Chapter Two

The chalkboard grid outside Chief Alma Maguire's office at the West Station informed them that Ellis / Banneker were slated to cover the day shift in Sector W-14 for the next ten days, with Herd / Duckers taking the night shift. On the corkboard next to it, someone had tacked a sign-up sheet for educational presentations at local retirement homes, another Marshals in the Community gig.

"Ugh," Frank grumbled an instant before their boss popped her head out of her office across the hall to ask, "Ellis, Banneker, what's this I hear about you bringing treats?"

Twyla froze, a statue dedicated to guilt, while Frank surreptitiously dusted flaky crumbs off the front of his blue work shirt.

Maguire narrowed her aquamarine demigod eyes, a pair of ice daggers in her brown face. "Salt Sea, seriously?"

"Pie doesn't last long in the commissary. You know how it goes, Chief."

"Humph." Maguire nodded toward the Marshals in the Community sheet on the corkboard, its blank spaces screaming at them in admonition. "Which one are you signing up for?"

Twyla and Frank caught each other's eyes in shared reluctance. Frank kicked off their hemming and hawing with a "Well now" that didn't go any further. Maguire jerked her head, indicating that they should follow her into the office, and they met each other's eyes again, this time in defeat.

"I'm going to be blunt," Maguire said as soon as she'd shut the door. She didn't even invite them to sit. "The Federal Assembly is breathing down our necks. They're saying that with the drudges gone, we don't need a force this size. Some are saying that we don't need the Tanrian Marshals at all."

"Maybe they should do a few tours busting poachers," Frank suggested acerbically.

"You don't have to convince me, but we all need to work together to convince the assembly. Feel free to find some serious criminal activity while you're on patrol, anything that could justify the taxpayer expense. The North Station got assigned a juicy smuggling case involving the illegal mining of Tanrian iuvenicite, lucky bastards."

"I thought the Doniphan Iuvenicite Mine had top-notch security," said Twyla.

"It does. That's why the case is such a big deal."

"Who would want a mineral that badly?" asked Frank.

"Tanria's the only place in the world where you can find iuvenicite. It's used in beauty products, the sort of stuff that's supposed to make women of a certain age look younger."

The old, familiar irritation at the ancient and unending double standard simmered in Twyla's stomach. "Wouldn't it be terrible if we let ourselves look our age?"

"Grandmother Wisdom forfend," agreed Maguire, who, like Twyla, was a woman of a certain age.

"Who's working the iuvenicite case?" asked Frank.

"Fox and Gomez."

"I thought Rosie Fox worked out of the East Station," said Twyla.

"She did, but she lost her seventeenth partner a few weeks ago. Gomez is the only one who'd take her, so now she's a Northie."

Frank motioned to the door or, more specifically, to the assignment board beyond it. "Looks like Duckers lost another partner, too. Wasn't he with Reese? Should have put him with Fox instead of Herd."

"And have Fox work out of the West Station? Thank you, no. I have enough headaches. And that's irrelevant. The West Station doesn't have a juicy iuvenicite case to work, so I'm having to get creative; hence, the Marshals in the Community initiative. You two are respected veterans. The younger ones look up to you, and I need you setting a good example. So let me ask you again: Which retirement home are you planning to educate about the work of the Tanrian Marshals?"

"Wisdom's Acres?" Twyla cheeped under her boss's brutal glare.

"Good choice."

Maguire opened the office door to dismiss them. As they shuffled past her, she asked, "What kind was it?"

"What kind was what?" asked Twyla.

"The pie."

"Um, peach." Her answer sounded more like a question than a statement.

Maguire sucked her teeth. "I love peach pie."

Twyla cringed under the weight of her boss's disapproval as Frank ushered her away from Maguire's Ire (as it was known among the Tanrian Marshals of the West Station).

