“Clive Larimer had a truckin’ company back then. Built it up himself, pretty much from nothin’. He was doing real well. Barbara’s family owned a chain of tire stores, so when he married her, his bank account fattened up even bigger. I always thought he could have helped Evie out a little more than he did, but there was bad blood between her and Barbara right from the first. Evie was proud, too, so that was part of it I guess. Anyways, your daddy worked some for Larimer Trucking, and some at the tire store on Center Street, but he was usually in between. He managed to get sick or hurt, often as he could.”

I closed my eyes, opened them again. “Mom supported us, then?”

“Mostly,” Boomer said. “She sure deserved better than she got.” He hoisted himself to his feet. “Best I get back to work,” he told me. “The city ain’t payin’ me to yammer on about the old days. You just sit there, now, till you feel right.”

If I’d sat there that long, I’d have become part of the landscape.

Besides, after what I’d seen in my personal flashback, what I’d sensed, and all that Boomer had told me, I wasn’t sure I’d ever “feel right” again.

I thanked him.

He’d left his shovel leaning against the trunk of the cottonwood tree. He retrieved it and headed back down the path.

I stayed put on the bench for fifteen minutes or so, then made my way slowly to my car.

It was still early, and I knew Jolie would be in her lab, up to her eyeballs in the detritus of death. I wasn’t about to go back to the Larimers’ place and hang out, or do a hairpin turn for Phoenix and upset Lillian with a bunch of questions she couldn’t answer.

My options were getting narrower by the second.

As soon as I was behind the wheel of the Volvo, with the doors locked and the motor running, I put a call through to the nursing home. A nurse reported that Lillian was resting comfortably; other than that, there had been no change.

Next, I drove around Cactus Bend aimlessly, for perhaps half an hour, getting the lay of the land. I cruised past the high school, the tiny library, the office of the weekly newspaper, the tire franchise where my dad had worked, when he couldn’t get out of it.

The text message I’d received the day before niggled at the back of my mind, but the truth is, I was on overload. There were so many things to think about, I couldn’t really settle on anything too specific. My mind kept swooping from one subject to another, like a bird far from shore, circling a shipwreck, trying to find something to light on that wasn’t about to sink.