“The doctor told you that?”
“Not in those words, but yeah.”
Then yeah, it was her fault. Reese put his elbows on the bar and leaned close. “Then why’re you here, Fran?”
“You think I don’t try to stop? I try to stop all the time. I tried not to drink when I was pregnant. I need it. It’s the only medicine I can afford so I can live my fucking life.” She took a big swallow of her beer. “And go to hell, bartender. Don’t get all high and mighty. You make your livin’ off people like me.” She stood and grabbed her glass. Reese watched as she stalked to a table in a dim corner of the bar and sat down alone. She’d left her water glass behind, untouched.
*****
Reese leaned against the bar and stared at that corner table. The house lights were up, so it wasn’t dim, but Frannie didn’t know that. She’d sat there, at the exact same table her father had preferred, passed out in her chair, her head leaning back and her mouth wide open. She was snoring like a freight train. Frannie could put some liquor down, but he’d never seen her pass-out drunk before. He half thought she’d done it intentionally, like a fuck-you to him for making her feel bad.
She’d been the only person from the reservation in the bar tonight. Natalie didn’t have a shift. She and Victor were both home with their folks. Nobody else had come in.
Linda came and leaned on the bar beside him. “Welp.”
“I don’t suppose you’d—”
“Don’t even finish that sentence, boss. I got to get home to my kids, and I can’t carry her, anyway. You could leave her here, let her sleep it off on the floor. Or take her upstairs to your—"
“Now you can not finish a sentence. Think what would get said if Frannie Lincoln came down from my place tomorrow morning. Fuck’s sake, Lin.”
“You could take her down to the Gemstone, put her up in a room.”
“Then Mary would have something to say. I’m gonna have to take her home. We can figure out her car in the morning.”
Linda laughed and patted his shoulder. “Vaya con Dios, boss. Come on, I’ll lock up for ya.”
Reese went to the corner table and shook Frannie’s arm. He’d tried that already a few times, but it was worth another. She stirred and snorted and her head came up. Her eyes opened, and her mouth closed.
“Hey there. Time to go home. Can you get up?”
Frannie blinked at him, not understanding.
“Okay. Well, let’s try.” He picked up her arm and hunkered down, trying to hook her arm over his shoulders to hoist her up. She was short, and not skinny, and not helping. It wasn’t a combination conducive to this maneuver. So he bent his knees and picked her up like a baby. His forty-two-year-old back wasn’t thrilled with this decision, but thankfully, she didn’t resist him—or seem to comprehend what he was doing. Docile as a lamb, she was.
Linda held the door open for him.
“Stop your sniggering or you won’t have a job,” he muttered as he went through.
“Yeah, yeah. Like you’d ever fire me.” She closed the door and locked it.
He poured Mac’s big sister into the passenger seat of his Dodge Ram. She was awake enough to stay upright, at least long enough for him to close the door. Then he trotted around to the driver’s side, gave Linda a brisk wave, and climbed in.
He hadn’t been face to face with Mac for more than two weeks. The last thing he wanted was a confrontation with her over her family’s drinking and his, in her mind, contribution to the problem. But if he were a betting man, he’d bet the Apple Jack Saloon that he was about to get the last thing he wanted.
Chapter Eight
As he pulled into the Mackenzies’ yard, a light went on in the front window of their mobile home, and in windows of their neighbors’ places. Shadows rose up and curtains shifted as everybody in this little arc of homes checked on the wee-hour disturbance.
Frannie had slept, or been passed out, for the whole ride, and she didn’t stir as Reese cut the engine. The door to the Mackenzies’ place opened as he got out and went around to the passenger side. He stopped with his hand on the handle and faced Mac, standing there in baggy sweats and a ratty cardigan, her bare feet on the cold concrete of the precast steps that served as their stoop. The light above the door shone down on her head.
At first, she simply squinted at him, but when he opened the door and the dome light went on, she saw her sister, and then she came running, over the dusty, rock-strewn yard.
