“I got your messages,” she said. “Both of them.”

Jesse Gower had left the voice messages at her office, each time asking about the progress of the investigation—and the gold cross. He said nothing in return.

“Can I come up?”

He waved her up onto the porch, and she took a seat on a stool.

They sat for a minute in silence, looking at each other. She thought back to her harsh parting words the last time they’d met. They had bubbled out of someplace deep within her, unexpectedly. Maybe it was the fact that, in Gower, she could see a bit of her mother: addicted, self-absorbed, angry at the world. More troubling, she could see herself … or, rather, herself as she might have become.

“Listen,” she said at last. “I’m not here to interrogate you or search your place or turn you in. I’m here as somebody looking into what happened to your great-grandfather. We’re after the same thing. There’s no need for us to be adversaries. And … ” She paused. “I’m sorry about the things I said. When I left, I mean.”

Jesse Gower took this in without changing his expression. “And the cross?”

“That cross is still evidence. It was found with his body, on public land. There’s nothing I or anybody else can do about that for the moment. When this investigation is over, we can see about the possibility of giving it to you. That’s complicated, too—there are laws governing such things. And … ” She hesitated and wondered if she should tell him it was radioactive. But that information was strictly embargoed. “I promise to do what I can.”

Gower took this in, too. She sensed that, between phone calls, he’d had some time to think things through as well.

“And I didn’t mean to come across as such an asshole,” he said. “It’s just … ” and he waved vaguely over the dust-bowl yard, the rusting implements, the oppressive and overwhelming sense of lost dreams. Corrie understood immediately. Going off to an Ivy League school after such a difficult upbringing must have seemed like ascending to a better world. But that world had fallen apart, and now he was back here—worse off than ever.

“I grew up in Kansas,” she said. “In a town not much bigger, and only a little less ugly, than this place.” She caught herself. “I didn’t mean—”

“No. You’re right. It’s ugly.” Jesse paused. “Cambridge was a revelation to me. I had no idea the world could be so green.”

“Green isn’t always so great,” Corrie replied. “I grew up surrounded by fields of corn. As a kid, I thought they went on and on and on, without end. A green hell.”

They were silent a moment. Then Gower stirred. “Do you want a glass of water or something? Sorry, I really don’t have—”

“I’m fine. Thanks, though.” There was another brief silence as they looked out over the desolation. Then Corrie took a deep breath, having made a decision.

“Your great-grandfather was killed in the Trinity test,” she said. “We think he was out searching or hunting—for relics, perhaps—out in the Jornada del Muerto desert. He got caught in the blast. He made it back to his camp at High Lonesome, but he died soon after.”

“Jesus.” While she’d spoken, his face had turned to a mask of shock and disbelief. “And you’re saying he’s been buried out there—since the day they tested the bomb?”

“Yes. We believe we’ve discovered his campsite. It’s in the process of being examined.”

“Have you learned more about the cross?”

Corrie hesitated. She didn’t want to arouse too much interest, since it was still anyone’s guess whether Jesse Gower could ever claim the artifact. “It was irradiated, too—he was carrying it with him when the bomb went off. We don’t have much information about it, beyond that it’s old and valuable. It may have been the property of a Spanish friar carrying out missionary work across the Southwest.”

“How irradiated?”

“Not much now. About what you’d get from flying at 35,000 feet.”

Jesse sat back with a sigh. “So you didn’t find a pocket watch on him?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“It seems strange he’d be carrying the gold cross and not his watch. That was one of only two possessions he really cared about. It was kind of a famous heirloom in the Gower family, passed down for several generations. But it disappeared with him, so they say.” He paused, ruminating. “A gold cross. Spanish. That sure sounds like treasure. You think he might have found the Victorio Peak treasure just before he died?”

Corrie didn’t answer. Jesse Gower was putting the pieces together very quickly—maybe too quickly. Why, exactly, had she come out here again? Partly it was in response to his calls. But something in her gut said he knew more than he’d already told them.

Into the silence came a cackle from the direction of the henhouse.

“Pertelote!” Gower cried. “Way to go!” He turned to Corrie. “There’s my supper.”

“Pertelote?”

“Sure. I can tell all the hens by their cackles. They’re eccentric little beasts.”

“But where on earth did you get that name?”

Gower went quiet for a moment. “The residual effects of my education. I’ve named lots of things on this old ranch after bits of English literature, sitting out here on this porch. Not much else to do. Chaunticleer and Pertelote were a rooster and hen from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Pertelote was my rooster’s favorite—until he vanished. I think a racoon got him. I’ve named all the other hens, too. And the henhouse is Canterbury. And that old blasted tree is Childe Roland, from Byron’s poem—to me it sort of looks like a knight that hasn’t fared too well. And all that space between the road and the fence is the Waste Land.” He paused. “Guess you don’t need to have read Eliot to figure that out.”