The Shimmering Road

by Hester Young

  “Gotta love monsoon season!” he says. “Hopefully it won’t hail.”

  Hail? In August? I turn to Noah with a stricken look, as if to ask, Did you know about this? but he’s busy watching the storm. A bolt of lightning streaks across the sky, jagged electricity that spreads like nerve endings over the city.

  I have to admit, it’s breathtaking.

  “The plants will love this,” Noah says, and I feel a surge of affection for his one-track mind.

  The storm ends—without hail—half an hour later, and we head over to Vonda’s. Outside, clouds roll away with astonishing swiftness, and the steely sky yields to an abiding blue. Desert rain, I’ve learned, is intense yet fleeting, leaving only an oppressive humidity and a few washed-out roads in its wake.

  As Noah guides our vehicle through a series of muddy brown puddles, I’m glad we left my little Prius back home. On one road too flooded to pass, I spot a gang of school-age kids kicking and sloshing through rainwater that tops their knees. They squeal and shriek, try to wrestle one another down into the grimy water.

  Noah stops the car, trying to reroute the GPS, and I watch the smallest child, a little girl, race into a nearby house and emerge with an inner tube. She sprints into the puddle with everything she’s got and then launches herself into the air atop the inner tube, soaking all three boys with her landing.

  I grin. “I hope our daughter’s like that.”

  Noah gives a little grunt of agreement, although I don’t think he’s paying any attention.

  I watch the four kids battle for control of the inner tube, marveling at how happy they look, how wholly absorbed they are in their play. Keegan would’ve loved this crew, would’ve exulted in these flooded streets. And then I look up at the horizon, see the nearby palm trees and cacti and houses, the mountains beyond them, smoky blue clouds rolling off into the distance, and even, I realize with a pang, a small fragment of rainbow suspended like a promise.

  My eyes fill up with tears, and though I know it’s probably just the hormones working me over, turning me into some unrecognizably soft and sentimental being, I can’t help myself. I want to live here.

  • • •

  MICKY WAITS FOR US in front of Vonda’s house, a yellow plastic bucket in her lap. We’re late, quite late, delayed by both the storm and its aftereffects.

  I can’t tell if Micky is pleased to see us, exactly, but she looks alert, her dark eyes taking in whatever information she can. Behind her, Vonda carefully brushes out Micky’s hair, dividing it into pigtails. Vonda smiles when she sees us, probably relieved she doesn’t have to explain the sudden disappearance of two more grown-ups to Micky.

  “You made it!”

  “Barely.” Noah wipes his forehead with the back of his hand.

  “That was quite a storm.” I grin. “I had no idea you got that kind of rain out here.”

  Vonda laughs, as if pleased by her city and its ability to surprise. “Mid-June through September, that’s monsoon season. Gets a little wild now and then, but it’s a nice change of pace, in a way.” She grabs a hair band off the step next to her and wraps it three times around one of Micky’s pigtails. “We liked watching it, didn’t we, Micky?”

  Micky nods and holds up her bucket, which I now see contains water. “This is how much it rained here,” she says. “Two inches.”

  “A budding meteorologist,” I observe. “Cool.”

  Micky looks at me blankly, then at Vonda.

  “A meteorologist studies the weather,” Vonda explains.

  “Me-tee-or-all-oh-gist,” Micky repeats. She mouths the syllables again to herself, filing this word away, and it occurs to me that this child is not stupid. She wants to learn.

  “Shall we invite your guests inside, Micky?” Vonda asks. “We can have some lemonade and maybe some of those Rice Krispie treats we made today?”

  Oh, Vonda, I think. Of course you made Rice Krispie treats. Of course.

  “Can I stay out here a little longer?” Micky asks her.

  “Sure, sweetie. Tell you what, I’ll run in and get our snack ready. You can talk with your auntie Charlotte and Mr. Noah for a bit. I know you had some questions for them today, didn’t you?” Vonda catches our eyes and there’s a warning of some kind in her gaze. “You all just let me know if you need anything.” She disappears into the house and I wonder what, exactly, we’re in for.

  Micky doesn’t beat around the bush. “Did you go to my mom’s funeral?”

