The Secret of Everything

by O'Neal, Barbara

  She titled the photo A variation on red white and blue. This is America, too.

  It was the first time she’d been lost in her photo world for ages, and it was remarkably peaceful, a pursuit without much thought, playing with color, with shadow and light, with composition and balance, with the exact mix to bring focus on what the eye should see. The shots of the old farmers at the market this morning were fantastic. She loved their hands, their crisp shirts, the sharp line of hair above their collars.

  There were more. A few other shots of the farmers’ market that burst with color and shape and vibrancy; a shot of the ancient cottonwood; one of the lane last night, narrow and ending in the cantina.

  As a teenager, Tessa had written an essay declaring the goals for her life. There were three: She wanted to see the world, buy her dad a house, and have a photo published in National Geographic. On the first one, she’d made fairly decent progress—she’d been to thirty-seven countries and actually lived in four. The second had been achieved when she helped her father buy the little bungalow in Santa Cruz seven years ago. She’d given up the idea of getting a photo published in National Geographic, but she still loved photography as part of her job—really, her avocation.

  By the time she’d edited the photos she’d uploaded since arriving in Los Ladrones, she was starving and ordered a casual supper of soup and bread. While she waited, she surreptitiously watched a pair of lovers—she a vision of cascading hair, he much older and smitten and wealthy.

  On the table, her phone flashed and spun around in a vibration dance. Tessa picked it up. “Hi, Dad,” she answered, turning away from the other diners and lowering her voice to be polite. “I just sent you a picture you will love.”

  “In the mail?”

  “No,” she said with the exaggerated patience she used for his computer allergy. “To your email address. It’s totally free.”

  “It won’t be free when I have to pay the guy at the Internet café.”

  “You know the answer. A computer of your very own!”

  He made a dismissive noise. Honestly, she thought with a smile, it seemed like the most computer-resistant population was in Sam’s demographic: ex-hippies and Vietnam vets suspicious of “the man.” “You having a good time?”

  “Ran into some rain on the way in, which was freaky, but other than that, it’s great. Did we go to movies at the Chief Theater?”

  “Probably. I don’t remember. Look familiar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Learning anything?”

  She drank a long swallow of beer. “Not really, not yet. I’m in the main hotel, on the plaza, and I went to the farmers’ market this morning and ate at the famous café, where,” she said, smiling, “I had the best oatmeal. In your honor.”

  “That’s sweet.” He told her about his surfing on great waves stirred up by a front, and hearing his voice made her miss him a little. There was no one like Sam.

  What, she wondered, had he been like when he first arrived in Los Ladrones? He’d gone to Vietnam and come back furious, dropped out, and traveled the country on a motorcycle. More than one of his endless store of adventures involved brushes with the police and not a few actual arrests for petty trespasses—fighting, drinking, the usual.

  That had all stopped when Tessa was born, and although he’d still pursued an unconventional career, he’d been sober and straightforward and never in trouble.

  “Do you have any pictures of yourself when you were at the commune, Dad?”

  “Maybe, somewhere. Why do you want them?”

  “Just curious, really. I’m thinking about the past, thinking about you, what you looked like then.”

  “Handsome,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “You know, Tessa, there are times in a person’s life that aren’t worth remembering. I’ve tried to forget about the commune days. I understand why you’re there, but it wasn’t the best time in my life, you know?”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  “No apology necessary, kiddo. I’m just not all that crazy about revisiting the whole thing myself.”

  “Understood.” The waiter brought her soup, and Tessa straightened. “My supper just got here. I’m going to let you go, all right? Kiss Peaches for me.”

  “Will do. Give yourself a hug from your dad.”

  “Go look at the pictures I sent!”

  “I will.”

  Tessa clipped the phone closed and buttered her bread, wondering why the conversation had left her feeling so uneasy.

