of Lilly’s final moments.
I tried to picture the scene as it had been several weeks earlier. Could someone have attacked the girl outside of the barn and later moved her body inside? The sheriff had dismissed the possibility, and as I looked around now, I couldn’t detect any signs of blood underneath the dirty footprints leading in and out of the barn. Surely, given the amount of blood that had flowed from the fatal wound at her final resting place, moving her injured body would have produced some kind of trail.
For the first time, I focused on the fact that the bale of hay against which Lilly had been reclined had been positioned to the side of the barn door, and her body had been facing away from the door when we had found it. Someone walking silently might have entered the barn without her knowing it, especially if her perceptions had been dimmed in some fashion. Perhaps she had fallen asleep in the barn and been set upon before she could awake and react. Or perhaps the whiskey Prickett thought he’d detected had played a role.
I crouched and looked around the barn from Lilly’s vantage point in those final moments. What had she seen, sitting there against the bale of hay? Whom had she seen?
“Who’s there?” shouted a familiar voice.
In one motion, I rose to my feet and turned. Rebecca was standing in the doorway to the barn. There was a shotgun clutched in her hands.
“Hallo,” I said with a weak smile.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. The gun in her hands was pointing toward the ground a few feet from where I stood, and while she didn’t shoulder it, she did nothing to lay it down either.
“I needed to see again where Lilly died,” I said. There seemed no way around it. “I thought perhaps I could find something, something the sheriff had overlooked, that might show who did this.”
“You shouldn’t have come onto my property without permission. I heard from a neighbor there were two men walking about today, stirring up trouble about Lilly. From the description, I was afraid it was that corpulent publisher. And you.”
I nodded. “I’m on your side, Rebecca,” I said. “I’m trying to help—”
“I don’t need your help. Or want it.”
At that moment, there was a great fluttering behind Rebecca and the crows took the skies as one, screeching in angry tones. Immediately Rebecca swung around, raising the gun to her shoulder and advancing out of the barn as she scanned the horizon. Her finger was coiled on the trigger. I took a few steps forward so I could see out over her.
Someone or something had unnerved the crows. But the cause of their sudden flight was nowhere to be seen. We were all alone.
I was about to say as much when Rebecca swung around again. The shotgun was still at her shoulder and this time it was pointing straight at my heart. Less than ten feet separated us.
“Don’t shoot,” I said, my hands raised over my head.
There was a beat of silence. The still air between us was fraught.
“No, of course not,” Rebecca said softly. She lowered the gun and rested it on the ground.
I became aware that I was breathing very deeply. Rebecca was as well, the captivating curve of her breasts rising and falling with each breath. Her face, made beautiful by the life she’d lived, had a look I hadn’t seen in a long time. And I felt sure my face was a mirror of hers. We took a step and then rushed toward each other, arms outstretched.
“I think it was the wind,” I whispered as my lips urgently felt for hers. My blood surged; my head pounded. I inhaled the moment deeply.
“The wind . . .”
I pulled her toward the interior of the barn, but she managed to shake her head, our bodies and arms and lips still enmeshed, and I realized her meaning at once. She was right; not there.
So I led her to the back door of her cabin and pushed it open. On the threshold she hesitated, resisting my pull, and said, without conviction, “I can’t, Joshua. We can’t.”
“We have to,” I whispered as my lips met hers again fiercely. I drew her inside and she did not resist.
We were silent for a long time afterward, lingering in each other’s arms, unwilling to let go of the precious now. I was transported back to those early mornings in her bed. The touch of