  “We did.” Noah settles himself on the step beside her.

  I lean against the door behind them, fairly sure that if I sit down here, I will not be able to rise again under my own power.

  “Were there a lot of people there?” Micky asks.

  “So many.” I understand all too well why this matters. “Your mom and your grandma must have had a lot of people who loved them.”

  She twists around to get a good look at me. “Did they get buried?”

  I hesitate. We’re treading on dangerous ground now, walking a fine line between the honesty I think children are due and the fear that too much information can feed. “I’m not sure,” I say, which is the truth. I don’t know what Pam’s burial plans were for Jasmine and Donna. But Micky doesn’t let me off that easy.

  “When you die, they bury you in the ground, right?” she persists.

  “Sometimes.”

  “My mom and my grandma . . . are they in the ground now?”

  For all I know, Jasmine and Donna were cremated, but I don’t think the concept of burning people up and then hauling around their ashes will ease Micky’s mind any. “I think so,” I say, wishing I were anywhere but here. “I think they’ve been . . . laid to rest now.”

  I look to Noah for some guidance, some sign that I’m doing okay, but he’s quiet, mulling over her questions. Maybe he thinks that, as the veteran parent, I know what I’m doing, but in four and a half years, Keegan never required any explanations of this kind.

  “Vonda says their bodies are in the ground but their spirits are flying in heaven.” Micky looks skeptical, as though she suspects Vonda might have been trying to sell her something.

  I take a deep breath. I am the last person in the world who should be explaining the afterlife to young, impressionable children. My own experiences have left me more unsure, not less. “Nobody really knows for sure what happens when you die,” I tell Micky. “Some people believe in heaven, and some people think . . . that dying is like going to sleep. Only you don’t wake up.”

  Her grip on the yellow bucket tightens. “Who’s right?”

  “I don’t know.” I’m aware that answer is even less satisfying to a child than it is to an adult. “What do you think?”

  She gnaws on her lip. “I think it’s really dark under the ground. It must be scary.”

  Instantly I regret being so candid with a six-year-old. She can’t understand death, not really. All she wants is a little certainty, someone controlling the reins. “I’m sure they’re in heaven, honey,” I say. “Vonda’s right.”

  “Is heaven far away? Like, could I go there?”

  That’s it. I nudge Noah with my knee. Let him field this one.

  “You want to go to heaven?” Noah asks softly, and Micky nods. “I bet you want to see your mom and your grandma again, huh,” he murmurs, and she nods again, gazing into her bucket with a heaviness that it pains me to see in a six-year-old.

  “People can’t go to heaven while they’re still alive,” Noah says. “But that doesn’t mean your grandma and your mom are gone. My Daddy Jack died more’n a year ago, but I still feel him with me sometimes.”

  Micky lifts her head. “Does your Daddy Jack talk to you?”

  Noah smiles. “Yeah,” he says, “sometimes he does.”

  I raise my eyebrows. This is news to me.

  “Every now and then I hear his vo
ice in my head,” Noah explains. “Like if I’m confused, or feelin’ scared. He reminds me how to be a good man.”

  Micky looks at him with large, intense eyes. “I saw Grandma in my dreams. Is it real?”

  “Does it feel real?” Noah asks.

  “I don’t know. She didn’t talk to me. She just watched.”

  “I’d say that means your grandma’s got her eye on you,” he says, ruffling her hair. “She’s keepin’ you safe.”

  He’s so ready to be a father. To be her father. But Micky has a father, and we need to settle things with him before we go making decisions about who this child belongs to. No sense letting Noah get attached to someone he might lose.

  “Hey, Micky?” I ask. “Do you know if your mom had a friend named Ruben?”

  At the mere mention of his name, her face shutters up. One finger finds its way to her mouth. “I don’t know.”

  “Did your mom talk about him?” I press. “Maybe she went to visit him sometimes?”

  Micky shrugs and continues sucking on her finger, giving up nothing. The poor kid has obviously been instructed to keep her mouth shut. Excellent parenting, Jasmine, relying on your kindergartner to cover up your cheating.

