“We don’t have to worry about that,” Jillian said.
“I want to. It’s better if I’m busy.”
Jillian felt like she’d eaten Legos for breakfast and couldn’t dislodge them from her throat. She made clearing noises. “How far have you gotten with the stack you’re working on?”
“Almost finished. Three more folders, but there’s not much in one of them.”
“Okay. I’ll go up and bring down the next batch of priorities.”
“Whatever.” Tisha smacked her gum and went into the dining room, where Jillian had set up her best scanner at the end of the table that had become Tisha’s usual workspace.
“I could use some coffee,” Nolan said.
“Me too,” Jillian said. “Tisha, are you sure you don’t want to try an iced coffee? I could whip it up. No trouble.”
Tisha flicked her eyes up for a quarter of a second. “Disgusting.”
The tortoise was back in her shell, nursing her old distraction. Jillian would have to double-check later to see if she’d labeled the scans according to the system they’d settled on and placed them appropriately in folders in the computer.
Jillian followed Nolan into the kitchen. They stood side by side at the coffee machines, holding mugs and pushing buttons.
“I suppose there was no way that could have gone well,” Jillian finally said.
“Short of my saying I’d arranged for a visit with Jayden Casky, no.”
“What are we going to do, Dad?”
“Give her some space for now.” Nolan tested the temperature of his beverage. “If she wants to work, let her work.”
“And if she takes off?”
“I don’t think she will.”
Jillian’s more complex latte was ready now, and they walked together through the dining room and living room toward the front stairs. Tisha had earbuds plugged into her phone, but a folder was open on the table and the scanner and laptop were operating. She didn’t look up.
Nolan turned toward his office, situated right above Jillian’s, and she headed for the large guest room now outfitted with shelves to hold the St. Louis boxes. She set her coffee on an end table while she slid a couple of boxes off the shelves and assessed what might be the most fruitful use of Tisha’s time, both to accomplish the next step in a long series of repetitive tasks but also to help her feel she was doing something significant—and of course to get Jillian launched on cases that might have the strongest trails to solve.
Thirty minutes later, Jillian’s mug was empty, and she had an armful of files that made sense for Tisha to focus on next. She took them downstairs, ready to swap for the stack Tisha was surely finished with by now.
The laptop was open, the unfinished file folder still spread on the table, and the scanner still powered up, but Tisha wasn’t there.
“Tisha?” Jillian set down the new stack of files and padded into the kitchen. No Tisha. She left her mug in the sink and stepped into the hall. The powder room door was open. No Tisha there or in the office.
“Tisha?”
No answer.
Jillian stuck her head out the back door. No Tisha.
She looked out the front door. No bicycle. Her stomach sank and she called up the stairs.
“Dad! She bolted.”
Nolan came immediately. “A note?”
Jillian hustled back to the dining room table and then to the desk in her office. “Nothing.”
“Did she sign out her hours?”
Jillian found the record sheet. “Nope. No entry at all for today, even though she was here on time.”
“I don’t like how this feels. I’ll call her.”
Jillian followed Nolan back up the stairs to where he’d left his cell phone on his desk and paced while he waited for her to answer.
“Nothing,” he said. “I’ll try texting.”
“What if she does something now and throws away everything you’re trying to do for her?”
“Just me?” Nolan glanced up from his phone. “Face it, Silly Jilly. You are on this train now too.”
“I am,” she admitted. “Even Drew is. He was great with her over the weekend. He baked cookies with her yesterday before he left. Do you know she had never baked homemade cookies in her life? He had to correct that situation immediately.”
“He’s a gem, that one.”
Jillian could not disagree. “Any response?”
“No signs of life on the other end of her phone.”
“Dad, you don’t think—”
He cut her off. “No, I do not think she would hurt herself. Poor choice of words. But I do know where the boyfriend lives.”
“Boyfriend? There’s a boyfriend?”
“I’m not sure how serious it is, but there is someone she goes to when Brittany doesn’t want her around.”
“Even ‘not serious’ can be dangerous. That’s why Brittany has Tisha. Don’t tell me he looks older.”
“He looks older.”
“I asked you not to tell me that.”
“It’ll only take a few minutes to drive over there and see if we spot her bike.” Nolan dropped his phone in a pocket. “Get your shoes. Let’s go.”
The bike wasn’t along the fence where Nolan had found it on his previous visit to this address, and snooping a little harder didn’t turn up any evidence she was there. In fact, the house seemed unoccupied—no lights, no television, no footsteps in response to a doorbell, no wildly barking dog.
“She might have gone home,” Jillian said.
“It’s possible.” Nolan set the pace back to his truck. “She’s still not answering my text. We might as well look.”
“It bothers me that she didn’t take the laptop,” Jillian said. “She’s hardly had it out of her sight since I gave it to her almost a week ago.”
They drove over Eastbridge and into the Crowder neighborhood. At least the home gave off no crashing noises, but the bicycle wasn’t in sight. Brittany’s car was there, though. Tentatively, they exited the truck and knocked.
