If he had a story to tell?
If he was innocent?
Or was he so bad, right down to his rotting bones, that Dad had to kill him? Had to leave him here decaying, a sight so awful the scavengers won’t touch him?
There’s not even a coyote tooth-scratch on his bones.
I press my hand to my mouth.
Is this what I’m doing now? Convincing myself he was a bad man because I can’t believe my father was?
“Libby,” Holt says, and I just about leap out of my skin.
He comes up behind me, resting a hand on my shoulder, moving in his silent prowling way that spooks me sometimes.
“Could you knock or something?”
“C’mon, Libby,” he says softly. “Nothing for you here. You’re just going to make yourself crazy.”
“There’s got to be something,” I whisper, glancing around the saloon, the old wood turned yellow in the afternoon light. “Dad said find the gun. So where is it? There’s all that crap behind the bar, but I’m scared to start digging. It’s…it’s like some kind of shrine. A Schrödinger’s box, maybe. As long as I don’t disturb anything, I don’t have to know, one way or the other.”
Holt walks behind the bar to the mess I’ve seen there before. Several huge boards, tangled up in a heap of other nameless objects coated in dust. Crates, maybe?
If the gun’s in that mess of stuff, I’ll never find it. Nobody will without leaving evidence someone was here recently.
He gives the biggest board his best push, but even a big, strong man like him can’t move it more than an inch or two. I watch him fling off his jacket and roll up his sleeves, gritting his teeth, like he’s ready to throw real muscle into it, but I see the dust he’s kicking up.
“Holt, no. Don’t do it. You’ll leave footprints. We can’t have anybody knowing we were here…” A breath sticks in my lungs.
After a second, he shrugs, then steps back around it to my side, carrying his jacket and dusting himself off.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says, tugging gently at my arm.
I follow him quietly with one last look back at the dead man.
Gerald gives up nothing as usual.
Nothing but more questions and a formless sense of dread.
I don’t wanna be scared like this.
One fine day, I’ll have to face down what happened here, and the fact that Dad’s part of it.
For now, I mount up on Frost, and together we head back, riding side by side down the trail through the mountain cut with our knees bumping, Frost and Plath so close their tails practically melt into each other as they lash away flies.
When we get to the mouth of the cut, Holt surprises me by veering off along the cliffs.
I frown, tugging lightly on Frost’s reins and turning him to follow.
“Holt? Where are you going?”
“Just c’mon,” he says with that devilish grin.
I sigh, rolling my eyes.
I’ll probably regret this later, but for now I’ll c’mon.
If only ’cause I’m curious as hell.
We ride slowly along the edge of the tall cliffs and mountain slopes that give Heart’s Edge its name, but I don’t realize where we’re going until the Charming Inn is a distant silhouette high at the top of one bluff.
Below it all, the massive meadow of summer flowers blends into the trees covering several hills nearby.
Every summer, the meadow below the half-heart cliff behind the inn blooms like an artist’s wet dream.
We’re talking wild colors everywhere, a carpet of pink and blue against verdant green.
All kinds of flowers, lavender and peonies and even violets, crowd their heads up against each other.
I haven’t been out here in forever.
Haven’t thought about the local legend—a story I’m sure changed a hundred times in the telling.
It’s about a farm boy in love with a mayor’s daughter, and the mayor wouldn’t let them be together—so they jumped over the cliff and became some kind of spirits.
They blew away to live together in the mountains, forever watching over the town and answering the wishes of new lovers who toss flower offerings over the cliff and swear their love.
My practical side always wonders if they killed themselves like Romeo and Juliet.
Maybe folks romanticized the story over time until it was forgotten and no one ever thought it might be real. Just a fairy tale.
Then there’s my hopeful, sappy romantic side.
I like to imagine them flying over the cliff is just a metaphor for skipping town together.
Flying the nest and being free to love each other, wherever they wound up.
“Woman,” Holt says, “you’ve got the dreamiest damn look on your face right now. What’s up?”
I laugh, glancing over at him.
He’s almost out of place in this bright noonday sun when he’s all night colors. Mostly, this dark leather jacket that’s thin enough for summer, but leaves him looking perfectly imposing.
He’s dressed for prowling around in the shadows. Not sitting on my mare under a high, bright-blue sky.