Snowfall On Haven Point

She had a sudden memory of seeing the sheriff the night Rob Warren had broken into her home, assaulted her, held her at gunpoint and ended up in a shoot-out with the Haven Point police chief, Cade Emmett. He had burst into her home after the situation had been largely defused, to find Cade on the ground trying to revive a bleeding Wynona.

The stark fear on Marshall’s face had haunted her, knowing that she might have unwittingly contributed to him losing another sibling after he had already lost his father and a younger brother in the line of duty.

Now Marshall’s features were a shade or two paler and his eyes had the glassy, distant look of someone in a great deal of pain.

“How long have you been out of the hospital?”

He shrugged. “A couple hours. Give or take.”

“And you’re here by yourself?” she exclaimed. “I thought you were supposed to be home earlier this morning and someone was going to stay with you for the first few hours. Wynona told me that was the plan.”

“One of my deputies drove me home from the hospital, but I told him Chief Emmett would probably keep an eye on me.”

The police chief lived across the street from Andie and just down the street from Marshall, which boded well for crime prevention in the neighborhood. Having the sheriff and the police chief on the same street should be any sane burglar’s worst nightmare—especially this particular sheriff and police chief.

“And has he been by?”

“Uh, no. I didn’t ask him to.” Marshall’s eyes looked unnaturally blue in his pain-tight features. “Did my sister send you to babysit me?”

“Babysit, no. She only asked me to periodically check on you. I also brought dinner for the next few nights.”

“Also unnecessary. If I get hungry, I’ll call Serrano’s for a pizza later.”

She gave him a bland look. “Would a pizza delivery driver know to come pick you up off the floor?”

“You didn’t pick me up,” he muttered. “You just moved a pillow around.”

He must find this completely intolerable, being dependent on others for the smallest thing. In her limited experience, most men made difficult patients. Tough, take-charge guys like Marshall Bailey probably hated every minute of it.

Sympathy and compassion had begun to replace some of her nervousness. She would probably never truly like the man—he was so big, so masculine, a cop through and through—but she could certainly empathize with what he was going through. For now, he was a victim and she certainly knew what that felt like.

“I brought dinner, so you might as well eat it,” she said. “You can order pizza tomorrow if you want. It’s not much, just beef stew and homemade rolls, with caramel apple pie for dessert.”

“Not much?” he said, eyebrow raised. A low rumble sounded in the room just then and it took her a moment to realize it was coming from his stomach.

“You don’t have to eat it, but if you’d like some, I can bring it in here.”

He opened his mouth, but before he could answer, she heard a voice from the doorway.

“What happened to you?” Will asked, gazing at Marshall’s assorted scrapes, bruises and bandages with wide-eyed fascination.

“Will, I thought I told you to wait for me by the door.”

“I know, but you were taking forever.” He walked into the room a little farther, not at all intimidated by the battered, dangerous-looking man it contained. “Hi. My name is Will. What’s yours?”

The sheriff gazed at her son. If anything, his features became even more remote, but he might have simply been in pain.

“This is Sheriff Bailey,” Andie said, when Marshall didn’t answer for a beat too long. “He’s Wynona’s brother.”

Will beamed at him as if Marshall was his new best friend. “Wynona is nice and she has a nice dog whose name is Young Pete. Only, Wynona said he’s not young anymore.”

“Yeah, I know Young Pete,” Marshall said after another pause. “He’s been in our family for a long time. He was our dad’s dog first.”

Andie gave him a careful look. From Wyn, she knew their father had been shot in the line of duty several years earlier and had suffered a severe brain injury that left him physically and cognitively impaired. John Bailey had died the previous winter from pneumonia, after spending his last years at a Shelter Springs care center.

Though she had never met the man, her heart ached to think of all the Baileys had suffered.

“Why is his name Young Pete?” Will asked. “I think that’s silly. He should be just Pete.”

“Couldn’t agree more, but you’ll have to take that up with my sister.”

Will accepted that with equanimity. He took another step closer and scrutinized the sheriff. “How did you get so hurt? Were you in a fight with some bad guys? Did you shoot them? A bad guy came to our house once and Chief Emmett shot him.”

Andie stepped in quickly. She was never sure how much Will understood about what happened that summer. “Will, I need your help fixing a tray with dinner for the sheriff.”

“I want to hear about the bad guys, though.”

“There were no bad guys. I was hit by a car,” Marshall said abruptly.

“You’re big! Don’t you know you’re supposed to look both ways and hold someone’s hand?”

Marshall Bailey’s expression barely twitched. “I guess nobody happened to be around at the time.”

Torn between amusement and mortification, Andie grabbed her son’s hand. “Come on, Will,” she said, her tone insistent. “I need your help.”

Her put-upon son sighed. “Okay.”

He let her hold his hand as they went back to the entry, where Chloe still sat on the floor, watching the hallway with anxious eyes.

“I told Will not to go in when you told us to wait here, but he wouldn’t listen to me,” Chloe said fretfully.

“You should see the police guy,” Will said with relish. “He has blood on him and everything.”

Andie hadn’t seen any blood, but maybe Will was more observant than she. Or maybe he had just become good at trying to get a rise out of his sister.

“Ew. Gross,” Chloe exclaimed, looking at the doorway with an expression that contained equal parts revulsion and fascination.

“He is Wyn’s brother and knows Young Pete, too,” Will informed her.

Easily distracted, as most six-year-old girls could be, Chloe sighed. “I miss Young Pete. I wonder if he and Sadie will be friends?”

“Why wouldn’t they be?” Will asked.

“Okay, kids, we can talk about Sadie and Young Pete another time. Right now, we need to get dinner for Wynona’s brother.”

“I need to use the bathroom,” Will informed her. He had that urgent look he sometimes wore when he had pushed things past the limit.

“There’s a bathroom just down the hall, second door down. See?”