Nolan glanced at the pickax on the front of the house. “Interesting decor.”
Brittany opened the door and looked at them through the screen.
“Hi,” Jillian said. “We’re looking for Tisha.”
“I thought she was working for you today.” Brittany pushed hair out of her face. “I was just glad for some peace and quiet on my day off.”
“She was working,” Jillian said, “but we may have had a little mix-up about the schedule. If she’s not here, we won’t bother you.”
“Wait a minute. She’s been jabbering nonstop about Jayden, and now you lost my kid. What did you do?”
“I did talk to Jayden,” Nolan said, “and the news was not good.”
“It’s her own fault,” Brittany said. “I told her not to get her hopes up. She never thinks that her own mother might actually know what’s good for her.”
The evidence has been a little thin. Jillian mustered a small smile. “If she comes home, we’d love to hear from her.”
“She’ll turn up eventually. She always does.” Brittany closed the door.
“Well,” Jillian said. “There’s that.”
“I haven’t plied out of her the names of any other friends,” Nolan said. “Have you?”
Jillian shook her head as they shuffled back to the truck. Then abruptly she snapped her spine straight.
“What is it, Silly Jilly?”
“The trail. The one we all hiked together on Saturday.”
“She insisted on climbing that pile of rocks.”
“Because I told her that Nia had mentioned it dated back to the mining days,” Jillian said, “when people dug up the mountain without any care for what it did to the environment.”
“And she wanted to go off trail and look for a grate covering an old mine entrance because maybe it was a Brandt mine.”
“Even though you suggested she should talk to Tony Rizzo about his mining museum and the tours he gives.”
Jillian raised her eyes to the attic window with the yellow curtain and the outdated air-conditioning unit. “I think she really believes there is a Brandt mine up in the hills.”
“But we found no evidence—”
“Dad, I practically told her I thought Fidelity Brandt painted the original of that picture hanging in our kitchen. She has the original in her attic.”
“Even if that’s true, it’s just a landscape.”
“Is it? Coincidence that it’s the view from a rock pile where there might be a lost mine in the area?”
“We’re going for a hike, aren’t we?” Nolan jangled his keys.
“Only if we see her bike somewhere. Most of the trail is not bike friendly. She can’t have ridden out. Not on that bike.”
They drove out west, past Tony Rizzo’s old mine and into the tangle of trails circling in the hills above it, dipping into several small parking lots at the trailheads.
“There!” Jillian pointed. “If she wants to camouflage her bicycle, she really needs a different color.”
“Let’s hope she’s not too far ahead of us.” Nolan put the truck in PARK.
“Oh, she is.” Jillian slammed the passenger door closed. Tisha could have had as much as a thirty-minute head start leaving the house, and they’d whittled away time looking in the wrong places. “Keep up, old man.”
Jillian set a jogging pace she could easily sustain even on an incline, choosing the priority of reaching Tisha. She’d feel better if she had the girl in sight. Then she could think about waiting for her father. It dawned on her that she was in shorts and tennis shoes, but that he wore jeans and, before leaving the house, had quickly slid his feet into shoes meant only for a quick errand or two, not hiking a trail or scaling a rock pile. They’d both left the house without water bottles in the middle of July. Periodically, she glanced over her shoulder to judge his progress, but she was more concerned with what lay ahead.
Sure enough, Tisha had found a relatively flat sunny spot among the boulders, about two-thirds of the way up, and situated herself. Jillian shielded her eyes and looked up before beginning the climb. At least it wasn’t a sheer rock face.
“Why are you here?” Tisha called to her.
“Because you’re supposed to be at work and I’m worried.” Jillian found footing and pushed higher.
“I’m way ahead in my hours, and you know it.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.” Even in tennis shoes, the hard edges of the rocks dug into Jillian’s feet. Somehow Tisha had made the climb in her usual flip-flops. Somehow she did everything in those flip-flops.
“You should know by now you’re wasting your energy,” Tisha said.
Jillian kept climbing. “I’m coming anyway.”
Tisha said nothing more. At least she kept still, and Jillian hadn’t found her clambering around looking for a hidden mine entrance. Finally, Jillian lowered herself onto a flat space near Tisha. The hot rock burned the back sides of her thighs, and immediately she pulled her knees up to her chin.
“You’ve had a lot of bad news,” Jillian said.
“And you’re going to try to give me advice about how to handle it. Thanks for nothing.”
“Advice? No. I don’t have a clue what you should do.”
“Such a big help.”
“I’m sure my dad wants to help in every way he can. If Jayden Casky isn’t ready, well, maybe more time will make a difference.”
“He’s had fifteen years.”
“You are not wrong.” Jillian glanced down the path, hoping for reinforcement. “Your mom was not that much older than you are now when she got pregnant. Even college boys are not the greatest at stepping up.”
“She could have made him.”
“Legally, she could have taken steps to get child support, and it looks like she didn’t.”
“Money doesn’t buy love.”
