The Ruby Brooch (The Celtic Brooch Trilogy) by Katherine Logan Page A

of the bridge bore frayed ropes and rotten planks. The other half had a solid wood floor and triple-knotted ropes.
    In the top corner, she had reworked the non-descript bird she had originally drawn into a house wren perching on the side of a nest built into a broken limb’s crotch suspended precariously above the river.
    Dying verbena covered the ground and merged into river waves. On the far bank, the verbena rose from a calm body of water and crept in full bloom up the slope.
    At the bottom of the page, she’d drawn a man with a two-sided face. Horror blazed in the shadowed eye on one side, and warmth in the other. Captured in the center of both eyes were reflections of herself that she hadn’t consciously drawn. Blood drained from her face, stealing the energy that had fueled her imagination.
    “Mrs. MacKlenna, are you ill?”
    The sound of Cullen’s voice yanked her with the force of bungee cord recoil. She closed her journal and after a moment’s pause to gain composure, she said, “I’ve heard that the pain of losing loved ones lessens with time. But I don’t believe that, do you?” She squeezed her hands into tight fists. Her nails left half-moon prints in her palms.
    He sat beside her and folded his legs Indian-style. Her pencils lay on the ground between them. He scooped them up and rolled them across his palm. As he studied the Prismacolor Turquoise Drawing Pencil imprints, a chill settled uncomfortably along her spine.
    “Never seen pencils like these. Especially the one that looks like a beaver attacked it.”
    She raked the pencils together like pickup sticks. No point in lying, so she didn’t say anything.
    “I’d like to see your drawing, if you’ve a mind to share it.”
    She rolled in the corner of her lip and held it between her teeth while she tapped her fingernails on the journal. “Maybe someday.”
    “Then someday, I’ll ask again.”
    They sat quietly watching people, but after a couple of minutes the silence made her fidget. She pointed toward the ferry. “Do you think it’s safe?”
    “The ferry?”
    Even though she wasn’t looking directly at him, she was sure his gaze never left her face.
    “Best option we’ve got. If the wagon wheels are well seated in the center there shouldn’t be a problem.”
    He picked up a pebble, held the stone in the crook of his finger, and tossed it side arm, low, and parallel to the water. It sank.
    A soft laugh relaxed her shoulders. “Don’t you need a calm body of water to skip rocks?”
    “I’ll have you know,” he said, lips twitching, “I was a rock-skipping champion when I was a lad.”
    “I don’t doubt that.” A peal of laughter rolled out. When it subsided she said, “I needed that. You knew it though, didn’t’ you?”
    “No ma’am, I was only skipping rocks.”
    “In a turbulent body of water?”
    He raised his shoulders in a what-can-I-say shrug. “Occasionally, you do things knowing your efforts might not get you what you want.”
    “Why would you do that?”
    He threw another stone, and it too sank. “I represented a man I knew was guilty of murder. As a lawyer, I wanted to win the case. As a law-abiding citizen, I wanted him to spend the rest of his life in jail or hang. But I did my job, and he walked away with a not-guilty verdict. Next day the victim’s family shot him dead.”
    “What happened to them?”
    “Law looked the other way.” He made the statement matter-of-factly, but the regret was evident in his visibly tightened lips.
    “Vigilante justice.”
    “Not sure the killing made the hurting ones feel better.” He turned and captured her face again with his gaze. “Which brings us back to your original question: Does a person ever recover from grief? I’ll start out by saying no and finish with what I hope you’ll remember.”
    His stoic expression gave no hint of his thoughts. He seemed to be going through a mental exercise preparing for what he was about to say. She imagined he did the same