Snowstorm of Our Past novel · Chapter 25 of 32

Chapter 25: The Stone

The diner had gone quiet around us.

Gabe's hand stayed on my back. He didn't press. He just left it there.

I looked at the envelope.

"No," I said.

Clint flinched, very slightly.

"I'll be there," I said. "I'll tell them about the beacon, because I'm the one who found it. But I'm not standing beside you, Clint. I'm standing with my team."

He nodded slowly.

"That's fair."

"It's not about fair."

"I know." He picked up his coat. "I'll see you on the pass."

He left a ten under the untouched coffee and walked out.

Gran watched him go.

"Huh," she said. "He tipped."

April twelfth was blue and freezing at the top of Tennessee Pass.

The old snow was still four feet deep on either side of the plowed lot.

Two Army buses had come up from Fort Carson. The lot was full of trucks and folding chairs and families in their good coats.

The stone stood at the edge of the trees, under a white cloth.

Behind it, the mountains went on forever.

The team stood together near the back.

The schoolteacher, the dog handler, the kid in his too-short tie again. The dog sat at Gabe's boots.

Gran had stayed at the diner with Tilly. She said one of us had to keep the coffee going.

The CID agent stood at the edge of the crowd with his hands in his pockets.

He didn't look at me.

Behind the buses, a plain white van sat with its engine running.

Clint sat in the front row with his son on his knee, bundled in a snowsuit.

Amber sat three chairs down from him.

She'd lost weight. Her honey-brown curls were pinned up neat, and she wore a black wool coat with the little gold star on the lapel.

In her lap she held a glass box.

Inside it, on a bed of blue velvet, was a red avalanche beacon on a torn harness.

The colonel spoke first. Then the chaplain.

Then Amber walked to the microphone with the glass box in both hands.

"Ten years and three months ago," she said softly, "my husband went into the snow on a mountain not far from here."

Her voice shook in all the right places.

"This is his beacon. It's the only thing of him the mountain gave back. It was on to the end, searching for his lieutenant."

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