I had no idea what I was going to do with Duncan’s body, or with the unwanted knowledge of what he and his father had done. For a little while I had succeeded in forgetting about Claire and her husband. It was almost a vacation.

At the turnout for Desert Home, I saw Walt on my left near the top of the hill leading to the archway. He waved me in.

Before I could get out of the cab he jumped up on the running board. “He’s been down there about an hour. Took his rented SUV down the road across from the diner. On top of everything else, he’s an idiot.”

He reached to steady himself on a mirror post. I could see the butt of a handgun beneath his short leather jacket. “You think you’re going to need that?” I asked.

Walt gave my question more thought than I expected. “I hope not,” he said.

“Don’t shoot anyone accidentally,” I said.

He jumped down and glared up at me. “I don’t shoot people accidentally,” he said. “I shoot them on purpose.”

We walked up the hill toward the arch. “An hour’s a long time,” I said.

Walt’s answer was to the point. “They’ve been married a long time. You probably shouldn’t be here.”

“Probably not,” I said. “But it doesn’t take an hour to hand over the cello.”

Walt put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t go down there.”

I wasn’t going to, and told him so. It wasn’t true—part of me was already starting down the other side.

“She knows you’re here, right?”

“She knows,” he said. “She doesn’t need to see me.”

“Maybe she is your daughter.” It was something that had been playing in the back of my mind for quite a while. I meant it as a kind of joke. As soon as I said it I was filled with regret. Such a comment wouldn’t sit well with Walt. When he didn’t say anything, I looked over at him. He was staring stone-faced down at the house.

The two of us knelt on the sandy ground just out of sight below the rim of the hill. One of us was praying that there was nothing going on inside the house but talk. Walt could have been hoping for the same thing. I liked to think so. Both of us just wanted to see Dennis come out of the house with the cello and leave, alone.

“Why don’t you go down there,” I suggested. “Just to make sure everything is okay?”

Walt glanced over at me with a mixture of understanding and pity on his face. It might have been a mixture of contempt and pity. It was an expression I’d never seen before, not on Walt Butterfield’s face. “She’s with her husband, Ben,” he said quietly. “Unless there’s a sign of trouble brewing, neither one of us belongs there. You can’t change whatever is happening behind those doors. It would be wrong to try.” He rocked back on his heels and stood up. “It’s time for you to go.”

He walked me back to my truck. “Maybe she’ll stay this time. Maybe not.”

“I thought this was her first visit,” I said.

“She showed up on my doorstep one morning about a year ago, right after she and her husband separated. I knew right off who she was. I let her cool her heels, hoping she’d go away. Stubborn girl. She stood outside the door to the diner or sat roasting in her car off and on for most of the day. She knew I was there. And she knew I knew. She wore me down. Late in the afternoon I let her in. She walked straight to Bernice’s booth and sat down, like she’d been doing it all her life. She had her choice of any seat in the diner.

“All she wanted was for me to tell her about her mother. She knew about everything else. I made us a little something to eat. Before she left she asked for a keepsake, anything that was her mother’s. I gave her those boots she wears. Had them made up special for Bernice just before…” He stopped. “And a little gold locket Bernice wore, with our wedding photograph inside. Then she asked for something to remember me by. Kind of surprised me.”

I asked him what he gave her.

“A quilt my mother made for me when I was a kid. She looked it over and put it in a bag. She thanked me and left. Never expected to see her again. Didn’t want to see her again. Claire looks so much like her mother. It was like losing Bernice again. A few months later I wrote to her and told her it would be okay with me if she wanted to phone me or visit again. I gave her the number to the phone booth and said that if I was around I would hear it ring. Two weeks ago it rang. She was calling from New York. She wanted me to come and pick her up at the airport in Denver. I picked her up. She sent some of her belongings ahead. Used her mother’s Korean name instead of her own. Said she had her reasons. I thought maybe it had to do with her husband.”

Walt looked back over his shoulder toward the archway, as if Claire was standing beneath it.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked him.

“Thought you should know since you and Claire are together now.”

“I hope so,” I said.

“There’s something else,” he said, “just between the two of us. Bernice and I had been trying to have children for years. Then those men violated her.” He scuffed at the dirt with his boots. I could tell for a moment he was in the diner again that evening. “She was still in the hospital when we found out she was pregnant. I couldn’t stand the idea. I wanted the doctors to flush the damn thing and send it straight to hell. No matter how I felt, Bernice wanted to keep it. She begged me, but I wasn’t having any of it. We argued. She said she would leave me if I harmed the baby. It wasn’t just the baby. Those animals broke her all up inside. Carrying the baby and childbirth might kill her. I agreed to let her have the baby, though I didn’t visit her until after it was born. It wasn’t the rape and beating that took away her speech. It was having the baby. A stroke. By the time she recovered, the baby was gone, adopted. Healthy damn kid. I still had Bernice. She hated me as much as I hated those men. Until Claire showed up, and I saw her, I hadn’t realized what I’d done to Bernice. What I’d done to myself.”

“A second chance?” I ventured.

Walt nodded.

“I hope you take it,” I said.

“Just thought you should know,” he said.

Walt walked back up the hill. What he really wanted me to know was that he had as much at stake as I did in whatever was going on inside the house, maybe more. Walt had made Bernice give up the baby. He had kept the corpse. Now he was trading back.

The sun was beginning to set. The wind was gusting, full of sand as it crossed 117. It made the sunlight dirty, like a bandage stretched over the sky. If I didn’t keep my speed down, the sand would take the paint off my truck and trailer right down to the metal.

The flashing blue and red light bars of the two police units faded in and out of sight behind the windblown sand. They were parked side by side along the shoulder in front of the diner. When the officers saw me coming they got out of their vehicles and motioned me to pull over into the diner’s parking lot. One car was a Utah Highway Patrol cruiser; the other was a Carbon County Sheriff’s unit.

There was little doubt in my mind they had been waiting for me. I had no idea why, especially the need for two of them.