  FIVE

  When she was released from prison, Annie Veracruz had rented an efficiency apartment above the drugstore, right on the plaza. It was small and, to be honest, slightly grimy. The couch was brown with itchy specks in it, and there was a recliner that listed to the left and would only actually recline if you reached down and pulled on the foot part. An old-school television that had a good strong picture and a box to bring in basic cable was shoved against the wall. The kitchen was just a fridge, a sink, a skinny battered old stove, and six inches of counter, but there was a big window that looked over the mountains and a red table with red vinyl chairs.

  She loved that table. Yesterday, she’d gone out specifically to collect yellow flowers to put in a water glass with blue and yellow stripes. Now, as she walked into the room to get ready for work, there they were, glowing, mostly sunflowers but a few other wildflowers she didn’t know how to name. It was beautiful. The whole time she was making her breakfast—pouring Cheerios into a bowl and slicing a banana into it, and smelling the tea in the air—she was sliding glances toward that glassful of yellow against the red table and plain wall. Sunshine started to edge into the room from the east, and in a few minutes it would all blaze. Annie was ready.

  And when it happened, she was sitting at her table with a bowl of her favorite cereal, Honey Nut Cheerios—not just the plain ones, which sometimes they did give you in jail, and the perfect arrangement of bananas, just like on the box, and a cup of milky tea. Then the music of the light moved right over the petals of the flowers, setting them afire, and Annie took a bite of cereal, her own heart blazing with joy.

  Free. She was free. There was a thick bracelet around her ankle that she’d have to wear for a year, but the jail time was done, and, even better, her time with Tommy was done.

  Free. And she didn’t intend to waste a single second of it. She celebrated with yellow flowers and Cheerios and tea made just as she liked it.

  Free.

  Church bells rang exuberantly, welcoming the faithful to Mass. They clanged Tessa awake on Sunday morning. Turning over, she tossed the wilted covers off her body—and slammed right into the black hole that had been living in the middle of her chest for three months.

  She did not believe in wallowing and lacked patience for navel-gazing dramas. And yet here she was, stuck in this airless-ness, struggling to breathe while the black hole sucked her down.

  It was a dark place, created equally from genuine sorrow, searing regret, and bitter self-recrimination. Because Tessa had not done her job, a woman was dead. How, exactly, did you ever make that right?

  She was as good as a man at compartmentalizing her life—putting everything into its own box and dealing with only what was right in front of her. To some degree, that still worked with the disaster in Montana. Aside from panic attacks, the odd nightmare, and these unguarded moments when it all showed up to crush her.

  I’m fine, she thought, turning over. Why do you ask? Ha-ha.

  A psychologist in the hospital had told her that if she didn’t deal with all the emotion attached to the doomed trip, she could expect to continue to be ambushed by panic attacks.

  Mostly, she could avoid thinking about it. Mostly, she simply pushed it away. But then she would notice the still-shiny scar tissue on her foot, and suddenly she’d be back on the morning of that last day in Montana. She had thought, clearly, that she should not go out, that the spider bite was too infected.

  But she powere
d through, because that’s what she did—she was strong, she was the leader. When the mountain came down in an avalanche of mud, dumping Lisa and her into the river, Tessa was so addled from the infection that she’d made huge mistakes.

  There was the black hole. Nothing she could say, nothing she could do would ever justify it or make it right. Lisa had died directly because she had entrusted herself to Tessa’s care. Lisa headed out to save them because Tessa told her to, and she died.

  Lying very still in the center of the bed, with the bells ringing and ringing, Tessa let the weight press her down, smother her. It was so unfair that she was still on the planet, walking around, while Lisa’s mother was probably breaking down over a kitchen sink somewhere, her hands in rubber gloves, the forks falling back into the water as she bent over, crying.

  So unfair.

  Lisa was gone for good. Forever. Because, plain and simple, Tessa did not do what she should have done. How did a person ever make that okay?

  She didn’t know. Wallowing would be too easy and would only add to her sins, trying to get sympathy for the crime of hubris.

  “Enough,” she said aloud, and pulled herself out of bed.

