Better or Worse
No one knew why he'd never tried to win Ava Crowder, no one but him, that is. It wouldn't have even been an effort, they said, because everyone knew everyone's business, and sometimes when football and baseball were out of season, the bookies took bets on which of Harlan's high school romances would go the distance.
Ava had always adored him, from the time he'd punched Bowman Crowder in the face for teasing her in seventh grade. But when the chips fell some years later, she was married to Bowman, and Raylan had given his hand to the certainly desirable but considerably less obvious Winona Hawkins.
Some of the older women, with knowing nods, said it was because Ava had been too open in her preference. And who could blame her, when Raylan had those pretty eyes and that smile that could melt butter? When asked, Raylan said it had been her age, but it hadn't been. After all, that's a problem time takes care of powerfully quickly.
When it came down to it, Ava and Winona were both a little crazy. Harlan didn't mind. It liked its women beautiful and a little bit off-center. Raylan didn't mind either. He'd always had a thing for crazy, ever since his Aunt Helen had taken him mudding at 2am when he was nine. Normal women didn't do that. He'd lost his taste for normal.
The real clue to the whole thing was what happened when the Marshalls shipped Raylan Givens back down Harlan's way, and he immediately took up with the now-widowed (to put it kindly) Ava Crowder, directly after she'd put a slug through Bowman's ribcage. The same old women, even older now, said it was fate, that things were finally happening as they'd always been meant to be.
But Raylan knew. He knew as soon as Ava brought her shotgun to dinner the night Boyd Crowder nearly killed him. He knew it even more when she refused to leave Kentucky.
The problem was, Ava Crowder had never needed him enough. It was only in those few, strange, beautiful weeks of her trial that she'd ever been remotely helpless. She had a voice that could summon men's hearts from over the mountain and a face that could stop a mine full of workers, but for one brief span of time, she'd been content to lay her head on Raylan Givens's shoulder and let him take care of her.
But it hadn't been real, a temporary aberration of a woman who was bound and determined to do it on her own. When it was over, she still wanted Raylan, but she was finished depending on him. He knew, then, that even if it hadn't been for the botching of Boyd's trial, he'd have broken up with her anyway. He couldn't exist where he wasn't needed. It was like asking a miner to dig where there was no coal.
Nobody but Raylan realized that Winona was the crazier one. The put-together court reporter with her pressed skirts and perfect hair was a mess and a half, with impulse problems so big they could fill all of Kentucky. Most people could understand why Ava had shot Bowman Crowder; there was no explaining why Winona Hawkins had decided to lift 200 grand and then give it back. But she needed him, and for Raylan Givens, to live was to be needed. Ava Crowder 's dulcet voice couldn't match the appeal when Winona haltingly uttered the phrase, "I think you're going to save me." That was all there was to it and how it had always been, how it always would be.
Ava Crowder was beautiful, but Winona—she was his to protect, for better or worse.