Tate had chatted constantly but, worn out, he now slept in the back of the rental. In the passenger seat, Shelby held onto her seat belt and simply gazed out the window, watching people as they rolled down a wide small-town road. Dex hoped this would be a good time for her. A good time for them all. “The first traders came here in 1871,” she told him. “The newspaper and post office followed five years later. We were a site for public lease options during the oil boom of the 1910s and ’20s. Then the Depression hit. Population withered from around six thousand to two.” She pointed. “That’s our City Hall.” Dex ducked his head to check out the austere double-story Georgian building on the corner. The national flag fluttered on a pole planted in one sidewalk, a single old-fashioned light post stood on the other. Next door was a neatly trimmed park with a bucking bronco monument. An ice cream shop came into view. An old man stopped licking his vanilla cone to peer at the Lexus as they slid by.
