He leaned on a heavy, ancient post and looked over the bustling plaza. It looked as if there might be a wedding this evening. Chairs were being set up beneath the tree, and someone had tied green ribbons to the low-hanging branches. A string quartet tuned their instruments, keyed into one another.
“Hello,” said a low, silky voice at his elbow. “I don’t know why I thought we could politely avoid each other in a town this size.”
“Why would we want to?” Vince turned.
Tessa stood there with the dog, her hair pulled back again into the omnipresent scrunchie. The same enticing tendrils curled around her long neck, lifted on a breeze. “Good question.”
He said, “This time, I was actually looking for you.”
“I sorta figured.” She pointed at the panting dog. “He needs to be in the shade.” She gestured down the way, and Vince nodded and followed her to a quiet, heavily shaded alley, where she pulled a bottle of water out of the backpack on her shoulder, awkwardly because of the cast.
“Let me help,” Vince said, taking the pack.
“Thanks.” She unscrewed the lid and poured water into a bowl for her dog. He slurped a hefty serving, then lay down next to the wall, panting in the heat.
“He looks great. Already fattening up,” Vince joked.
“He is a great dog, and he eats like a sixteen-year-old boy! But then, we’ve been walking a lot today, checking out all the trails around here.”
“How’s your foot doing?”
She lifted one shoulder. “Pretty good. How’s my Pedro?”
Vince grinned. “Fine. Just fine.” He pointed at the dog’s feet. “Were you at the river?”
She was drinking from the bottle now and nodded, screwing the tin lid back on. “Yeah. I’m trying to desensitize myself. I almost drowned there when I was four.”
“In the Ladrones River?”
“Yeah. I don’t remember it. Or at least I didn’t remember it until I fell in a river on a hiking trek in May. Then I remembered just enough to drive me crazy. Do you remember a forest fire?”
“Yeah, quite a few.”
“Like, mid-seventies sometime?”
Vince frowned, thinking back. Late elementary school. “I remember a few small things, you know. Nothing much.”
“There wasn’t anything in the newspaper files. I guess I have to keep looking.”
“Are you hanging around here for a while longer?”
“You sound irritated.”
“No. But I’d like to know where we stand, maybe.”
She slapped his belly. “You have to lighten up. Coming on a little strong.”
To his amazement, Vince actually flushed. “You know what? You’re right.” He gave a dry, humorless laugh. “You have no way of knowing, but this is not me.”
She caught his shoulder. “Doing it again.”
Vince turned, and she stood over him on the step. His face was a little lower than hers, and she put her hands on his face.
“Now smile,” she said.
He gave her the fakest smile he had, ear to ear, bottom teeth and all.
“Better.” She tucked her hands in her back pockets and inclined her head. “Now, here’s the question, Vince: Do you want to play—and I do mean play—while I’m here, or let it go? I’ll be here another week or so, and then, if I get approval, I’ll be in town to set up the tour, and we can either be … um … friends, or not.”
He put his hands on her waist, taut and lean. “Friends. Now kiss me.”
Tessa laughed and bent in, pressing her mouth to his.
And just like that, the lightness blew away. The taste of her, the smell, the way she clutched his shoulders and pressed into him, all of it. He was as horny as a fifteen-year-old at his first dance, his dick as hard as glass. Pulling back a little, he took a breath.
“Jesus,” she whispered. “The chemistry is intense, isn’t it?”
He leaned closer, met her eyes and pressed their bodies together. “I want to fuck you until you can’t stand up.”
“That would take some doing,” she returned, and he dug his fingers into her back, laughing.
His phone rang, the sharp trill that signaled work. “Sorry,” he growled, and pulled it off his belt, keeping one hand around her body so she wouldn’t run away. “Grasso here.”
“We’ve got three lost teens in Rifle Canyon.”
“Missing since when?”
“Yesterday,” Jason said. “They were supposed to report back by five p.m. and still haven’t.”