Frannie had been leaning on the door, and Reese barely managed to get in and keep her from falling out of the truck. He’d just gotten hold of her when Mac was there, grabbing the edge of the door, trying to wedge herself in between him and her sister.
“What did you do? Dammit, what did you do?”
Not sure which one of them she was talking to, but the only option that was conscious, he answered. “She had a little too much tonight.” He took Mac by the arms and set her back from the truck, then turned and got Frannie out. She woke a little, muttered something unintelligible, and went back under. She’d really done a number on herself.
“Jesus!” Mac barked as Reese closed the truck door with his hip and headed to the trailer. “Why didn’t you stop her!”
Reese didn’t answer. If they were going to fight, he wasn’t going to do it with her sister draped over his arms. “You wanna get the door for me?”
She stomped up the steps and opened the door. He caught it with his elbow and followed her in.
He hadn’t been in this trailer in a decade, but it looked exactly the same. More wear and tear, maybe, but otherwise, he could have last been in here yesterday.
The broken-down old sofa was made up like a bed—for Mac, he assumed. “Where should I put her?”
She glared at him and stomped off down the short hallway, opened a door, and then stood there with her arms crossed, glaring. She and Frannie had shared that room with their grandmother back in the day. He followed and went in. It was dark, except for the light from the hallway, but Reese saw the empty twin-size bed and laid Frannie on it. She groaned and rolled to her side.
On the other side of the small room was a tiny bed, for a child. Reese saw the little lump where Frannie’s boy slept.
Feeling like an intruder, he went to the door.
“Don’t you go anywhere,” Mac snapped in a whisper as she took care of her sister, taking off her shoes and pulling the covers over her. Always, no matter her anger or disappointment, she was gentle when she took care of her family.
He hadn’t intended to cut and run, but he didn’t belong in this room. With a nod, he went down the hall and waited in the living room.
Within a minute Mac was stomping toward him, her arms crossed over that stretched-out, snagged sweater that must have been her sister’s because it was way too big for her. Reese found himself locking his legs as if he expected her to tackle him.
“What the fuck did you do?” she whisper-shouted, sticking out one slender finger and poking him in the chest.
He had a sudden flash of that night when she was nineteen, the first time she’d come to the Jack to collect her passed-out old man and scold Reese for letting a grown man drink his fill at his bar, where his business was selling drink.
That was the night he’d begun to fall for Miss Georgia Mackenzie. He’d asked her out within a week, and they’d been inseparable from then on, until she ran.
He replied much the same way now as he had then, though he called her a different name. His name for her. Only his. “I’m not the fuckin’ babysitter, Mac.”
“You know she has trouble knowing when to stop.”
Yes, Frannie was an alcoholic. That was true of regulars at every bar on the whole round earth. People who spent a lot of time warming barstools did so because they drank too much. They had problems to drown.
“And you know I’m not her boss, or her man, or her keeper. She’s a grown woman, and I own a business. I brought her home, didn’t I? She’s safe in her bed.”
&nbs
p; Her finger dropped from his chest, and she crossed her arms again. “Why can’t you just tell her no? Stop filling her damn glass.”
“You think that would stop her?” They both knew it would not. “I tell her no, she goes looking somewhere else. I serve her, she stays put. She usually stops and chills out until she can drive safe. Tonight, she was upset, and she didn’t.”
That got the murder out of Mac’s eyes. She took a step back, and heaved a deep sigh. “She’s mad at me.”
“Yeah.”
“What’d she say?”
Reese shrugged. Bartenders were often privy to their customers’ secrets. He considered that a sacred covenant. “I’m gonna go. Her car’s still at the Jack. You can pick it up whenever.”
“She has a shift at the Lunch Box tomorrow—this—morning.”
“You think she’s gonna make it?” Frannie looked like she had several hours of sleeping this off ahead of her.
