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to his and realizes that Brix is right. The fiddle player really is good. He weaves the melody in and out between the bass and drums, never straying so far that the dancers lose the rhythm, but never completely predictable either. When the song is over, she lets Brix go back to the girls clustered at his table and she spends the rest of the evening dancing with several young bachelors in their set.
    All are perfectly nice young men, men her mother approves of.
    All eligible.
    All boring.

CHAPTER
3
    Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
    — Exodus 20:8
    A s we were leaving Aunt Zell’s, Dwight’s phone rang.
    “We’ve got a hit on the victim’s prints,” he said, so I dropped him at his office and Cal and I drove on home alone.
    When we neared the farm, Cal said, “Can we go by Uncle Robert’s?”
    He and Robert, my oldest brother, have forged a bond over the farm’s old Cub tractor. I learned to drive on it when I was Cal’s age and now Robert is teaching Cal. They’ve been talking about disking in our spring garden to get ready for a fall crop of leafy greens. Dwight had already bought some cabbage and collard plants and was keeping them in a cool shady spot till time to set them out.
    “I don’t know, honey. It’s Sunday,” I reminded him, “and you know how Aunt Doris feels about working on Sunday.”
    “We won’t be working, Mom. He’s just going to show me how to hitch up the discs. That’s not work.”
    When it comes to males and machinery, the line between work and play is so narrow not even an angel could dance on it. Or so it seems to be in my family.
    “First, we’ll go home and change clothes,” I said, “then you can call him and see what he thinks.”
    As I expected, Robert said for Cal to come on over. When we got there, we found him out under the shelter with the Cub. “You can stay, too, Deb’rah, but Doris has gone shopping with her sister.”
    It doesn’t bother Doris that Sunday play for her means Sunday work for others.
    “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got some stuff I need to do.”
    Cindy Dickerson, the trial court coordinator down in New Bern, had emailed me the pleadings for tomorrow’s court and when I finished with those, I spent another hour reading up on family law.
    Our chief district court judge has proposed that we subdivide our court into specialty areas: civil, criminal, and family. He’s asked if I’d like to hear the family cases—the divorces, custody disputes, contested child support, etcetera. With its monotonous round of DWIs, assaults, rubber checks, and petty crimes, criminal court has begun to bore me. Yes, domestic situations can be heartbreakers, but those situations interested me more and more these days and I think I’ve done some good work there. And let’s not overlook a side benefit: Dwight and I wouldn’t have to be so careful about discussing his work in case it proved to be something I’d have to rule on.
    Decision made, I called Judge Longmire and told him yes.
      
    By late afternoon, the sun had moved around to the other side of the house and a light breeze tempted me out to our shady screened-in porch to finish reading the Sunday paper. I had gone back inside to pour myself a glass of tea when I heard a car door slam and glanced out in time to see the taillights of a gray patrol car leave the yard.
    Dwight looked hot and tired, but he smiled when I opened the door. “Is that for me?”
    “Absolutely,” I said.
    He had drained my tea in three deep gulps. “Thanks, shug. That really hit the spot.”
    He followed me back into the kitchen for more and while I poured a second glass for myself, he loosened his tie and hung his jacket on a doorknob. “The guy’s name was Vick Earp. Ring a bell for you?”
    “The only Earp I know is our dentist. Any kin?”
    He shook his head. “You issued a domestic violence restraining order on him last year.”
    “I did?”
    We took our tea out to the porch and settled into lounge