Page 85 of My Heart Will Find You

“Beautiful voice. I’m Zack Vaughn, Henry’s research assistant. He probably told you about me.”

Not a word, Etta thought. “Lots.” She took a chance. “How’s your leg?”

He smiled, glad to have been remembered. “It’s good. It took some surgery, but it’s nearly healed. I’ll go see him.”

“Sure.” Etta was digesting this information. Rufus’s leg was hurt in the past, and his reincarnation’s leg was hurt in the present. Was that karma? Or fate?

She went to the kitchen and prepared a tray of lemonade and cookies to take the library. But Zack entered.

“He’s in the zone and I don’t dare disturb him.”

“I understand. Would you like to sit outside?”

“Yes, I would.”

As she suspected, he carried the tray. In 1871, men carried things. Unless the woman was, as she’d said to Max, “some poor overworked, underprivileged serf.” The memory made her smile.

They sat at the little table and chairs in the side garden.

“How are you holding up in this isolation?” he asked. “I mean, Henry is good company, but...”

She laughed. “It’s like living inside a book. Talk to me. Tell me all about yourself.”

“Nothing interesting, really. I had a daughter when I was nineteen. Her mother and I couldn’t stand each other, so she turned my daughter over to me and left the country.” He grimaced. “My daughter now has a tall, skinny boyfriend and they live in Denmark. She translates books.” He took a drink of his lemonade. “I had a farm until six years ago but I sold it to a rich guy, then I retired early. What about you?”

“No husband, no kids.” Even to Etta that sounded sad. “But I’m in a serous relationship.” It was a lie that wasn’t a lie. “What do you do for Henry?”

“Whatever he can think up for me to do. We met at one of his book signings in Abilene. There weren’t many people there so we talked. We discovered that he had too much to do and I didn’t have enough, so we merged. I do any legwork that he needs. I drive him around, take photos, that sort of thing. Henry and I have been on half a dozen road trips together.”

Like he used to do with Ben, she thought. “A road trip,” she said dreamily. “That sounds wonderful.”

“Getting stir crazy?”

“Yes, but it’s more than that. There’s a place I want to see. It’s a town that disappeared when the train line moved to Wichita.”

“There are a lot of those places. Now they’re just empty land.”

“I know, but I still want to see it. There’s a town, a house, and a stream with cottonwood trees.”

“That sounds like half of Kansas.”

“There was a sod house cut into a hill near the stream.”

“That’s another quarter of Kansas.”

“Then we’d only have to search a fourth of the state.”

He laughed. “That’s better than Henry’s directives. One time he sent me nearly to Oklahoma just to look for one kind of a flower.”

“Did you find it?”

“Of course.”

“When do we leave?” She was joking but Zack didn’t laugh.

“How about today?” he asked.

She could see that he was serious. “But this lockdown...”

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