Triple Exposure

by Colleen Thompson

  “No.” The word came out clipped and pebble-hard, but curiosity got the better of him. “Why?”

  Her brows rose. “No one explained it to you?”

  He shook his head and then turned to unhitch Gus from the loaded travois he’d been dragging. Two more bundles of wood lay across the mule’s back, carefully padded by a thick horse blanket. Since Zeke’s equines were his workforce, he took their care seriously. Since they were also the closest thing to company he had, he went out of his way to keep them comfortable as well as healthy.

  “Do you want what they told me, or would you rather have the truth?” she asked.

  “I’m a big fan of cutting to the chase.”

  “There’s a shocker.” A hint of a smile bubbled through her words. “The Blank Canvas Foundation is throwing some crumbs to the natives. Took me a few days to figure that out and a couple more to decide it’s a good deal. They’re putting together a special showing for area artists, letting us sell our work to help them publicize their views. The event will be well advertised and should draw some serious collectors, so we’ll all profit from—”

  He turned to look at her, indicating his derision with a reflexive snort. “I’m no artist. I just make furniture out of useless scrub wood. So why tell me about this?”

  “I’ve been waiting for a while, and you left your workshop door unlocked.” She jerked a nod in the direction of the long, low, concrete building, which in a bygone day had been a candelilla factory, where the spiky desert plants were once processed for their wax. “I went in and looked at your stuff, and I’m afraid I have bad news…”

  She drew it out with a grave nod. “You’re definitely an artist. Your work—it’s fantastic and utterly unique. I’ve never seen anything like it in my—”

  “You walked inside my home?” He lived on one end, which he’d restored and refinished to create a rudimentary apartment. On the end opposite was his showroom, an informal space where he displayed and sold his finished pieces.

  She raised her palms in surrender. “I didn’t go anywhere other than your workspace, but I’m sorry. You can quit glaring at me, Mr. Pike.”

  “It’s Zeke,” he said as he removed the mule’s packs. “Just Zeke. And I’m not glaring.”

  When he glanced her way, her pretty nose scrunched. “Maybe you should check that theory in your mirror sometime. Or lock your door when you aren’t in the mood for visitors. Even a Keep Out sign would suffice.”

  He didn’t take to mockery, wouldn’t put up with it. “Or I could take a page from your book. Shoot unwelcome callers.”

  Her mood turned on a dime, the lightly teasing smile vanishing. Soft brown eyes went ironwood-hard as she stepped nearer, thrusting her chin toward him. “Screw you, then, Just Zeke. If you don’t want me taking pictures, bringing in more business for you, say so, by all means. But don’t you dare take potshots at me about a situation you don’t understand at all.”

  Zeke felt a rush of heat, along with a swift kick from his conscience. There was a fine line between unfriendliness and cruelty, and he’d just stepped across it. “You’re right. I was out of line.”

  “You sure as hell were.” Fair as she was, the color that rose to her face made her appear sunburned.

  He knew he should make amends, but he wasn’t sure how. So instead, he asked, “Those snooty art folks pay you for the pictures?”

  “Yes, if it’s any of your business—”

  “Then take as many as you want. Anything in the workshop or the showroom.” He pointed to the far end. “Long as you steer clear of my apartment.”

  Or more importantly, of the secret stashed inside. He should have burned it by now, every last trace of the man he’d once been. But he couldn’t bring himself to destroy the letter. Her letter, and his last, remaining link.

  Never try to come back, she had begged him, and don’t risk sending me more money. Because they’ll find you and they’ll kill you, one way or another, just the way that they killed him. And I can’t live through it again. I won’t….

  He forced himself to put the past aside, to live solely in the present, dealing with life moment by moment as it unfolded. It was the only way for him to stay sane, to keep his lungs working and his heart beating. Because he owed his mother that much.

  “Don’t worry,” Rachel said sullenly. “Your bedroom’s the last place on this planet I have any interest in exploring.”