They dutifully signed their names under Wisdom's Acres before making their way toward the weapons lockers. As they walked down the long hallway, Twyla had Rosie Fox on the brain. Fox was legendary among the marshals, the literal first person to sign up for the force, more than a quarter of a century ago, but Twyla had never met her personally. A lot of demigods, like Fox, joined the Tanrian Marshals—maybe as a way to feel closer to their divine ancestry. But Fox was the only one Twyla knew of who was actually immortal. She was more than a little curious about the woman.

"Do you know Rosie Fox?" Twyla asked Frank.

"Yeah. I used to run into her more often in the early days. She's… got a big personality."

"But you like her?"

One corner of Frank's mouth twitched upward. "I do. She's impulsive, which gets her into trouble sometimes. A lot of times. But that also makes her a great marshal. Your decision-making processes must work a little differently when you don't have to consider whether or not something is going to kill you."

By now, they had reached their destination, and it seemed rude to talk about another marshal where Fern, the registrar on duty, could drink in every word. They checked out their government-issued pistol crossbows and ammunition in short order. Twyla also requested a rapier, and Frank got his usual machete. While Tanria was much safer these days, old habits died hard, and after years of taking out drudges on Tanrian soil, neither Twyla nor Frank was ready to part ways with the weapons that had once separated corpses from the souls that had reanimated them.

After hitting the commissary to stock up on provisions, they headed to the stable to select their mounts. Twyla viewed equimares as merely practical, a means of getting around, so she didn't fuss about which one she chose. Frank, on the other hand, was far more particular. In his teens and twenties, he had worked on an equimaris ranch on the southern coast of Bushong, and he had the slightly bowed legs to show for it. He was one of the few marshals who was glad to find Saltlicker in one of the troughs. The Bride of Fortune was with him today, because there was Saltlicker in all his vivid violet glory, blowing churlish bubbles in the water.

"Hello, gorgeous," Frank greeted him.

Saltlicker lifted his huge head out of the water long enough to heave a disgruntled gargle in reply.

Twyla shook her head as she led her docile mare out of the trough. "Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder on this one, Frankie."

They toweled off the equimares' scales, saddled up, and ambled to the West Station's portal into Tanria. Millennia ago, the New Gods had defeated the Old Gods and imprisoned them here on the island of Bushong, inside a churning, impenetrable fog—the Mist. The Old Gods had long ago surrendered to become stars on the altar of the sky, but human beings had first entered Tanria only twenty-seven years ago, with the invention of the portals.

The metal archway, constructed directly into the Mist, emitted a gust of steam as the partners approached.

"Louis, you're back! How's the new baby?" Twyla asked the engineer on duty as he adjusted a couple of dials on the portal's frame.

"Real good! But no one's sleeping much at my house. You know how it is."

"That I do, three times over."

The engineer pulled on the crank, and a mystifying series of cogs and pistons whirred into action. The Mist within the portal's arch thinned to an opaque curtain, with the silhouette of Tanria's strange landscape barely visible on the other side. Twyla and Frank urged their mounts through, and in the few seconds it took to cross, the usual oppressive sense of wrongness squeezed Twyla's head, making her ears ring. She had grown used to the feeling, but it remained a loathsome aspect of an otherwise rewarding career.

Tanria came into focus, the bizarre otherworld of mismatched colors and landscapes and plants and animals, created by bored gods with nothing better to do. The Old Gods were not the gods of creation—the world and all that inhabited it were created by the New Gods—so Tanria looked more like a child's drawing of mountains and trees and flowers than actual mountains and trees and flowers. She used to marvel at the sight, but after eight years in the marshals, it had lost some of its wonder. Now this was simply the place where she worked.

They rode north-northeast to Sector W-14, where they were assigned for the duration of the ten-day tour. The landscape here was rugged and mountainous, a series of unnervingly triangular peaks known as the Dragon's Teeth, even though everyone knew the tales about Tanrian dragons were false.

