Page 127 of My Heart Will Find You

“You found it!” Max picked up the heavy board. He sat down on the couch, studying the carving. “This is why Dad bought the desk.”

“It was out in the open? I’d think that some collector would have paid a lot for it.”

“It wasn’t visible. Dad crawled under the desk. I don’t know what made him suspicious, but he knows history. Anyway, he said there was something hidden in the back.”

“So he bought the desk and took it out. But why did he hide it again?”

“Because of me. I was fascinated with this picture. I would sit on the floor and stare at it for hours. I said I wanted to be the man on the horse. I even tried to get Dad to buy me a breechcloth.”

All Etta could do was nod at what he was saying.

“One day Ben kicked a ball and hit it. See here? There’s a tiny chip that Dad repaired. He was afraid Ben and I would hurt it, so he took the panel out. He said he put it in a safe-deposit box at the bank.” Max shook his head. “But he just turned it around.”

“I bet it was you who found the key and opened the trunk from the auction.”

“You caught me. That was another obsession of mine. I kept on until I figured it out.” He kept staring at the artwork. “Now, looking at this as an adult, it’s not right. That woman isn’t wearing the traditional indigenous dress. And the man on the horse has a rifle. That would scare the buffalo. It might make them stampede and kill people. Maybe—”

Etta took the panel out of his hands and put it on the desk top—over the closed portrait of her and Max. If he saw that, he’d ask too many questions. “Do you have a camera ready to take with us? Maybe you could print out the directions while I throw together some food. There aren’t many places open now. Do you have the art supplies you’ll need?”

He was looking up at her with the amused expression that she’d seen on her Max many times.

A feeling of such lust ran through her that her scalp spit out tiny beads of sweat.

His expression changed to surprise when he seemed to feel it too.

Etta nearly ran from the room. “Ten minutes,” she called over her shoulder. Upstairs in her bedroom, she closed the door and leaned against it for a moment. “He is not my husband, and he never will be,” she said aloud. She went to the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water.

Max started to get in the front passenger seat. “I can sleep anywhere,” he said.

Etta didn’t want him so close to her. Asleep, he might remind her even more of her Max. She opened the back door and told him to stretch out across the back seat.

As her Max had often done, he smiled at her bossiness. She handed him a pillow and Henry’s lap robe, and he thanked her. She saw in the rearview mirror that he was asleep before she pulled out of the driveway.

She was glad of the drive as it gave her time to think. When she was in the past, she’d seen the life she wanted to live. Home and family. It’s what she’d thought she had, but now it seemed that it was an illusion. Alicia had been craving her own home, and her father wanted to get away from responsibilities. He’d wanted the freedom to go and do. Etta seemed to be holding him back.

She knew that it was up to her to figure out what to do now. She’d had a good job offer. She could stay in KC and be Henry’s assistant, his caretaker. But would she want to stay after she’d told him what happened the last time she’d seen Max?

When the word “last” came to her mind, it upset her so much that she almost ran off the road. It was good that there was no traffic and she was avoiding all the major highways. As Zack had done, she was going by farm roads.

By the time she saw a sign that said Garrett Historical Site, she’d made no decisions, no plans about her future.

She drove through a small town that in other circumstances would have been flourishing, but now there were no people on the streets. Even the little hospital on the outskirts looked empty. “That’s good,” she murmured and kept driving. A sign advertising Wild Prairie Sage Beer made her do a double take. Could it be the same one?

Finally, a sign sent her down a side road and through an open gate. Beyond it she could see the buildings of the town, her Garrett, Kansas. She started to wake Max and tell him but she didn’t. He could see it later. Right now she wanted to look and say nothing.

The car rolled down the street, which was clean and had some modern surface on it. Not asphalt, not gravel, and certainly not horse manure.

The first thing she noticed was the absence of many of the saloons. It looked like the historians didn’t want to admit that their ancestors’ favorite pastime was getting drunk.Rotgut whiskey was probably what created your great-great-grandfather, she thought.

The Red Dog was one of the saloons that had been rebuilt. Etta doubted that this one was as dirty as the real one had been. She wondered if Freddy saw this place, would she remember it?

Not far away was the doctor’s house, and she was glad to see that the window John Kecklin had stolen was there. The Garrett Emporium and the sheriff’s office were in place, and to the far right was the train station. She knew Fred Harvey had set up his restaurants, and she wondered if her words had given him the idea.I like to think I made a contribution.

The town was one street so there were no alleyways, no forge for Phillip, no big stables where the horses were kept. And she didn’t see any outhouses anywhere.

All in all, it was a clean, nonsmelly version of Garrett and she loved it.

She had reached the end of the street. What she had so carefully and studiously avoided looking at was the church.

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