Twenty-four hours later at Alexandra, a café three blocks from her studio apartment, Abigail bent to kiss a woman with short silver hair who was wearing a cotton summer dress that showed off the constellation of freckles on her browned shoulders.
“You look cute.”
She sat across from her mother, their table bordering the sidewalk of Hudson Street, a hot day in the city, the rectangle of sky between the buildings a washed-out summer white and the stench of the river draped like a dirty wet blanket over the West Village.
Sarah Foster said, “I ordered a bottle of wine. Best they had.”
Abigail dropped on the table the stack of mail she’d collected from the post office.
“Mom, you didn’t have to—”
“I know I didn’t, but I did. Excuse me for wanting to celebrate that my daughter isn’t going into the clink for thirty years. And you wouldn’t even let me be there.”
Abigail set her sunglasses on the wrought-iron table. “If the verdict had gone the other way, I couldn’t have watched what that did to you.”
Sarah took hold of her daughter’s hand. “Always the protector. Well, it’s all behind you now, Abby.”
“Yeah, but you know the full story. For everyone else, not guilty by reason of mental defect doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.”
“It’s nobody’s business.”
“People wonder. They’ll talk. Snow madness is what my attorney argued, what I said happened. That I went nuts for a little while ’cause of being stranded in the storm. Temporary psychosis and—”
“You know the truth. That’s all that matters.”
“Doesn’t make it easy.”
The waiter came, presented the bottle of chardonnay, filled their wineglasses.
When he’d left, Abigail pulled down into her lap the pile of mail rubber-banded together. As she perused the month’s accumulation of magazines and past-due bills, she noticed the package from the mail-order film-processing company, and her face must have darkened, because her mother said, “What is it, Abby?”
Abigail tore open the envelope, withdrew a sheaf of photographs.
“Emmett Tozer shot a roll of film on the hike in, and his wife gave it to me our first night in Abandon. I guess I sent these in to be developed before I flew out to Colorado for the trial.”
“Sure you wanna see those right now?”
The photos had been shot in black-and-white, and the first picture wrecked Abigail’s stomach—a long downhill shot of the llamas, Scott and Jerrod, June and Lawrence, with Abigail bringing up the rear, every head hung as the party climbed a steep wooded section of the trail.
“This was the first day,” Abigail said, handing the picture to her mother.
They worked their way through the bottle of wine, Abigail providing captions for each photograph until she came to a picture that closed her throat and sheeted her eyes over with tears.
Sarah said, “Honey, what’s wrong?”
The ominous skyline of Abandon was a blur behind them, the low cloud deck expressed in a few dark strokes of gray, but their faces stood out in perfect focus—Lawrence smiling, not at the camera, but at Abigail, who was pulling away.
Abigail shook her head, laid the photograph on the table so her mother could see. Whispered, “I’ve never seen a picture of us together.” She recognized herself in the way his eyes had gone to slits with his smile, saw Lawrence in the shape of her mouth. “I know you were angry that I went to see him.”
“No, honey—”
“It wasn’t a betrayal. I needed to see him, and it’s strange to say, but all this shit I went through . . . meant I at least got to know him.”
“And I’m glad you did, Abby.”
“He was a broken man, Mom. What he did to us, it wasn’t right, but he was so young.”
Sarah was nodding now, and Abigail watched her mother push back the emotion.
“And he tried, Mom, you know? Asking me to come to Colorado, that was him trying. It couldn’t have been easy.”
Sarah lifted the photograph, stared at it for a moment, and when she looked up at Abigail, she was smiling through tears.
“He’s looking at you here like you’re someone he loves.”
Abigail wiped her eyes, watched a man walk out of the watch-repair shop across the street. “Mom, I tried to find him. Three times we flew into that box canyon, but—”
“I know.”
“—the snow was so deep, it had blocked—”
“Abby, you have to let all that go now.”
“He died doing what he wanted, I guess. What he loved.”
Sarah tilted the wine bottle, topped off her glass. “Where do you stand financially?”
“The lawyer wiped me out.”
“If I had the funds to—”
“I know.”
“Abby, I’ve been thinking.” Sarah scooted her chair over and leaned in close, speaking just above a whisper. “It’s summer now. Snow’s melted in the high country, right?”
“In a month or so. Why?”
“What if you went back to that mine, took a few bricks—”
“No, Mom.”
“Just enough to get you out of—”
“No.”
“Darling, you’re broke. Could you find the mine entrance?”
“Probably.”
“So why suffer when you don’t have to?”
Abigail leaned back in her chair.
“For hundreds of years, Mom, that gold’s done nothing—nothing—but bring out the worst in people. Make misery and death. There isn’t even the smallest part of me that’s tempted to go back to that wilderness, into that mine, to get it.
“You know I’m not a superstitious person, but if anything in this world is cursed, that gold is. I couldn’t be broke enough to resort to that. Now you’re the only other person I’ve told about the gold and the bones. Not even my lawyer knew, and I expect the secrets of Abandon to die with both of us, so the awful history of that town can stay shut away.”
Sarah had been biting her bottom lip. “Honey, that’s noble of you, but it’s gonna take you years to replenish your savings, get back on your feet.”
“So be it.”
“Are you sure? I mean, you’ve really decided this?”
Abigail finished her wine. “I jogged to Brooklyn this morning. Halfway across the bridge, I stopped and threw the key to that mine into the East River. So yeah, Mom, I’m sure.”