“Screw South America. I’ll be there.” She moved down the corridor toward the elevators.
* * *
“YOU LOOK TIRED,” BEN SAID. “Maybe you should go to bed.”
Joe’s gaze flew to the boy’s face. Ben’s eyes were open, and he seemed clear and coherent. Amazing, considering that they’d loaded him with sedatives and antibiotics.
“I’m fine.” He made a face. “I was just thinking that I hated hospitals. I just got out of one myself.” He smiled. “And you’re the one who should be tired. You went through a couple hours of surgery to put you back together. How do you feel?”
Ben thought about it. “Sore. A little dizzy. But better than when I fell down the steps when I was trying to help Mrs. Smythe.”
“That’s good. I think.” He paused. “Ted Danner is dead. I couldn’t stop it, Ben.”
Ben nodded. “She said it was going to happen, that it was his time, but that it wouldn’t be bad for him. She was worried about you.”
“So you decided to trail along and help?”
“She was worried,” he repeated. “I don’t like Bonnie to worry. It makes me worry.”
“So you took a bullet for me.”
“Ted didn’t mean it. He must have been … excited. Sometimes he got upset.”
“That was pretty obvious.”
“You’re still mad at him. But he didn’t hurt Eve.”
There was no use arguing with the boy. What difference did it make? Ben’s loyalty might have been misplaced, but the quality itself was admirable. There had probably not been that many people in his life who had shown him the kindness Danner had. “No, Eve is fine.”
“That’s good.” Ben’s lids were beginning to close. “I’m going to go to sleep now.”
“You do that.” He paused. “I was wondering when you got out of here what you planned to do.”
“Go back to the camp.”
“You like it there?”
He smiled. “Yes. I told you, I’m good at what I do.”
“I was wondering if you’d like to come and work for me. We could work something out.”
Ben’s eyes opened. “Why?”
Joe shrugged. “I have a place on a lake. There’s always work to do.”
Ben stared at him for a long moment. “You need me?” He shook his head. “You don’t need me. You feel bad and want to give me something. A job is like a present sometimes.”
“And sometimes it starts out as a gift and becomes something else entirely. As I said, we could work it out. Think about it.”
“Maybe.” Ben closed his eyes. “But I shouldn’t do it just because I’d like to do it. That would be wrong.… You’d have to need me.…”
He was asleep again.
Joe leaned back in the chair. He shouldn’t have assumed it would be easy to get Ben to take a job where Joe could keep an eye on him. Ben was a mixture of simplicity and sudden flashes of sharpness that came out of nowhere.
He should probably just allow the boy to go back to the job he liked and forget about taking him under his wing. The camp was a safe environment, and Joe usually wasn’t this protective.
Hell, no. He’d worry about Ben.
That was what Ben had said about Bonnie, he remembered suddenly. She would worry.…
A connection?
He couldn’t rule it out. All connections seemed to be centered around Bonnie.
But it didn’t change anything. Joe still wanted Ben where he could watch over him.
And that meant he had to sit here and think of a way to create a position for Ben that would convince him that he would be totally indispensable.
Providence Canyon
THE SUN WAS GOING DOWN as Eve took the last turn up the canyon ridge.
“I’m on my way, Bonnie.”
“I know you are, Mama. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Then you should have come to me.”
“I wanted you here. I wanted to show you the sun setting over my valley.”
“Your valley?”
“It’s my valley, my canyon. Ted Danner gave it to me, and I made it mine. I share it with all the animals and the wind and the trees.…”
“Joe said that Ben told him that you liked it here, the trees, the deer.… I was so afraid that you’d be somewhere.…” She stopped. “I worried.”
“I know. But that would have been only a place, too, and you can turn it into whatever you want it to be.”
“You didn’t tell me that, dammit.”
“I didn’t know. I’m learning all the time.” She paused. “But so are you, Mama.”
“Am I? I don’t feel as if I am.”
“That’s because you haven’t been able to think of anyone but me. That will be different now. So many things will be different.”
“No, I’ll always love you, think about you.”
“It will be different.”
Eve turned down the dark passage, and a moment later rolled back the large boulder.
“I wanted Joe to come with me, but he said that I should come here alone. He’s been staying at the hospital with Ben. He’s a very sweet boy, Bonnie. Joe and he are getting along famously.”
“Ben is beginning to love Joe. Loving is easy for Ben.”
“Like you, baby. You were always—” She inhaled sharply as she stepped into the garden.
The garden was bathed in the gold and scarlet haze of the setting sun. The vines cast purple shadows that formed exotic patterns on the ground. It was both intimate and spectacular. And the sun sinking below the horizon was breathtaking.
“I told you that it was wonderful. No, don’t look over at that grave. I’m over here, Mama.”
Bonnie was sitting in the corner, leaning against a boulder at the edge of the cliff. The rays of the setting sun were turning her curls to fire red. She gestured out at the valley. “See, Mama.”
“I see.”
“Come and sit by me.”
Eve sat down a few feet away, where she could still look at Bonnie. To hell with scenery that she could see anytime. She was never sure when Bonnie would be gone.
“But I always come back. This way I don’t interfere with you.”
“Ask me if I’d care.”
“I’d care. Every moment of the first step is precious.”
“You didn’t have many of those moments.”
“It’s not always the same. It was my time. I don’t know why, I only know it was time for me to go on.” She leaned her head back against the boulder and looked out at the valley. “Maybe I had more to learn here than there.”
“You seem to be doing pretty well.”
“At first, it seemed as if I was wandering around in a kind of haze. It was beautiful, but I didn’t know what to do. Then it all came together. But you were hurting and Ted Danner was hurting. I had to wait until it was finished.”
“And is it finished?”
Bonnie’s radiant smile lit her small face. “Yes, can’t you feel it, Mama? No pain, no bitterness. All that’s left is the love.”
“Yes, I can feel it,” she said unsteadily. Freedom. None of the shackles of pain and horror and sadness that had bound her all these years. “Love.”
They sat in silence, watching the twilight turn to darkness.