LITMIR.BIZ

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discoveries displayed in the entry hall, an ornately decorated Anasazi turkey-feather burial shroud he’d found a decade ago at the bottom of a late-1800s mining-debris pile where the national park’s Backcountry Information Center now stood at the south edge of the village.

      “I like the feather thing best,” Rosie proclaimed, turning heads in the quiet museum. “It’s pretty.”

      “You’ve got a good eye,” Chuck praised her.

      The skill of the Anasazi in the medium of clay was well known, while the shroud featured heretofore-unseen Anasazi mastery with needle and thread. As such, the shroud was the most impressive of Chuck’s displayed artifacts, providing an even greater understanding of the Anasazi than did the double-ported urn.

      “It’s the most famous of my finds,” Chuck told Rosie as he stood next to her in front of the glass case. “It led to all the work I’ve gotten with the Navajo tribe over the last few years.”

      “Wow.” Rosie pressed her nose to the front of the case so that her breath fogged the glass. “Did they put you on TV?”

      Chuck smiled. “Not yet. But quite a few papers and articles have mentioned it.”

      “That’s how Chuck makes his living, m’hijas,” Janelle explained to the girls as she bent over Rosie, peering into the case. “Your stepfather digs up these sorts of things so people can study and learn from them.”

      “He’s a magician,” Rosie whispered.

      But Carmelita stiffened. “We already know what he does,” she huffed. “Duh. That’s why you made us come here.” She folded her arms across her skinny chest and stalked away from the display case.

      Janelle shot Chuck an apologetic look. She called after her oldest daughter, “You’re right, bonita. Perdoname, por favor.” She put her hand on Rosie’s shoulder. “The Grand Canyon,” she murmured. “We’re really here.”

      “The biggest hole in the Earth this side of the Mariana Trench,” Chuck put in.

      Rosie turned from the case. “There’s a bigger hole than the Grand Canyon?”

      “If you count what’s underneath the ocean.”

      “Well, I don’t.”

      Janelle gave Rosie’s shoulder a squeeze. “Neither do I.”

      Rosie skipped out of the entry hall, trailing Carmelita beneath the exposed beams of the museum’s main passageway. Janelle watched them go. She slipped her hand into Chuck’s and looked up at him, her face alight with happiness. He lost himself in her gaze, just as he had countless times since they’d first met a few months ago. He wasn’t sure what it was about her dancing eyes that had made him fall so quickly and completely in love with her, but he liked it all the same. Jonathan and Elise Marbury were right: Janelle was lovely.

      For a few luxurious seconds, he basked in the delicious, schoolboy-like infatuation he felt for Janelle, until the growing pit in his stomach reminded him of the frighteningly hasty commitment he’d made to her and the girls. He turned his head away lest she see the anxiety in his eyes. What could she possibly see in him? he asked himself for the thousandth time.

      All his adult life, Chuck had found peace in being alone—so much so, in fact, that before Janelle had come along he’d regularly gone days at a time without speaking to anyone. He’d enjoyed his solitary life right up to the evening when, upon meeting Janelle at her parents’ house, the calm in his head had been replaced by the combustive mix of ardor and trepidation that, at this point, was on the verge of driving him crazy.

      He had no idea what he’d done to deserve this beguiling young woman who had materialized in his life, nor did he know how Janelle had come to trust him enough to allow him to join her in raising her two girls. He worried about missteps he might take that would result in his newfound joy vanishing, and wondered how, having experienced the thrill of his new life with Janelle and the girls, he could go back to his old life if that were to happen.

      Deep down, he was convinced he risked scaring Janelle away if she ever realized how much he loved her. How could she not be frightened off when the love he felt for her was threatening to scare him away, to send him running from the museum this very instant?

      Janelle tugged at his hand, and he forced a smile. “We’re here all right,” he said, his words guarded. He cursed to himself, knowing his uncertainty was visible in his eyes. “The Grand Canyon.”

      Janelle’s eyes narrowed. Without a word, she let go of his hand and set off down the hallway after the girls.

      Chuck gathered himself and followed. He would catch up with her and take her in his arms, tell her how fortunate he knew he was, how much he loved and cared for her. But he was still trailing her when she spun to face him in the middle of the corridor, causing other museum-goers to alter course as they passed. He avoided her eyes as he approached.

      “Look at me,” Janelle said.

      He stopped in front of her and offered her an uneasy glance before looking past her at Carmelita and Rosie, still making their way down the passageway.

      “Look . . . at . . . me,” Janelle repeated.

      He did as told. Seconds ago, her mouth had been relaxed, her eyes warm and inviting. Now, every muscle in her face was tight, her eyes burning into him.

      “I love what we’ve got going between us. You have to believe that,” she said. “But I have to be sure you’re with me on this. I already placed my trust in someone by mistake. You know that. I can’t let it happen again. I won’t let it happen again. Not to me, and not to Carm and Rosie.”

      Chuck opened his mouth, then closed it.

      “Maybe I should have figured this out earlier—like, before we got married,” Janelle went on, her voice softening. “But I’m doing the best I can here. And what I’m saying is, you have to be all the way in on this with me. No halfway about it. You don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve it.” Her lower lip trembled. “And the girls . . . the girls . . . they don’t deserve it either.” Her voice shook. “I don’t need a pretend husband, Chuck. I need the real thing. I can’t stand by and let the girls grow close to you just to risk having you walk away from them.”

      “I—” Chuck began, but Janelle wasn’t finished.

      “There’s a time limit on this thing,” she said, her voice steadying. “I don’t know how long, exactly. But there has to be, for the girls, for me. You have to come around for the three of us. All the way around. And you have to do it soon.”

      With that, she turned and headed down the corridor after her daughters.

FIVE

      2 p.m.

      Chuck shuffled down the passageway behind Janelle.

      A time limit, she’d said.

      She was headstrong, impetuous. She’d probably just been blowing off steam. Still, her comment filled him with dread because he knew she was right. Did he have it in him to do what she needed, what he himself knew he had to do, if their brand-new marriage was to last?

      Rosie came charging back up the corridor. She darted around her mother, took hold of Chuck’s wrist with both hands, and dragged him past Janelle toward a darkened doorway off to one side.

      “You gotta see, you gotta see,” she exclaimed gleefully, tugging him through the entry into a windowless, cave-like room lit only by black lights directed at luminescent specimens of hackmanite collected from Meteor Crater, a fifty-thousand-year-old, five-hundred-foot-deep asteroid-impact depression in the high desert east of Flagstaff.

      Rosie pranced around the dark room, giggling at the way the cream-colored piping on her blouse glowed beneath the black lights. “Look at me!” she cried out.

      Carmelita

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