Abandon

The special agent cut her eyes at Abigail.

“She’s awake.”

They dragged their chairs over into patches of afternoon sunlight that spilled in through the second-floor windows.

“How you feeling?” the undersheriff asked.

“All right.”

Hans leaned forward in the chair, clasped his hands together.

“Search-and-rescue just got back a half hour ago. You might’ve heard the helicopter.”

“They didn’t find my father.”

“They spent forty-five minutes hovering over the mountainside you think you came out on, with two men combing the area with binoculars.”

“I told you: There was a chimney I climbed out—”

“I believe you, Abigail. Thing is, that’s steep terrain up there. They spotted numerous avalanches, and they’re thinking a slide may have swept down the mountain at some point in the last twenty-four hours, buried the opening to the chimney.”

“So they’ve given up?”

“No, of course not. But there’s another storm coming in tonight, blizzard warnings already up, so our window for finding your father is shrinking.”

Abigail glanced at the special agent, could have sworn she caught a glint of compassion through the federal facade. “Maybe my father left that chimney room, tried to find his way back to the cavern where we first entered.”

“Okay, even assuming he was able to find his way back, this morning an avalanche swept down that hillside where you say you entered the cave. So wouldn’t the entrance be buried? And as you said, it was practically impossible to find in dry conditions in broad daylight.”

Abigail shook her head, the tears coming. “He thinks I’m coming for him. Please. Fly me back there. Let me—”

“You honestly believe you can find it?”

“Tell me something, Hans. At what point would you quit looking for your father?”

1893

NINETY-ONE

Gloria’s head lay in Rosalyn’s lap, and she saw that lonely lantern still burning in the middle of the cavern, its flame a little lower than before. The pain had intensified into something like the worst aftereffects of drunkenness she’d ever experienced, her body begging for water as it slowly dried and wilted. Still alive, she thought.

Now only moans and soft bellows disturbed the silence, the whimpers of those waiting to die, wanting it more than a drink of water, worse than air.

She looked up at Rosalyn. “Hey,” she whispered.

Rosalyn’s eyes were open, but the old whore made no answer. She had died while Gloria slept, her mouth inflated by the gigantic tongue, eyelids cracked, blood rolling out of them and down her cheeks. Even while she’d been alive, the absence of water had allowed the mummification of her body to begin, the skin on her face shrinking, lips shriveling, gums blackened, nose withered by half, flesh leathered into the color of ashen purple, with livid streaks where the blood had pooled.

Gloria felt a glimmer of release that her friend had passed.

Again, she obsessed on water, imagined bending down on the shore of Emerald Lake, splashing her face on a bright summer day. She kept replaying the last drink she’d ever taken—snow melted in an iron pot over the fire in their cabin. She could still picture Zeke filling her cup on Christmas morning, remembered how the water had chilled the tin, how when she touched it, her fingerprints had appeared as ghostly, fading condensation on the metal.

The sound of weeping drew her attention. She could barely raise her head from Rosalyn’s lap, but when she did, she saw a woman lying ten feet away against the wall of the cavern, touching the blond hair of a boy perhaps two or three years old. The woman had managed to pull him into her body and she kissed his eyebrows and his parched little lips and cried tearlessly. Her husband had died several hours ago and his body lay sprawled nearby on the floor.

The woman rolled her son across the rock toward his father and lay down between them. She held their hands and stared up at the ceiling, her lips moving, and she would not get up again.

Gloria closed her eyes. She thought about her husband and her son, wondered if they could see her dying in this cave.

Then she sensed him, opened her eyes, and across the cavern stood Ezekiel, dapper in that four-button sack coat, his Sunday best, and shining as if illumined by footlights.

Though his lips did not move, she heard his voice perfectly.

He said he was sorry she’d suffered, but that it was almost over, that he’d glimpsed the place where they were going, and there were no words for pain or loss there, and no past.

Our boy’s there, he said, and I’m told he’s been askin for us. There’s some kind a beautiful place waitin on our souls, Gloria.

What’s he look like, Zeke?

Like Gus, I suppose.

He ain’t grown?

I don’t know.

Will he always be a little boy, or will he grow up into a man?

I don’t know the answer to that.

You go on to him.

I wanna wait for you, Glori.

You won’t be waitin long.

June 2010

All right, we’re back on the record oh nine CR one sixty-four, the People versus Abigail Foster. Let’s go ahead and bring in the jury.”

The woman occupied a table near the street, shaded by an umbrella, a copy of the Times spread out across her lap.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, she looked up.

“Would the defendant please rise?”

Abigail and her attorney stood.

“Madam Forelady, have you arrived upon a verdict?”

“We have, Your Honor.”

It was all happening faster than Abigail had imagined. She felt dizzy, her knees trembling under her skirt, had to put a hand on the table to steady herself.

“Is the verdict to be returned a unanimous one?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“How do you find as to count one of the indictment charging the defendant with murder in the second degree?”

Midday, mid-June on the steps of the San Juan County court house, and the sky shone spring blue, the scant deciduous trees of Silverton just beginning to leaf out, baby greens and yellows smudging this high valley where mounds of snow lingered under the eaves of Victorian houses. It had been the hardest winter in a de cade, the snowpack still four feet deep above timberline on the north aspects.

Walter Palmer ended his cell-phone call with a curt “No” and looked at his client. “Wanna grab lunch, Abigail? Brown Bear Café, and I’m buying.”

“I’ve got a flight to catch to New York.” Abigail embraced him, this fifty-six-year-old, balding, pudgy lawyer with halitosis and no sense of humor who’d fought for her freedom as if it were his own, put a soft kiss on his cheek, and said, “Thank you, Walt. For everything. Best seventy-five grand I ever spent.”