Chapter 9: Taos
Elias said he was not well enough.
Nathan told him anyway.
They left two days later, early, before the morning had fully committed to being a day.
Elias rode in the back seat with a blanket across his knees and his cane between his feet.
Claire sat beside him.
Nathan drove.
Ruth had packed food that none of them ate.
The drive to Taos took just under four hours.
They passed through country that changed slowly — high plains giving way to red rock, the sky widening as the land flattened, then the mountains appearing in the distance like something the horizon had been keeping in reserve.
Elias did not sleep.
He watched the landscape with the attention of a man who understood he might not see it again.
Halfway through the drive, without preamble, he said: "I looked for her.
After she left Colorado.
I told myself I was checking that she was all right.
But I think I was hoping she had found a way to be happy without either of us." He paused.
"She had.
For a time.
She married a man in Albuquerque.
He left when Elena was two years old." Another pause.
"She worked.
She raised your mother alone.
She died of pneumonia when Elena was nineteen."
Claire watched the red rock passing outside the window.
"Elena was twenty-two when she had me," Claire said.
"Yes."
"And she died when I was four."
"Yes.
A car accident outside Taos.
You were in the back seat." Elias's voice was very careful.
"You were not hurt."
Claire had known this.
Her grandfather had told her, years ago, in the simple way he told her difficult things — directly, without softening, with his hand on her shoulder.
She had been too young to remember the accident.
She had grown up with it as a fact rather than a memory.
"I didn't know about the cemetery," she said.
"I found it through the county records.
Eight years ago, when I first began looking." He paused.
"I should have told you then.
I should have come to you then."
"Yes," Claire said.
"You should have."
Elias nodded.
He did not argue.
The cemetery was small, set on a hillside outside town, surrounded by a low adobe wall.
The gate was unlocked.
The morning had turned clear and cold, the kind of cold that sharpens everything.
Nathan stayed by the car.
Claire and Elias walked in together.
The grave was near the back, under a juniper tree.
The stone was simple — a name, two dates, and a single line that someone had chosen.
*She gave everything she had.*
Claire stood in front of it for a long time.
Elias stood beside her.
He did not speak.
He had not spoken since they came through the gate.
His cane pressed into the dry ground and he stood straight despite his eighty years, as though the posture was the least he could offer.
Finally, Claire said: "She never knew you were looking for her."
"No."
"She never knew Silas had tried to reach her."
"No."
"She raised my mother alone and died at forty-three and nobody came."
"No," Elias said.
"Nobody came."
A bird moved in the juniper above them.
The sound of it was very small in the quiet.
"I'm not going to forgive you today," Claire said.
"I want you to know that.
I'm not ready and I won't pretend."
"I know," Elias said.
"But I came here with you." She looked at the stone.
"That's what I have right now."
Elias's cane trembled.
His free hand came up and pressed against his mouth for a moment.
His shoulders moved once.
Claire did not look at him.
She kept her eyes on the stone.
But she reached out and put her hand on his arm.
She did not say anything.
She did not need to.
They stood there together for a long time, in the cold and the quiet, under the juniper tree, while Nathan waited by the car and the mountains held the sky up in the distance and the morning continued without asking anything of either of them.
When they finally walked back through the gate, Nathan looked at Claire's face and did not ask any questions.
He opened the car door for Elias.
He handed Claire the second cup of coffee from the thermos Ruth had packed, still warm.
May you like
She wrapped both hands around it.
They drove back through the red rock and the widening sky, and nobody spoke for a long time, and that was all right.
