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She did, however, reach out to Jamie.“She’s pretty insistent on having you come here. I’m not worried about her being able to kill me, but it will piss me off if I have to ruin my blouse. I like this one.”Jamie asked her where she was.“Good point. You know that restaurant that has the giant skillet out in front? I’m about a foot from it. There was a commotion with some witchcraft that I came to—like you care. I’m there. Can you do that popping thing without being seen by her?”
“I can. I can see you both now. It’s not a gun. It’s a hairbrush. Also, you’ll be thrilled to know that I haven’t any idea who she might be. Let me do a little walk through her empty head.”After a few minutes, she could feel Jamie’s laughter.“She wants me to use my dogs to help her find her cheating husband. She’s a loon, Amelia. They’ve been divorced for nearly three years, and he came here to start a new life without her. I’ve seen this before, recently, as a matter of fact. If I can’t have you sort of mentality, then no one will. I’m coming toward you from behind. Just don’t kill her. She is seriously in denial about the divorce and the way that it ended. I’m nearly there.”
Turning around, Amelia grabbed the hairbrush at the same time. When the woman fell back on her ass, she put her foot on her chest and held her there. Jamie was calling the police as she was walking up on the two of them.
“I need for my husband to come and pick me up. He’s not being fair to me. Did you know that he took my kids from me?” Jamie asked her if she’d really tried to kill them. “They were just a way to keep him with me, and he saved them. Isn’t that the most precious thing in the world? He’s such a good man but a little lost now. He needs me as much as I need him.”
“You need help is what you need.” The woman told them that she only needed her husband and was still going on about how she needed him when the police showed up. She begged them to go away so that she and Jamie had a contract for her to find her husband.
Frazier contacted her just as the woman, Porsche Miller, was being loaded up in the cruiser and taken away. After she told him what she’d been up to, he laughed, telling her that at least it ended well.
“I’ve got some great news. Well, I hope you think it’s great news. I’ve decided to turn in my notice at work. I’ve never felt so relaxed as I have in the past week working on things that I want to do. Grannie is thrilled. She said that she’d hire me to work the shop a couple of days a week so that I can talk to the people about the park too.”She told him that she was so happy for him.“Me too. Talking to you last night about it really helped me solidify my answer for the job. It didn’t help either that I’ve had a really rough day today with tourists.”
“I guess there is a lot of that going around. Harlin, you know, Jamie’s dad had a tourist toss hot coffee at him today. Luckily he wasn’t hurt too much, but it’s still a shitty way to have people treat you.”He agreed with her.“I’m headed to a meeting. I’m supposed to be meeting with the coven around here that is having issues. She wasn’t too specific as to what her troubles were, but I guess I’ll find out. Where are you?”
“I’m at the ranger’s office with Gibb. He has the desk today. I’m waiting on my next group to show up, then I’m going to—”When he stopped talking, she stopped walking. Jamie was with her, and she stiffened too.“Can you and Jamie meet me at the north entrance of the park? There is a ranger down, and shots were fired.”
“I’ll get you and take you with me.”He said that he needed to drive in.“No. I’ll come and get you. You’ll be safer than being on the road not knowing…do you know who it is?”
“It’s grandda.”Popping into the bathroom at the office, she took him there first, then Gibb, who was closing up the office when she returned for him. They both were so upset that she told them she’d go and get grannie.
“I’m going to be just fine. He’ll be all right when I get there, then I’m going to kick his bottom for making us all fuss after him.” She could tell that the woman was upset but being brave. She’d heard that Grandda had been shot twice, but no one could get to him. “You tell him for me when we get there that I’m not going to wait around for him to die on me. Oh, Amelia, whatever will I do without him?”
“You’ll be fine. Both of you will. I’ll…I’m going to do something you asked me not to do for the two of you.” Grannie only nodded and told her to do it. “All right. I can take it back if you decide you don’t want to be here forever, but he’ll live.”
She didn’t tell her that if he was already gone, there was nothing she could do for him. When she reached out, touching his mind with her own, it broke her badly to know it was too late. Grandda had died.
