“You jealous, Anne?” He softened his tone and she narrowed her gaze.

“I’m trying to protect you from heartache! She’s not your type. She’s just slumming.”

He put a hand up. “Whoa. Look, I get it. You’re protective and I appreciate that. But you don’t know Caroline. And I’m insulted on so many levels I can’t decide where to start so I’m just going to skip it because you and I both know you’re full of shit.”

Anne frowned. “She’s a lawyer and you’re a farmer.”

“I totally am. And she respects what I do, as it happens. And she didn’t start that shit at the Tonk. Benji did. Benji was out of line, just like Dolly and half those girls are when they talk shit about you and your siblings because you’re Murphys. I didn’t stand for that then and I won’t take it now. No one deserves to get judged for what their parents do and you know that. Hell, if you gave her half a chance you’d actually like her.”

“Christ, Royal, you’re a lovesick idiot. I’m trying to help you.”

“I don’t need your help, Anne. I’m dating someone. I like her. She likes me.” He shrugged.

“She comes back here after being gone for years.”

“Is that illegal now? She was a kid! Jesus. After her mother was murdered, Caroline, at sixteen, went to live with her uncle. You act like she went on TV and denounced Petal as not good enough for her. You of all people ought to understand what it means to be marked by what your parents have done.”

“She’s defending a murderer! People are going to start thinking you’re like her if you keep on this way.”

“I’m not so sure he was really a murderer. I’ve read up a little. Some of the stuff she’s written, some articles about it and her struggle to prove his innocence. But in any case, I can make my own mind up. If people judge me for what someone else thinks, that’s their problem.”

“So if she was a Nazi and you dated her that would be fine?”

He snorted. “It’s a pretty big leap to take from going through the legal system to try to prove someone’s innocence and find the real killer to Nazism. Isn’t there some internet rule about bringing Hitler into an argument?”

She laughed. “Her boobs have entranced you.”

“They’re pretty awesome boobs.”

Things eased between them and he breathed easier. He didn’t want Anne to feel bad. He cared about her. But this silly tantrum over Caro was just that and he wasn’t about to give in.

“I should go. I’m supposed to stop by and get fresh eggs to bring over to Tate’s.”

“You know, she’s going to be here in a while. You could stay and get to know her a little.”

Anne rolled her eyes. “No thanks. I don’t want to elbow in on your action. I’ll see you later.” She bent to drop the cat in his lap and give him a quick kiss.

“Just…be careful please. People get worked up about this stuff. It tore the town in half before, and this sort of thing doesn’t just die away. Everyone in her family thinks he did it. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

Carrying Spike draped over his forearm, he followed her to the door. “Yes, it tells me that when she truly believes something she believes it to her heart. She’s not going to pretend to think or feel something she doesn’t. That’s an important quality in a person.”

“Ugh. You’re totally smitten.” She sighed and slapped his butt before she bent to smooch the cat’s head and scoot out the door. “Later.”

“Later. Say hey to everyone for me.”

Caroline told herself she was going home, but she stopped at the Honey Bear, bought pie and sandwiches anyway. Her car aimed itself in Royal’s direction and she went with it. Heading away from the heart of town to the outskirts, where the houses and businesses dropped away, replaced by rolling hills of farmland and orchards.

Familiar dread warred with the happy memories of it all. This was the way to E and B Family Style Diner and Kitchen. The diner had been a second home. The back room had a desk where Caroline had done homework after school.

She’d learned how to drive a stick shift on this long, straight piece of road, her dad beside her in the cab of his truck. She had no idea how he’d remained so calm as she’d ground his gears over and over. But he never lost his cool.

There it was.

She paused and then pulled over across from the place that used to hold the diner. Patty Griffin’s “Rain” came on the radio. Tears blurred her vision of the empty lot. They’d razed the building to the ground ten years before. No one wanted to buy it, no one wanted to rent it and run a business from it, much less eat there.

Weeds were the only thing left other than the cracked asphalt. She and her siblings owned it now. An empty lot where her mother was murdered and her father had found her. Caroline rested her forehead on the steering wheel.

Even her tears were contraband. In Petal, her grief for her mother had been questioned. Every tear she shed was examined. That she grieved her father too had been some sort of proof she hadn’t cared about her mother.

She never felt this way anywhere else. But it was there in Petal where she ached to be able to talk about her mother with the people who knew her and not have that look come into their eyes. They either thought about how she believed her father or how she left town, or that her mother had been so brutally killed.