“Damn it. Five last night? Why didn’t they call yesterday?”
“Who the hell knows.”
“I’ll be there in twenty,” he said, and hung up. “Sorry, gotta go.”
“You’re just doing this to raise the anticipation, aren’t you?” she said, slanting him a hot look. “You want me to sit up in my room fantasizing about what you’re going to do to me when you get back.”
His entire body reacted to that visual. He kissed her, deep. “Hold that thought. I’ll call you.” Straightening, bringing them both back to the real world, he added, “There’s no way of knowing when I’ll be finished, or even if it will be today, or what kind of shape I’ll be in when I’m done.”
“I get it.” She lifted a shoulder. “You know where to find me.”
FIFTEEN
Vita liked to run in the last light of the day, before twilight came creeping in with its ghosts. Along with cooking, running had been her salvation, and perhaps the two together were a good combination, because she’d never put on weight, which was more and more a surprise the older she got. She wasn’t vain about it—considered it a lucky accident of preferences and genes.
Tonight, the oppressive heat that could sometimes fill the valley in September had finally been blown down the river by a vigorous wind, and Vita decided not to run the long trail down by the river—there was always the slight worry over West Nile, which had hit the town pretty hard a couple of years back. Vita never got it, thank heaven. Mindful of the threat, she ran the perimeter of the town on a dry dirt trail. She’d already run her one marathon of the year, the Chicago, so she wasn’t in training. Just running for pleasure and stress relief and to keep her bones strong. The air smelled of dust and crushed leaves and sage, a scent that would be in her clothes when she got home.
The trail looped behind the plaza and around through open pine woods, down along a flat, open stretch lined with prickly pear and walking-stick cactus, over the trail to the lake, and back down. As she ran, she rearranged recipes and let the day flow through her feet into the ground, where she left annoyances like the dishwasher who had been a no-show for the third time and a delivery of bad bananas. She thought of skinny Annie and her bad hair, humming under her breath as she flipped a pair of eggs, and of Vince Grasso glowering at Tessa the other day in the restaurant—something going on there, that was for sure; Vince didn’t bother with women much.
A lot to bother with in Tessa, Vita thought. Whenever Vita was with her, she had the sense of glimpsing an iceberg—just the edge, not enough to make sense of. A sense that there was more to her than she said, than she wanted to reveal. It made Vita careful in return, guarded, and she never was these days. Tessa was hiding something, but Vita didn’t think there was anything malicious about it.
Why, then? What did she really want in Los Ladrones?
God knew there was plenty for all of them to get twitchy about. Secrets aplenty, especially at Green Gate, that terrible summer. They all kept expecting the past to dry up like dust—they were in their sixties!—but it never did.
She completed her six-mile trek and slowed to a walk, cooling down as she came back into town. A fox dashed across her path, and Vita caught her breath. Seeing something like that startled and delighted her every single time, which was one big reason to never return to the cities of her youth. Wonder was worth pursuing.
If not for the fox, she might not have seen the man skulking along the apartment block above the western b
lock of shops. He was lean and dark, beautiful in that sensual way that could be so dangerous, and his hair was tied back in a leather string. He was clearly stalking something. Someone. Looking at the windows, along the ground. Vita pulled out her phone and shot a picture. She would show the police, because, even though they sometimes laughed at her worries, they also understood, and they loved her for her protectiveness of the young women who came through the diner.
She watched until he skulked away, then looked to see if she could make out what—or who—he was watching. There, framed clearly by a kitchen window with little clippings of plants in jars, was Annie.
Vita’s blood ran cold. The woman had never said, but the evidence of an abuser was all over her face and body. Tonight, Vita would take the cell phone pic to the police. Maybe she wouldn’t show Annie yet. She was just beginning to feel a sense of safety. It would be a shame to knock that out from under her.
