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whole thing surrounded by a grassy lawn. The town’s businesses were arranged around the courthouse square, and the oak-canopied residential streets were organized in a similar four-square grid, as logical and orderly as old Joseph P. himself Around the town there were mostly corn and cotton fields and lots of timber. The past few years had been drier than normal—people were already talking about a drought—but Jed said the town’s water supply was in no danger, and Ophelia believed him. She always believed Jed. Always.
    “I’m home,” Ophelia called, coming into the house through the kitchen door. She put her empty dish—the Dahlias had eaten every one of her stuffed tomatoes—on the kitchen table and went down the hall into the living room. Jed was just turning around from the telephone on the wall. He stepped to her quickly and gave her a hug. At six feet to her five-foot-four, he nearly dwarfed her.
    “Have a good meeting?” He was one of those men who go on looking forty-five until they’re seventy, brown-haired and brown-eyed, with square, capable hands and—usually—an open, pleasant look on his face. Just now, his brows were pulled together. He looked troubled.
    “We did,” Ophelia said, taking off her hat and fluffing her brown hair. “Except for Voleen Johnson, of course. She thinks Beulah’s sign looks tacky. Well, I s’pose it is a bit colorful, but since Beulah painted it, we love it. Then we cut the dues, which annoyed Voleen even more. She thinks it’ll encourage riffraff to join, although she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it in so many words.” She bent over and straightened the crocheted lace antimacassar on the arm of Jed’s chair. “Really, I don’t know why that woman bothers with the Dahlias. She—”
    Ophelia straightened and caught the look on her husband’s face. “Something’s wrong?” She looked around uneasily. “The kids. Where are the kids?”
    “Down the street at the folks’. Sis and her pair came over for the afternoon.”
    Jed’s parents lived in a two-story white frame house four doors down on the other side of Rosemont, where one or another of their grown children, along with their broods, usually showed up for Sunday dinner or homemade ice cream on Sunday afternoon. Sis was Jed’s youngest sister. She lived out by Jericho. Her twins were only four, much younger than Ophelia and Jed’s two, Sam and Sarah, now thirteen and eleven. There’d been another baby before Sam, their first boy, but he had died at birth. And then Sam came along, robust and squalling, and they had put their loss behind them and got on with what had to be done.
    “That’s good,” Ophelia said with satisfaction. “They’ll eat there, I reckon.” She glanced at the clock—the walnut tambour clock Jed’s parents had given them for a wedding present—on the shelf beside the radio. It was nearly six. “Are you hungry? We had refreshments—you know the Dahlias, plenty to eat. But I can fix you a sandwich. There’s some ham.”
    Jed shook his head, and she saw that his frown was deeper. “Who was that on the phone?” she asked.
    He hesitated imperceptibly. “Roy Burns.”
    Ophelia tilted her head. Roy was the sheriff. He and his deputy, Buddy Norris, kept close tabs on all the criminal elements in Darling. The job didn’t amount to much, though, since the only people who came to Darling were friends and relatives of the folks who lived here or hoboes off the freight trains. Of course, there was the occasional crime of passion, some man getting liquored up and beating his wife, or a knife fight at the Watering Hole or the Dance Barn on Briarwood Road. There wasn’t supposed to be any liquor out there, or anywhere else for that matter, but the moonshiners took care of that. The jail, on the second floor of Jed’s Farm Supply building, had only two cells, which were mostly used to give drunks a place to sleep while they sobered up.
    “What’s wrong?” she asked.