by Steve Rzasa
And there was that book.
The old Bible sat off to one side of the table. I tried to ignore it. Looked past it out the window. A middle-aged couple wearing matching capris—dude, really, capris? On a guy?—ogled the Bimmer. Scratch that: he ogled. She looked bored.
But there was no ignoring that book. I opened it. Where to?
Luke was always my favorite. Sure, I’d been a fan of the Epistles, but sometimes Paul was just a little too—well, Paul.
Relax. Just read it.
“Two others, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. And Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ And they cast lots to divide his garments. And the people stood by, watching . . .”
I slammed the cover shut. Why of all things did I have to read that? My heart hammered. Felt like me there in the crowd, standing around doing nothing.
Great. Just peachy.
“Hey.”
Ally’s voice made me jump. You know, for a teacher with zero background in my kind of work, she was really good at being sneaky. She pulled up the chair opposite me. Whatever was in her cup was some kind of coffee flavor that didn’t occur in nature. She blew steam away but never took her eyes off me.
I kinda wish she would have. Eyes like those make a man forget everything rational queued up he has to say.
“Hey.” That was my witty response. Nice. “You don’t have to sneak up on me like that anymore, you know. We’re not dating.”
“You seemed like you were deep in thought there, and I didn’t want to disturb you.” She set her keychain and her iPhone on the table. The keys jingled. “Really?”
“Yeah.” She smiled. “Okay, I kind of miss sneaking up on you like I used to. You liked it eventually.”
“I loved it.” This was going pretty well, considering—never mind. “So how’s life treating you out here in the sticks?”
She shrugged. “Teaching is a joy and a burden all at once. Sometimes in the same ten minutes. These kids—they need someone to work with them every step of the way, someone who’s going to believe in them a whole lot more than anyone else has.”
Just the same as I remembered. Weary, but with the same drive. That was my Ally. Not mine any more, but still . . . “Good.
I’m glad it’s going well for you and all that.”
“Thanks. It’s much quieter out here than Boston. It took me a long time to realize I needed to come back to Wyoming. You can take the girl out of the Cowboy State . . .” She sipped at her coffee.
“I heard you were in Maine for a while.”
“Four years. Too much snow, too cold.”
“I thought about coming to visit once or twice. Right after.” I scratched at a loose piece of the table top.
“Of course you did.” Ally rubbed her fingers against the sides of the cup. No rings. There’d been one years ago. Silver with a diamond flanked by two sapphires. I gave it to her in a park off Bay Street between the brownstones of the BU fraternities. I was a nervous wreck.
Never mind. Forget I said it.
“How’s your work been?” She looked at me, puzzled. I must’ve stared off into space too long.
“Busy.”
“I saw that last night.”
“That’s not how most of my evenings go.”
“Really? Is there more fighting?”
There was that familiar smile. It meant she was teasing me. Okay, I remembered enough of that game to play it. I grinned back. “Hey, just enough to keep things interesting, right?”
She chuckled. “I have to say I was surprised to see you with a Ghiqasu on your arm.”
Well, that was quick. And subtle. Not. “It’s not by choice.”
“Someone forced you to take an alien around Wyoming in a BMW? You, who hates aliens?”
“I . . . no.” Forgot how frustrating she could be when she was after something. Most FBI agents could learn a thing or two from her interrogation techniques. Of course, they’d have to drop fifty pounds and look prettier. “Okay, so it was my choice. When the Bureau comes calling and offers you a lot of money, you tend to put aside your prejudices. At least until the job’s done.”
“So it’s about the money.”
I took a swig of tea. “Of course it is. Geez, Ally, don’t say it like you just found out you stepped in a cow turd.”
Her eyes narrowed. Oops. “Nice. We’re in Wyoming, so naturally, there’s hicks and cows all over the place?”
“Didn’t say that. It was a joke.”
“A lousy one.”
You’re telling me. Ahem. Time to restart. “We’re looking for some rare artwork.”
She ignored me for a moment. Fine. I could wait.
“We don’t have to do this. This bickering.” She sounded tired. “It’s why it didn’t work out.”
“It was a little more than bickering—”
She held up her hand. I shut off my statement. She didn’t want to talk about it. So what else was new?
“What kind of rare art are you boys looking for?” she asked. “Cowboys and Indians?”
“No. Nil is more into . . . unique sculptures.” I didn’t want to have to lie to her right now. This was more than we’d said to each other in years. If I needed to, I could always lie later. It was easy.
The thought turned my stomach like never before.
“I’ve only met a few Ghiqasu up close,” Ally said. “We had an Observer come to school this fall. He was quiet. Kind of aloof, you know?”
“Yeah. Nil is kind of like that too. I think it’s our smell.”
“Smell?”
“They’ve got really sensitive noses. Big ones too.”
Ally snorted. There we go. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Well, they are easy to miss—”
“Cut it out, Caz.” She put her mug down. Her fingers fidgeted with her iPhone.
“Ally?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s going on?” I put my tea aside too. Something was brewing. Sorry, bad pun. But seriously. “You could have contacted me.”
“You don’t have a phone listing, Mister Foss.” She gave me a dirty look.