Grannie knew as soon as she did that he’d passed. They were mates, after all, and she knew the moment that he took his last breath. Holding onto Frazier as he realized the news, too, he sobbed so hard on her shoulder that she was at a loss as to how she could help him.
“Can’t you go and get him, honey? He’s just lying there, and I need to hold him one more time.” She said that she could but was worried that the police would get pissy about moving him. “Yes, I guess they have to have their evidence on this. My poor Alford. Why did they shoot an old man like him?”
The man who had killed Grandda was killed by the rangers there. He’d killed three people, including Alford Cross, when he’d come to the park this morning. Now there was a man, a wonderful person, dead because the man couldn’t get his credit card to work so that he could buy dinner for his family. He’d been drinking heavily since he’d arrived, and it didn’t bode well for anyone, it seemed.
After the man was killed, not soon enough for the family, Grandda was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead before they arrived. Grannie had been able to sit with him for as long as she wanted, and the family gathered around her.
When she consented to have him taken to the mortuary, she didn’t move from her seat in the emergency department. None of them wanted to rush her either. Amelia thought that it would be a very long time before any one of them was ready to face the world without one of the greatest men she knew.
“I’d like to go home now.” Mark took her home as he was the only one with a car there. Grannie leaned heavily on her grandsons, and it hurt her heart in ways that she couldn’t explain. “When we get there, I want you all to please stay with me for a bit. I’m…my mind is a bit scrambled right now, but I’d very much like to have you all there.”
No one said that they had things to do. Not that she thought they would, but it showed how much love and respect they had for her when they all told her that they’d be there for as long as she could stand them. The ride back to the homestead was quiet. Grannie cried softly in her lacy handkerchief and talked about some of the things that the two of them had done while first married. Once they were home, she sat in her usual chair and looked at Amelia.
“I don’t want you to give me that immortality, child.” The family was mourning the death of their patriarch badly. Grannie was taking it the hardest, of course, and it was all she could do not to beg her not to die. “I want to go with him. To the great mountains in the sky. He’s my heart, and now that he’s gone, I don’t think it will ever beat the same.”
No one begged her not to leave them. It was as if they knew, deep in their hearts, that it wouldn’t matter what they said to her. Her mind was made up. And Amelia knew too that she’d never be the same now. As she had said, her heart was broken.
“Mine and your Grandda’s will is all made up. I’ll tell you now that it will be equally divided between the six of you. There’s a bit of money along with some jewels that had been passed down to us over the years that I’d like to have you give to the women in the family as they come along.” Mark told her that he’d do that for her. “Thank you, son. Also, I want you to know that you’ve never been a burden on us. We’d do it all over again, even knowing what we know now. You’ve been the best grandsons that a person could ask for, and I don’t want you to ever think any differently.”
“Words aren’t enough to tell you how much we love you, grannie.” She took Frazier’s hand into hers and kissed the back of it. “We’ll tell our children about you too. They’ll think they knew you by the time they’re ready to have their own children.”
“Now, don’t you be making me out to be some kind of saint, young man. You know as well as I do that I have me a powerful temper and I let it go on occasion.” They all laughed, and grannie smiled at them. “That’s just what I needed. To hear a little laughter right about now.”
“What do you want us to do about grandda’s funeral? I know that you had your arrangements made, so you tell me if you want anything different.” Grannie told Gibb that it was the way they wanted it. “We’ll abide by your wishes then.”
“Yes, please do that.” She looked around the big room, the home that Mark had been living in since he’d met Jamie. Smiling at them, tears streaming down her face, she told them how much she loved them and then stood up. So did everyone in the room with her. “I’m powerful tired right now. I think I’ll go and have me a nice nap. Then we’ll talk some more.”
Amelia and the other two women helped her change her clothing. It was smeared in blood when she’d been able to hold onto Grandda while the police finished up their day. As they were leaving the room, she looked back at the woman and thought that she’d never looked her age until just that moment. It was Sunny that spoke first.
“She’ll be gone in the morning. You know that, don’t you guys? She’s broken in ways that I can only imagine. I love that old buzzard so much. I know you two do as well.” They all nodded, holding onto each other as they sobbed about how they’d miss her. “She’s been such a wonderful person to all of us. I just don’t think things will ever be the same without the two of them right there all the time.”
