadn’t role-played this part of the conversation. “The Woodrows want a new bottle of ketchup,” she said, talking loudly, as though volume could return the conversation to its proper track.

  “They�
�re supposed to be coming through town before sunset,” Marydale added casually. “They’re looking for virgins. I wish I wasn't closing tonight. Although technically, I don’t count, even though I gave up my, ah, virgin chalice to a girl.” She blew a little kiss toward Tippany. “But you’re just their type. Isn’t that right, Aldean?”

  Aldean looked up at Tippany, and the girl fidgeted with the flounce of her apron. She might have sewn abstinence pledge bracelets for all her friends, but there were few straight women whose wombs didn’t flutter at the sight of Aldean Dean.

  “God’s own truth,” Aldean said.

  Tippany hurried way.

  “You’re terrible,” Aldean said.

  Marydale leaned her elbows on the counter. “Ronald Holten offered her a place to rent.”

  “The lawyer. I know. At the Holten House,” Aldean concurred. Of course he had heard. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Your place is nicer.”

  “No. It’s not. I know she wasn’t going to rent a room from me, but she doesn’t know Ronald Holten. She’s going to think he’s just a nice guy with country hospitality or some shit.”

  “Don’t do that.” Aldean pointed a warning fork at her.

  “Do what?”

  “Get all protective. Get attached.”

  “You’re ridiculous.” Marydale picked up a cloth from behind the counter and started polishing. “I don’t even know her.”

  Still, she watched the glowing windows of the Almost Home Motel as she put the last of the chairs up on the tables. She wasn’t attached. She wasn’t even optimistic. According to the conditions of her parole, she wasn’t allowed to date. Hell, she wasn’t allowed to drive across the county line to Burnville. But as she went to put the locking pin in the door, she stopped. A figure emerged from the side of the Almost Home, and Marydale recognized the lawyer’s stride, confident and purposeful, her head bowed slightly, like a businesswoman walking though rain. And Marydale knew Kristen wasn’t coming to see her. She was coming for an order of pie or chicken fries or one of the stale candy bars they kept under the glass counter by the register, and yet Marydale’s heart beat faster. She tried to fix her hair, but she could feel her unruly curls exploding in the humid air. She stepped outside, still trying to tuck strands back into their alligator clip.