“Yeah, and you know why that is. My line of work, I can’t hand out my numbers like party favors. Listen. Why do this now? Is it because I’m here in person? I’m not—well, once we’re done—”
The words kept getting stuck in my throat. But she apparently caught the meaning.
“I know you’re leaving. When I saw you the other day, believe me, you were the last person I wanted to see strolling into town.” Her voice took on a hard edge. “You abandoned me.”
There it came. My shields went right up. Just when I thought we were warming up to each other again, she goes and freezes over. The anger started a slow boil. “I didn’t abandon you. We broke up. You got rid of me.”
“We were engaged.”
“You said we weren’t ready. You told me to get out. Exact words, Ally. Things got thrown at me, too, if I remember right.”
“A dictionary.”
“A big dictionary.”
“Part of me didn’t think you would really leave!”
“After you screamed at me and chucked Webster’s at my head? Whatever would make me stay?” Blast. Should’ve laid off on the sarcasm. People tell me it cuts through them like a knife. Bad habit. But I have to admit, sometimes I like that feeling. It’s control.
Right up until people give me the same hurt expression Ally just did. Then I feel like a miserable slug.
“We were engaged,” she whispered, “and I was pregnant.” We lapsed into silence. I had to look somewhere. Anywhere.
Back out at the Bimmer, out the window.
The couple who’d been fondling my car were walking up the street. Hand in hand.
Great.
Fingers tapped the table. Ally had tears in he
r eyes.
“I’m sorry.” It was all I could manage. “For that. And for this.”
“I am too.” She sniffed.
“I guess . . . I don’t know. I was frustrated, angry, unwilling to change anything. You know I thought we could actually do it?”
“Do what?”
“Raise a kid and finish our degrees. Get married. Get it all wrapped up.”
“It’s never that easy.”
“No. No it isn’t.”
“We weren’t ready, either of us. Not ready to be parents and not ready to be married.” Her eyes were rimmed in red from crying. “When the aliens arrived, everything was perfect for us. Right before junior year, remember? We thought we had it all planned. But when they showed up something snapped in you.”
That jolted me out of my stupor. “Something snapped in everything, Ally. That church group we went to—you remember what happened?”
She nodded glumly.
“It fell apart. Everyone stopped coming. Every. Single. Student.” I slapped the table to emphasize each word. Pretty sure the few people in Deerfield were staring at us. Not that I cared. “They lost so many people from the youth groups at BU that they wound up disbanding them a year later. Raya cut her wrists. Tony got thrown in jail for his protests. Devon and Claire signed up for the first qwaddo internship on the farthest planet away, right after they tossed their Bibles. And our youth minister—well, he took it pretty rough, didn’t he? Threw himself off the BU Bridge in the middle of the night. Left his wife without a husband and three kids without a dad. That was the guy I admired for his faith. Some faith.”
There. Said it. She needed to hear it and stop being so rosy about everything that had gone on. The qwaddos arrived and Christianity got flushed. Before they showed up a quarter of all adults in America said the Bible should be read literally. Yeah, there’s no aliens mentioned in there, have you noticed? I didn’t know the numbers, but they were bad. People just didn’t care like they used to. It’s hard to believe the whole mankind-has-dominion-over-the-fishes thing when you have huge alien spaceships in orbit and four-armed freaks walking the streets like they owned the place—which they did, for all intents and purposes.
“You didn’t have to give up.” Ally sounded less sad and more irritated. “I didn’t. Lots of people didn’t. Boston—yeah, it was hard for people there, but in other places the faith grew stronger than ever.”
“Good for you. I’m sure Jesus has an extra special gold crown with your name on it.”
She scowled. “So that’s your excuse for running away? Everything got too difficult for you? Or was it more of an excuse to sleep with that other girl?”
Ah, she did remember. My own recollection was a little hazy. I may have consumed to excess and gone off to one of Beantown’s bars in search of escape. Any escape. From everything.
And found it in a pretty girl with black hair. Can’t tell you her name. Big surprise. “I got no excuses for that.”
“You have excuses for everything. I think that’s why we went our separate ways.”
Separate ways. My memories flashed before me. This one was 100 percent clear. I got on the T at Kenmore station. The train was headed to the airport. Ally got on a different one, headed the other way. She didn’t look at me.
“But you didn’t have to leave,” Ally said softly.
I shook my head. If you thought it hurt before, well . . . “You’ve got to try to understand. When the girl you love, the one you’re crazy for, when she says we’re not ready and she decides to ride out to an abortion clinic—”
“Caz.” She held my hand.
God, why did you have to let her touch me? Not that I haven’t touched a woman since. But that familiar feel of her skin on mine . . . Chills. Heat. All at once.
“I never had the abortion.”
I couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d shot me. I just stared at her, my jaw slack. There was a roaring sound in my ears—my blood rushing. She said something, but I couldn’t hear it. Had to shake my head and focus before the words made sense.
“You’re a father, Caz.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
She arched an eyebrow. That’s all it took. We used to communicate like that all the time.
“You’re right. I wouldn’t have come back. Not then.”
