“I found a picture of the woman he loved.”
“Let me see it,” Ty said softly and Chris gave him the photograph. He looked at it a long while before handing it back to her. “He said he threw it over the side and I believed him.”
“You’ve seen this?”
“It was my most treasured possession for most of my life.”
She hesitated. “Who is this woman?”
“I’ve been told she’s my mother.”
“Your mother? But, Ty, don’t you realize that if you have this maybe you can find out who she is? Find out who you are?”
“I know who I am,” he said with a set jaw.
Chris looked at the picture for a while. “What’s her name?”
“I have no idea.”
“But didn’t you ask?”
He looked at her. “Who was I going to ask? The old man told me she said one word before she died and that was, ‘Tynan.’ ”
“Did you show the photo to the women in…to Red and the others?”
“Sure, they saw it, but no one knew who she was. They thought it was all real romantic and they kept buying frames for the picture, then the old man’d come and take the frame and sell it. It was a great source of income to him for years.”
Chris turned the picture over. “It says something on the back, but I can’t make it out.”
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“Sa. It has the letters Sa on the back and the rest is faded. I used to imagine that my mother’s name was Sarah.”
“You’ve spent a lot of time looking at this, haven’t you?”
Tynan didn’t answer her, but lay on his back and looked at the sky. “I missed seeing the sky while I was in prison. What you can see is covered by iron bars. And I didn’t like the noise either.”
Chris wanted to hear more about the photo. “How did the old man get this picture? If she had this, she must have had other things too.”
“He sold everything else, even her clothes and her underwear. I imagine he threw her naked body off the side there. Or else it’s still around here.”
“Tynan! How can you be so crass? The woman was your mother, and she died giving birth to you.”
He sat up. “She died from three bullet wounds in her back.”
“But who wanted to kill her? Why?”
“Is there anything to eat around here? Maybe I could scout up some game.”
“Are you going to answer me? Do you have any idea why someone would shoot a woman who was carrying a child?”
He looked down at her. “Why do men cheat at cards? Why do men get drunk and try to kill each other? I don’t know. She wandered in here with three big holes in her back, lay down, gave birth to me, said ‘Tynan,’ then died. That’s the sum of all I know. The miner watched her give birth, planned to leave both her and the kid, but then he thought he could sell what clothes she hadn’t bled on and the screaming brat, so he stripped her and carried me down the mountain. That’s it, Chris, that’s all there is to tell. He sold everything except the picture. Nobody wanted a photo of a woman they didn’t know, so I took it one summer when he had me up here working. Now, can I eat?”
Chris sat on the ground and looked at the picture. “She’s a very pretty woman.”
“Was. She was pretty. She’s been dead for a long time. Chris, why are you so all-fired interested in my mother?”
“I’m interested in—” She stopped abruptly. She’d almost said that she was interested in him. “I’m a reporter,” she said, rising. “I’m curious, that’s all. I’m curious about everything.”