you found me I was waiting, you know, waiting for that miracle they say can happen to the right person in the right place. I’ve seen it once before. It’s never happened to me, but if anyone needed it to happen, last night I did.”
“Nova.”
“You have to wait and wait for such things. I don’t know why. I was in so much pain.”
“Dr. Ransom told me he died two years ago.”
Nova’s well of words ran dry.
“Two years ago,” Beth repeated. She was standing next to the bed now, ready to leap to somewhere, but she had no direction. “He was with you Sunday morning?”
“Yes. I see Mr. Remke most days. He lives two blocks from here.”
“Where?”
“On the Old Stage Road. Parallel to Main Street. He’s got a shop.”
“Garner’s Garden.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s not just an online place?”
“No. It’s his home too.”
“What’s the number, the house number?”
“I don’t remember. Twenty-six? Twenty-eight? There’s a sign hanging from the porch.”
“I’ll go check on him.”
Nova gestured to the phone underneath her table lamp. “Just call him.”
“It’s not even two in the morning.”
Nova reached for the phone and, in hesitating and squinting gestures, dialed it, while Beth felt suddenly sick and certain that the reason Dr. Ransom wasn’t here was because she was there, killing the man she’d already proclaimed dead.
Of course, it might be that Nova was a lunatic.
“Nova, I shouldn’t wait.”
The woman didn’t answer. Those lines of worry on her forehead that plagued her sleep began to reappear the longer she held the handset to her ear. She finally lowered it and raised her eyes to Beth. “He says he sleeps like a bear in winter.”
“Are you okay for me to leave you?”
Nova reached out and gripped Beth’s fingers. She closed her eyes and bowed her chin to her chest, then rested her other hand atop her slender belly, which was still tucked into the sheets. It wasn’t long that she stayed this way, with Beth’s fingers in a knuckle-crushing clench, but every second stretched out into a long minute for Beth, who didn’t understand what Nova was doing. She appeared to be praying, as far as anyone interested in alien abductions and haunted houses might pray. But color was returning to her pallid skin, and the strength of her grip came as a great surprise.
“Where do you get your power?” Nova whispered.
“I don’t have any power.”
“Yes, you do. I can feel it.”
“Then it must be from God.”
She looked up into Beth’s face, and she smiled. The lamplight and tears made her eyes sparkle. “You can do anything. You could be rich and famous.”
“I don’t think that’s what he had in mind.”
“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”
“Nova,” Beth finally said, as gently as she could. “I need to find Garner.”
“I know.” Nova reluctantly let go, looking at Beth’s hands rather than her face. “Find him. And look out for Catherine Ransom. She’s no doctor, I guarantee it.”
30
At the bottom of Nova’s stairs, the wolf was waiting for Beth with his nose pressed to the rear door like a dog who urgently needed to be let outside. Beth turned the knob and he sauntered out, heading at an easy pace straight for the unpaved road that ran up the hill behind the doctor’s offices and into the impenetrable night.
Using a flashlight Nova had loaned to her, Beth set out after Mercy. Nova had given her instructions to get to Garner’s shop and home. These would have been unnecessary if the wolf had waited for her, and the black margins that pressed in around her flashlight beam whispered anxious possibilities. A cloud of fatigue crowded Beth’s head. The crouching mountains and her foggy awareness conspired to make everything seem darker, thicker.
She walked one block along the unpaved road, then paused at a cross street. In the center of the intersection she turned in a circle and then back, trying to locate a signpost confirming that she’d found the Old Stage Road. There was none, and soon she realized she’d lost track of her original position. Which way was west? Without the sun or mountains in view, she had no idea. Her compass was back at Dr. Ransom’s apartment, in her pack.
She was considering how far she might go in any direction when Mercy’s heavy weight leaned up against her thigh, and Beth’s chilly fingers found the thick ruff of Mercy’s neck. The grogginess fell away from her mind. He turned to the left. She followed.
She began to shine her light across the fronts of buildings that might