“Maybe we should give your mom credit for knowing that. Maybe she didn’t want the money if it didn’t come with love for the baby too.”
Tisha side-eyed Jillian. “Are you just making this stuff up?”
“Maybe. How am I doing?”
“Could be worse.” Tisha repositioned her feet. “So I’m supposed to give up on ever knowing my father.”
“I didn’t say that.”
They fell into silence. Sweat soaked the back of Jillian’s T-shirt.
“You know what this is, right?” Tisha finally said.
“I wondered if you might recognize it.”
“I got the painting out last night. I kept thinking about how you said maybe Fidelity painted it.”
“Is it the same picture?”
Tisha nodded. “And it’s this view. The mines, a piece of the rock pile, the canyon, the mountains, Fidelity being a painter. Too many coincidences.”
“If Fidelity made that painting,” Jillian said, “why does your family keep it stuck away in the attic?”
Tisha huffed. “Why does my family do anything? That seems to be a question dating back to Clifford and Georgina.”
“An astute observation.”
Tisha stood up, finding her balance among the stones. “I’m out of here.”
“What are you doing?” Jillian shifted to her feet as well.
“Leaving.”
“My dad will be here soon.”
“The two of you can have a nice chat about me behind my back.”
“That’s not what we do.”
“Isn’t it?” Tisha glared for a couple of seconds before scoffing and beginning her descent. “You don’t understand. No one who has known her dad all her life can possibly understand.”
Jillian followed, but Tisha was nimbler on the rocks, making Jillian feel old and cautious. By the time she was back on the main trail, she wasn’t even sure which direction Tisha had darted off in.
Nolan approached, slightly breathless.
“Did you see her?” Jillian asked.
“How does somebody run that fast on a trail in that kind of footwear?” He shook his head.
“Which direction?”
“Back to her bike, I think. She wouldn’t stop for me. What did you say to her?”
“What did I say? Dad, don’t go there.”
“Sorry. That came out wrong.”
“Just when I think I’m making progress with her, everything falls apart again.”
“Tisha Crowder processes in her own way.”
“Dad, tell me I was never like that when I was a teenager in pain.”
“You processed in your way too, Jilly,” Nolan said softly.
She linked her arm through his. “But I had you.”
“We had each other.”
They began winding their way back down the trail toward the car.
“She’s way ahead of us,” Jillian said. “We won’t catch her at this rate.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t try. Give her space.”
“I’m parched.”
“We’ll get something as soon as we’re back in town.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Canyon Mines, Colorado
Tuesday, December 12, 1893
Can’t you at least stay for Christmas?” Lity’s eyes filled, and her warm exhale clung to the cold air for an instant before surrendering and dissipating, and with it her hope. “Our first Christmas here—and without Papa. And now without you. How will we stand it?”
How will I stand it? That was the true question Missouri heard tremble in her sister’s words. Fidelity was a tender seventeen. Fatherless. Essentially motherless now. Adventurous within a certain frame of safety but not yet brave enough to do something brash like leaving the family home, frail as it was, without a sure plan for independence. And she shouldn’t. Missouri would not encourage such a choice. In fact, q
uite the opposite.
Missouri choked on her own choice. “Mama has accepted the store now. She’s learned how to work there as well as any of us. It will be all right.”
“She still hates it.”
“It’s a first step.”
They stood on the porch of the house their father had expected to live in for many more years, shivering against a blast of winter air funneling through the narrow high mountain valley that cradled Canyon Mines. She would miss this. Only four months, and already it felt like a place she might have called home for a long time.
If only. Missouri wrapped her arms around her midsection, reminding herself that where she was going would be warmer, and her sisters would need the thickest cloak she was leaving behind more than she would.
“Mama hates Papa for dying even more than she hated him for taking us out of Denver,” Lity said.
“Hate is a strong word, Lity.”
“Do you have a better one?”
Missouri rubbed her gloved hands together. She did not have a better word. “She’s hurt, and she doesn’t know what to do with her pain.”
“Shouldn’t we help her? Instead of leaving.”
“I don’t know how to help her, Lity. Loren has been nothing but good to me—to our family and to Papa—but Mama is determined to hate the man I love and wants me to hate him.”
“So you do think it’s hate.”
Missouri sighed. “Only for lack of the right word. My leaving might actually help her because she won’t look at me and Loren every day and … I don’t know … blame us for what happened.” At the end, Papa had floundered in his attempts to abate Mama’s descent from occasional to constant anxiety and finally suspicion and bitterness. Somehow he was supposed to have exempted the Brandt family from the effects of silver’s collapse and a national recession. Missouri had read her father’s journals. What he’d given away was generous, but it would never have saved their home, not without substantial employment to carry them forward.
“Leaving will help? That doesn’t make sense.” Lity’s bottom lip slipped out into a pout.
“None of this makes sense.”
The front door swung open and Decorah stomped out. “I thought you would be gone by now—or have you changed your mind and decided to do the sensible thing and stay with your family instead of running off with a man you barely know?”
What You Said to Me Page 24