  “I don’t know about him,” she mumbles. “You shouldn’t ask me.”

  “Honey.” Noah leans forward. “Your mom can’t get in trouble anymore. You can tell us about him. We’re your family, you got that? You don’t need secrets.”

  She hesitates. Searches his face for signs of deceit or trickery, and eventually relents. “Ruben by the beach,” she says softly.

  “Ruben lives by the beach?” I cast Noah a triumphant look.

  “My mom went to the beach with him on the weekend sometimes,” Micky says. “If Doug had to work. But two times, I got to go, too.”

  “You went to the beach?”

  “Yeah. We all went swimming in the ocean, but the waves were too big and they knocked me over. That’s why I don’t like the water.”

  I’m puzzled how Jasmine could afford beach vacations. “Did you take an airplane?”

  “No,” she says. “We borrowed Grandma’s car. It was a long drive. I took Grandma’s iPad and I watched Tangled two times. And then we were there.”

  My friend Rae’s daughter was briefly obsessed with Tangled. Two Tangled viewings must be a three- or four-hour drive. Is there really oceanfront just four hours away from the Tucson desert?

  “So, you went to the beach with your mom and Ruben,” Noah reviews. “What else did you do?”

  Micky screws up her face, trying to recall details. “Well, he was working at the blue hotel. We had to wait for him while he made all the drinks. He gave me some little umbrellas.”

  Noah and I exchange quick glances. A bartender?

  “So Ruben was—nice?” I prod.

  “Yeah,” Micky says. “He got me a shark jaw with all the teeth in it. From a real shark, but he bought it at a store. And he made good sand castles.”

  I can scarcely believe what we’re hearing. Micky met her father. Spent time with him, probably recently. “Do you remember the name of the hotel Ruben works at?”

  She blinks. “It was just . . . the blue hotel.”

  Micky may be running out of useful information, but I sense that we’re on the verge of a breakthrough. I motion for Noah to take over and I duck into the house, where Vonda is mixing up a pitcher of powdered lemonade.

  “Vonda, how far are we from the ocean?”

  “The ocean?” She taps the last bits of fluorescent yellow powder from the pouch, unbothered by the abrupt entrance and odd question. “Hmm, let’s see. Rocky Point is, oh, two hundred miles away.”

  “Rocky Point?”

  “That’s what Americans call Puerto Peñasco,” she explains, stirring the lemonade with a large wooden spoon. “It’s a beach town in Mexico. The university kids go there to party because the drinking age is eighteen, and I think they get a bunch of retired folk, too. The RV crowd.”

  “So you can drive there?”

  “Sure. You’d need a passport, but sure.”

  “Does Micky have a passport?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Vonda says. “We can’t take Micky out of state without special permission, much less out of the country.” She pours a glass of lemonade over ice and offers it to me. “If you need to know, you should ask the police. You’re next of kin. I’m sure they’d let you into Jasmine’s apartment, and you’ll probably want to sort through Micky’s stuff there anyway. Or try the apartment manager, they could help.”

  She’s right, of course, and I feel a bit dense for not having considered that avenue myself. Although if there was clear evidence of Ruben’s whereabouts in Jasmine’s apartment, wouldn’t investigators have found and seized it by now? Wouldn’t McCullough, as jealous as he is?

  It doesn’t matter, I decide. Whatever we might find or fail to find in that apartment, Noah and I already have enough information about Ruben Ramos to pull this off. Bartender, blue hotel, Rocky Point. We can find Micky’s dad.

  • • •

  I THOUGHT THAT CONVINCING Noah to make the trek to Rocky Point would be a slam dunk, but it’s soon clear that I’ve misjudged him. We’re sharing a colossal ice-cream sundae inside a chilly shop when I tell him my plan.

  “No,” he says, almost spitting out a gob of whipped cream. “No freakin’ way.” From the look on his face, there’s no room for negotiation.

  I scoop out a spoonful of peanut butter topping, mystified by his resistance. “I thought you’d be all over this. You’ve been saying all along how much you want to meet Micky’s dad. Get a family health history and all that.”

  “But just marchin’ off to Mexico hopin’ we find him? That’s plain crazy.”

