Claudia scraped the last of the burnt crust from the cupcake tin, rinsed it and dumped it in the dish rack to air-dry.
A branch scraped against the window. She looked out, but without the chill: she was humming to herself, something old, something high school. Tonight, at least, she and Lisa weren't alone. Frank was here. In fact, he was on the stairs, coming up, and he was humming to himself. They did that frequently, the same things at the same time.
"Um," he said, and she turned. His thinning black hair fell over his dark eyes. He looked like a cowboy, she thought, with his high cheekbones and the battered Tony Lamas poking out of his boot-cut jeans. He was wearing a tattered denim shop apron over a t-shirt and held a paintbrush slashed with blood-red lacquer.
"Um, what?" Claudia asked. This was the second marriage for each of them. They were both a little beat-up and they liked each other a lot.
"I just got started on the bookcase and I remembered that I let the woodstove go," he said ruefully. He waggled the paintbrush at her. "It's gonna take me another hour to finish the bookcase. I really can't stop with this lacquer."
"Goddammit, Frank…" She rolled her eyes.
"I'm sorry." Moderately penitent, in a charming cowboy way.
"How about the sheriff?" she asked. New topic. "Are you still gonna do it?"
"I'll see him tomorrow," he said. He turned his head, refusing to meet her eyes.
"It's nothing but trouble," she said. The argument had been simmering between them. She stepped away from the sink and bent backwards, to look down the hall toward Lisa's room. The girl's door was closed and the faint sounds of Guns 'N Roses leaked out around the edges. Claudia's voice grew sharper, worried. "If you'd just shut up… It's not your responsibility, Frank. You told Harper about it. Jim was his boy. If it's Jim."
"It's Jim, all right. And I told you how Harper acted." Frank's mouth closed in a narrow, tight line. Claudia recognized the expression, knew he wouldn't change his mind. Like what's-his-name, in High Noon. Gary Cooper.