The workings of the supernatural realm still surprised me. How could a departed be trapped? How could the touch of a human set them free? I would never fully understand. “How did you get Kenny out here?”

“I haunted him,” she said, a mischievous smile emerging from behind the sadness. “I moved books and shook glasses until he paid attention. I couldn’t do much, but when I finally got his attention, I tried to get him to come out here. I left clues for him to come out to the land. A saltshaker on a map. A pencil on a sketching I’d done of our house. He knew I was haunting him, for lack of a better phrase, but he thought I wanted him to build our dream house.” She shrugged. “Whatever works. It got him out here. But it took longer than I thought. He had to ‘make plans.’ ” She used air quotes to emphasize the last bit. “You know, for a champion bull rider, that man can move slower than molasses in January.”

I laughed. “I think that’s an impediment for most men.”

“What?” Uncle Bob whispered. “What’s she saying?”

I patted his cheek, then asked, “Do you know who did this? There have to be at least twenty women buried here.”

“Twenty-seven,” she said, bowing her head. “There are twenty-seven.”

After allowing myself to absorb that bit of knowledge, I asked, “Do you know their names? Where they’re from? Who did this?”

She looked down in regret. “Nothing. I know exactly how many there are, what they look like, but none of them talk.”

Disappointment gripped me. “I’m having that same problem.”

She glanced at me in surprise. “What are you anyway?”

I lifted one corner of my mouth. “I’m the portal, whenever you’re ready.”

She took in another superfluous breath and surprised me again by saying, “Somehow I knew that. I’m ready, I suppose. I’ve done what I needed to do. And the longer I stay, the longer Kenny will put off the rest of his life. I’m afraid in my haste to get him to come out here, he promised to wait for me, to never marry again.”

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“Can you give him a message for me?”

“Absolutely.”

“Can you tell him to build our house over there instead?” She pointed to a spot about fifty yards back. “And to put a garden here? In honor of these women? When he can, anyway. I’m not sure how long the state will keep the land tied up.”

“I’ll tell him.”

She looked back at her husband. His eyes were red-rimmed, his shoulders drawn as he regarded a wildflower he twirled in his hand.

“He is such a rascal,” she said. Then she stepped through.

Salient images of her life flashed before me as her essence soaked into my body, rushed through my veins. She’d taken ballet as a child but preferred saddles and cowboy boots to tutus and slippers. She had a horse named Cinnamon and a dog named Toast. They were buried on her parents’ farm outside of El Paso.

The first time she saw Kenny, he was getting ready to ride at the state fair. She was nineteen and enthralled with the way his leather chaps left one of his best features exposed. She told him so. They’d been together ever since except for a few weeks he’d gone on a drunken binge in Mexico after white bull named Hurricane crushed two vertebrae in his back. She hunted him down and found him passed out in a hotel room with another woman asleep beside him. With heart almost shattered, she sent the woman away, packed up his clothes, and brought him home to the ranch. She never told him she knew about the other woman, and he never mentioned it. It was likely he didn’t even remember her. That’s what she told herself.

But she loved him as fiercely as he rode bulls. His face was the last thing she saw before she passed, and it was her most prized memory.

I breathed deep as she crossed, and clasped Uncle Bob’s arm to steady myself.

He took hold of my elbows. “What just happened?” he asked as I caught my breath.

I wiped at the wetness under my eyes. “She crossed.”

“What? What does that mean?”

Uncle Bob didn’t know about that part. He knew I could communicate with the departed, but that was about it.

“She crossed to the other side,” I explained.

“You mean, you can’t talk to her anymore?”

“No. But she had no idea who did this.”

Noticing my distress, Agent Carson walked over to us. “Everything okay here?”

I straightened and let go of Uncle Bob. “There are twenty-seven.” Having seen enough, I started for Ubie’s SUV. “Don’t let them stop until they find all twenty-seven.”

After a rather quiet ride back, Uncle Bob dropped me off at Misery. He had questions. He wanted to know more about me. About what I did. But I set my mood to somber and didn’t give him a chance for idle chat.

I wondered if Reyes was still at work, then decided to check on Cookie instead. The class would almost be over and I wanted to make sure she’d passed it before heading over to Kim Millar’s apartment. If my plan was going to work, I would need Kim’s full cooperation. I hoped to get it, because I didn’t have a backup plan of any kind. Besides prayer.

Would Reyes talk to me afterwards? The late Mrs. Knight’s love for Kenny echoed my own for Reyes. I understood the fierceness of it. The absolute need. His pull was like a gravitational force on my heart.

“Are you okay, pumpkin?” Ubie asked me before I got out.