By nine o’clock on the morning of Abigail Turner’s wedding, every pew inside Cedar Hollow’s little white church was occupied.
That alone told her almost everything she needed to know.
Her father’s funeral three weeks earlier had not filled half the room.
He had spent twenty-seven years waking before sunrise to bake bread for people who sometimes forgot to pay their tabs. He had slipped extra rolls into the hands of children whose parents were struggling. He had left pies on widows’ porches and never admitted who brought them.
When he died behind the bakery counter with flour still dusting his sleeves, only a few neighbors had come to say goodbye.
But Abigail marrying Caleb Mercer?
That brought everybody.
Not because they loved her.
Not because they respected him.
Because Cedar Hollow had been waiting years for a spectacle this satisfying.
From the narrow upstairs room above Mrs. Whitcomb’s dry-goods store, Abigail could hear wagons arriving one after another.
Voices carried through the open window.
Boots crossed the boardwalk.
Horses snorted against hitching rails.
Somebody laughed too loudly in the street.
Mrs. Whitcomb pulled hard on the laces running down the back of Abigail’s cream-colored wedding bodice.
“Hold still.”
“I am holding still.”
“Hold still more.”
“That is not physically possible.”
Mrs. Whitcomb grunted and pulled again.
The corset pressed into Abigail’s ribs.
She gripped the edge of the dressing table.
The dress was old but beautiful in a tired way. Cream rather than white, with lace along the wide neckline and sleeves that ended just below her elbows. The bodice had been altered twice over the previous two days to accommodate Abigail’s large figure, and the skirt required nearly twice as much gathered fabric as Mrs. Whitcomb originally expected.
Abigail had heard the woman mutter about that too.
Never directly insulting.
Not exactly.
But there were many ways to make a woman feel like an inconvenience without calling her one.
Abigail looked at herself in the spotted mirror.
Twenty-six years old.
Dark chestnut hair twisted into a soft braided arrangement at the back of her head.
Round face.
Full cheeks.
Brown eyes that had spent the previous month learning what grief looked like every morning.
Strong arms.
A body Cedar Hollow had discussed openly since she was old enough to understand whispers.
She had never been small.
Even as a child, Abigail had been broader than the other girls.
At fourteen, she had been heavier than several grown women.
By twenty-six, she weighed close to six hundred forty pounds.
Most people assumed that fact explained everything important about her.
They were wrong.
But sometimes Abigail was tired of having to prove it.
Mrs. Whitcomb stepped away.
“There.”
Abigail breathed carefully.
“Can I breathe now?”
“Moderately.”
Abigail almost smiled.
Then voices rose from the street.
A man called:
“Has Mercer seen her yet?”
Another answered:
“He might run back to Black Ridge before Reverend Shaw finishes the first prayer.”
Laughter.
Abigail’s smile vanished.
Mrs. Whitcomb moved toward the window and slammed it shut.
“Animals.”
“They shop downstairs.”
“They can be both.”
Abigail stared at herself.
“Do you think he’ll laugh?”
Mrs. Whitcomb turned.
“Caleb Mercer?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
The certainty surprised Abigail.
“You sound sure.”
“I’ve watched that man buy supplies here for seven years.”
“And?”
“He barely smiles when somebody intends him to.”
“That isn’t reassuring.”
Mrs. Whitcomb came closer.
“There are stories about Caleb.”
Abigail looked down.
“Yes.”
Everybody knew the stories.
Caleb Mercer had come north from Texas nine years earlier carrying scars across one side of his face and refusing to explain how he got them.
Within months, a version of the story began circulating.
Fire.
A dead family.
A ranch outside San Angelo.
Some said Caleb killed his father and brothers during an argument over land.
Others said he locked them inside a burning house.
One imaginative drunk claimed Caleb had stood outside listening while they screamed.
Nobody produced evidence.
Nobody needed evidence.
Cedar Hollow preferred stories that improved each time they were repeated.
By the time Abigail was nineteen, Caleb Mercer had acquired a name people used when they wanted children home before dark.