“The weather’s only going to get worse from here. It’s only going to get colder and darker. How long can a person survive out in the elements when it’s twenty below?”

He hadn’t meant to say all that. He preferred to keep his fears to himself. But Frank had a way of drawing people out.

“Have you talked with your dad about moving her somewhere?”

Mitch’s shoulders slumped. “Not yet. But it needs to happen soon.”

“And what about Bea? She doing okay?”

“I don’t know. She’s not speaking to me much right now.”

Frank nodded knowingly. When his daughter, Hannah, was sixteen, she’d gone through a brief but intense rebellious phase. Ran away and everything. Mitch had never seen Frank so torn up.

Frank stood. “Well, I better go. I’ll be praying for you.”

Mitch walked him to the door. From anyone else, those words would feel trite. Condescending even. When Frank said them, though, he felt a small sense of relief, maybe because he knew Frank meant it. He spent hours in prayer. Mitch had caught him on his knees in his office more times than he could count.

“Thanks for coming by.”

Frank squeezed his shoulder. “Talk to you soon.”

Mitch closed the door after him and stood in the hallway for a moment, listening to the silence and remembering the time he’d shown Frank to the door and told him not to bother ever coming back. It had been his anger and grief talking—he knew that now. He only hoped Frank knew it then.

The tip of Bea’s nose was frozen, while the rest of her was surprisingly warm. Her coat, hat, and gloves, along with the brisk pace of their walk, were doing the trick. Beside her, Jeremy hummed a Mark Chesnutt tune.

“That’s an old one,” she said.

“I like the classic country station better than the other.”

She smiled, pleased. “Me too.”

They walked in silence for several minutes.

“Let me know when you want to head back,” Jeremy said.

Bea chuckled to herself. That was his nonconfrontational way of saying he was about done with this whole walking around town in the dark and cold thing.

“In a minute.”

She loved the peaceful feeling of Moose Creek tucking itself in for the night. All the Ponderosa commuters had made it home by now. Football and volleyball practices were over at the school. Families were finishing dinner and getting kids ready for bed. And that was it. There was nothing else going on.

“You think your grandma will be okay out on the ranch?” Jeremy’s words formed puffs of steam in the cold air.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m scared she’s going to end up in a nursing home somewhere.”

“She’s too young for a nursing home.”

“But it seems like there’s something really wrong. The things she said that day . . .”