GABRIELLA PUT THE FINAL PAIR OF JEANS INTO THE SUITCASE, wrestled the zipper closed and carried it downstairs and out to the jeep. When she came back in, she held a box Ty’d slipped in between the suitcases—a shoebox with holes in the top.
“Whatever’s in here—a tiger salamander, a green snake, a mountain lion, a sperm whale—whatever it is, take it back to Notmuchava Waterfall and let it go.”
“But Mom, I—”
“Take a picture of it to prove to Joey you didn’t make it up. You can catch another one next year.”
That put a smile on his face. And on Pedro’s, too.
“I mean, if Jim Benninger invites us.”
“Oh, he will invite you,” Pedro said. “I can absolutely guarantee he will invite you!”
The boy and P.D. headed out the back door and across the meadow toward the creek and Pedro held up a cup of coffee.
“Break time,” he said. “I spared no trouble or expense in brewing the perfect cup of coffee, made from eleven herbs and spices—”
“That’d be fried chicken.”
“Then I threw in two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pick—”
“It’s instant, isn’t it.”
“Yep. But sit on the porch and look at the view and you will not notice.”
She followed him out the front door and eased carefully down into a chair. The doctor had given her a cervical collar and instructed her to wear it on her injured neck for two weeks. She’d taken it off after ten days, but was beginning to regret that decision. The plane flight from Pittsburgh to Denver, the three-hour drive to St. Elmo and the ride up the mountain yesterday had reawakened the pain of the injury.
“A little, but—”
“You are not lifting anything heavier than a toothbrush! Ty and I can handle the rest of it.”
Gabriella didn’t even bother to protest. She had learned that when Pedro went into what she called Pancho Villa mode, resistance was futile. He was in charge … as he had been from the moment he half-carried her down from the bristlecone pine forest, wouldn’t let her or Ty go into the cabin, just whisked them off the mountain and took care of everything. It was all a blur now. Her only clear memory was that Pedro had been there through it all—the hospital, the police investigation … and Theo’s funeral.
“You figure they will sue?” Pedro asked.
She barked out a little laugh. “Of course they will! When I tell Hampton Books there’ll be no sequel to The Bride of the Beast and that I’m not going to make any more appearances to promote the book, they’ll sue all right.” She looked sideways at him without moving her head. “I’ll survive. It’s only money. I can live comfortably the rest of my life on the royalties from Garrett’s music.”
They sat together in companionable silence, looking out over the vista of the Arkansas River Valley.
“When does Adriana’s flight get in?” she asked quietly.
“A couple of hours after yours leaves. The timing ees perfect.”
Gabriella said nothing.
“And we will talk. All of us, as a family. I think I know where eet will go, eventually. Where it has to go. Perhaps Angelina can learn to breathe on her own without the ventilator … but if she can’t …”
Gabriella reached out and squeezed his hand.
Ty came around the side of the cabin and up onto the porch and said he’d returned the creature to the creek.
“You got all your stuff gathered up?” Gabriella asked.
“Just one thing’s left and it’ll have to stay here.”
“You’re not leaving your rock?”
Gabriella had given Ty the half she’d hidden in the fireplace to save as a Christmas present for Grant more than thirty years ago. An ordinary rock. Except it wasn’t. A chunk of granite that couldn’t be a geode. Except it was. With rainbow crystals inside that were a geologic impossibility. Just like The Cleft was an impossibility.
She and Pedro had talked and talked about it, and they always wound up at the same place. And that was nowhere at all. There was no explanation, not for any of it.
They wondered what they’d find if they dug farther down in the rock slide than the authorities had dug to recover Yesheb’s body. If they dug out where The Cleft had been—would every pebble she and Garrett had tossed into it that summer be changed on the inside, too? Be just as beautiful as—?
“The impossible rock—no way!” Ty said. “It’s the best present I ever got! I’ll keep it my whole life.”
Her eyes were suddenly moist.
“Then what …?”
“I painted a picture last night with the oil paints. I didn’t know it’d still be wet this morning. We can’t take it with us.”
“Put it on the refrigerator.”
Ty grinned. “And we can get it when we come back next summer.”
She nodded, then made a shooing motion. “Go on now, go get it. We’ve got a plane to catch.”
They went back into the cabin and Ty bounded up the stairs with P.D. a step behind him.
Gabriella turned to Pedro.
“Pedro, I’ve been trying to think of a way to say—”
“Shhhh.”
“But—”
He pulled her into his arms. “Call me when you get back to Pittsburgh.” He held her tight and she breathed in the soap smell of him as he whispered into her hair. “We have many things to talk about.”
They heard Ty’s footsteps like the rumble of a stampede down the wooden stairs. He held a piece of paper from the art tablet in his hand, 12 × 16 inches. He went to the refrigerator, pulled off four magnets and carefully affixed them to the unpainted edges of the paper and positioned it below the watercolor he’d done of the view from the front porch of the cabin the day Yesheb—
The room went airless. Gabriella looked at the piece of art paper and the world slowed down and stopped. Didn’t move on its axis. For a breathless, eternal moment nothing in the universe stirred.
Below the little-kid-drawn watercolor of the valley was an oil painting of a single, perfect bristlecone pine tree—a tree that glowed. Somehow, Ty had captured the incandescence, the light from within. Each needle on every branch was a golden firefly. Around the tree were hundreds of points of light, sparkling, each a star, a universe of its own. The glow spread out into the shadows; the rock walls curved protectively around it.
It was stunning, a work of art!
Gabriella dragged her eyes from it to the picture above it—a child’s scrawl on a refrigerator door with the Mona Lisa. She looked at Pedro, saw his eyes go from one picture to the other, watched him make the same comparison, reach the same conclusion. He turned his eyes toward her, opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Ty was completely oblivious to their response. He stepped back, adjusted his baby-owl glasses on his nose and looked it over himself.
“I wish Grandpa Slappy could have seen it,” he said, his voice thick with unshed tears.
“Me, too,” Gabriella managed to gasp.
Then Ty turned around and saw that his mother and Pedro were gaping at him.
“What?” he asked, looking from one to the other. “What’s everybody standing around for? I thought we had a plane to catch.”
THE END