She put her iPhone down on the table. “As for me, well, I wasn’t about to go back home to my parents. It took me a couple years to even work up the courage to tell them what had happened. It was worth it. They love having a grandson. And the Hargrave family is wonderful.”
Hargrave family? She kept rubbing that phone. My heart stopped. Suddenly this wasn’t some abstract possibility. The screen was empty, but who knows what would appear? “You’ve met him? It’s a him? A son?”
She smiled. “Yes, it’s a boy. He’s fourteen, tall, has freckles on his nose and cheeks.”
“Like yours.”
She laughed softly. “Not nearly as many.” I grinned back.
“Look.” Ally tapped her phone a few times. She slid it across the table to me. I turned it, stomach churning. The screen was bright with an image.
My kid. Our kid.
The boy had Ally’s freckles and dimples, but my eyes, pale hazel ones. The grin? All me. He was skinny like I’d been at that age and had sandy hair that was a perfect mix of my blond and Ally’s auburn. He wore blue jeans and a brown T-shirt emblazoned with a red symbol—the Rebel Alliance flame crest from Star Wars. Good taste is genetic, apparently.
Next to him was a guy with an easy smile and thinning hair and a blonde woman shorter than both. She hugged the kid.
I touched the image. It’d be better if I could slap him on the shoulder, and he could turn that grin sideways at me and call me “old man” or some fond insult like that.
Shook those thoughts off. That wasn’t likely to happen. Definitely not today. I pushed the iPhone back to her. Slowly. I had to know, though. “What’s his name?”
“Kyle. Kyle James Hargrave.”
Kyle. I liked it. Might have picked it out myself, had I known. My hands clenched my cup of tea like a life preserver. Easy, Caz. I’m not one for waterworks. But there was no mistaking the burning at the corners of my eyes.
My son. I had a son.
Astonishment gave way to sorrow and morphed into anger. My default. “Way to drop something heavy like that on a guy first thing in the morning when he’s nursing a hangover.”
“I had to tell you the truth, Caz. You have a right to know.”
“Yeah, I guess I do. Where is he?”
“Seattle.”
“And he’s—okay.”
“Yes. He’s doing very well in school. And he has an unhealthy addiction to science-fiction.”
“I guessed.” There wasn’t anything else I could think to say. Ally finished her coffee. “Look, I have to get to work.”
“What now? What am I supposed to do?”
“That’s for you to figure out.” She gathered up her keys and phone.
“Ally, wait up. We need to talk about this.”
“Do you want to see him? I assumed you weren’t interested.”
“That’s quite the assumption, considering I hadn’t said a word.”
“Is it? How much have you changed?”
Fair question. I didn’t know the answer. “We have to at least talk this out some more. Maybe—I don’t know, maybe I could visit him.”
She sighed. “Maybe we can meet up again before you leave town. Whenever that is.”
“Your, uh, boyfriend won’t mind?”
She made a strange face. “I don’t have one.”
“Just checking.”
“I’d like you to come to my church this weekend, too, if you’re still around.”
Nice. Invitation and not-so-subtle dig, all in one. “I don’t do church these days.”
“Prince of Peace. Lutherans, out on the west highway. It’s a brown building, kinda sloped like the library.
” Ally bent over and kissed me on the cheek. “Good-bye, Caz.”
It was back to me, sitting there at the table, alone. My tea, or what was left of it, got stone cold. No one spoke to me. No electronic devices bothered me. Just me and my thoughts.
I hate that.
<<<>>>
By the time I got back to the hotel I was in a foul mood. Nil was gone.
Great. The qwaddo hadn’t thought to give me a way to contact him. And the idea he was out doing something without my consent just ticked me off to no end.
My tablet dinged at me. Facebook message.
It was Larry Shackleford. {Do you know where Mosier Gulch is?}
Mosier Gulch. What’s a Mosier Gulch? “Shoot.” I grabbed my bag. There was a Wyoming Gazetteer shoved in the bottom. I yanked it free, tearing a page in the process. Most of Casper fluttered to the floor.
Mosier Gulch. Ah. There it was. West of town, on Highway 16. Looked like a picnic area with some trails. I tapped on the keypad. {Sure thing.}
There was a pause. It got longer. I chewed my lip. What, now he’s got cold feet?
The door opened. Nil strolled in about as casual as a qwaddo could. “Greetings.”
“Where’ve you been?”
His head cocked to one side. “I was visiting with a pair of Biqasohon who work at the fusion station. Several of them have lodged here, in conference with human engineers.”
Biqasohon. Tech aliens. Got it. “Why?”
“Why?” The question seemed to puzzle him. “They are highly rational individuals who notice details. I questioned them about any rumors they might have heard regarding the theft.”
“What? We’re supposed to be low key!”
“I was. I continued our ruse by telling them I am an art collector.”
“Oh.” I frowned. “Wait, you lied to them?”
“It was an extreme circumstance.” Nil sounded defensive. This was the same guy who whined about my pandemic of lies.
“Okay, whatever. Did you find out anything?”
He shook his head. “They promised to inform me if they did. We exchanged communication codes.”
“Speaking of which, you gotta leave me your number.”
“Number?”
My tablet dinged again. Shackleford? “Yeah, you know, so I can call you.”