  Slightly sweaty even in the skinny cotton tank and gray shorts she slept in, Tessa washed her face, brushed her tangled hair and pulled it into a scrunchie, and made some hot water for tea. While the water heated, she opened the French doors to the plaza to let a breeze in, thinning the stale overnight air in her room. It smelled of spruce and possibility, and she breathed in gratefully.

  Here I am.

  A waft of a dream came to her as she stood in the doorway, arms crossed loosely. Tasmania. She’d been dreaming of Tasmania, where she had lived for six happy years, four of them with the man she had believed she would marry. The happiest she had ever been in her life. Something about the air here, halfway around the world, made her think of Glenn and the town of Hobart, where they had lived between a towering mountain and the sea. It must have been the market yesterday, reminding her of the Salamanca Market on Saturdays in Hobart.

  It was in Tasmania, while living with Glenn, that she had become accustomed to drinking strong Australian-style tea, made the English way with milk and sugar. She carried English tea bags with her whenever she traveled in America.

  While her cup brewed this morning, she checked email and then started working with her photos again. She selected a few to send to her boss and then pulled up the little girl watching the dancers at the cantina the other night. Idly, one foot tucked under her knee, tea steaming at her elbow, Tessa cropped it, bringing the focus to the chubby little fingers, the falling-down sock.

  The photos of Vince were there, too. Mama mia. He was freaking gorgeous. A soft wash of red light illuminated his throat, caught in his hair, along the curve of his lip. His chest, one sturdy thigh.

  A quiver of lust moved through her. She wasn’t usually attracted to such big men, but something about his giant legs and giant hands was working on her libido.

  Search and rescue, she thought. How appropriate.

  She heard herself humming “Rescue Me” under her breath, and snorted. It broke a little of her dark mood, and she took a sip of tea, laughing at herself.

  Maybe she was just horny. It had been a fairly long time since she’d had a man in her bed. Only a couple of times since she broke up with Glenn, which was probably a good thing. She really had not wanted some big rebound thing. Too much drama.

  She clicked forward, found the picture of Vince looking into the camera, long lashes and direct gaze, and a distinct zing worked its way through her belly.

  Anyway. She clicked the photo closed.

  A plan for today.

  There was no big hurry—she had decided last night that she wanted to spend more than a week here. She’d find a cheaper room in a few days, allow herself the time and pleasure of exploring the town that so charmed her, follow whatever links might come up to help her piece together her shattered memory.

  She did need to get organized, however. She wanted to meet with the woman who ran 100 Breakfasts and visit other restaurants in town, map out some possible hikes and outdoor activities. On the table was a thick glossy book of trails in northern New Mexico, and she flipped through the chapters on the area around Los Ladrones with keen hunger. She was dying to get out on the trails again! She absolutely respected the healing process, but it had been way too long since she’d been able to take a good long walk.

  Easy does it. She’d have to pace herself. Start small and gauge her progress carefully.

  In between, there were plenty of other things to do. She would definitely explore the church and the pilgrimage route to the shrine, and discover any attractive legends and stories they could use in the brochure. She also needed to visit Green Gate Farms. And, for herself, she needed to go down to the river.

  A coppery cold moved along her spine at the thought. It could wait.

  This morning, she’d head down to the hotel restaurant and check out their brunch. Much as she’d love to just go back to 100 Breakfasts, she should sample more than one meal at the hotel. And there might be some celebrity-sightings, too. Always fun.

  The heat surprised her when she left the hotel in late morning. It murmured around her as she walked down the portico in the deep shade, but when she stepped out of the shadows, the sun fell on her skin like a skillet, heavy and hot. She paused for a moment, closing her eyes, letting it sink deep into her bones. Sunlight at such a high altitude had ferocity to it, texture, weight.

  “Don’t forget your sunscreen, young lady,” said a man passing by.

  Tessa opened her eyes. He was thin and stooped, maybe eighty or a little more, and she’d seen him doing his loops around the plaza yesterday. She smiled. “It feels good, doesn’t it?”

