LITMIR.BIZ

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it goin’, Win?” he asked, sending the little girl a playful grin.

      The two-year-old bounded over to him, throwing her arms around his knees. “Wy-ant!” she cried, saying his name with two distinct syllables. “You bring candy?”

      He reached into the breast pocket of his uniform where he always carried fun-sized banana taffies for Winnie. “Oh, no,” he teased. “I’m all out!”

      Her plump cheeks fell and her smile disappeared as she looked up at him. “Wy-ant... Don’t tease da poor girl,” she said it with all seriousness, but he couldn’t help but laugh as her high-pitched voice mimicked her mother’s words.

      “Oh, well, if you say so.” He pulled the candy from his pocket and handed it to Winnie, who took it and ran toward the barn and out of the vicinity of anywhere her mother might see her gobble the treat.

      Winnie turned back as she moved to slip through the barn door. “Thank you, Wy-ant.”

      Gwen stood next to him. “Looks like you have a fan.”

      He looked at her and smiled. “She is something special,” he said, wanting to add that the girl wasn’t the only special one in his life, but he stopped.

      Gwen looked at him and moved to speak, but stopped and then walked to the barn where Winnie had disappeared. “Where did it happen?”

      He motioned forward, opened the door for her and followed her inside. The lights were on, illuminating the darkened stalls. It was quiet since the horses had already been fed and turned out for the day. The place smelled like hay and horses, a smell that always reminded him of home.

      “We found her in the back pen, just there,” he said, motioning to the stall.

      Gwen stood still, staring in the direction he had pointed. Aside from it being the place where they’d found Bianca’s body, it was like every other barn—stacks of hay, the tack room, stalls and a door leading to the pasture. Yet Gwen was holding her arm around her body like this was the first time they’d ever been inside, even though there was evidence in the hayloft to the contrary.

      Her gaze moved to the ladder that led up to the hayloft, and for a moment, he swore he saw a smile flicker over her lips. Was she thinking about the last time they had stepped up those rungs as well?

      He walked around her, hoping she was envisioning all the possibilities of giving him one more shot in the hayloft. Moving to the stall, he looked to the spot where they had found Bianca. For a moment, he could see her there again. At the time, there had been talk about calling her family in, but he was glad now, looking back, that they hadn’t. Some things couldn’t be unseen. It would be hard enough for Gwen to see Bianca in the casket—the last thing she needed was to see her sister sitting in the middle of the horse stall surrounded by dirty hay, water buckets and the hooves of a hurt and scared mare.

      The horse was gone and the stall had been recently cleaned so well that he could smell the strong, suspicious scent of bleach. That was unlike his mother or the staff—normally they never used bleach out here. Some things weren’t going to get completely clean no matter how much scrubbing they did, and a horse stall was one of them.

      “What happened to the horse—is she okay?” Gwen asked.

      The wood of the door was rounded and smoothed by the years of horses chewing it, but as he took his hand away it still scraped at his skin.

      “My mother had another vet come in and take a look at her. Luckily, the horse’s leg wasn’t broken, just a sprain.”

      “I’m glad the horse is going to be okay.” She said it like it carried some measure of comfort that only one of the beings in this stall had lost its life. “Bianca would have liked to have known the horse was okay, I’m sure.”

      “I’m sure she’s watching down.” As he spoke, he knew it was a platitude.

      Gwen glanced over at him and put her hand on top of his. “Thanks. I know you don’t mean it, but thanks.”

      Seriously, it was like she could read his mind sometimes and it scared the bejeezus out of him. As it was, however, with her warm hand on his, he would take whatever he could get. It was better than having her angry.

      He took her hand in his. “I do mean it. Sort of.”

      “You don’t believe in that stuff, remember?”

      He shrugged. “What I believe doesn’t matter. What matters is that your sister was a good person. If there is any justice in this world, her soul will rest in peace, maybe where she can watch down on you and help keep you from finding yourself in too much trouble.” He smiled, trying to lighten the mood. He hated talk of death.

      “If there was any justice in this world, Wyatt, she wouldn’t have been killed. And I wouldn’t be standing in the middle of the crime scene.”

      “Actually,” a woman said, her voice cutting through the tension, “you aren’t really standing in the middle of the crime scene. Bianca died inside the stall.”

      He turned to see Alli standing there, Winnie in hand, staring at them. Gwen pulled her fingers from his, and as much as he loved Winnie, he silently wished they hadn’t been interrupted.

      “Heya, Alli. You’re right, but this is still part of the scene,” he said. “Come here, Winnie-girl.”

      Winnie let go of her mother’s hand and scampered over, and he picked her up. She was heavy in his arms in a way that made him wish, for half a second, that he had a child of his own.

      Gwen looked over at him and smiled, but the action was short-lived.

      “You know, Wyatt, you don’t have to give Winnie a treat every time you see her,” Alli grumbled. “She’s getting spoiled. Soon she’s going to be a brat if you keep it up.”

      He lifted Winnie so he could look up into her face. He turned her from right to left as though he was inspecting her. “Yep. Nope. Don’t see a brat here. Just see a few bats in the cave.”

      Winnie giggled, the sound was infectious and he caught himself laughing with her.

      “What, don’t you ever pick those boogies?” he teased.

      Winnie reached up and stuck her finger in her nose. She lifted her finger for him to see. “Look, I get them boogies!” she answered excitedly.

      “You’re just like your brother,” Alli said, her tone heavy with dislike. She reached over and grabbed Winnie and set her back on the ground. “Go wash your hands, girl.”

      Winnie gave him a backward wave as she escaped the confines of the barn and the castigation of her mother.

      “The gardens looked good this year,” he said, trying to make small talk with Alli.

      She shrugged. “I’ll do better next year. It was just too dry a summer.”

      He’d tried to work in the gardens one year, as his family sold their vegetables and fruits at the local farmer’s market every Saturday in the warm months, but he’d found in a single month that he had a brown thumb rather than a green one. Though, admittedly, he had been working there with their old gardener, Bernard, who’d had even less of an amicable nature than Alli. Not all professional gardeners he’d met were light on personality, but it seemed like the last couple his mother had employed were no Bob Hopes.

      Then again, his mother hadn’t really hired Alli so much as been forced to bring her into the fold when Waylon had eloped with her. Now Wyatt’s brother had been gone for almost three years, but here they were stuck with the only part of him that he’d left behind.

      Alli hadn’t always been rough to be around, but the day Waylon left everything likable about Alli had gone with him.

      “How were the tomatoes this year?” Gwen asked, in what he assumed was some kind of olive branch.

      “Not as good as I woulda liked, but I did pretty good at the market. The people

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