“She never misses work. She can’t afford to. She’ll make it. But she needs her car.”
“Well, get her keys, then. You can ride back in with me.”
She stared at him. He stared back.
“Do you want her car or not? You gonna wake somebody up and ask them for a ride?”
“Hold on,” she said and stomped back down the hallway.
Reese stood and studied the photos on the paneled walls—school photos of Frannie and Mac, still in their cardboard frames, tacked up with thumbtacks. Some photos were framed under glass: Her grandparents’ wedding photo, in traditional dress. Her parents’ wedding photo, in modern dress. The Ridge Review clipping of Mac winning Miss Jasper. All those pictures, he’d known already. The only ones he hadn’t seen before were Frannie’s wedding photo, at the courthouse in Boise, a snapshot of Frannie holding her new baby boy, and another of Tyson crying on Santa’s knee.
This was a family. Scratching out a living, full of troubles, with more losses than they could count, but they were a family, and they celebrated what victories and joys they could.
Mac came back dressed in jeans, boots, and a hoodie. She had a set of keys in her hand.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Reese gestured toward the door and followed her outside.
*****
They rode off the reservation in silence. Reese kept his eyes on the dark road, and Mac leaned against the passenger door, as far away from him as she could get without riding in the bed. Each time he glanced her way, her posture was the same: staring out the side window, her elbow on the armrest, her chin in her hand, her other arm across her belly, both knees canted toward the door.
Fine. If she wanted to pretend there weren’t thirteen goddamn years between them and he was just some townie acquaintance, then fucking fine. He turned off the reservation road onto the state highway that would eventually lead to Jasper Ridge and become Ridge Road. Sodium arc lights lit the way, one every quarter mile or so, giving a rhythm to the ride—pale glow growing brighter and then waning again, over and over.
The silence pressed against his ears, leaned on his shoulders. He thought about saying something himself, but all the words that came to mind sounded like begging to his internal ears. He thought about turning on the stereo, but didn’t want to add a soundtrack to this miserable moment.
As the town welcome sign (Welcome to Jasper Ridge, Idaho—Hitch Your Horse and Sit a Spell!—Population 2,315—Home of the Jasper Ridge Riders, 2017 State Champions!) came into view, Mac sat up straight and sighed loudly.
“Do you think you’ll ever just talk to me again?”
That was such a bizarre question, Reese would have laughed, except anger swept in and knocked humor to the side. “What the hell are you talking about? You’re the one staring out the window, clinging to the door like you’re waiting for the truck to slow down enough you can jump out.”
She looked his way, then skittered off again to stare out the windshield. “I don’t ... I don’t know what to say to you.”
He found some humor then, but the swelling anger charred it black. “Then I guess we won’t be talkin’ anytime soon, no.”
“Reese ...”
He stomped on the brake and skidded to a noisy stop in the middle of the road. Mac rocked against her seatbelt as it locked.
At this hour of the morning, Jasper Ridge was bedded down, so there was no traffic to disrupt. Reese put the truck in Park and turned to face her, though all he got was profile in return. “What? What do you want, Mac?”
“I want ... I don’t know.”
“I am sick to death of that bein’ your only answer. You fucked me sideways, dumplin’. I deserve more than ‘I don’t know.’”
At long last, she looked straight at him. “You do. Can’t we—can we—maybe if we can just talk, maybe I can find better answers. I want to give you better answers.”
“Are you staying?” None of this meant a damn thing if she was even thinking of bailing again.
“I don’t know.”
All he could do was laugh. It tore up from his heart with its teeth bared.
“I’m sorry.” Her hand reached for him. When he didn’t reach to meet it, she let it drop onto the console between them. “I missed you, Reese. That’s what I know. I’ve never loved anybody else.”
He rubbed his hands over his face and raked them back through his hair. “Jesus, Mac. What’re you doin’?”