According to legend, the Old Gods had ridden dragons into battle against the New Gods. When Tanria first opened to humanity, many hoped there might be a few left, hanging on to existence inside the Mist, but none had ever been found. That didn't stop big-game hunters and quack scientists from entering Tanria on a special license from time to time, hoping to be the first to find a Tanrian dragon. It never ceased to baffle Twyla that people would be willing to pay a ludicrous amount of money to go looking for something that clearly didn't exist and would in all likelihood kill them if it did.

They found Herd and Duckers saddling up for the night shift when they arrived at Sector W-14. Even in the dimness of the stable, the lurid violet of Herd's ostentatious equimaris-hide boots offended Twyla's eyes.

"Saltlicker!" cried Duckers when he spotted Twyla and Frank, or, more specifically, when he spotted Frank's mount. He patted the stallion's neck and got his hand out of the way as it tried to bite him. "I love this guy."

Saltlicker gurgled malevolently, and Frank's face split into an appreciative grin. "I knew I liked you, Duckers."

Herd's greeting was less charming. "If it isn't Mr. and Mrs. Banneker," he said as he led his mount out of the shadows of the stable, cackling at the same tired joke he'd trotted out countless times before.

"Men and women can be friends, and a man can take a woman's family name, but good to know you're still paying tribute to the misogyny of the Old Gods, thousands of years after their demise," Frank replied, his tone affable when Twyla was boiling on the inside. Her partner's magnificent unflappability was a reminder that Herd wasn't worth her time or temper, and she clamped her lips shut against an unhelpful retort.

That didn't stop Herd from winking at her and saying "If looks could kill, Mrs. Ellis" before he led his mount out of the stable and into the Tanrian gloaming.

"So wait, are you two married, or is Herd being a dick? Or both?" Duckers asked them.

"We're just friends," Twyla told him.

"And Herd's a dick," Frank added.

"Frank!"

"Well now, he is a dick, and that's a fact."

"We shouldn't say mean things behind a person's back, though."

"You were shooting figurative fireballs out your eye sockets at him seconds ago."

"You'd think the guy would retire," Duckers chimed in. "Not married. No kids. A good twenty years in the marshals. He must be rolling in it."

"Nah, he's broke," said Frank.

"I'm putting a kid through med school on this salary, and I'm not even fully vested yet," said Twyla, shocked. "How is he broke?"

"Gambling debts."

Twyla thought of the years she had worked and scrimped and saved to keep her family afloat, while this man had squandered what the Bride of Fortune had so generously bestowed upon him. Then again, a person who spent his time in gambling dens probably didn't have a lot to lose in terms of the important things in life: friends, family, a sense of belonging. So it was Twyla's charitable side that commented, "That's sad."

Duckers was less charitable. "What a dumbass."

"How did you wind up with Herd?" Twyla asked him. "I thought Reese was your partner."

"Reese quit a few weeks ago. Saltlicker kicked him in the nuts, and he wound up having to get a nut-ectomy. Vowed he'd never come back."

"Sounds like the work of a gorgeous equimaris," Twyla commented to Frank as he winced in sympathy.

Duckers laughed and reached around his equimaris's girth to tighten the saddle strap, revealing the green-blue lines of a stoppered bottle etched into his brown skin. A temple votary must have preserved his soul in the tattoo after his appendix burst. When drudges were still a problem, marshals like Duckers had been handy to have around, since the appendix, as the seat of the human soul, was where the lost spirits of Tanria would take up residence in order to reanimate a dead body.

Of course, now that the drudges were gone, it didn't matter where Duckers kept his soul.

"Not gonna lie: Herd isn't my favorite," Duckers said. "I mean, the guy wears purple equimaris-hide boots. Why would you want to wear something you ride? It's tacky."

Frank huffed in agreement as he coaxed a recalcitrant Saltlicker into one of the water troughs.

"But Maguire said she didn't want me working solo yet," Duckers continued, "so I got stuck with Herd."

"How many partners have you had?"

"Since Hart left? Only three."

Twyla sometimes forgot that Duckers had apprenticed under Hart Ralston, the savior of Tanria, a man so austere that it was jarring to hear anyone use his first name freely. "Who were you working with before Reese?" she asked.

