Dove in the Window Read Free Page B

own western artists and an antique cloth doll exhibit. Though the exhibits were finished, there were always last minute details that needed to be ironed out before an opening, and as usual our artists would be selling their wares at the Thursday night farmer’s market as well as at the fiesta on Saturday. That meant I had to make sure that everyone knew their booth assignments and that the booths and canopies were in good shape and that all the artists were at peace. Well, as much at peace as forty very different, and often temperamental, artists could be. My job was, I had discovered after long, lazy Sunday-morning-in-bed talks with Gabe, very similar to his. We both spent a good deal of our time trying to keep divergent groups of people happy. There were days when I wholeheartedly missed full-time ranch life. Cattle were at least fairly predictable, possessing only a limited number of tricks up their bovine sleeves. Humans were an entirely different creature to figure out and never ceased to amaze me with their creative ways of driving each other crazy. And now that I was the police chief’s wife, there was a whole other aspect to my life I’d never anticipated. One that included cocktail parties, charity balls, endless social chitchat, and the wearing of fancy clothes. None of those things had ever been on my list of favorite activities, but I was trying my best to at least not be a liability to Gabe’s career, having long abandoned the idea that I’d be an asset.
    The museum was already bustling with activity when I pulled into the parking lot. The old two-story Sinclair Hacienda, donated by our local patroness of the arts, Constance Sinclair, had become as familiar to me now as the old truck I was driving and almost as well loved. If someone had told me three years ago that at thirty-five I’d be living in town, running a folk art museum while trying to juggle a marriage to San Celina’s chief of police, I’d have informed them the state mental hospital was thirty miles up the road and that maybe they’d better check in for a little testing. But here I was, and though at odd moments when my late husband Jack’s smiling face popped into my mind and sadness froze a section of my heart, I was amazed and grateful at where I’d ended up.
    “Four more days,” a young potter named Julio commented. We passed each other on the ivy-covered arbored walkway between the museum and the old adobe stables that now comprised the co-op’s studios and my cramped but comfortable office. Pale November sunlight dappled his wavy black hair.
    “We’ll be ready,” I answered with a smile. Exhibits didn’t tie my stomach into knots the way they did my first few months as curator, though a jittery edge of pre-event anticipation still lingered. I was ready for the crowds this time and looking forward to the week-long celebration of our county’s heritage and the Mission Santa Celine’s two-hundred-twentieth anniversary.
    Spread across my desk was today’s San Celina Tribune , placed there as it was every morning by my sixty-eight-year-old assistant D-Daddy Boudreaux—the only person who’d managed to keep the part-time job longer than a few months. On the front page was a story about the most controversial subject since a local well-known grower of marijuana ran for mayor two years ago.
San Celina or Santa Celine? Is Historical Correctness More Important than the Homeless?
    Apparently a group of people affiliated with the Historical Society had decided that our town’s name, the improperly monikered San Celina, should be returned to the proper Santa Celine to match the mission’s and honor the French saint the mission was named after. Most people in the town, myself included, never gave much thought about why the names didn’t match, figuring it was one of those government snafus that just happened. Research conducted by a local historian revealed that back in the early 1900s the town was renamed by a Texas millionaire who