“Caitlin’s disarticulation is beautiful,” the doctor said. He smiled, his eyes catching the light. Then, sobering, he admitted that there was, however, a good deal of soft-tissue trauma that would require some complicated grafting, which would slow down her healing.

“But she is strong, by God,” he said, “and I’ll tell you something else, Mr. Courtland: in about six months, when she gets one of these Flex-Symes carbon running feet under her, she’ll wish she’d lost both feet.”

Grant stared at him. “Did she tell you that?”

“Tell me what?”

“That she’s a runner.”

The doctor looked at him, puzzled.

“I’m told your daughter brought only two things down with her from the mountain, other than the clothes on her back,” the doctor said. “Is that not correct?”

Grant didn’t understand.

“May I?” said the doctor, and he leaned over the coffee table and picked up the white plastic bag that sat near Grant’s feet and had been sitting there all that time. Grant looked at it and wondered who had given it to him and when. The doctor loosened the plastic drawstring and reached in and peeled the bag away from a pair of running shoes. They had once been pink and white, and one of them, the left, was shaped and cleaned by its recent usage in the snow while the other was dingy and stiff, and the moment he saw them Grant took them from the doctor and held them in his hands and wept.

71

Sean was inside the terminal on time, but his mother’s plane was delayed and he passed the time wandering with his limp and his cast in the massive weave of travelers, until finally he took refuge in a small shop. He pretended to browse the magazines, then bought a toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste and went to the men’s room where he stood brushing his teeth and washing his face and running his dripping fingers through his hair. The face he saw in the mirror looked old and foreign to him. Men came and went. After a few minutes he threw away the toothbrush and the small tube and went back to the terminal corridors to wait for her.

He didn’t see her at first among the passengers emerging from the security exit. He saw a woman he mistook for her, looked past her, and looked back and it was her. She saw him at once and walked over to him with her red eyes brimming. She was older and somehow smaller and her blonde hair was styled in an unfamiliar way and within it were new streaks of white. She stood looking him over and shaking her head and saying nothing. She raised her hand to his face and swept her thumb over his dry cheekbone as though to wipe away a tear.

“Is your father with you?”

“No, he’s with Caitlin,” he said, and at this sentence her face fell and she reached for him and held him while passengers dodged all around them. He could not remember the last time they’d embraced, but it seemed he’d been a boy then, reaching up to her from far below.

When she released him her face was wet but composed. He took the small bag from her shoulder and hung it on his. She asked was it a long drive to the clinic and he said no, not long, and they turned and began to walk. Soon they were on the highway in the Chevy, driving back into the city, back

into the west, as they’d done long ago, toward those same formations looming so incredibly in the sky.

At the clinic, at the first sight of her aged and joy-wrecked mother, Caitlin knew her better than she’d ever known her before, seeing in her eyes nothing of what she herself had gone through but only the full and terrible love of a mother for the child who came from her and was part of her and was all of her and the loss of whom could not be borne.

72

The funeral was held on a damp and chill Thursday morning. It was only ten days since the old man had been buried here, but now the last of winter had been washed away by the rains, and the grass was coming in pale green and tender over his grave.

There had been no formal service—Sheriff Kinney had seen enough of the press and other gawkers and wanted only to get his brother laid to rest and for all of this business to be behind them, although he knew it never would be, and those who attended the burial had received a call from him the day before, when the time and day had at last been set. Among the mourners were the Gatskill girl, wearing the same black dress she’d worn ten days ago; the old veterinarian, Dale Struthers, and his wife, Evelyn; Maria Valente and her daughter, Carmen; the sheriff’s two deputies and their wives, and

Kinney’s own wife and his daughter, Josephine, who’d driven down from Boulder again and who was unable to keep her eyes from the Courtland girl, so thin and quiet in her wheelchair, so pale in her dark dress and dark hair, her eyes gazing into the distance while the pastor spoke graveside once more, committing on behalf of those gathered this soul to God’s keeping. The breeze took up his words and carried them along over the graves and into the far border of trees where the crows sat in the boughs watching.

The casket descended mechanically into the earth and a few flowers were cast down onto its black enamel hood and Denise Gatskill dropped some small unseen thing that rang lightly along the curve of the lid and fell down into the dark. Then she was led away in the care of another young woman and a young man who, like her, had nothing more to say to anyone there.

One by one the remaining mourners turned from the grave and shook the sheriff’s hand again or embraced him, and then moved on to the Courtlands and the girl in the wheelchair, the men nodding to the girl and patting her stiffly on the shoulder, the women bending to press their faces wetly to hers. They shook hands with Grant and Sean and Angela, and as there were no words for what they felt they said none and moved on, some to pay respect to other graves, the rest returning to their cars.

Kinney lacked the heart to open up the ranch house again and instead the mourners were invited to the Whistlestop Cafe, where Tom Hicks was preparing a brunch buffet, and for this reason Maria Valente and her daughter were brief with their respects, Maria saying as she held Angela’s hand that she hoped she would see her again at the cafe and then turning from Grant Courtland and his family and walking away hand in hand with her daughter. At their car the girl stopped and looked back, and Sean, holding his tie down against the wind, went to her. Maria slipped into the car, and Sean and Carmen stood talking for just a moment. Then she raised up on her toes to kiss his cheek, and he turned and came back, head down, refusing to meet his sister’s eyes or to acknowledge in any way her sly smile.

Kinney walked the old pastor to his car for the chance to press a fold of bills into his hand, but the pastor would not take the money, as he had not taken it when he’d buried the sheriff’s mother, and then the sheriff’s father, who had been members of his parish. On his way back Kinney stopped behind an iron bench and lit a cigarette, and after a moment Grant walked over to join him. Kinney shook another cigarette up from the pack and Grant looked as though he would take it but then didn’t.

“Told myself I’d quit,” he said.

“You can quit some other day.”

He took the cigarette and leaned toward the sheriff’s cupped hands, and they stood smoking, watching the small huddle of their families in their dark clothes, all standing but one.

“How’s she coming along?” said the sheriff.

“Healing fast, the doctor says.”

“I ain’t surprised.”

“I appreciate you putting this off like you did, Joe. We all do.”

Kinney waved this away.

Grant read the inscription again on Emmet and Alice’s shared stone, and he read the new stone already in place: WILLIAM MICHAEL KINNEY, BELOVED SON AND BROTHER.