Free Lethal Little Lies (Jubilant Falls Series Book 3) by Debra Gaskill Page A

fallow ground. The lights were off in the farmhouse. Duncan had gone to bed already.
                  I flipped on the kitchen light, only to see Fisher Webb’s salary offer on the kitchen table, probably smoothed flat by Duncan’s hand. Water from the kitchen faucet—yet another item that needed repaired—dripped into the dinner dishes soaking in the sink.
                  I sighed, walked across the kitchen to the staircase and flipped off the light. Suddenly all I wanted was sleep. Whatever argument could be made for me taking or not taking the job would have to wait.
                  By four-thirty, Duncan was already making coffee when I made it downstairs. He was dressed in his Carhartt insulated coveralls, steel-toed boots and a toboggan. His gloves were shoved in his back pocket.
                  “Good morning sunshine. Happy Tuesday,” I whispered as I stood on tiptoe to kiss him. I had on my farm wife gear—insulated overalls, boots with manure that never came out of the treads, and a sweatshirt. My barn coat hung on a hook by the kitchen door, the same door I’d come through just three and a half hours ago.
                  He smiled down at me and kissed my forehead. “Good morning.” It was one of those rare moments when I felt like it was the first year of our marriage, before we’d moved from our small apartment to this, his parents’ farm, with a new baby girl and all our hopes for the future.
                  Back then, we hadn’t been tested by hard years of poor crops or bouts with sick livestock, Isabella’s suicide attempt and bipolar diagnosis, or the constant wear that my job put on all of us. We’d come through it all, stronger mostly, but it would be nice not to have to struggle quite so much. This hospital job would do that for us.
                  Pouring me a cup of coffee, Duncan nodded at the piece of paper lying on the kitchen table. “Thought about it at all?”
                  “Just how much better it would make our lives, that’s all.”
                  “But do you want to do it?”
                  I sighed. “You know I love my job. But the furloughs, the cutbacks—they all make me think newspapers aren’t going to be around much longer.”
                  “Come on out to the barn with me. We can talk about it.”
                  I slipped my barn coat on and stuffed my hands in the pockets, feeling the bits of hay there, and fell in step beside Duncan as we walked toward the barn, following the small circle of light that shone from Duncan’s flashlight.
                  The sun was just beginning to come up over the horizon, peeking between our dairy barn and the equipment barn, both structures long in need of paint and repairs. We’d kept the dairy barn in better shape, admittedly, since it housed the cows that provided farm income. The equipment barn wasn’t much, just enough to keep the rattletrap combine and the old Allis Chalmers tractor out of the weather. On the other side of the equipment barn was the old hen house Duncan had converted to house his graphic design business.
                  The cold made our breath hang in the early morning air in silver clouds. The snow crunched between our boots and the thin gravel beneath.
                  “So, have you made a decision?” Duncan asked.
                  “I don’t know. I really like the financial part. I like the hours. I don’t know if I can be some corporate hack spouting the party line.”
                  “For a hospital, how much of a party line could there be?”
                  Before I could answer, Duncan pointed with the flashlight at fresh tire tracks leading from the side of my Taurus to the equipment barn. He raised his finger to his lips.
                  “Go back in