"Paulson, but we only did two tours together before he left to follow after some lady on the Parcheesi tournament circuit."

"So you've had three different partners in one year?"

Frank slung his arm over Twyla's shoulders, the warm heft of it a comforting blanket around her. "Don't ever leave me, darlin'. They might stick me with this guy."

Duckers gestured toward Twyla's pack.

"Hey, Banneker, I didn't know you were a Gracie Goodfist fan."

"I've never read the comics, actually."

"But you have a Gracie Goodfist backpack."

"It belonged to one of my sons." She knew the bag was ridiculous, but she could never justify buying herself a new one when she had a perfectly serviceable (if slightly childish) option at hand.

"How old are your kids?"

She counted them off on her fingers. "DJ is thirty-three, Wade is thirty-two, and Hope is twenty-three."

"So they're old."

She leveled him with a stare.

Duckers put a hand over his heart, as if he'd been shot. "Dang. Fireballs."

Herd oozed into the wide doorframe of the stable and sucked all the fun out of the air. "You coming or not, kid?"

"I'm coming, I'm coming."

"That's what she said."

Twyla raised her eyes to the Unknown God in the Void Beyond the Sky. "Gods save us."

Ignoring her comment, Herd spat over his shoulder. Twyla could never understand a man's urge to spit. Doug used to do the same thing, and it drove her batty.

"I don't know why we bother riding out anymore," griped Herd. "We don't have shit to do, thanks to that sanctimonious twat Ralston."

Frank didn't rise to the bait, but Duckers clenched his fists, while Twyla snapped, "Yes, where does he get off, saving our lives?"

"Word is he gets off on Mercy Birdsall these days. Let's go, Duckers." With that, Herd walked away, leaving his partner to follow in his oily wake.

"If I murder him tonight, will you be my alibi?" Duckers asked them.

"Sure thing," said Frank.

Twyla was fairly sure that Duckers was joking, but on the off chance he wasn't, she said, "Maybe don't kill him tonight. Or ever. Please?"

"Fun-ruiner," Duckers told her amicably before he left the stable.

On Sorrowsday evening, Twyla and Frank returned to the barracks from their day shift to find Duckers leading his equimaris out of the stable, alone.

"Where's Herd?" asked Twyla.

"No idea. I thought he was taking a piss, but he stepped out an hour ago, and I haven't seen him since. If he doesn't get his ass back here in the next couple of minutes, I'm going to be working solo tonight. Again. He pulled this shit with me last week, too. Didn't catch up with me until two hours past sunset."

"Want me to ride out with you?" offered Frank.

"Don't worry about it. I'm sure he'll catch up. Eventually."

"Make sure you have your flare handy. We'll keep an eye out," Twyla called as he urged his mount out of the stables, and Duckers waved in thanks as he rode off.

An ominous roll of thunder echoed in the distance. There was only one storm inside Tanria, a giant angry cloud created by the imprisoned God of Wrath centuries ago, and it was never pleasant to be caught out in it. Twyla directed an uneasy glance at the sky before following Frank into the barracks. They left the door and windows open. If Duckers ran into trouble and sent up his flare, they'd be sure to see it.

They were sitting down to dinner when they heard a hesitant "Hello-o-o? Mail delivery?" from outside.

"Come on in," Twyla called, and a moment later, Hermia, the new nimkilim who delivered mail throughout Tanria, poked her upturned hedgehog nose into the barracks. Her predecessor had been a whiskey-swilling, foulmouthed, hard-bitten rabbit, so as far as Twyla was concerned, Hermia was a serious improvement, at least in terms of demeanor. While most nimkilim were shorter than humans, the top of Hermia's prickly head didn't even reach Twyla's hip, a diminutiveness that added to her bipedal charm. She wore an oversized Fair Isle cardigan, a red woolen scarf, and blue rubber boots with clouds printed all over them. Her spines jutted out of her sweater in odd patches, giving her a cozily rumpled air, and her beady black eyes looked enormous behind the perfect circles of her glasses. She was so ludicrously cute that Twyla had to resist the urge to say "Aw!" every time she saw her.

