Page 49 of Mountain Man’s Mystic Touch

“You didn’t see a gun,” I say.

“No.”

“You heard a loud crack and concluded it was gunfire.”

“I saw your blood.”

“That doesn’t make the sound a gun.”

Her face turns toward the window again. “You asked what I saw. I told you.”

“I’m trying to separate observation from interpretation.”

“And I’m trying to tell you that the two don’t always arrive separately.”

I pull into the gravel drive leading toward the cabins. “That makes it difficult to act on.”

“Yes, Rocco. It does.”

Pain edges her voice. Not physical pain.

I have questioned witnesses after violent incidents. People remember fragments. Sound distorts. Time contracts. The mind fills missing spaces with whatever makes the experience coherent. Pressing for detail is necessary, but there is a point when questions stop clarifying and begin sounding like disbelief.

I passed that point two miles ago.

“I’m not saying you’re wrong.”

“You aren’t saying I’m right.”

“I don’t know what happened.”

“Neither do I,” she says, softer now.

I park outside my cabin and turn off the engine. Loralee keeps her face angled toward the window.

“I believe you saw something that frightened you,” I say.

“That sounds like something people tell children after nightmares.”

“It isn’t meant that way.”

“How is it meant?”

“I don’t understand what happened to you. I do understand that you were on the ground, unable to speak, trying to wipe my blood off your hands.”

Her head turns.

“I didn’t see what you saw,” I continue. “I saw you.”

Some of the resistance leaves her face.

“That is the evidence I have,” I say. “It is enough for me to take this seriously.”

Loralee gazes at me for several seconds. “Even if you don’t believe it was a vision?”

“Yes.”

“That must be uncomfortable.”