  He turned back to the task of unsaddling his mount. Best to ignore her, he decided. But as he checked both animals’ hooves for stones and turned Cholla and Gus loose with the pinto, Zeke couldn’t stop picturing the way her face had closed. Couldn’t stop thinking of how she had bared her claws at his insult.

  From the time he’d been a kid, his mouth had always gotten him in trouble. He’d thought he had learned better than to use it.

  He was moving the mesquite and trying to forget her when she came out of the workshop, her head shaking.

  “Camera battery’s gone bad.” Her forehead creased as she frowned. “It’s not holding a charge worth anything, and I left my spare back at the casita.”

  Patsy had mentioned Rachel was staying in one of the two tiny guest houses she and Walter usually reserved for visiting pilots. He’d never understood why The Roost’s owner felt the need to try and chitchat, but instead of asking, it was easier to simply listen as he watched the planes and tiny gliders mount the sky.

  “You can come back,” he said, bothered that Rachel wasn’t meeting his eye. “Anytime you like.”

  She stared long enough for him to see her indecision. Probably debating whether he was worth the aggravation.

  Decision made, she nodded. “All right. I’ll stop by. I need to take my grandma to see her doctor in Alpine, so it probably won’t be until this afternoon.”

  As Rachel neared the fence-line, the pinto mare thrust her head across to nudge Rachel’s arm. Pausing to scratch her spotted neck, Rachel took a deep breath, then said, “Look, it’s probably not my business, but this horse . . .”

  She trailed off, her face flushing.

  “What?”

  “Well, she’s sweet as anything, but she could really use to put on some weight.”

  “You’re right.” He allowed himself to relax into a smile. “It’s none of your business.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he kept going.

  “It was none of mine either when I found her starving in some overgrazed patch of nothing that was supposed to be a pasture. There was another horse there with her—buzzards were eating what was left of it.”

  “You saved her.” Some new emotion dawned in Rachel’s expression, but it had been so long since Zeke had seen approval, he didn’t know how to react.

  “Listen, I’m no bleeding heart, but I know potential when I see it. And this mare’s got potential. What she needs is time and care and good feed.” Like you, it came into his mind to say, but he bit down on such foolishness.

  “So you bought her?”

  He shook his head. “Had a talk with the ignorant fool who owned her. Made him see the wisdom of giving her to me. Unless he wanted to hear from the law about that dead horse.”

  “You are a nice man. But don’t worry.” When she smiled, her nose crinkled again, and this time he made out a faint smattering of freckles across the bridge. “We’ll keep it our secret.”

  As she turned and walked back toward her van, his gaze lingered on the sweet sway of slim hips and the flutter of her red-brown hair in the cool breeze.

  And something in him was resurrected—something that would better remain dead and buried until his body shared its dusty grave.

  “Don’t know why you’d want to drive this awful thing,” Rachel’s grandmother, Benita Copeland, complained. “A person needs a ladder to climb up into this monstrosity.”

  As they’d headed east on Highway 90, it hadn’t taken long to leave tiny Marfa in the rearview. Once they crossed the currently dry Alamito Creek, the wintry-dull desert plain ro
lled out ahead, bounded only by the knobbed silhouette of Cathedral Mountain in the distance.

  “I knew I was moving, and it held most of my stuff.” Rachel didn’t bother explaining that after her Mini Cooper had been repossessed, a friend with an uncle in the car business had given her the ugly gold van, with its peeling “wood grain” panels. She’d been grateful to have any mode of transportation, particularly one that could haul all her photography equipment—and serve as temporary housing in a pinch. “You’re just put out because you’ve been scheming with your canasta buddies to sneak out late at night and go joyriding in that zippy little car I used to drive.”

  Her grandma, who had given up her driver’s license years before, laughed and waved aside such nonsense in a gesture that sent upper-arm flab swaying dangerously. Always a heavy woman, she wore a deep purple pantsuit that made her look a little like an eggplant, along with square-framed, thick-lensed bifocals. On sunnier days, she donned enormous sunglasses that fit right over the top of her regular pair. Today’s heavy, low clouds nixed that fashion statement, just as it had grounded all the sailplanes.

