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Epilogue

Megan lay back on the blanket spread across the largest of the flat rocks surrounding Waterfall Canyon. Only a trickle of the waterfall survived in the annual droughtlike weather of late August. But there was a trickle, and a respectable pool, and a surprising light breeze tickling the leaves and grasses.

Jake lay beside her, his eyes closed, his hands crossed on his flat belly as he napped after their picnic. Deacon lay softly snoring a few feet away, with the two cats curled up against him.

Her wounded warriors.

Deacon's hair had not completely regrown to cover his wound, and the scar from his surgery constantly reminded her of how much she had almost lost. And how much she had gained.

Jake had wanted to claim a shoulder wound, but the truth was, this bullet had taken a bite out of his lung. The truth was, she'd told him, he was running out of parts to sacrifice. And he'd agreed. So when Rolley P resigned in disgrace, Jake had refused to take the office.

Mack had taken the job as sheriff of Pitchlyn County: Mack, the DEA undercover agent who'd been sent in to check on all the irregularities in the investigation of Jake's shooting and the buy gone bad. He said he found he liked small-town living, and that while he wasn't sure it would be any less eventful than his days at the agency, based on what he'd seen so far, he wanted to give it a try.

Jake had never again talked to her about what he'd said while still drugged, that Lydia had not shot Sam. She doubted if he even remembered saying it, so she knew it would do no good to question him. But he had gone with her and Mattie to visit Sam Hooker's overgrown grave in a rural cemetery a few miles north of Prescott.

How alone he had seemed in death. As alone as he must have been most of his life.

No one knew where Lydia was buried, if she was buried at all. A cryptic comment found in the cemetery records of the County Genealogical Society mentioned the grave of a woman found in a field near Wilton's sawmill, with no name, no age, no date. And though Wilton's sawmill was located miles from where Sam's had been, surely someone would have recognized Sam Hooker's wife, Daniel Tanner's daughter.

They visited that grave, but there were no answers there.

She did remind Jake of what she had told him, that she felt sure Lydia had been responsible for her not shooting him. And Jake, standing at the foot of Sam's lonely grave, had been the one to make the suggestion that now seemed so right.

"That notebook of yours," he'd said. "How did Kent describe it? A way of putting all the pieces of your life back together?"

Megan had nodded, not understanding where he was leading. A place to explore choices made and those not made as though they had been, she remembered. "A way of exploring things done and those not done. A way to make me whole again."

"And how much of it is Lydia?" he'd asked.

Except for two brief pages, which Megan removed, all of it was.

Sam Hooker had loved Lydia. Even though he'd never told her, every word written in her fine copperplate penmanship sang of that love. He'd told her he never wanted her to be frightened again, but she had been. And he hadn't been able to keep his covenant with her that no one would ever hurt her again.

Now, even in death, they were separated.

Jake understood those things as well as Megan. He also understood when she'd told him she had to go back into the notebook one last time. He'd stood silent watch over her while she did so, and although she knew he wanted to ask her what she had discovered, he did not.

That morning they had gone to the cemetery: Megan, Jake, Mattie, Patrick, and Barbara. Earlier they had spent days cleaning the gravesite, ordering the headstone, and building the black metal fence that surrounded an area large enough for the two graves the double stone suggested. Now Patrick and Jake opened a second, much smaller grave while Mattie looked on in approval. And then, with words both from Mattie's tradition and from Megan's, they had buried the notebook that contained the essence of Lydia Tanner Hooker next to her husband.

The picnic had been an afterthought. Just Jake and Megan, together in the heat of a lazy August afternoon. One of the few lazy afternoons remaining to them, because Jake's business had just received orders for millwork for five reconstructions, and Megan had dusted off her degree and the certification that neither her father nor, later, Roger had wanted her to use and signed a contract to teach history at Prescott Middle School.

She felt Jake shift and stretch by her side and smiled. Life was good.

"What would that rich white aunt of yours think if she could see you now, Liddy?"

"Perhaps she would refuse to let me live with her."

Jake jerked to awareness beside her. Quickly she put her hand on his arm. "Shh," she said. It was happening! She hadn't expected it, but she had hoped. Now this, too, she could share with Jake.

The larger black kitten looked toward the pool and arched his back, hissing. Deacon jerked awake, looked at the pool, and then nudged the cat back into place and slathered its face with a wet tongue.

Megan raised on her elbow to look at the pool. Peter and Liddy waded there as before, Liddy with her long dress tucked up between her bare legs, Liddy with a wisdom and maturity about her that had not been apparent before. Together they played out the scene that lived so vibrantly in Megan's memory.

If I had let Peter win the argument about our visiting Granny Rogers's house, if I had let him convince me that Sam was not at home, if we had gone wading as we had done so many times before, would any of the subsequent events have happened? Lydia had written in her diary.

Would they have? Or were they already set in motion by then? Megan didn't know. But she did know of this moment, a moment so strong it lingered for others to see.

"My God," Jake whispered. "It's—"

"Yes," Megan said. "Yes."

A sound from the opposite bank drew Lydia's attention. A tall travel-worn man stood there, holding the reins of an equally travel-worn sorrel horse. His dark hair showed strands of silver, and his hair, his clothes, even the day's dark stubble on his jaw wore the dust from his ride.

"You're back!" Lydia cried. With joy lighting her face, she waded from the pool, dropped her skirts, and crossed the stone dam to stand in front of Sam. "I was afraid you wouldn't get back in time."

Sam reached a tentative hand to her cheek. "I tried to stay away. God knows I tried."

Lydia caught his hand to her face and held it there. "I knew you wouldn't let me leave you."

"You're so young, child, and so innocent. I wonder—could you survive me?"

She stood straight and tall and proud before him. "I only know that I cannot survive without you."

He shuddered as he drew her against him. "So be it," he said. He looked over her shoulder to the young boy in the pool. "Peter," he said. "We're going to have to elope because your father will never give his permission. Will you be our witness?"

At some time Jake's hand had captured hers and now held it tightly.

It had worked. Oh, sweet heaven, it had worked.

In our language, the words for "to go" and "to have gone" are the same . . . I felt a peace there, a continuity too often lacking in my world, a harmony with all that had been, all that was, and all that would be.

Mattie's words mingled with the half-remembered directions for her journal. They all faded as she watched Sam Hooker lift Lydia onto the sorrel horse and lead her from the clearing.

Jake let out a deep sigh and turned her in his arms. "That was why you went back into the journal, wasn't it?" he asked.

She nodded and he pulled her against him.

"Does this mean that none of it happened?"

"I don't know," she told him. "I only know I had to try to do something. And now, somewhere, they are together."

THE END

 

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Framed