fight out of him.
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Beth.” And he truly was.
“I’m going to go . . . walk,” Beth said. She was small enough to slide by Dotti’s bulk, and her feet were weightless on the stairs, as if she was already vanishing from his life. Here, gone. Garner listened to her boots clack lightly across the floor over his head, heard the squeal of the wood-and-screen door swing open and then slap shut as she left the house.
“So, how much money do you really have?” Dotti asked.
He turned to her. “A fraction of what Hank has.”
“Hank? You gave your money to Hank?”
“To Mathilde. Got myself a brass plate and a bench for it.”
“Was it enough to save a ranch?”
Garner sighed. “It was enough to buy ten ranches.”
Dotti fell silent, and Garner found it impossible to look at her. But then she started laughing. “I can’t believe you gave it to Hank! I could have given you class-six whitewater rides for life! Much more exciting.”
Garner didn’t find that the least bit funny.
“It’s just as well,” she said, and she pushed herself off the steps and dusted off her backside with the palm of her hand. “People who have money believe it’s the answer to everything. Which, of course, it’s not.”
38
Beth stood with Garner’s yard gate closed firmly behind her and started to cry. You said you were going to show me mercy.
I don’t know what you meant.
She would have to go back to the Blazing B empty-handed. After all that.
Before she left, however, she had a question to ask Nova. A question that might actually have an answer. Beth walked the unpaved roads between her grandfather’s shop and the doctor’s abandoned offices. She passed in front of the broken window that still had not been boarded up. And then she walked into Nova’s bookstore, drying her tears as she entered.
The aisles were narrow and the shelves were short enough to allow a person to see the entire room. Beth saw Nova at the back, rearranging some books. When she saw Beth enter, she raised her hand in a hesitant wave, and Beth thought how nice it would have been to know her older sister, the one now tucked in beside her father in the grave.
Nova spoke first. “I thought you’d have gone home by now.”
Beth shook her head. “I had some things to take care of first. I’ll probably go back today.” It was already late morning, though, and the thought of another night in the mountains—more cougars, more detours—took everything out of her. “Or maybe tomorrow. How are you feeling?”
Nova tipped her head to one side and aligned the spines of several books on the shelf. “It’s a sad time.”
“It is.”
They were quiet for a minute. Beth picked up some of the books Nova was shelving.
“I wanted to ask you about a photograph I saw in your apartment,” Beth asked.
“Which one?”
“The men with the horse—a white man and a Native American.”
“The white man is Jonathan Wulff.”
“Wulff?”
“The grandson of Mathilde Werner Wulff.”
“I don’t know who she is.”
“She is the one behind the Sweet Assembly. The church where you found me Monday night.”
“Miracle Mattie?” Beth asked, recalling something Trey Bateman had said.
Nova nodded.
“I guess I’m not up to speed on the story.”
While Nova arranged her books, she told Beth the tale of Mathilde’s journey, of the cougar attack, of the mysterious Indian man who rose from the cold fire pit and took her home. In the rich vision of the story world that Nova built, Beth momentarily forgot her troubles.
“Come over here,” Nova eventually said, and Beth followed her to the front of the store to a shelf labeled Regional.
“Mathilde’s original journal is still with the Wulff family,” Nova said as she ran her fingers along the titles, searching for one in particular. “There are excerpts on display at the Sweet Assembly. But about twenty years ago one of her descendants published it.” She found the slim paperback volume and pulled it out for Beth. The Personal Account of Miracle Mattie.
“Jonathan Wulff wrote the foreword,” Nova pointed out.
“The man in your picture,” Beth confirmed.
“Yes, the one whose leg was healed at the same place. Please take the book. It’s a small thing, but I’d like you to have it. For comfort in your own sad time.”
“Who is the other man in the photograph? The one riding the horse.”
“My great-great-grandfather. He was an elder among the Southern Ute in the 1930s. Jonathan married his daughter.”
“And I’m guessing that