Page 65 of Mail Order Bride

“I'm guessing you didn't know a lot about Joel's work.” She rocks on her heels. “What I know of your husband, he was a very private man.”

She seems like she's choosing her words carefully, like she's either skirting around something or feeling me out. I can't tell which it is. Maybe it's both.

“Joel dug graves.”

She smiles. “Yes. But he also helped people. I had the good fortune of being one of them.”

“Forgive me if I'm being forward, or presumptuous... but were you a lady of the night?”

Margo laughs at my choice of words. Then she presses her lips into a tight smile. “Something like that.”

“I see.”

“Joel helped me turn my life around. He told me that if anything ever happened to him, he wanted me to be okay. But more than that, he wantedyouto be okay.”

I don't know what to say or what this has to do with me or even why I'm here. I'd like to pretend I care, but I don't have it in me. The good days are when I feel nothing, and today seems to be one of those.

Margo looks at me with warm eyes. “I’m sure you're wondering what this has to do with you... and I'm sure you have better things you could be doing, so I'll get on with it.”

She takes a deep breath and continues. “Like I said, your husband helped a lot of people. He kept a lot of scum off the streets, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m afraid I don't know what you mean.”

“Joel collected bounties,” she tells me, fidgeting with her dress. “That's how we met.”

“I see,” I say, but I don't see. Why wouldn’t Joel have told me this?

“He didn't want you to worry,” she says. “That was his biggest concern. He wrote to me about that a few times. He said if anything should happen to him, he never wanted you to have to worry.”

My brow furrows. “Was my husband involved in something shady because—”

“Like I said, he didn't want you to worry. Probably, the less you know, the better.” She leans in close and lowers her voice, “But sometimes he did things he wasn’t proud of. Really bad things…”

“I know he sold drugs,” I say. I don’t know why it comes out, only that I’m already feeling terribly stupid, terribly out of touch, and I don’t like not having the upper hand.

She narrows her eyes. “He tell you that?”

“I guessed.” This is a half-truth. After finding Joel at the Apricot Inn, after he swore he wasn’t stepping out on me, I asked if he had other methods of making a living. He admitted that sometimes when money was a little tight, he found other means. So, he didn’t confess to dealing drugs outright, but he hadn’t denied it, either. I just assumed, and we left it at that. Sometimes you look back on a conversation and see it very differently. Now is one of those times.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” she says. “I only know about the bounties.”

“Why did you ask me to meet with you?” I say, “Surely, you could have just written this all in the letter.”

“I’m sure in time you'll work it out in your head.”

She shifts from one foot to the other. “But also, Joel asked me to. He paid me. He loved you a lot, you know.”

“I loved him.”

“Maybe not the same way, though, huh?”

“Again, I don't know what you're getting at.”

“Sure you do. It’s all over the papers. What kind of man your husband was.”

I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.

Finally, she waves a hand in the air. “Never mind. Stick to the plan. That’s what Joel would have said if he were here. But he isn’t, is he?”

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