  “Why?” I stare at him, trying to understand. “Ruben Ramos is out there. No one can adopt that kid if he still has parental rights. Not us, not Vonda, not anyone. What happened to getting to know Micky’s world? This man is part of it, Noah. We have to try.”

  “No, baby, we do not. Somebody else can handle it.”

  He’s scared, I realize suddenly. Scared of my dream.

  “Who do you think is going to handle this?” I ask quietly. “The police? McCullough? I mean, Jesus, if McCullough gets ahold of the guy, Micky could have two dead parents on her hands.”

  Noah slaps his plastic spoon down, jiggling our slightly lopsided table. “Ruben coulda been the one who killed Jasmine and Donna, you ever think of that?”

  The possibility has of course occurred to me, but I find it unlikely. “Ruben can’t even get into the country. He’s a Mexican citizen, remember?”

  “Not bein’ a citizen hasn’t stopped plenty of folks,” Noah points out. “And don’t you think it’s suspicious, him and Jasmine havin’ some kinda relationship, and then she dies, he disappears, and—”

  “He didn’t necessarily disappear, Noah.”

  “Yeah? Then how come no one can find him?”

  “Jasmine was cheating on her boyfriend with this guy. Her volatile, possessive, gun-owning boyfriend. You think she’d just hand out Ruben’s phone number and address to everyone she knows?” I munch thoughtfully on a frozen chunk of brownie. “She was keeping the whole thing under pretty tight wraps. Ruben might not even know she’s dead.”

  I’m thinking aloud, but as soon as I say it, the idea makes sense. If Ruben’s living in Rocky Point, how would he know what happened to Jasmine? Who would have told him? Nobody but Jasmine—and possibly Donna—even knew where he was, and it’s not like he’d be following Tucson news.

  Given law enforcement’s difficulty locating the guy, Jasmine must have done a decent job covering her tracks with Ruben, which means she probably wasn’t using her cell phone to communicate with him. A smart move. It would’ve been too easy for McCullough to stumble across a missed call or an unknow
n number, too easy for him to answer the wrong phone call while she was driving or in the bathroom. And the international fees wouldn’t be cheap. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced: Ruben doesn’t know.

  “Someone has to tell him.” I frown, sliding a restless foot across the tiled floor. “Someone has to let Ruben know what happened.”

  Noah’s eyes blaze. “Okay, let’s say you’re right. We find this blue hotel, we find Ruben. What if he wants Micky? What then? He gets to whisk her off to Mexico?”

  “That would be for the court to decide.” I dig out one final bite of ice cream, let the sweetness melt slowly on my tongue. “That girl at the funeral thought Ruben’s parents might want Micky. It’s worth looking into, at least.”

  “It sounds like you’re trying to get rid of her. Make her someone else’s problem.”

  “I’m trying to give her a family!” I retort. “Ruben is Micky’s father. And not just biologically, Noah. He knows her. They hung out together. They made sand castles.”

  “He met her twice.” Noah scowls. “Big deal. She doesn’t even know he’s her father.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want a relationship with her,” I agree. “But what if he does? It wouldn’t have to be custodial. You said yourself, she needs all the family she can get.” I go for the jugular. “You grew up without a dad. What would you have given to know your father?”

  My words have the intended effect. Noah has always felt his father’s absence acutely, and learning details of the man’s murder this past winter has only intensified his feelings of loss. “Shit,” he says, and I know that I’m winning, though from the stubborn set of his jaw, I haven’t won yet.

  I reach across our wobbly table and take his face in my hands. “I know what you’re scared of, and it won’t come true. You said yourself the dream won’t come true.”

  For a moment, he lets me hold him, meets my gaze with an expression both fierce and tender. Then he breaks away. “I’m not willin’ to bet your life on that.”

  I want to tell him that if my nightmare is really a premonition of my future, there may be no escaping it. Doesn’t trying to change your future always cement it? I think of Oedipus and Macbeth, both trying to dodge ugly prophecies and, in doing so, inadvertently running headlong into the very futures they feared. But now is not the time to have a philosophical discussion about fate or free will.