Tessa had dinner, then collected all of the notes she had made on the town, the farm, and the restaurants and began to arrange them into an itinerary for her boss. Working with the door open to the breeze, she typed it all in and then wrote a letter giving him an idea of the overview.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Los Ladrones Tour possibilities
Attachments included
Hi, Mick.
Please find attached a couple of possible itineraries for tours in Los Ladrones. I’ve included photos you might use in the brochure/catalog. It’s great! The town is rich with history, riddled with celebrities (staying in my hotel this very minute are three A-list actors, one of whom appears to be scouting out land for a retreat home), and so much for foodies! The market is gorgeous, and Green Gate Farms (see attached itinerary and photos) is worth a trip all by itself, and there are gourmet shops like a salt store and a kitchen store in addition to all the restaurants. There are also plenty of trails we can use to map out day hikes for varying levels of ability. I still need to hike to the top of the mountain (pilgrims walk it barefooted to atone, which seems kind of a cool offering, though we probably need to make it an optional day, since it’s such a religious thing), but in general I think this would make a great base for a new tour. I’m visualizing it as a food tour with modest hiking, maybe one day of long hiking, rather than the more vigorous hiking tours I’ve been doing. Just don’t know that I really want to go back to that. Maybe we could add in a photography angle or something? (Just brainstorming.)
I’ve included two itineraries as possibilities. Look it over and let me know what you think.
Tessa
PS-As per our agreement, I’ll be checking out of the hotel tomorrow, but I think I’m going to hang around for a while, rent some cottage or something for a few weeks. I’m enjoying it here, and since I’m not working yet, there’s no reason to get back to CA. Will let you know when I get settled.
The last paragraph surprised her. She had not realized that was her plan until she typed it out, but as she sent the email, it felt right. More right than anything had felt in a long time.
Felix was out on the balcony, watching the plaza, and she joined him, scratching his ears. The wedding had moved to a reception, perhaps. Across the way, one of the shops had strings of white Christmas lights around the windows. Music rose into the quiet night, gliding guitar and a woman’s smoky voice, swirling out into the warm air and drawing Tessa down to the plaza. She looped her camera around her neck and leashed Felix for the sake of politeness.
Felix snuffled around the base of the ancient, spreading tree, while Tessa simply let the place fill her up—the juxtaposition of a whole store devoted to gourmet salt a few doors down from a forties-style drugstore, complete with soda fountain and rubber tomahawks, across from a hotel where movie stars sipped aperitifs and made big deals right next to a plaza where Comanches had stolen seven women and an old hippie-commune-turned-major-organic-farm sold fresh produce.
What an intriguing place.
Tessa unleashed Felix and let him explore the daily dog blog around the legs of park benches and bushes while she experimented with low-light shots of the neon in the drugstore window and signs. She shot the square of light visible over the pass-out bar at Vita’s café and turned toward the blaze of the movie theater sign: CHIEF. The letters were white, with neon blinking in tubes of pale pink and green and blue. She could hear the buzz of it clearly in the night, along with crickets and faint music. Lovers wandered by, and tourists, and people on their way to dinner. Felix explored. Tessa disappeared into the camera.
Maybe it was the meditative state or the visit to the river the other day, or finally just being here long enough, but all at once the door to her memory opened, and, instead of seeing the jumble of puzzle pieces scattered in a pile, she saw whole scenes. Again she saw the angry blond woman hurrying them across the square, and now she saw who made the other part of “them”: another girl, with long hair pulled back in a braid, crying because she was in trouble. They were both in trouble, she and Rhiannon.
Rhiannon.
Feeling airless, Tessa sank down on a bench, keeping her eyes on the gently radiating blinking sign. Felix came over and sat heavily on her foot. Absently, Tessa stroked his head in thanks, letting the memories pour through her.
For years she’d remembered a pink tricycle. Now she saw it was decorated for a contest in the plaza. Tessa rode it dressed in a red and white bathing suit and red cowboy boots, her dog trotting on a leash beside her. Brenna.
Tessa looked down. Felix looked just like Brenna.
