Chapter 4

Tim and I are lovers.

The words made Jarrod's head spin for a moment. It took him a bit to fumble it out, but he finally said, "What are you talking about? How in the world did you become involved with him? He's garbage!"

"He's not, Jarrod," Olivia said. "We were just having a spat. You jumped to conclusions."

"Look, Jarrod," the sheriff said, "you've had a short fuse for years now. You made a mistake when you attacked Boniface. Olivia backs him up. I'm gonna have to let him go."

Jarrod didn't believe this. "Fred, I know what I saw. Olivia, how can you let a man handle you that way?"

"Jarrod, please, just let it go," Olivia said. "He wasn't trying to hurt me. We just had a spat and I was trying to walk away and he was trying to stop me. That was all it was."

Jarrod took a couple deep breaths. He knew what he had seen, but now Olivia was saying it wasn't what he had seen.

"Jarrod – Olivia means something to you even now, and you saw what you wanted to see," the sheriff said.

"What I wanted to see?" Jarrod was incredulous.

"Maybe not wanted," Sheriff Madden said. "Maybe expected. But if Boniface says he wasn't trying to hurt Olivia and she says the same thing, I have to let him go. I don't have any choice."

Again, Jarrod thought. Boniface is avoiding responsibility for what he's done again. And Jarrod began to seethe inside. He honestly didn't know what to do right now other than be angry at everyone around him.

"Look, Jarrod," the sheriff said again. "Go on home. Cool off. Nothing happened as far as I'm concerned. You and Boniface can both lick your wounds and forget the whole thing. BUT – you watch that temper of yours. In a lot of ways you got lucky today. Boniface could be having you up on charges if Olivia wasn't letting you both off the hook."

Jarrod looked down at Olivia. He took a few more deep breaths and calmed down – some. He ended up saying, "Olivia – the sheriff is right about one thing. No one else but us knows what happened between you and me. But it meant something to me, and you still mean something to me. And if you need me, I'll be here."

Jarrod waited for her reaction. She nodded, slightly. Jarrod was still convinced what he had seen was a woman being attacked, and now she was afraid to tell the truth about it. But he couldn't do anything. He turned and went out.

He found his brothers heading down the street toward him, Heath on horseback and Nick driving a buggy, his own horse and Jarrod's horse hitched to the back. Jarrod headed up the street to them, every vestige of a sore back gone now, gone as his anger had risen up. Nick hardly got the buggy stopped before Jarrod climbed in beside him. "Drive," he just said.

Nick and Heath both knew an angry Jarrod when they saw him, and they knew when not to ask. This was one of those times. Nick gave a slap to the reins, and the rode all the way home in silence.

XXXXXX

The first thing Jarrod ever said, as he was resting on the settee in the living room with his head back and ice in a towel on his black eye, was when Nick said he was going to pay Boniface off and let him go. Without uncovering the eye or looking up, Jarrod said, "No, Nick, keep him on."

"Keep him on?" Nick said, unbelieving. "Jarrod, you don't get to have a knock-down drag-out with one of us and keep your job! Not to mention he was in town when he was supposed to be on the job!"

"I'm told I misinterpreted," Jarrod said. "The fight was my fault."

"Now, I don't believe that for a minute," Nick said.

Heath was more sanguine about it. "Who told you that, Jarrod?"

"Sheriff Madden and Olivia Emery," Jarrod said. "I can hardly argue them about it."

"Just how do they explain it?" Nick asked.

"It's not something I want to talk about," Jarrod said.

"Is it confidential?" Heath asked.

"Not in the legal sense," Jarrod said. "It's just private."

Nick and Heath looked at each other. They had talked to each other about whatever it was that was going on between their older brother, Boniface and Olivia. Neither one of them liked that Jarrod was keeping tight-lipped about it. "Look, Jarrod, if we're going to be bailing you out – "

Jarrod had had it with the "Look, Jarrod"s he'd been getting today. "Nick, let it go. It's over and done and it was a fight that happened because I misinterpreted what I saw. Don't bail me out of anything anymore if you don't like it."

Jarrod didn't know that his Mother and sister had entered the room, but Nick and Heath saw them. Nick threw his hands up in the air and said to Victoria, "You talk to him."