  “That’s probably for the best.” She sighed. “If I got down inside one of those little jobbies, you’d probably need a forklift and a team of chiropractors to get me out again. It just seems a girl your age should have a spiffier set of wheels, that’s all. Back when I was young, I had this bright red-and-white T-bird. You know, the ones with the big fins? It was a convertible, but no matter how my mama scolded, I never covered my hair with a scarf. I just let it stream out, blonde and beautiful, and drove the menfolk wild.”

  “Sounds like a lot of fun.” Rachel smiled, knowing from family photos that her grandmother had kept a tight cap of perm-fried, brown curls close to her head throughout her younger years, curls that had stood the test of time, though they had long since silvered. Rachel suspected, too, that Benita, who had never had much—nor liked to part with—money, was speaking of a car she’d seen in advertisements instead of anything she’d really owned. Since Rachel’s last, brief visit two years earlier, either her grandma was growing more inclined toward exaggeration, or problems with her memory were painting her younger years a rosier hue.

  Over dinner last night, Patsy had cast her vote for something more serious. “I’m afraid it could be a problem. With her living on her own much longer, I mean. She’s a diabetic, Walter, and keeping her blood sugar stable is a tough balancing act, especially with her vision the way it is.”

  But Rachel’s father had been adamant. Anger flashing in his eyes, he’d snapped, “She’s been managing for twenty years. She knows what she’s doing. Sure, she forgets little things now and then, the same as anybody, and she has to use a magnifying glass to read the labels. But I gave her my word she’d live out her life in the house Dad built her, and there’s no way, no way in hell, I’m going to break that promise.”

  When Patsy had carefully raised the subject of the medication mix-up that had sent Benita to the hospital the month before, Rachel’s father had accused his wife of wanting to stick his mother in a nursing home so the two of them could travel. Clearly furious, Patsy had dumped her dinner in the trash and left the house for a long walk.

  Rachel grimaced, considering the first fault line in a marriage that had until now appeared rock solid. Despite her ambivalence toward her father’s wife—who had been quick to insist Rachel would be more “comfortable” in one of their Spartan and poorly heated guest casitas—it made her stomach hurt to witness the two of them squabbling.

  She had volunteered to drive her grandma to the ophthalmologist today, partly to get a handle on her physical and mental state, but mostly to relieve Rachel’s own tension. It occurred to her that before That Night, she could have coped with such a skirmish easily—could have told her dad to chill out and listen to what sounded like a legitimate concern. She and her father might have even raised their voices at each other, both of them secure enough in their relationship that it felt safe to do so.

  She wondered if her dad or Patsy had noticed the ways she’d changed. No one had mentioned anything, not even her grandmother, who didn’t know about the trial. Presumably.

  “Still boycotting the TV news?” Rachel asked. A few years back, her grandmother had sworn off it, saying she’d lived through enough heartache for one lifetime without taking on the whole world’s. Interfered with her appetite, she’d claimed, and kept her from sleeping. Had turned her into a door-locker, too—an aberration in a town with almost no crime.

  “You betcha. Stopped the paper, too, while I was at it.”

  Rachel understood the attraction of her grandmother’s decision to insulate herself from others’ pain. To remain oblivious to terror’s black moths chewing holes in the world’s fabric. To live in ignorance of the cruelest of murders, rapes…and trials. “Doesn’t it make you feel sort of…disconnected?”

  Her grandmother shot her a surprisingly shrewd look. “If you’re fishing around to find out if I know about your trouble, the answer is yes. Of course I do, in spite of your father’s ridiculous attempts to shield me. I might have my struggles with small print these days, but I’m for doggone sure not blind.”

  “You—you’ve known? For how long?” Rachel glanced over at her. “Why haven’t you said anything?”

  Her grandmother’s look turned pouty. “When I first heard over at the Hair House, I was madder than a wet hen. I’m an old woman, not a child, and I’ve weathered tougher things than you can imagine. Buried a husband and my first son, when he was just a tiny baby. Watched boys go off to wars they hardly understood, some of ’em never to come home. Grew up poor enough to know hunger on a first-name basis. Lost both my sisters in the last five years. I know how to stand things, Rachel, and I might have had a thing or two to say to you about it. But no one wanted an old woman’s opinion. So I kept it to myself.”

