Chapter 25: Moonrise Eve

My mother had been gone three days when the territory climbed the mountain for Moonrise Eve.

The deputies had found her car at a truck stop two valleys over, doors unlocked, keys on the seat.

They had not found her.

They had not found the locked case either.

Every deputy told me she could not get far.

They said it in the careful voice people use on the injured.

I did not believe them.

My mother had never in her life gone anywhere without a plan.

The Moonrise Ground was a stone bowl on the shoulder of Blackridge Peak.

A plank stage stood at one end and a fire pit at the other.

By dusk there were hundreds of folding chairs and more people standing behind them.

Children carried paper lanterns.

The old woman with the fox bite had been wheeled up in a hospital chair with a blanket over her knees.

She was the first person who saw us come over the rim, and she lifted one hand off the blanket.

"Cora," I said. "We can turn around."

"Do you want to?"

"No."

"Then neither do I."

She wore the gray sweatshirt from the night in the kitchen and jeans with a hole in one knee.

There was no ring light, no makeup, no sponsor patch on her sleeve.

For nine years she had walked into rooms like this one as someone to look at.

Now she kept her hands in her pockets and looked back.

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