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“You should be sleeping,” she said. “You were awake all night.”
“I got enough. What are you doing? I never saw a woman who liked to snoop more than you do.”
“I wasn’t snooping, I was cleaning.”
With an infuriatingly knowing little smile, he sat down beside her. “Cleaning inside locked boxes?” he asked, nodding toward the big, rusty lock on the ground beside her. “Find anything interesting?”
“Only about two pounds of gold,” she said smugly, holding out the big rock to him. “This is why your miner doesn’t want to leave this place.”
Ty took the rock, leaned back on one elbow and looked at it. “Fool’s gold,” he said. “The old man doesn’t know gold when he sees it. Up on the side of the hill, there’s a place where he’s been digging for years. He was digging it when I was a kid.”
Chris took the rock from Tynan. “If there’s no gold, why does he stay here? Why does he live like this?”
“He believes there is gold and facts have nothing to do with this man’s beliefs. As for why he lives like this, he’s just afraid to let anything go. If he can’t sell it today, he’ll keep it until it’s worth something.”
“Like babies. They’re not worth much as newborns, but strong little boys can work.” Tynan didn’t reply to her, just gazed at a bird overhead, seeming to be content to lie still for the moment. “How has he lived up here? He must have had money for food from somewhere. Has he always stolen things and sold them?”
Tynan took a while to answer. “He used to steal but now I send him money when I can.”
“You? But why? After what he did to you and the way you hate him, I’d have thought you’d do nothing for him.”
“That old man is the closest thing to a father I’ve ever had. Besides, I didn’t want him selling any more children.”
“I wonder how someone like him got to be the way he is. I wonder what awful things happened to him. I bet he was in love once. Maybe he lost her and never recovered.”
Ty was looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. “What makes you think that old man ever loved anybody?”
“I found a picture of the woman he loved.”
“Let me see it,” Ty said softly and Chris gave him the photograph. He looked at it a long while before handing it back to her. “He said he threw it over the side and I believed him.”
“You’ve seen this?”
“It was my most treasured possession for most of my life.”
She hesitated. “Who is this woman?”
“I’ve been told she’s my mother.”
“Your mother? But, Ty, don’t you realize that if you have this maybe you can find out who she is? Find out who you are?”
“I know who I am,” he said with a set jaw.
Chris looked at the picture for a while. “What’s her name?”
“I have no idea.”
“But didn’t you ask?”
He looked at her. “Who was I going to ask? The old man told me she said one word before she died and that was, ‘Tynan.’ ”
“Did you show the photo to the women in…to Red and the others?”
“Sure, they saw it, but no one knew who she was. They thought it was all real romantic and they kept buying frames for the picture, then the old man’d come and take the frame and sell it. It was a great source of income to him for years.”
Chris turned the picture over. “It says something on the back, but I can’t make it out.”
“Sa. It has the letters Sa on the back and the rest is faded. I used to imagine that my mother’s name was Sarah.”
