once she thinks it through, she’ll understand that you saved her from a terrible marriage. Any man who could do what Jacob did? When she realizes that he was such a man, she’ll be grateful.”
Clara thought about that and wondered. “Maybe.”
“How did Mullins take it?” Max asked, his voice edged in worry.
“He blustered at first and didn’t believe me.” Clara thought back to her detective’s visceral reaction, his fury as he refused to accept that the man he’d given his daughter to had savagely murdered her. “Telling Mullins was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” she admitted. “We both knew that Laurel didn’t want Jacob. Mullins finally watched the video of Jacob’s confession. When it ended, Mullins got deathly quiet, thanked me and rushed off.”
“Pretty broken up, I bet,” Max said.
“I think he needed to be alone,” she whispered. “I don’t think he wanted me to see him cry.”
They leaned into one another in silence, and then Clara looked up at the stars again and asked, “Max, do you think that although not here on earth, Laurel’s final prayer was answered?”
He held her tighter. “Was that in her last letter?” Clara nodded, and he asked, “What was it?”
“That she and Myles would someday be together,” Clara said, staring out at the vast landscape, the heavens above them.
Max rubbed her shoulders to keep her warm. “I’d like to think the afterlife works that way. I hope it does.”
She smiled up at him. “I do, too.”
At that, he suggested they go back inside.
They shed their jackets and hung them on hooks near the door. Clara returned to her spot on the couch, and Max walked over. “Okay if I sit next to you?”
She looked up at him, smiled, and patted the cushion beside her. “I’m counting on it.”
The fire flickered, and he held her close. She tilted her face up to his, and as she had so many years earlier at the river, she placed her hand on his cheek and drew him to her. Their lips met and didn’t part for long minutes. Then she turned away again and watched the fire.
“You know that first time we kissed?” she asked.
“I’ll never forget it,” he said.
“We were children,” she said. “Just really children, who had our lives ahead of us.”
For a minute, Max remained quiet and considered what she’d just said. “We still have much of our lives ahead of us, Clara, don’t you think?” When she didn’t answer, he lowered his voice and murmured, “The question is if we’ll spend those years together.”
Quiet moments passed, and Clara stroked his arm and settled on his hand. She took hold and held it, and she thought about how warm he felt, how inviting. She wondered if this was the time to explain and again if he’d understand. “The man they gave me to, his hands were like ice,” Clara said. “So cold. As cold as his heart.”
She’d never brought up her marriage before, and Max wanted to ask questions, but didn’t. Instead, he waited, and moments later, she said, “On the day my parents delivered me to him I was seventeen, and my husband was sixty-four. He could have been my grandfather.”
Max had asked about Clara over the years. He’d never been able to find out what caused her to flee, but he’d heard about the marriage to one of the prophet’s brothers, a man with many wives and children.
“You never had kids?” he whispered.
She shook her head. “No, I…” at that, she hesitated, then she focused on him with such intensity that he understood what she’d say next was something she held close. “Max, my husband told everyone I wasn’t a good woman, that I wasn’t in communion with him, of like mind, and God had punished me by making me barren. Even my own mother believed him.”
Max thought he understood where she was heading. “But that wasn’t the truth? It wasn’t you?”
“No, it wasn’t,” she said. “It’s that… well… he was so much older, not in the best health, and… I was young, but he was past the point where he was able to…”
“He couldn’t…” Max said.
Clara shook her head. “He blamed it on me,” she said. “He said I was ugly and unlovable. He said that no man would ever desire me.”
Clara fell silent, and Max waited, unsure what to say. He thought she’d talk more about her past, but instead she asked about his. “We both have ghosts that haunt us,” she said. “At times, I’ve had