For a moment, Katie couldn’t reply. Her anger vanished and she was suddenly moved, moved beyond description, to discover that after all these years she had not been found wanting in William Tear’s eyes. He had chosen her to guard his son.
“Crisis over,” Jonathan muttered, and shook his head ruefully. “But not for long. You might not believe in my visions, but I know when trouble’s on the way, and there’s bad trouble coming down the pike.”
He did know, Katie admitted reluctantly to herself, but she shrugged it off and took his hand again, tugging him toward the library. “Not this afternoon, sibyl. Now hurry up.”
Three days later, Row Finn walked back into town, alone.
He must have been thirty pounds lighter, his clothing torn and ruined and his carrying pack barely in one piece. His steps were stumbling, and he appeared to be delirious. When he saw Ben Markham and Elisa Wu, who were fishing on the banks of the Caddell, he collapsed.
The story passed like quicksilver through the Town. According to Mrs. Finn, who jealously guarded her son from visitors, the expedition had become lost in the high mountains and they had succumbed, one by one, to exposure and starvation. Row had lasted the longest, and it was only by barest chance that he had found a narrow natural trail that led him down a pass. He had survived the journey home by eating such roots and berries as he was able to forage in the great forest.
The Town believed this story. Katie did not.
She had not seen Row yet, but she had heard plenty. His church flocked to him, determined to fatten him up. Virginia, who had gone over to see Row two days before, said the house was full of food, baked goods and soups.
“Women too,” Virginia told Katie grimly. “Awful lot of women in that church like seeing Row Finn bedridden, I can tell you that.”
For the rest of the mountain expedition, the Town had a rare united moment of genuine mourning. Jen Devlin in particular was an enormous loss. They held a single service for the eleven dead, a service through which Katie stood dry-eyed, watching not the various people who spoke in memory of the dead, but the Finn house, clearly visible two streets down the hill. She was desperate to question Row, but she didn’t want an audience when she did so. The conversation would not be a good one. She didn’t want to suspect her old friend, but she couldn’t help it.
In the end, it took her more than a week to find him alone. Row’s church was off on some sort of prayer retreat in the plains for two days, and his mother had gone to a card party. Row’s tale had made Mrs. Finn a much sought-after guest, and Katie liked the woman even less for the grasping and desperate embrace of her fleeting popularity. The sight of her happily following a group of women, women who’d wanted nothing to do with her until now, made Katie want to shake the woman awake.
Katie didn’t bother to knock before entering the Finns’ house. When she reached Row’s room, she found him on his side in bed, his eyes closed, his face that of an angel in repose. The weight he had lost only made him better-looking, his cheekbones like carved marble. Katie couldn’t help wondering who Row would have been if he’d been born without that face.
“I know you’re shamming, Row.”
His eyes popped open, and he smiled. “You always know, don’t you, Katie?”
“About you, I do.” She dragged up a chair; there were several spread around the bed. “Hiding from all your guests?”
“They do wear me out.”
She looked around the room, taking in the homemade bouquets and boxes of baked goods, and gave a derisive snort. “I suppose that’s the price of being the new messiah, isn’t it?”
“I’m not the messiah,” Row replied, smiling pleasantly, but his eyes held their same old devilry. “Just a devout man.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened to you out there?”
“That story is all over town by now.”
“It is.” She smiled, but her smile wasn’t as genuine as Row’s; it felt like winter on her mouth. “But I’d like to hear your story.”
“Don’t you trust me, Katie?”
“Don’t play with me, Row. What happened?”
He told her substantially the same story she had already heard: lost in the mountains, the expedition dying slowly of starvation and cold. He had outlasted them by rationing his food carefully, and by huddling for warmth with the two horses until they too succumbed. There were only two points where Katie sensed Row fiddling with the truth: the food rationing, and the trail he had found down the mountain. But Katie couldn’t make him shake his story, and finally she gave up and leaned back in the chair, unsatisfied.
“Didn’t you miss me, Katie?”
Katie blinked. She had missed him, though she hadn’t realized it until this moment. Things were more interesting with Row around; that hadn’t changed, even if everything else had. But at the same time, the Town felt safer with Row gone.
“I missed you, Katie.”
“Why?”
“Because you know me. It’s useful to have everyone think I’m good, I suppose, but it’s tiring too.”
“I knew your church nonsense was a lie.”
“Brother Paul is dying.”