Do you remember now?
“I think I might.”
Nearby was another trike, this one blue and decorated with tissue-paper roses. They had looked and looked for blue tissues and finally found some, and they wrapped them with green pipe cleaners.
Uneasily, Tessa let the blips reel out. Little things. Other children, a group of them playing jacks in a tower room with windows all around. Cold, shivering as it snowed outside and an adult lit a fire.
Whirling by like one of the snowflakes was Tessa’s father, his hair very long and dark down his back. He was doing magic tricks with a circle of children around his feet, and Tessa was laughing as he pulled a coin out of her toe. It made her ribs ache somehow. Even then, he’d been the greatest dad around.
The angry woman, hurrying them. Again.
The fire and running, squeezing Rhi’s hand, the whole forest burning, filling the air with smoke, running and running, holding hands, and then a blank, and water filling her mouth, a scream and a cry, and surfacing, crying: “Rhiannon!”
Enough. Tessa leapt to her feet, gasping for breath as if she were drowning right now, this very minute, in the darkness of the plaza. Her heart was racing, pounding so loudly she couldn’t hear over it at all, and her vision fizzed at the edges, as if she would faint. She felt like she might throw up, fall down, die of terror.
Some reasonable part of her brain said, Panic attack.
Tessa felt Felix’s cold nose against her palm, a focal point that helped her come back into her body, out of her head. She told herself it was only in her mind, that she could breathe, even if she didn’t do it until she fell over and had the wind knocked out of her. Thinking of Felix’s worry if she actually fainted made it possible for Tessa to take a slow, long breath in, let it go. Ragged at first, then more smoothly.
Good God.
Shaking in reaction, she decided maybe a margarita was in order. It was not her drink of choice, but only an idiot drank shots of tequila at her age. Bending over, she kissed Felix. “Good dog. Thank you.” Felix licked her nose.
As she sat down over her margarita in the courtyard of the hotel, she realized one thing that was off-kilter: Her memories were not those of a four-year-old. The tissue-paper flowers. The trikes, the dog. Not four. More like five or six, like Vince’s daughter Jade’s age.
And it was beginning to seem as if she’d had a sister. Which meant that Sam
had lied to her.
Why?
Natalie sometimes liked sleeping at Grandma’s house, even if she didn’t like to eat there. It was nice to be close to town, and there were four bedrooms with clean, shiny floors you could slide on in your socks, and pretty views of the mountains, and Grandma’s big family room where they watched movies together. Natalie had a room of her own here, too, and an altar that Grandma let her set up, even though she said something like religion was the drug of the masses, which Natalie didn’t get until she realized Grandma didn’t mean Mass but big groups of people.
They had eaten at the diner so late today that Natalie didn’t need anything else, so tonight she skipped the sodium-free organic soup Grandma opened. She took Pedro and went into her room and started to pray the rosary, just like her mother taught her:
“Hail Mary, full of face, the Lord is with thee …”
Pedro slid down beside her, resting his back against her. She loved him best of all the animals she had ever met. Distracted, she stretched out on the floor beside him and scratched the place on his chest that he loved so much, right below his collar. His eyes were exactly the same color as the afternoon sky, and sometimes, it seemed you could see into another world in there. His pointed ears seemed to always have something to say, twitching, leaning, or, like now, going soft so that the tips flopped over like an envelope.
He also had the softest fur in the universe, like a pillow, and she scooted closer to put her face on his side, breathing in the dusty dog smell of him. She wished there was perfume like dogs. She would put it in her bed so she could pretend pillows were dogs.
The idea made her giggle. Dog perfume! Pedro turned and delicately licked her face, right across the eye. It felt nice. She slid down flat on the floor and he gently, thoroughly washed her face.
Jade came barging into her room without knocking, but for once Natalie didn’t care. “Hey, Nat, wanna come watch movies with us? Grandma said we can pick whatever we want and make some popcorn and she’ll even watch with us!”
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