But it happened. Neither was much to look at. Richie Bainard’s face was often in shadow under his wide-brim Stetson, and he carried himself with the twitchy presumption of an undersized bird at a feeder. Esther Block was blond as a Bavarian milkmaid and easily sixty pounds overweight, though her forebears were Jewish peddlers from Alsace-Lorraine with a long history of going hungry. Being thirty-six and unmarried was fine by her but for her father’s sighs whenever young couples browsed for cradles and nursing bottles at Block’s Dry Goods on Ryan Street. In the years since Esther’s mother died his desire for a grandchild had become a grumpy lament. Things took a pitiful turn when after a recent doctor’s appointment he’d declared that his tacky heart was frail as paper and how sad it was that he wouldn’t live to see his daughter become a wife and mother. Now whenever lone male customers came into the store, Esther found herself sizing them up like a judge at the Brahma bull competition in the Lake Charles country fair.