Hermia was digging around in her worn leather satchel when the barking of a stray dog in the distance made her startle. "Oh my goodness gracious!" she squeaked, sending a mini storm of undelivered letters fluttering out of her mailbag and onto the floor.

Frank gave a huff that was either laughter or exasperation—possibly both. Twyla got up from the table to help the hedgehog pick up the scattered mail, gathering as many letters as she could at one go, while Hermia picked up one missive at a time and blinked at each address before sliding the envelope carefully into her bag.

"This one's for you," she told Twyla as if she were surprised by the letter's existence.

"Thank you." Twyla dimpled when she saw that the letter was from her daughter, Hope.

"And this one. My goodness, two whole letters!"

Twyla took the second missive and went about digging around in her Gracie Goodfist backpack for a tip.

"I know there's one for you, too, Marshal Ellis." The nimkilim's little pink hedgehog tongue poked out the side of her cute little hedgehog mouth as she fished around inside her satchel.

And fished.

And fished.

She pulled out a letter, studied it, and said, "No." She pulled out another letter, studied it, and said, "No." She pulled out an enormous crate that was four times the size of the satchel, grunted under its weight, and said, "No." Visibly deflating, she dropped the crate into the satchel, retrieved what appeared to be a bottle of grape soda, and took a fortifying sip.

"Do you think it might be… there?" Frank pointed to Hermia's right shoulder, where a couple of letters had gotten stuck in the spines sticking out of her cardigan.

She set the soda bottle on the table and plucked one of the envelopes from her prickles with her tiny pink hand. "No, that isn't it." She stuck it to a separate set of spines poking out of the left side of her sweater.

Frank gave Twyla a long-suffering moue as another round of thunder rumbled through the Dragon's Teeth range.

"Be nice," she scolded him.

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to."

Oblivious to this exchange, Hermia lifted a second letter off her spines, accompanied by a delicate rip. "Oh dear," she said with a tut before she straightened her glasses and studied the direction. "Oh! I found it."

Frank accepted his letter in its torn envelope as Twyla slipped the nimkilim a tip.

Hermia clutched the copper to her heart, her eyes growing misty behind her lenses. "Thank you ever so much. I'll be off, then."

She stuffed the coin into the cardigan's drooping pocket, adjusted her satchel, and nabbed her bottle of soda, an action that required both hands since her fingers were so tiny. "Have a good night."

"You, too. Thanks, Hermia," answered Twyla.

"Bye."

"Bye," said Twyla.

Frank gave a half-hearted wave from the table.

"Bye," Hermia repeated before she turned and walked out into the night.

Twyla hovered at the door as another clap of thunder shook the earth. "I hope she's safe out there."

Frank shrugged and took a bite of his burrito.

"You aren't worried about her?"

"She's immortal. What's there to worry about?" He stared into the distance before he spoke again. "You know, my mom used to collect hedgehogs—not real ones, but little statues and saltshakers and stuff. She loved them." One corner of Frank's lips turned up. He always spoke fondly of his mother, who had passed away fifteen years ago. He did not recall his father or older brother with anything resembling affection. Twyla had long since learned not to press him on it, but she knew that, his mother aside, his childhood had not been a happy one.

Frank returned his attention to the present and to his letter, and Twyla followed suit, her heart blooming at the sight of her daughter's handwriting on the envelope. She opened the letter and read:

Dear Mom,

Frantically cramming, so this is just a quick note. I wanted to let you know that I'll be home by next Wisdomsday afternoon, if not sooner. Can't wait to see you!

Love,

Hope

P.S.—I hope it's okay that I'm bringing Everett!

Frank watched Twyla grin at her mail and guessed, "Hope?"

"She's coming home for the semester break. And she's bringing Everett with her."