  “I like the snow myself, but we’re not long off for that, so it’s all right I reckon.” He waved twisted fingers her way and marched onward.

  Earlier, the church bells had been ringing loud and long. Tessa had looked up the history of the ancient church on the Internet as she ate her breakfast on the patio, covertly watching a pair of actors feed each other cubed cantaloupe.

  Her father had told her there were ghosts attached to the church, and the history of the place certainly lent itself to that idea. Maybe the missionaries slaughtered by the Indians, or the Indians the Spanish slaughtered when they returned. There had also been a raid by the Comanche, who stole seven women from a wedding feast.

  Standing now in the high, hot sun, Tessa shaded her eyes to look at it. It was the kind of church painters could not resist, with adobe covering its curved bones like peachy flesh, exaggerated by the sharp shadow cast by that fierce sun. Over the whole stretched the plastic blue sky. Constructed simply, it had two bell towers, with a heavy pine doorway between them. A wall created a protected garden in front. A bus with its motor still running was parked in the narrow street in the rear, and milling tourists shot it from several angles.

  Tessa resisted shooting it now, when there were so many people about. Not only the cluster of tourists from the bus but another knot of people had gathered outside the wall, at the base of what looked to be a trail. Most of them were barefoot, and as she watched, they took off their hats and gave water bottles to a young man collecting them in a box.

  She asked a man nearby, “Do you know what they’re doing?”

  “Pilgrims,” he said. “They walk to the top of the mountain to visit a shrine.”

  “Ah, I read about that.”

  Through her viewfinder she focused on a woman who looked to be in her sixties, with curly salt-and-pepper hair and knobby knees. A rosary looped around her left wrist, green beads glittering. For a minute, Tessa was lost in the repetitive shapes—curls and kneecaps and beads. Joy, the soft white of clouds, moved in her. She was shooting everything in her drunken rediscovery and would be lucky to get even a handful of great shots, but it didn’t matter. The colors and shapes, the quietness of seeing the world only in a single
frame at a time was filling some empty chamber of her heart.

  She made a mental note to check the length of the pilgrimage route and its difficulty. It was the kind of walk she always did in any locale—whatever was notable or interesting. Maybe, before she left, she’d be able to hike it.

  For now she would explore the church. Entering through the wooden gates set into the adobe wall, Tessa found herself in a splendiferous garden. Trumpet vines, blooming orange in defiance of the heat, covered the internal walls, mixed with wilted morning glories. Corn with silky new tassels grew in tidy rows, along with the elephant-ear leaves of squashes and tomatoes staked within wire supports.

  A young priest with dark-framed glasses and a black shirt with short sleeves filled a basket with zucchini and crooknecks. When he spied Tessa, he nodded. “Good morning.”

  “Weren’t these courtyards usually given to graves?” she asked him.

  “They were. Very good.” He straightened, brushing off his knees. “It was so dangerous here at St. Nicholas that the garden was created inside the walls and the bodies buried behind the church. Even so, the first missionaries were killed.”

  Tessa held back a slight smile. “That’s what you get for ‘nailing lifts to the natives’ feet.’”

  His dark eyes held a bright twinkle. “George Carlin.”

  “Very good.”

  “We do get out now and then to hear something of the world.”

  “Touché.” She gestured to the healthy plants. “It looks very fertile.”

  “Well, we have animals in the pasture. Once, they kept the animals inside the walls, too, but that’s not such a problem for us nowadays.” He slapped his gloves together.

  “Do you sell what you grow at the farmers’ market?”

  “Oh, no, my dear. All of this produce goes to the poor. We feed many every year.”

  “Now, that’s a church program that makes sense. Do you do all the work yourself?”

  “Afraid not. I mainly putter. There’s a garden committee that plans and tends it for us. One of our parishioners runs the kitchens at Green Gate Farms, and she’s been gardening organically for twenty years. She’s helped us set up a system that works very well.”