I got out of it, the map Boomer had given me the day before clenched in one sweaty hand. I consulted the map, and started off on foot for my parents’ graves.

My subconscious didn’t kick in, as it had with Lillian’s old house and the vacant lot across the street. I took at least three wrong turns before I finally found the plots I was looking for, on a little grassy knoll in the shade of a tall cottonwood tree.

The monuments were impressive, made of smooth granite and polished to a shine. Clive and Barbara must have sprung for those, I thought. As little as I remembered about Mom and Dad, I knew their budget hadn’t extended to things like cemetery plots and expensive headstones.

I stood there, a soft breeze drying my perspiration-glazed flesh, and tried to recall the funeral.

Nothing.

I took a step closer, read the chiseled letters on the first marker.

Evelyn Larimer Mayhugh

died, August 18, 1983

My throat constricted.

I closed my eyes.

Blood, warm and slippery, on my hands, my T-shirt, my shorts, my bare legs. Mama.

I backed away from the memory mentally, time-warped back to the present moment a dizzying rush that left me swaying on my feet. I forced myself to read the other stone.

Ronald Charles Mayhugh

b. June, 1957, d. August, 1983

Bile scalded the back of my throat.

“You came back.”

I almost jumped out of my shoes.

Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

BOOMER HARRISON, THE GROUNDSKEEPER, stood grinning at me from the path snaking by on my right. Leaning on a shovel handle, he repeated himself.

“You came back.”

My right hand had flown, fingers splayed, to my chest, in an unconscious effort to calm my startled heart. I made a fist before lowering said hand to my side. “You scared me,” I told him, and though I spoke calmly, there was a note of accusation in my voice.

“Sorry,” Boomer retorted, with no trace of regret.

I took in the shovel and wondered if he’d been digging a fresh grave. Whimsical thinking, I decided. They probably used heavy equipment for that, these days. Boomer was a groundskeeper. He could have been planting flowers or moving a shrub from one place to another or any one of a dozen other things.

“You’re the daughter, aren’t you?” he inquired companionably. “Ron and Evie’s girl. I should have figured it out in the first place, with you so interested in finding their graves and all. I ain’t never claimed to be the smartest dog hitched to the sled.” Boomer paused. “Yes, sir, you’re the spittin’ image of Evie, with that red hair and those freckles.”