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“Like I said, she’s good people. She wouldn’t like the way that woman is behaving, not with a new widow.”

She couldn’t help the tears that filled her eyes. The idea that someone would be so kind and help her without charge almost seemed like a miracle. Not that she didn’t have friends and that they wouldn’t do anything for her, but this woman was a stranger.

Of course, this was all theory. It wasn’t like this lawyer even knew about her plight or had actually offered to help. She could just hear the certainty in Ammo’s voice, as if he knew for sure that’s the way things would play out.

“My house and yard have looked like this for months, so it’s not just because Charlie died,” she said.

“How did he die?”

She let out a wet laugh that held no humor. “He overdosed in a motel off the highway on his own. When he was found, he was completely naked.”

“Jesus.”

Yeah. She could still remember the sheriff’s deputies coming to the house and telling her how they’d found him.

It had felt like it was one last “fuck you” from Charlie. She knew that was a terrible way to think. He was dead, and she’d never wished that for him.

She just wished she’d been able to get away before he’d died. So she wasn’t left with all of his messes to clean up.

“Fuck, what an idiot he was,” he said.

She blinked at him in surprise. “What?”

“What an idiot.”

It was like they were the words that she’d been waiting to hear. Everyone else had been full of good things to say about him since his death.

Well, except for Kirsten, who knew everything about her life with him.

With everyone else there was almost an air of blame in the way they spoke or looked at her, as if it was her fault that he’d died like that, as if she’d driven him to take the drugs.

There had also been rumors that he was meeting someone there, that he’d been cheating on her, and yet still the sympathy seemed to lie with Charlie.

It was one of those things, wasn’t it? A double standard when it came to men and women, because if she was the one who had overdosed in a seedy motel while waiting for a lover, Charlie would have gotten all the sympathy.

Yeah, she should have left him years ago, but she’d been raised by a grandmother who hadn’t believed in divorce, that you toughed your marriage out no matter what. She’d chosen Charlie, and he was her problem.

But these last eight months had been so bad that she’d finally known she had to leave. That was why she’d been saving all her money from her multiple jobs in order to be able to find a place to live on her own, to separate herself from him.

And then the bastard had gone and died.

Suddenly it was just all too much. His sympathy, his understanding, the way he dealt with Yvonne, the memory of how Charlie had been found, the fact that so many people were now looking at her sideways . . . yep, it was all too much.

She burst into tears.

7

Ammo stared down at her in shock.

Well, fuck. What was he supposed to do with a crying woman?

Yeah, he’d been around plenty of tearful women, but usually they were crying because he’d just punished them.

But this time, he hadn’t done anything, had he? Was this his fault? Was it something he’d said?

Was it because he’d called Charlie an idiot?

Because that was just the truth, and it didn’t seem like she should get upset over that. Charlie was an idiot for the way he’d treated her.