  No wonder her grandma hadn’t invited her to stay at her house. Rachel winced as moisture blurred the green splotches of juniper among the dry, gold grasses and rocky soil that lined both sides of the road.

  “I never meant to hurt you.” Rachel wished she’d considered how the woman who’d stood by her after her mother’s sudden stroke would take being “spared” her granddaughter’s pain. “I’m—I’m so sorry, Grandma. I just didn’t know how—how to say the words. And Dad thought—”

  “You know your daddy.” A smile softened her grandmother’s expression. “He could tell you anything you’d want to know about those contraptions he’s always zooming around in and not a durned thing worth knowing about how a woman’s mind works. But you, Rachel…You might have—”

  “I was so ashamed.” Rachel blinked hard to clear her vision. “You had such high hopes for me. Without you, I don’t think I’d have ever imagined seeing my photographs in galleries, or making a living doing what I love. You’ve always meant so much to me—especially after Mom died.”

  “This—this boy that ended up killed. Was there anything to those stories he was spreading to his buddies?”

  As worn, tan mountains rose before them, Rachel struggled against starkly ugly memories. Explicit voice mail messages and e-mails, the disgusting discovery of a used condom hanging on her doorknob—made worse because the culprit had removed the bulb from the security light above. She remembered it all in horrifying detail—everything except the evening at the restaurant that had supposedly set it all in motion.

  That’s because nothing happened worth recalling, she reminded herself, nothing but a perfectly forgettable outing with my students. No matter what a few liars claimed or her own psychologist had suggested.

  “No, Grandma,” Rachel insisted. “I would never do that. Not with anybody I was teaching and especially not with—He was just a big kid to me, that’s all.” Before he’d become a monster, anyway. “A little more polished than some—I understand he’d been kicked out of the finest prep schools. But still, he was my student, just an overgrown boy I thought had talent. The rest—”

  Her
grandmother shook her head. “I got into quite a fight with Tally Sue Ryan, over at the Hair House. Told her I wouldn’t believe you’d do a thing like that and if she meant to argue, her stylist was going to have to tease that fuzz of hers over a couple of new bald spots.”

  Rachel’s tension dissolved into laughter at the image. “I am Grandma, hear me roar. So, you didn’t believe the gossip.”

  “That boy wouldn’t be the first to run bragging to his friends about escapades he made up. The same thing used to happen back when I was in school. That sort doesn’t think about the girl’s reputation, only his own.”

  Rachel lapsed back into silence, thinking how far beyond mere boasting the tall and model-handsome Kyle had gone. How he’d used skills learned in her class to graft her face onto pornographic photos, how he’d added his own image to make it look as if she were on her knees before him, open-mouthed for his erect…

  How those photos had been so skillfully manipulated, it had taken the defense’s own set of experts to discern the trickery, a finding that had proved false those disgusting messages Kyle had sent her—messages whose contents intersected with the yawning gap in her own memory.

  Pain twisted through her midsection, so overwhelming she had no choice except to pull the van onto the stony shoulder. She bailed out without looking, barely noticed the blare of a semi’s horn at her flung-wide door or the swirl of her loose hair in the chill wind of the truck’s passage.

  In an instant, she lost the breakfast Patsy had insisted on feeding her that morning. A short time later, she heard the crunch of orthopedic shoes on gravel and felt her grandma’s hand, a warm and steady presence at her back.

  “It’s all right,” she crooned, her voice soft and comforting as faded denim. “It’s all right, Cora. I’ll drive.”

  Her grandmother’s slip of the tongue pulled Rachel back from the brink of another round of sickness. Great Aunt Cora, Grandma’s older sister, had died four years before.

  But it was the offer to drive that most concerned Rachel, as her grandmother, who hadn’t been behind the wheel in years, attempted to tug the keys from her hand.