Red flamed onto Thomas’s face, and another round of laughter followed, from everyone but Virgil, that was. The man stood suddenly somber inside his cell.
“This ain’t about Griggs. I’m looking for my young’uns. Maybe you seen ’em? Left their older sister to care for them, but I found me a note saying she died when I got to the cabin.”
Isaac stilled. Not the O’Byrne children. This man couldn’t be their father.
But who else in town had a father away and a sister who died after she’d been left to care for them? Eagle Harbor was hardly teeming with young’uns, and the O’Byrnes were the only ones that came halfway close to fitting that description.
“You’ve been sitting around at The Wagon for two weeks, and this is the first you thought to ask after your children?”
The man shrugged, his round belly protruding over his britches. “Wanted to look around a bit. See if I spotted them on my own.”
“Because so many children frequent bars after midnight,” he muttered.
The man didn’t even try to look abashed. “You’re the law in this town, figured if anyone knew about some young’uns runnin’ about without a ma or pa, it’d be you.”
Isaac’s tongue felt as heavy as a copper ingot. He knew about children without a pa, all right, had just held two of them on his lap when he’d visited his family for Sunday dinner.
The man narrowed his gaze. “You know somethin’, don’t ya? Now listen here, Sheriff. Thems be my young’uns. If you know where they are, you’ve got a legal obi… obo… oblagotation ta tell me.”
Isaac scrubbed a hand over his face, his stomach curdling. He could already picture the silent grief on his brother’s face when Elijah got his first look at Virgil. The unshed tears glimmering in Victoria’s eyes at the thought of turning the children over to a ruffian. How was he going to tell them?
“Wait.” He ran his gaze down the womanizer. “What did you say your name was?”
Elijah had been looking for a man named Norman, not Virgil.
“Norman Virgil O’Byrne.” The man hooked a thumb beneath his suspenders and puffed out his chest as though the name were something to be proud of. “My friends here call me Virgil, but Norman’s my official soundin’ name.”
“Where did you say you left the children? That you found the note?” But he didn’t need to hear an answer, not really. He could look into the man’s dark eyes and see they were the same deep brown as Jack’s, his hair the same walnut color.
A fist tightened around his heart. Why had he ever agreed to run for sheriff? As if nearly being beaten tonight wasn’t enough, he now had to tell his brother about the O’Byrnes’ father, would probably even need to arrange an introduction.
Elijah had told him he’d make a good sheriff, but his brother didn’t know the half of it.
Chapter Nine
Jessalyn set the red and black plaid mackinaw coat atop the stack of completed ones, then reached for the next one that needed mending and held it up. A jumble of coins fell to the floor and scattered. She rolled her eyes and bent to collect them. What was so difficult about cleaning out pockets before men dropped off their coats with her? Some days it felt as though she spent as much time stuffing things back into pockets as she did mending.
She set the pile of coins on the table, lest they fall again while she was mending the garment, then studied the coat. It was missing all but one of its buttons, two of which had left holes in the wool where they’d been torn off. It almost looked as though someone had yanked the coat open.
She had some buttons that should fit. She bustled around a table and stepped over a pile of trousers on the floor before reaching the buttons stacked on the shelf against the back wall. But where was the basket of men’s buttons? And the children’s buttons, for that matter? She kept five baskets back here, but somehow there were only three. And how had her basket of extra lace bits gotten on the shelf?
The girls must have been playing in the shop again. She pursed her lips together. Even Megan at five years old knew better than to move materials around. She grabbed the basket of lace and shuffled toward the next shelf, setting it right where it belonged—in the spot currently occupied by the basket of children’s buttons? She’d have to talk to her girls when they got home from school today. But she needed the men’s buttons now, not in six more hours.
She pushed onto her tiptoes and surveyed the shop. Where had the girls…?
The bell above her door jingled, and a gust of cold swept inside.
“Good morn—” She stopped when Thomas entered. She didn’t need another interrogation about her dress factory, not when she had a stack of coats to mend and a second bridesmaids’ dress to start. “Sorry, I don’t really have time to talk today. I’m in the middle of something at the moment. The girls just left for school, and I have to make use of my time.”
Maybe she needed to hire a fourth woman to work for her, because at the moment, she was barely keeping up with her Eagle Harbor clients, and that didn’t count the Chicago wedding job.
“I can wait.” Thomas shrugged. “Olivia said you were busy when we were on the way to school.”
He’d walked them to school? She’d known he was walking them home, but she hadn’t seen him around when she’d sent her daughters out the door in the mornings. Had he listened even a little when she’d asked him not to get too attached to the girls? Evidently not, which left her no choice but to…
What?
He was their father, after all. This was Megan’s first chance to know him, and he was so good with their daughters, always carrying one of them around or making snowmen with them.