“It’s tearing me up, being back and not seeing you. I know you’re mad. I deserve whatever you’re feeling. If it’s hate, whatever. I deserve it. But when you kissed me at the cabin—Reese ...”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she turned away, looking out the window again.
“You broke my heart, Mac.” He didn’t want to say those words, but they came out anyway.
She turned back and met his eyes. “I know.”
Reese looked away, focused on the Ram logo in the middle of his steering wheel. The truck was still parked in the middle of the road, canted over the yellow line when it had skidded to its stop. They could stay right here for another two or three hours and never be in anybody’s way.
He’d never loved anyone else, either. And he’d never stopped loving her. He’d known it that night she’d walked into the bar, trailing Pearl and enough gossip to power the town for weeks. He still loved her. That was why the few relationships he’d tried while she was gone had all failed, most of them quickly. He’d thought he was trying, but not one of those good women had ever gotten this key part of him, the part he’d given to Mac when he was twenty-nine years old. Some part of him had been waiting for her all this time.
If they were going to hash all that out, he didn’t want to do it in the middle of the road. He didn’t want to do it at the Jack or his place above it, either—if this went badly, he didn’t want those memories crapping up his home. Same for the cabin; that was his sanctuary.
He knew where to go. It had a lot of memories, too, but somehow that made the choice more fitting. If tonight was to be their conclusive end, then why not do it at the site of their true beginning? And if there was a chance to start something new, then it worked as a new beginning, too.
Reese put the truck in gear. He made a three-point turn and headed back out of town.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
He turned to her but didn’t speak. After a second, she understood, and a smile made a suggestion at the corner of her mouth. “Okay. Good.”
They rode north toward the mountains, until Reese pulled off on a narrow gravel road. Low branches brushed the sides of the truck as they crept into the wilds, but country people didn’t get bent about a few marks on the finish.
The road widened abruptly into a small glade. A stream ran through, too small for a name, but wide enough that somebody sometime had built a simple wood bridge to cross it. Just a few planks and a couple of supports made of mounded rocks, like cairns. The land here was part of a little slice of nothing, all that was left of a large holding an old town family had sold off in lots when t
hey’d hit hard times. They’d left when Reese was still a little kid and had abandoned these fifteen or so wooded acres around this twisty rill of water. None of the neighboring owners who’d bought up the rest of the lots had bothered with this bit; it was beautiful but no good for their purposes of farming or ranching. So here it sat, forsaken, and yet that simple old bridge stayed in decent repair. When it got wanting, somebody in town came around and fixed it. Not any one person, just whoever saw what needed doing and did it. Once, that had been Reese and Heath.
The town had claimed it as their own. Parents brought their kids out for picnics and to splash in the gentle water. Groups of teens came out on weekend nights to drink and smoke. Couples came for some quiet romance. Graduation and wedding photos got taken here, too.
Reese had first kissed Mac out here. Near the end of their first date.
He parked the truck, shifted in his seat, and faced her. “So let’s talk.”
She smiled—a real, true smile. Damn, she was beautiful. Even the low light of a night in the woods couldn’t mask it—in fact, maybe it enhanced it, making everything soft and mysterious. “Do you still have blankets in the box?”
“I do.” He was driving a different truck than the one she remembered, but he still had a box behind the cab, and he still kept emergency bad-weather supplies in there. He knew what she was thinking, but he wasn’t sure if it was a great idea or a calamity in the making.
“You want to sit in the truck bed and watch the sky?” she asked.
How many times had they done just that in their three years together? Too many to count. But that first date had been the first time.
“You sure about that?”
She nodded. “I’m sure.”
“Alright then.” He opened the door and got out. She did, too, and they met at the tailgate. He put it down and, without thinking, grasped Mac at the hips and hoisted her up. When her weight was in his hands, he caught a blast of painful nostalgia right in the chest and stood there, dazed, for a second after she was in the bed.
Anywhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories, #3) Page 9
