that didn’t have-”
“Mother,” Joanna interrupted. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry?” Eleanor echoed. “But I should have. It’s-”
“What you do or don’t do isn’t any of my business,” Joanna said. “It’s your life. Live a little.”
“But-”
“No buts, Mother,” Joanna said firmly. “Now come on. There’s someone waiting for me out in the bar, someone I’d you to meet.”
“Is it a he?” Eleanor asked.
Joanna laughed. “Yes, Mother, a he. His name is Butch on. He’s a friend of mine.”
George Winfield and Eleanor stayed long enough to be introduced, but they left when the hostess arrived to tell Joanna and Butch that their table was ready.
“Have George and your mother been an item for long?” Butch asked.
“I’m only her daughter,” Joanna said with a laugh. “How would I know?”
They had an enjoyable dinner, so nice, in fact, that by the time Joanna dropped Butch off at the Grand Hotel, they had agreed on having a picnic lunch the next afternoon. When Joanna came hone and went to bed, she did so with a sense of completion. She had done her job. She had uncovered things about some of her neighbors and acquaintances that she would rather not have known. She had seen the disastrous results that came when people lied and cheated, but she had also tapped into parts of herself-the courage part Butch had talked about-that she hadn’t known existed.
When the phone woke her the next morning, she groaned as she picked it up. “What now?”
“Is it true?” Angie Kellogg asked.
“Is what true?”
“What I read in the paper. I stopped off for breakfast and picked up a newspaper while I was at it.”
“I’m not sure what’s in the paper,” Joanna mumbled, turning to look at the clock. It was five after seven.
“About the guy with the parrots,” Angie said. “I think Hacker is his name. Age twenty-seven. Is he for real?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
“But I’ve never seen parrots in the wild, only in cages.”
“From what I hear, that seems to be the parrots’ problem, too.
“Could I go see them? The parrots, I mean.”
Angie Kellogg’s enthusiasm made Joanna smile. “Sure,” she said. “Mr. Hacker would probably be delighted to meet someone who cares as much about birds as he does.”
“But how do I find him?”
“Drive up to Pinery in the Chiricahuas, get on Forest Road 42 and ask for the parrot guy. I’m sure someone will be able to tell you where he is.”
“I may just do that,” Angie said.
Joanna picked Jenny up from Sue Espy’s house in time for Sunday school and church. During the service, Jeff Daniels held the quiet Esther on his lap while it took both Joanna and Jenny to keep Ruth corralled. Marianne’s Thanksgiving-in-January sermon left not one dry eye in the congregation. During coffee hour afterward, one whole Sunday-school table was stacked high with baby presents.
Over Jenny’s objections, Joanna rushed her out of the social hall before she was able to snag a second helping of cake. “What’s the hurry?” Jenny asked.
“We’re going on a picnic,” Joanna replied. “I’ve ordered picnic lunch from the Grub-box uptown. It’s supposed to be ready by now.”
“Where are we going?” Jenny asked.
“It’s a surprise,” Joanna told her.
As expected, lunch was packed and ready to go. They rove from there to the Grand Hotel where Butch Dixon sat waiting for them in the lobby reading another book-
Once he was in the car, they headed east on Highway 80. Where are we going?” Jenny asked again, settling into the backseat.
“The Wonderland of Rocks,” Joanna said.
“Where’s that?” Butch asked.
“In the Chiricahuas. If you look on the map, it’s called the Chiricahua National Monument, but locals call it the Wonderland of Rocks.”
“It’s where Grandpa Lathrop died, isn’t it,” Jenny asked quietly.
“Yes,” Joanna said. As they drove across and up the long valley, Joanna told Butch the story of Big Hank Lathrop’s death, about how he had stopped to change a woman’s tire and had been run down by a drunk driver while Joanna and her friends had looked on in horror. “And until Friday night,” she finished, “I had never been back.”
“Not once?” Butch asked. Not even with Andy?”
“No,” Joanna said. “Not even. But I decided this morning that today is the first day of the rest of my life. This was always one of my favorite places. It was silly to put off coming here for so long.”
Driving into the monument, they rode past the greasy oil slick where Hal Morgan’s Buick had burned to ashes. Joanna said nothing. That was part of her other life. She was determined not to let work intrude on this gloriously clear, wonderfully warm January day.
The first glimpses of the fantastic rhyolite pillars brought gasps of astonishment from Jenny in the backseat.
“This must have been a sacred place to the Indians who lived here,” Butch said. “What did they call it?”
Joanna shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Whatever it was, they probably kept it a secret, and I don’t blame them.”
Later in the afternoon, after lunch, while Jenny set off to explore one of the trails, Joanna and Butch sat watching a lizard sun himself. Green-and-gray skin made him almost invisible on the lichen-covered rock.
“So what do you think?” Butch asked. “Will Hal Morgan be able to get his life back now?”
Joanna thought long and hard before she replied. The question had more than one layer of meaning. So did her answer.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It takes time to get over something like that.”
“Yes,” Butch Dixon said gently, “I’m sure it does.”
About the Author
J.A. Jance is the author of the J.P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, and two standalone thrillers. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington.
