Part 22 (2/2)

But it was an entirely different woman who faced me, older, and clearly quite ill.

I took off my hat as I stepped into the room. ”My name is Calvin Chase,” I said.

She leaned forward, squinted. ”You can go, Maria,” she said to the small, plump woman who'd escorted me into the dusty room where she lay. Despite the suffocating heat, she was wrapped in an Indian blanket, her fingers curled around a steaming cup of coffee.

”Sheriff Vernon told me where to find you,” I said when Maria had left us.

”He must have been surprised that I came back.” Hedda fingered her blanket. ”Everybody was. The return of the prodigal daughter.”

Her hair was jet black but streaked with iron, her eyes sunken, two rheumy, dark pools. She started to speak, stopped abruptly, and coughed into a dark red handkerchief. Once the spasm had pa.s.sed, she brushed her mouth roughly, then lowered her hand into her lap. ”Sorry,” she said almost bitterly. ”I've not been well.” She glanced out the window, into the blinding sunlight beyond it, a white-hot sweep of desert sand. ”I didn't want to come back here, but I owned this little house. Free and clear.” She s.h.i.+fted slightly and a pair of small brown feet peeped from the blanket. ”They said it would help me. Coming back here. The climate. The dryness.” She fanned herself with an open hand. ”A good place to die.”

I saw something of the thwarted life she'd lived, felt the death that would soon bring it to an end. ”I'm sorry,” I told her.

She looked at me intently, like someone studying a map. ”Maria said you came all the way from Maine.”

”Yes.”

”What are you looking for, Mr. Chase?”

”Catherine Shay.”

The oldest of her wounds opened before my eyes.

”So this is really about Adrian Cash,” she said. ”What I did to Catherine by saving his life. You'd have thought him being locked up would have been enough to ease her mind.” She fell silent for a moment, then said, ”Tell me, do the people in Twelve Palms still believe I fell in love with Adrian?”

”I don't know.”

”Well, suppose I did. You can't help who you fall in love with, can you?”

I heard my own fated p.r.o.nouncement: I love you, Dora.

”No,” I said. ”You can't.”

”Well, just for the record, I fell in love with my duty, not Adrian Cash,” Hedda said. ”My duty as a lawyer. And they never forgave me for it.” She wiped a line of sweat from her upper lip with her hand. ”End of story.”

”It's not the end of Catherine's. She's still running from him.”

She squinted slightly. ”You look like a priest, Mr. Chase. One of those worldly priests.” She sucked in a raspy breath. A hot breeze rustled the blanket at her feet, sent tremors through her hair. ”You know the type. A fallen, fallen man.”

I saw Dora's house swing into view, blurry through the sheeting rain, my brother's car in the muddy driveway, felt my feet press down upon the sodden earth, my body move forward through silver wires of rain.

”The type who can't forgive himself,” Hedda said.

The stairs creaked as I went up them, a chorus of tiny, aching cries.

”Something eating at him. Something he did.”

The door was partly ajar. I stopped, a moment, nothing more, then pressed my hand against it, called her name, Dora.

”Something...”

Then stepped inside, searching for her in the dim light, finding someone else instead. ”... terrible.”

William.

Hedda's eyes now bore into mine so fiercely that for an instant I believed she'd seen the images in my mind. ”Well, I'm like that too,” she said. ”Fallen. Because of what I did. Saving Adrian Cash from the hangman. What that did to Catherine.”

The only words I could muster were ”Help me find her.”

”You shouldn't have much trouble doing that,” Hedda said bluntly. ”She's not hiding anymore.”

”Why not?”

”Because Adrian Cash is dead. Died three months ago in the state prison.” She turned toward the small table that stood beside the couch. ”He willed me his entire estate.” She pulled open a drawer, reached inside, and drew out a battered silver ring. ”This is it,” she said as she handed it to me. ”All he had left.”

I turned the ring over in my fingers.

”I don't know where Catherine Shay is, Mr. Chase,” Hedda said. She plucked the ring from my fingers, her eyes still on me intently. ”But I'm sure her father knows that Adrian is dead. That Catherine is safe now. And so, like I said, she doesn't have to run anymore, hide anymore. My guess is, her father's probably already gotten in touch with her, told her to come home.”

I suddenly felt Dora so near to me that I could all but feel her breath in my hair. ”Home?” I asked.

Hedda nodded toward the window. ”Not far from here.” She pointed toward a line of dark, ragged cliffs that rose in the distance. ”She's out there somewhere. With her father. In the mountains.”

At that moment, as I've since calculated, she was sitting on a granite stone, her legs drawn up beneath her, peering into an icy mountain stream.

Chapter Twenty-two.

Billy was at the window when I came into the study.

”How are you doing?” I asked.

”Fine,” he answered softly. He continued to stare out into the yard. He was fully dressed, sitting in an upright chair, both hands on the handle of his cane, ma.s.saging it rhythmically.

”You're low on firewood,” I told him. ”I'll get some from the bas.e.m.e.nt.”

He continued to stare out the window.

”It won't take long,” I a.s.sured him. ”I'll try not to disturb you.”

He said nothing until I turned to leave. Then he said, ”That woman, the one you visit in Royston. Do you ever feel anything for her, Cal?”

”No.”

”Nothing at all?”

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