Page 130 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“This ain’t how the law works, Logan.”
“Briggs.” Pa stepped forward. “I’ve lived in this county for forty years. Paid my taxes. Buried my wife on that land. This family don’t ask for favors. But I’m askin’ now. That boy belongs with us.”
Briggs looked at the cell. Jonah sat on the cot with his hands between his knees and his head down. That posture—shoulders rounded, chin tucked—belonged to a man who’d spent his whole life getting told to stay down. Logan had seen it in green-broke horses, the ones somebody had hit too many times. They stopped flinching eventually. They just went still.
Briggs sighed. “Circuit judge ain’t gon’ be here for a while now, I suppose. I can let you have him until then.”
Pa nodded. “Thank you—”
“Don’t thank me.” Briggs pointed his fingers at Pa. “When that judge comes here, you bring that boy back here, or it’s both our asses, you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“You can plead your case to the judge directly. If he don’t drop the charges, there ain’t nothin’ I can do for you.”
Logan tipped his hat. “We appreciate it, Sheriff.”
Briggs turned the key. Jonah looked up. Grace shoved past Logan—elbowed him right in the ribs, actually, which he deserved—and threw herself at her brother hard enough to rock him back on the cot.
“Ow.” Jonah laughed into her hair. “Easy, Gracie. Ribs.”
“I don’t care about your ribs.”
“My ribs care about my ribs.”
***
Logan hated dishes. Always had. The water went cold too fast, the soap left a film if you used too much, and no matter how carefully you stacked them in the rack, they’d shift and clank,and the whole arrangement looked crooked, which bothered him in a way he’d long since stopped trying to justify to anyone.
Jonah picked up a towel and started drying.
They worked side by side for a minute. Logan washed. Jonah dried. The rhythm settled in the way rhythms did when two people had roughly the same idea of how fast a dish should move from hand to hand.
“I ain’t gonna pretend we’re square.” Logan passed him a plate. “As much as I want to forgive you, and I do, what you did—the ad, the silver, the tunnels under my gate—that sits in me. It’ll sit for a while.”
“Fair.” Jonah dried the plate and set it on the stack.
He scrubbed at a spot of gravy that had calcified on the rim of Pa’s bowl—the man ate like a bear, just shoveled it in, and left streaks that required soaking—and got it loose. “But what you did... That counts. You put yourself between Ace and my wife with a knife in his hand. That counts for somethin’.”
“She’s my sister.”
“She’s my wife.” Logan handed him the bowl. “And you brought her back safely. So... we start from here.”
Jonah dried the bowl. “Friends?”
“Let’s not push it.” Logan’s mouth twitched. “Brothers-in-law who don’t hate each other.”
“I’ll take it.”
They finished the dishes. Jonah hung the towel on the hook—the right hook, the one Logan preferred. Either the man had picked that up from watching or Grace had told him. Both were fine, actually.
“Hey.” Jonah nodded toward the window. “Your wife’s on the porch.”
Grace rocked in Ma’s chair with Miriam bundled against her chest. The baby had gone slack and heavy with that full-body surrender that meant she’d sleep through a thunderstorm, and Grace’s chin rested on the top of Miriam’s head while the chair creaked back and forth on the boards.
“Go on.” Jonah took the last plate from the rack and dried it. “I’ve got the rest.”
Logan pushed through the screen door.