"Who's Everett again?"

"You remember, Hope's friend. They've known each other since undergrad. He came for a visit last summer."

"Oh yeah. He's a good egg."

"He really is." Twyla was fond of funny, sweet-tempered Everett Simms. If her daughter had to go far from home to attend med school, Twyla took comfort in knowing that Hope had a good friend looking out for her.

"When are they getting in?" asked Frank.

"Next Wisdomsday."

"Then they'll be here in time for the wedding." He held up his own mail, and Twyla realized that she was holding a matching copy, an invitation in lovingly handwritten calligraphy on thick creamy paper.

With hearts full of joy we invite you to

the wedding of

Mercy Elizabeth Birdsall & Hartley James Ralston

On Wardensday, the 3rd of the Month of Painter

At five in the evening

All Gods Temple of Eternity, Bushong

Reception to follow

Twyla couldn't believe her eyes. "Hart Ralston, getting married. Who knew he had it in him?"

"Good for him," said Frank, and she could see that he was trying hard to mean it. Weddings were always an uncomfortable affair for Frank, a reminder of what he considered his greatest failure. But since that so-called failure had led, in a roundabout way, to the best friendship of Twyla's life, she couldn't bring herself to resent Cora for walking out on him twelve years ago.

The first time she met Frank was the day that he and Cora and Lu and Annie had moved in next door to her and Doug and DJ and Wade and Hope, twenty-two years ago. Their houses were mirror images of each other, a pair of three-bedroom ranches on small squares of lawn, facing west on Cottonwood Street in Eternity. But Twyla could barely remember shaking Frank's hand. It was Cora who became her friend first, that neighborly kinship born out of having children the same age. They would help each other in a pinch, watching the kids when one of them needed to run a quick errand, loaning an egg or a cup of sugar in a time of need—that sort of thing. Cora had been a lifesaver in those days, and Twyla liked to think she had been there for Cora, too. For a decade, the Ellis and Banneker children moved between both houses and accompanying yards as if there were no fences between them, while Twyla and Cora sipped their coffee in the morning and the occasional glass of wine after dinner and talked about how exhausted they were all the time.

They also bitched about their husbands. Quite a lot.

Privately, Twyla didn't think Frank Ellis was that bad. True, he was gone much of the time on his tours of duty inside the Mist. But when he was home, he always seemed to be doing yard work or taking out the garbage or playing catch with Lu in the backyard or helping out with his kids' sea polo team. From what Twyla could tell, the real issue between Cora and Frank was the fact that Frank simply wasn't there. Yet sometimes, for that very reason, Twyla envied her neighbor.

The day Cora left, Twyla heard about it from Eugene Channing while she was ringing up his cabbage and bananas and digestive crackers during her shift at Wilner's Green Grocer. Eugene was a shameless gossip, but gods, if he wasn't accurate 99 percent of the time. In this case, he got wind of it from his buddy Bob Lowenstein, who had filled up Cora's tank for her at the Gas 'n' Save on her way out of town.

"Had the hold of the autoduck so full she had to tie it down. Trunks on the rack and everything. It weren't no vacation packing—that's what Bob said. You take my word for it: she's halfway to the southern coast by now. That's where she and Ellis come from, right?"

"I'm sure I don't know anything about it," Twyla told him, but guilt formed a hard, heavy lump in her gut as she thought of all the times she and Cora had complained about Doug and Frank, respectively. And now Doug was dead and the Ellises were splitsville.

When she got home that evening, she did what any self-respecting woman would do: she set about assembling a tuna casserole. A half hour later, with the glass dish in hand, she marched across the front yard and knocked on Frank Ellis's door. A long silence followed, but then she heard the shuffling of feet from within, and a moment later, Frank stood in the doorway.

It was as if Twyla were seeing him for the first time, not as Cora's husband or as Lu and Annie's father, but as a living, breathing person in need of a shower and some comfort food and a good hug.

