"How did you take the news?"

"I thought it was funny! One of those isn't-it-a-small-world things. Besides, I'd heard the story in general from my mother all my life-not about Paul's involvement, but Josh the randy miner and teenage Edith. And shamed papa who wanted to shotgun the bastard if he could catch him! She and my father-my Radisson father-used to joke about it."

"Your grandfather never said he found him." Dean made a statement, not a question.

"No. He stopped looking when my mother insisted she didn't want Josh Mulligan found! He took advantage of her, but she wasn't stupid. She was quick to see her mistake and had no intention of compounding it at the end of a shotgun."

"Did she ever talk about him?"

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"Sure. He was like those guys in the musicals-loveable rogues who roll into town and catch the eye of the local star-struck gal and sweep them off their feet. In the musicals, the guy is bewitched and they live happily ever after, but mom knew a fable when she met one." Jennifer laughed. "Knowing my mom, I'm not sure who did the seducing!"

"Didn't you ever wonder about him?" Cynthia asked. "I thought all adopted children yearn to meet the white knight father of their imagination."

"I have letters from Josh Mulligan-letters he wrote my mom. They were more than enough. Frankly, when you cut through all the flowery words, he was a first-class con man-a rascal. He couldn't hold a candle to my real father-the one who was there for me all those years. I had no need for anyone else."

"Maybe he mellowed in later life," Dean said. "It's hard to judge a guy by teenage love letters."

She looked at him. "No, you don't understand. He wrote letters to me and my mother all his life. I don't know whose bones were in the Lucky Pup Mine, but Josh Mulligan died in 1987 of cirrhosis of the liver from drinking too much."




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