He stepped away from the mic. His legs seemed to shake as he walked off the stage.
Bodine saw she had two choices. Let those murmurs and hard looks turn to words, and maybe worse. Or start the healing.
She moved through the crowd, saw Chad stop, raise his tear-streaked face to hers. He broke into sobs when she slid an arm around him.
“All right now, Chad. You come with me now. You don’t blame yourself for what happened. She wouldn’t want you to. She wasn’t like that.”
She made sure her voice carried as she led him out of the memorial, and to the steps leading down.
In the heavy silence, Jessica walked quickly to the stage. From what she could see, Bodine had started turning the tide. She’d try to keep it moving.
“I didn’t know Billy Jean very well. I haven’t worked here as long as most of you. But I remember after my first week here, going into the Saloon. I was feeling good about the work, but a little out of place, maybe a little homesick.”
She brushed her hair back from her face. She’d left it down so it waved its way to her shoulders. More casual, more friendly, she thought, than wearing it up and sleek.
“I wanted to fit in here,” she continued, “so I went into the Saloon that evening. Billy Jean was working the bar. I asked her what she’d recommend, told her I’d just started working here.
“She told me she knew that already, that bartenders hear everything sooner or later, and usually sooner. She recommended a huckleberry margarita. I’m going to admit it didn’t sound appealing.”
On stage, Jessica smiled at the chuckles.
“A lot of customers were in there that night, and I noticed how easy she made her job look. How she had a smile for everybody, even if she was working with both hands. She put that drink in front of me. I looked at it thinking why in the hell did people around here put huckleberries in everything. Then I took a sip, and got the answer.”
She smiled again at the quick laughter, waited a moment. “I drank my first huckleberry margarita. Then I drank a second one, sitting at the bar, watching Billy Jean work. When she put a third one in front of me, I told her I couldn’t. I had to drive home. Only to the Village, but I couldn’t get behind the wheel with three drinks in me. And she said: Honey, you go ahead and have that drink, and celebrate your first week here. That she was off in an hour, and she’d drive me home. So I did, and she did. It wasn’t the huckleberries that made me feel like I was beginning to fit in. It was Billy Jean.”
She stepped off the stage, took an emotional test of the air around her. And, deciding the tide had fully turned, moved to the background.
“That was a good thing.”
She glanced over at Chase. She hadn’t seen him move in her direction. “Your sister did the right thing. I just finished it off. And the story was God’s truth.”
“That was a good thing,” he repeated. “Just like this memorial. I want to say you put it together just the right way, and maybe you knew her better than you think.”
“I had a sense of her, and I talked to people who knew her well.” She looked around the space, at the photographs, the flowers, the faces. “All this has taught me a couple of things. I wish I’d spent more time sitting at the bar when she was working it. And she was—we all are—part of a whole, not just employees of a good company. Bodine told me some who came here today are seasonals, and some of them drove a hundred miles and more to come. That’s what family does. And that kind of sensibility comes from the top. Your family set that tone, and it rings true.”
“I’m going to apologize.”
She aimed those blue eyes straight into his, raised her eyebrows over them. “Are you?”
“I didn’t mean to make you feel you don’t belong.”
“You just don’t think I do?”
He shifted his feet. “I’m apologizing.”
“And I should be gracious enough to accept it. So I will. Bygones.” She held out a hand.
“All right.” Though it felt awfully damn small in his, Chase shook her hand. “I need to get back, but—”
“Miss Fancy’s sitting over there, and Rory’s due any minute. It’s fine if you go.”
“Then I’ll … ah…” Since he’d run out of words, he nodded, escaped.
As he made his way out, exchanging more words with some who sat at tables set up on the main floor, he saw Callen coming toward the Mill.
“Couldn’t get away before now,” Callen said.
“More than enough time. We had some drama when Chad came along, had a say.”
“Is that so?”
On a sigh because he knew the tone, Chase settled his hat down further on his head. “You’re still mad.”
“You broke an oath.”
“You weren’t there. I’m sorry I let temper get in the way of it, but it did. And it’s done. You want to even it up, I’ll give you leave to break the oath we took about me pouring whisky into a Coke bottle and sneaking it out of the house, and the pair of us trying to drink it up at the campsite, and getting sick as dogs instead.”
“You got sicker.”
“Maybe. You puked your share. You can tell that one if it levels this.”
Considering, Callen hooked his fingers in the front pockets of his jeans. “Picking what you say I can tell doesn’t level it. I should be able to pick one.”
Because he couldn’t argue with the logic, Chase frowned out at the mountains. “Go ahead then. Pick one and let’s put this away.”
“Maybe I’ll pick how you lost your virginity when Brenna Abbott lured you into the hayloft at your sister’s thirteenth-birthday party.”
Chase winced. It might not have been his proudest moment—considering his whole family and about fifty others had been within shouting distance—but it had been a seminal one.
“If that’ll do it.”
Callen stood hipshot, studying the mountains along with his friend, listening to the music and voices from inside the Mill.
“Hell, it’d just make me feel like an asshole, and stop you from feeling so much like one. I’d rather you feel like one awhile more. Whatever happened to Brenna Abbott?”
“Last I heard she was living in Seattle. Or maybe Portland.”
“How quickly we forget. Well, bygones,” Callen said, offering a hand.
Chase stared at it, then let out a laugh. “That’s the second time in under ten minutes somebody said that to me. I must be making it a habit to mess things up.”
“Nope, not a habit. Just a blip on the screen.”
“I got something else. Clintok starts something, you come and get me before you finish it.”
“I’m not worried about Clintok.”
“You come and get me,” Chase repeated, then spat on his palm, stuck out his hand.
“Jesus.” Touched, amused, and struggling not to think of Bodine’s comment about twelve-year-olds, Callen mirrored the gesture, clasped hands.
“All right then. I’ve got to get back.” Chase sauntered away.
Rubbing his hand on his jeans, Callen walked inside to pay his respects to the dead.
*
Bodine wouldn’t rank herself as a top cook. She might not rank herself in the top fifty percent of cooks. But on Thanksgiving, she did her duty.