His hair at the time was cropped short and stood up in irregular spikes around his head, more black than gray. His big brown eyes were bloodshot, his clothes wrinkled. He didn't look like he was wallowing in the depths of despair, per se. He simply looked lost. Twyla knew the feeling intimately, having experienced something similar the day the sheriff stopped by Wilner's a year earlier to let her know that Doug had wrecked their autoduck on Highway 4 and himself along with it.

She held up the casserole. "Have you eaten? I brought you dinner if you're hungry."

Frank gazed at her in confusion before nodding, as if to say So I guess you know my life is in shambles but also That casserole sounds pretty good right about now.

"Come on in," he said as he stepped aside. Twyla had never realized how deep his voice was until he uttered those three words. Had they ever spoken more than three words to each other in the ten years they'd shared a property line, she wondered? It was a lowering thought.

She went to the kitchen, turned on the gas sconce, and set the oven to preheat.

"It should take about fifteen minutes to get up to three hundred and seventy-five degrees. Put this in for forty minutes. When it's good and bubbly, take it out and give it five minutes to cool and firm up before you dig in. You should have plenty of leftovers to get you through the next couple of days. Do you want me to pick anything up for you? I've got a shift tomorrow at Wilner's, so it wouldn't be a problem."

"Aren't you having any dinner?"

"It's for you. I can rustle up something for myself."

"You made a whole casserole for me?"

"It's no trouble."

Frank started to blink furiously, and for one panicked moment, Twyla thought the poor man might crack like an egg. But then he gave a watery laugh and said, "I think there are a few bottles of beer in the fridge. Want one?"

She almost said no, but then it occurred to her that she hadn't had a beer in a long while. So she stayed for a bottle, followed by another, followed by a serving of tuna casserole and a side of carrots she had scrounged up from the back of the refrigerator.

From then on, they ate dinner together every now and again, whenever Frank was off duty and Twyla had an evening free from work or scouts or PTA meetings. Hope was in junior high at the time, and occasionally Wade and Anita would join them, too. Much to Twyla's surprise, Frank insisted on taking turns cooking and cleaning up the kitchen, which led to him fixing the pernicious leak under the sink that had plagued Twyla for ages. A few weeks later, while walking up the brick path to Frank's house, Twyla noticed his iris bed was overgrown, and she set about dividing the rhizomes for him when the weather cooled. The meals and the small neighborly acts snowballed into an unexpected friendship, leading inexorably to the day eight years ago when Frank, listening to Twyla agonize over the financial impossibility of sending Hope to college, suggested that she apply to work with him in the Tanrian Marshals when his partner retired.

"I'm not going to lie. It's dangerous work. But the money is good, and you know I'll watch your back every step of the way."

He wrote a letter of recommendation for her. She got the job. She put Hope through college and was now putting her through medical school, and she had enough left over each month to squirrel away a small college fund for each of her grandkids. Now here she was all these years later, eating dinner with Frank in Tanria.

Twyla lovingly tucked Hope's letter into its envelope and stacked it neatly with the wedding invitation. She wished that her eldest, DJ, wrote to her the way Hope did. Twyla's daughter-in-law sometimes sent her letters and photos of their kids, but Twyla knew that DJ's boys were much closer to their maternal grandparents than to her. It was only natural that they would visit their mother's parents more often, but it broke Twyla's heart all the same.

Frank was in a similar boat. Lu had been eleven and Annie had been only nine when Cora left him. Once a year, he took a long vacation to spend time with them at their ranch, and every summer Lu and Annie came to visit him for a couple of weeks in Eternity. He never said as much, but Twyla knew that the older they got, the more he feared they'd stop coming to see him.

A loud popping sound jolted Twyla out of her thoughts. She and Frank rushed outside to see a bright pink flare shooting into the sky, sizzling with alarm.

"Aw, shit," Frank said at the same moment Twyla said, "Duckers."

They abandoned their dinner plates, mounted up without bothering to dry off the equimares, and galloped off in the direction of the flare.