Isaac’s gaze lifted from the paper in front of him. “Did she agree to stay there with you? That seems like a sure sign the two of you are doing better.”
“She’s thinking about it, or at least about staying there with me and trying to be married.” Given her concern about him working for Isaac, she might truly be considering his offer and not trying to let him down gently.
“You’re going totrybeing married?” A grin covered Isaac’s face. “I thought you alreadyweremarried.”
Thomas rolled his shoulder, still aching from carrying the ladder and his family last night. “Turns out the legal definition of marriage is a bit different than the practical one. We spent five years living like we weren’t married, and now that I’m back in Eagle Harbor, we’re both so involved in the lives we built separately that we can’t figure out how to have a life together anymore.”
Isaac stood from his desk and moved one of the chairs along the side wall, clearing a path to a door that had been partially covered. “You can have the apartment for as long as you need it. I’ll let Mr. Ranulfson know the lease is switching hands for a few months, but I doubt he’ll care as long as he gets paid.”
Thomas held up his hands. “Better wait a day or two on that. She hasn’t said yes yet.” And he should know better than to get his hopes up with her.
“Sounds fine. I can wait a few days.” Isaac unlocked the door and disappeared inside, but rather than emerge a moment later with a broom or some other object from storage in hand, clomping sounded.
“Isaac?” Thomas stood and headed to the door. “Where are you going?”
Isaac paused halfway up a cold, dusty staircase. “Jenkins’s apartment. Might need a place to stay for the next few months.”
“There’s an apartment up here?”
“If you can call it that.”
It made sense. The building was clearly two stories, but he’d never given much thought to what sat above the sheriff’s office and jail. Thomas’s boots left prints in the dust as he headed to the top and followed Isaac inside the apartment.
Or rather, he tried to follow Isaac inside. But there was barely room for one person to stand in the dusty, cramped space, let alone two.
“Don’t tell me the former sheriff lived here?” He looked around the small room with crates and sacks scattered haphazardly over the floor. There was probably a bed underneath all the clutter… somewhere. If they spent a weekend shoveling this place out, they might even find it.
Isaac grimaced. “Rumor has it he saved every sheriff’s report he ever filled out.”
“I thought you said he was remiss in his duties.”
“At the end, but he was sheriff here for over thirty years, and he wasn’t always a drunkard.”
Thirty years of papers crammed into a one-room apartment. Great. Thomas grabbed a sack of papers, opened the top, and glanced at an arrest record dated 1868. “Looks like there’s going to be another fire soon, but one we’ll set.”
Isaac reached into one of the crates and pulled out a glass bottle. “Want a bottle or twelve of whiskey?”
“No, thank you.”
Isaac put the whiskey back and pulled the lid off another crate. “Jenkins didn’t have any family to collect this stuff when he died. Technically the apartment comes with the job, but I didn’t want to live above the jail—it’d feel like I’m always working. Plus I still don’t have the first inkling what to do with Jenkins’s stuff.”
“Wait. When I first arrived in town, you could have given me this apartment to rent and told me to clean it out, but you offered to let me stay with you?” Thomas dug deeper into the sack. Were any of the reports recent, or were they all fifteen years old?
“Because you’d be right next to Jessalyn. And I figured… well, that you’d need to be close.” Isaac’s eyes met his, serious andsober. “Because there was no way she’d be inviting you into her shop on her own. There was a heap of hurt lying between you.”
“I feel like all that hurt’s still there, like it gets worse the longer I stay, not better.” He pulled out a couple more papers, but held Isaac’s gaze rather than read the dates. “Thank you. Being next door helped.”
Isaac swallowed, then muttered a few words about doing something right for once, before opening another sack. “Glad I could help.”
Thomas grabbed two sacks of papers by their necks. “So do you want to start cleaning this out or wait until Jessalyn decides what she’s doing?”
“May as well clean it out. It has to get done at some point.” Isaac surveyed the piles of papers and crates. “Virgil O’Byrne needs a place to stay with his children too. Thought about letting this to him, but I don’t like the notion of him being above the jail. With you above the telegraph office, that’d leave me nowhere to stay but with my brother. It wouldn’t be difficult for someone to find me while I walked home in the middle of the night.”
“And attack you,” Thomas growled. “And maybe not just one person, but a group of someones.”
Isaac tugged at his collar. “Yes, that.”
“Sheriff? Sheriff Cummings?” A man’s voice echoed up the stairs. “Where are you?”
