By the light of the moon

was to turn you into a warty toad
and make you hop away forever. And here you are instead. That'll
teach me not to slack off on my spellcastin' practice.'
    On the table, two small gifts, as yet unwrapped, and a bottle of
wine indicated a special evening. Although Lynette's simple dress
appeared inexpensive, the care with which she had done her makeup
and brushed her hair suggested she'd worn her best. The aging
Pontiac in the parking lot further supported the conclusion that an
evening as fancy as this must be a rare treat for them.
    'Anniversary?' Dylan asked, relying on deduction rather than on
clairvoyance.
    'As if you didn't already know,' said Lynette. 'Our third. Now
who put you up to this, and what's next?'
    Surprise froze her smile when Dylan briefly touched the stem of
her wineglass to reacquaint himself with her psychic imprint.
    He felt again the unique trace that had been on the passenger's
door of the Pontiac, and in his mind another connection occurred
with the ca-chunk of coupling railroad cars. 'I believe your
mother told you that she was adopted, told you as much as she
knew.'
    The mention of her mother thawed Lynette's smile. 'Yes.'
    'Which was nothing more than her adopted parents knew –
that she'd been given up by a couple somewhere in Wyoming.'
    'Wyoming. That's right.'
    Dylan said, 'She tried to find her real parents, but she didn't
have enough money or time to keep at it.'
    'You knew my mother?'
    Fully dissolve a heavy concentration of sugar in an ordinary
bowl of water, suspend a string in this mixture, and in the morning
you will find that rock-sugar crystals have formed upon the string.
Dylan seemed to have lowered a long mental string into some pool of
psychic energy, and the facts of Lynette's life crystallized on it
much faster than sugar would separate from water.
    'She died two years ago this August,' he continued.
    'The cancer took her,' Tom confirmed.
    Lynette said, 'Forty-eight is too young to go.'
    Repulsed by the continued invasion of this young woman's heart,
but unable to restrain himself, Dylan felt her still-sharp anguish
at the loss of her beloved mother, and he read her secrets as they
crystallized on his mental string: 'The night your mom died, the
next-to-last thing she said to you was, "Lynnie, someday you should
go lookin' for your roots. Finish what I started. We can better
figure where we're goin' if we know where we come from."'
    Astonished that he could be privy to the exact words her mother
had spoken, Lynette began to rise, but at once sat down, reached
for her wine, perhaps remembered that he had put his fingers to the
stem of the glass, and left the drink untouched. 'Who... who are
you?'
    'There in the hospital, the night she died, the last thing she
ever said to you was... "Lynnie, I hope this won't count against me
wherever I'm goin' from here, but as much as I love God, I love you
more."'
    By reciting those words, he wielded an emotional sledgehammer.
When he saw Lynette's tears, he was appalled that he had broken her
pretty anniversary mood and had knocked her into memories
unsuitable for celebration.
    Yet he knew why he'd swung so hard. He had needed to establish
his bona fides before introducing Ben Tanner, ensuring that Lynette
and the old man would more immediately connect, thereby allowing
Dylan to finish his work and to slip away as quickly as
possible.
    Although Tanner had hung back until now, he'd been near enough
to hear that his dream of a father-daughter reunion would not
become a reality in this life, but also that another unexpected
miracle was here occurring. Having taken off his Stetson, he turned
it nervously in his hands as he came forward.
    When Dylan saw that the old man's legs were shaking and that his
joints seemed about to fail him, he pulled out one of the two
unused chairs at the table. As Tanner put his hat aside and sat
down, Dylan said, 'Lynette, while your mom hoped one day to find
her blood kin, they were looking for her, too. I'd like you to meet
your grandfather – your mother's father, Ben Tanner.'
    The old man and the young woman stared wonderingly at each other
with matching azurite-blue eyes.
    While Lynette was silenced by her astonishment, Ben Tanner
produced a snapshot that he had evidently fished out of his wallet
while standing behind Dylan. He slid the photo across the table to
his granddaughter. 'This is my Emily, your grandma, when she was
almost as young as you. It breaks my heart she couldn't live to see
you're