Wind River Ranch. Jackie Merritt

      Two

      At 8:00 a.m. Dena was on her way back to Winston. Using one of the ranch cars, she drove the familiar road, thankful that it was sparsely traveled, as her mind was too overloaded to concentrate on anything but the sudden tragic turn of her life.

      She felt rocky from lack of sleep and because she hadn’t been able to eat more than a few bites of toast this morning. She knew what she was doing to herself. Even people without medical training knew that one shouldn’t stop sleeping and eating because of a shock. But that’s what people with a heart did, wasn’t it? The kind of shock she had received, the nightmare she was living through, all but disabled a person. Certainly it destroyed normal routines and habits, and only God knew how and when she was going to regain her usual sensibilities.

      Dena harbored an impossible wish: that she could avoid Wmston altogether. But it was where Dr. Worth’s office was located, and Nettie had told Dena that the doctor had to see her posthaste. Dena was certain she knew why—that question of an autopsy.

      The funeral home was also in Winston. If Dena had the power to eliminate one day from her life, this would be it. There were others that had caused an enormous amount of trouble and grief, but none to compare with what today demanded of her.

      Dr. Worth had been the Colby family physician for as long as Dena could remember, and Nettie had said that his office was still in the same place it had always been. Once Dena reached the town limits, it took only a few minutes to get there. There was a small parking strip next to the building, and she pulled into a space and turned off the ignition. Panic rose in her throat. She didn’t want to do this. Neither did she want to visit the funeral home after talking to Dr. Worth and plan her father’s burial. How did one converse coherently and with a reasonable amount of intelligence about such things?

      Tears welled and she wiped them away with a tissue. Then, drawing a deep breath, she took her purse and got out of the car. She had phoned Dr. Worth at his home this morning and he had told her to meet him at his office at eight-thirty. She was right on time.

      With every cell in her body throbbing like a toothache, she walked to the side door of the building—another of Dr. Worth’s instructions—and rang the bell. The door opened almost at once. Dr. Worth gave her a quiet smile. “Hello, Dena. Come in.”

      “Hello, Doctor,” she whispered hoarsely.

      He led her to his personal office and sat her in a chair near his desk. Even through the haze of pain clouding her mind, Dena realized that Dr. Worth had aged since she’d last seen him. She was thinking about the changes time wrought on everyone and everything when Dr. Worth spoke.

      “I understand you’re a nurse now,” he said, seating himself at his desk.

      “Yes.”

      “Then you’ll have a better understanding of what we must discuss.”

      “You want to do an autopsy.”

      “No, I have to know if you want an autopsy.”

      Dena swallowed the lump in her throat. “The ranch foreman said you diagnosed the cause of Dad’s death as a cerebral hemorrhage.”

      “I did, and I still believe my initial diagnosis. But if you have any doubts...”

      “Was there any chance of foul play?”

      “Oh, no, nothing like that. Simon died quite naturally. It’s just that sometimes family members are driven to know the exact and precise cause of death.”

      “I don’t feel that way, Doctor. Unless there is good reason for an autopsy, I don’t want it.”

      Dr. Worth nodded approvingly. “I’m glad to hear that. Dena, you have to know how sorry I am about Simon’s death. How are you holding up?”

      Dena turned her face away. “Not...well,” she said in an unsteady voice.

      “You look drawn and exhausted, but that’s to be expected, I suppose, when you flew all night to get here. Are you eating?”

      “Not...much,” she whispered.

      Dr. Worth eyed her thoughtfully. “One of life’s most traumatic experiences is the death of a loved one. There’s a hole in the world that wasn’t there before, an emptiness within oneself, and the memories we carry of that person seem to bombard us with cruel clarity. We tend to feel guilty over every disagreement with that person and any event where we think we might have done things differently.”

      “I could have done things differently, Doctor.”

      “But the problems you and Simon had are long in the past, Dena,” Dr. Worth said gently. “You must try not to dwell on what happened so many years ago.”

      Dena’s eyes dropped to her hands on her lap. She could tell the good doctor that nothing had changed during those years, that she had tried and tried to reconcile with her father and he had died without forgiving her. She could talk for an hour about the letters she’d written and the phone calls she’d made, but what good would it do?

      All she said was, “I’ll try, Doctor.”

      “Good,” he replied, appearing satisfied that his little pep talk had worked.

      Dena rose from her chair. “I won’t take up any more of your time, Dr. Worth. Thank you for seeing me.” She started for the door, then something occurred to her and she stopped and turned. “Was Dad getting regular checkups, Doctor?” “Simon rarely showed his face in this office, Dena. Essentially he was a very healthy man.”

      “Then he wasn’t on any medication that you know of?” There were some drugs that could wreak havoc with the circulatory system, and if Simon was taking any kind of medication, she wanted to know what it was.

      “If he was, he didn’t get it from me. Dena, try to take comfort from the swiftness of Simon’s death. He died too young, but the way he went was much better than a long, lingering illness.”

      Dena hated remarks like that, even though she knew Dr. Worth was still attempting to ease her pain and there was even some truth in what he’d said.

      But suddenly she couldn’t talk about her father’s death a second longer. “Thank you for your time, Doctor,” she repeated and hurried out.

      In her car it occurred to her then that she might run into someone she knew while in Winston, a thought that nearly brought on a fit of hysteria. Holding her hand to her throat, she took several deep breaths and told herself to calm down. She might as well face the fact that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of avoiding people’s sympathy during her week in the area.

      Or could she? Where was it written that she had to have a public service for her father? She could confine the sad event to—Groaning, she put her head in her hands. Nettie would be appalled. Dena could see herself and Nettie standing alone in the cemetery, listening to a prayer administered by...who? A minister? Someone from the funeral home? Oh, what a pitiful picture, she thought with a fresh gush of tears. And it would be an improper, insulting rite for a man of Simon Colby’s stature. She was being selfish again, thinking of herself and the discomfort of a public display of grief.

      Wiping her eyes, she put on dark glasses and forced herself to start the car. She would go to the funeral home and then get out of Winston. And if she ran into a dozen acquaintances—unlikely but possible—with vulturelike words of sympathy and only partially concealed expressions of morbid curiosity, she would handle it.

      She had no choice.

      

      That night Dena was able to eat dinner and to talk to Nettie without choking on her own words, probably because she felt so head-to-foot numb. It was even possible to walk through the house, remember her father and not fall apart. When she went to bed she was able to sleep, and any troubling dreams she had during those hours vanished when she awoke.

      Ry thought she seemed unnaturally calm, not at all like the