"I don't know what I'd say," Victoria said.

Jarrod opened his good eye, looked her way, and closed it again.

"No one around here has to talk about something they don't want to talk about," Victoria said. "If Jarrod says he made a mistake and that's the end of the issue, then that's the end of it."

"Nick," Jarrod said, "keep Boniface on and we can keep a closer eye on him than if he's wandering around town on his own."

"And you think that's our job, to keep an eye on him?" Nick said.

"I think it's my job to keep him from hurting Olivia," Jarrod said.

"You don't think you really misinterpreted what was going on between them, do you?" Heath asked.

"I don't know," Jarrod said. "I'm just being cautious."

There was silence then, Nick scowling, Victoria trying to calm him down with her eyes. Heath defused the situation. "Nick, why don't we get back to work?"

"And leave Boniface alone!" Jarrod spoke up, more loudly. "If there's anything to say to him, I'll say it."

"Do as he asks, Nick," Victoria said.

Nick huffed and left the house, Heath right behind him.

"Thank you, Mother," Jarrod said when he heard the front door close.

"Oh, I'm on Nick's side," Victoria said. "If you're asking him to keep Boniface on, he deserves to know why, all of it."

Jarrod sat up, removing the ice from his eye. It was swollen shut, and his back hurt again now as he tried to get comfortable in a sitting position. "Because I made a mistake. That's all there is to know."

"I know better than that," Victoria said, "but that's your misperception to deal with. Just be aware – and I'm sure you are – that this thing between you and Boniface is not over."

"I'm aware," Jarrod said.

"And you are a more powerful man now than you were even a few months ago," Victoria said, "and a man with a heavier temper than you were a few years ago."

"I know who I am, Mother," Jarrod said.

Audra had been quiet, just taking this all in, but she finally said, "You know you can talk to us if you want to, Jarrod."

Jarrod smiled at her. "I know that. And if I need to, I will. But right now, I don't need to." He got up wearily, unfolding painfully. "Right now I'm going to get myself some more ice, take myself up to my bed, and take it easy like the doctor told me to. The rest of this can wait until tomorrow."

He hobbled off to the kitchen, leaving his Mother to watch him go and his sister to shake her head. "Why is he like this? Why is it the more he ought to talk to us, the less he does?"

"It's his way," Victoria said. "I might have made it worse because I talked him into becoming a lawyer."

"He became a lawyer because he wanted to, Mother," Audra said.

"I had a hand in it. But you're right, and he keeps his secrets because he wants to," Victoria said. And she sighed a sigh like Mothers everywhere sigh almost daily. "He'll come to us if he needs to. Until then we best just leave him alone."

XXXXXX

Outside, heading back out to work, Heath watched Nick get angrier and angrier. He wasn't surprised when Nick said, "I don't care what Jarrod says. I'm going to fire his butt."

"That might make things worse, Nick," Heath said.

Nick glared at him.

Heath shrugged. "The sheriff let Boniface go. If you fire him, he's gonna get mad at you and madder at Jarrod than he already is, and Jarrod's gonna get mad at you, too."

"You don't beat up on one of us and keep your job," Nick said.

"We've allowed it before," Heath reminded him. "At least give it a day or two, see if things die down. Jarrod won't be working in the field again for another week or so and you can keep the two of them apart. If the bad blood continues, or if Boniface keeps bailing on the job, then yeah, fire the man, but let's see what happens first."

Nick grumbled.

Heath knew that meant he'd won his point. He changed the subject slightly and asked, "Do you know what's really going on between Jarrod and Boniface? There sure seems to be some history there."

Nick shook his head. "I got that feeling too but I don't know what it is. With Olivia Emery, I can take an educated guess."

"You think she and Jarrod were involved when he was keeping that apartment?"

"I think it's likely, and I think it's likely Olivia and Boniface are involved now. We got a triangle here, but more than a triangle. A triangle with a lot of older bad blood."

Heath heaved a sigh. "Well, if we have Boniface here, we can keep an eye on it."

"And we will, because I'm not going for any more of this business between Jarrod and Boniface, and we can't fire Jarrod."

Heath had to nod in agreement with that.