foyer, Trey said, “Got a favor to ask you, Garner.”
“The cannabis I have is designated for legal medicinal use only—just so we’re clear.”
“You have a strange sense of humor.”
“It is from a different generation.”
“After my shift ends Saturday, I was hoping to head out for a short expedition. Want to check in on a pride of mountain lions that live up over the ridge. I’d head out before dawn Sunday, plan to be back Tuesday night. But I want to make the most of the days—any chance I can crash at your place Saturday night and Tuesday night? I can sleep on the floor, bring my own food.”
“Nonsense, I’m glad for the company. In fact, I’m having dinner with a friend Saturday night. You should join us. She said I could bring someone.”
“Sounds great. Wouldn’t happen to be at good old Dotti’s, would it?”
Garner winked at him. “Cat Ransom,” he said.
“Sweet. Tell her I’m a gluten-intolerant vegan who only eats organic macrobiotics. Maybe she’ll disinvite me.”
“I couldn’t allow it,” Garner said.
In the bright foyer of the Sweet Assembly, the solitary woman in the hat paused to regard Mathilde’s portrait, a photograph of her taken around 1911, when she was well into middle age. In fact, Garner noticed, she was about the same age as the woman, who reached out to touch Mathilde’s cheeks with her fingertips. She stood there, lost in her own mind for quite a long time, and Garner had the uncomfortable feeling that he was intruding on the woman’s private hopes in the very same way that the tourists who came here intruded on his—even if they did buy herbs at his tea shop afterward. But Garner didn’t want to be guilty of that kind of invasion. And so he turned away from her and focused on the images on the other side of the room, several photographs of a Southern Ute tribe taken in the 1920s.
These people were the reason why all the details of Mathilde’s spiritual perspective weren’t that important, Hank had once said to Garner. What was truly miraculous about Jonathan Wulff’s encounter with his grandmother’s fire pit—in Hank’s opinion—was that it eventually led to an amazing archaeological discovery: Mathilde had built her fire and scooped her ashes right on top of a Southern Ute burial ground, where a man of significant rank in his tribe had been buried along with his favorite horse, according to custom. The Ute people had graciously cooperated with Burnt Rock’s efforts to preserve the place, because their chief at the time had said that it was clear the spirit world hadn’t barred the Wulff family from its blessings.
“You know that’s how Burnt Rock got its name,” Trey said at Garner’s shoulder. He’d left the door to peer at the photograph of several men with their horses, the lineage of which they had acquired centuries earlier from Spanish explorers.
“What? How?”
“The Ute burial customs.”
“I know they killed the man’s favorite horse,” Garner said. “More than one, if he was important enough.”
“Imagine that in our celebrity-crazed culture. Can you imagine what a rock star’s memorial service would look like?”
“Young man, that is cynical and wrong.”
“I apologize. The Utes also burned down the man’s home and torched his possessions. Some of the rocks in the area still bear the scorch marks. Hence, Burnt Rock.”
“Is that so? I’ve seen those black rocks, but I didn’t know what caused it. Why did they do that?”
“It was believed he’d have more use of those things in the afterlife than his family would have in this one. There were others to provide for their needs. A community.”
“Still, that’s an unfortunate custom for the wife and kids.”
“I was thinking the horses got the worst end of the deal,” Trey said.
The woman at Mathilde’s portrait gave a little gasp as if she realized that she’d been left behind or had been pricked by an invisible pain. The dry climate might have resulted in an unexpected shock when she rubbed her fingers across the image, which she wasn’t supposed to touch. Whatever it was, she hurried into the sanctuary, hand on hat, purse on stomach, and Garner thought he saw pain line her face. She stumbled at the threshold but recovered her balance quickly and went on.
“Maybe she’s not sick at all,” Trey said. “Just odd.”
“No,” Garner said, because he recognized something wrong with the way she had stumbled, something that told him it couldn’t be blamed on a wobbly shoe or frayed carpet. “I think your first instinct