Glory looked at him. “You want a slice of bread.”
“Yes, if it isn’t any trouble. My stomach—”
“For Pete’s sake, who are you? Oliver Twist? If you’re that hungry, stay.” She threw down the dish towel she’d been holding. “Juniper’s making dinner. I have some work to do in the barn.”
“It’s not that I’m—”
“Excuse me, may I get by?”
He and Juniper watched her go out the back door and let it slam. “She doesn’t really have anything to do out there,” Juniper said.
“Yeah, I got that impression. I should go.”
“No, I want you to stay! She just gets moody sometimes. Plus that article upset her, though she’d never let on. Mrs. Solomon’s private. She won’t cry in front of anybody. She cries in her closet where she thinks no one can hear her, but the walls are thin.”
“I’m leaving. I don’t want to upset her any more than I have, and neither should you.”
“No, no, no. The worst thing you can do right now is leave. You can distract her. Tell her about your cop experiences. That’s what she needs. Someone new who’ll perk her up. You like spaghetti with meat sauce? Mine’s really good. I am so the bomb at cooking now. Makes up for the horrible food we had at the group home. You’d think it’s impossible to ruin macaroni and cheese, right? But they did, I swear. Some nights I’d just make a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, take them back to my room, get narked on by some mean girl, demerits for hoarding food, have to … ”
He nodded. No escape was in sight and he still needed a piece of bread. Juniper handed him the grater and some Parmesan cheese and never once stopped talking. He checked her pupils to see if she was on some kind of upper, but they appeared normal. While the sauce simmered, he ate a homemade, buttered Parker House roll and his stomach quieted. He looked out the window at Mrs. Solomon playing with her dogs. She threw a glow-in-the-dark Frisbee for Cadillac. The nervous brown mutt she had weaving in and out of her legs while she performed a simple dance step. They definitely had the routine down. She made a loop with her arms and the brown dog jumped through, then trotted back in the other direction. Joseph tried to think of some music that would make it all fit together, some kind of background for the rhythm of their movements, but nothing seemed right. Juniper babbled on. He tore romaine lettuce into pieces and sliced avocado for topping just as he had a million other times back in New Mexico, wondering what would happen when Glory came back indoors. He heard a scratching on the door down the hallway. “What’s that?”
“Edsel,” Juniper said. “If I let him out you, have to be prepared for a speeding bullet.”
“Edsel is a gun?”
“An Italian greyhound.” She loosed the beast, who ran laps around the kitchen and living room as if he were on the track in Ruidoso until long after Joseph was sure the dog had made himself dizzy.
“He’s so small,” Joseph said, and Juniper shushed him.
“Don’t let Mrs. Solomon hear you say that. He’s her baby. She makes all his food special.”
After the salads were eaten and the plates mopped dry of vinegar-and-oil dressing, Juniper ladled out the spaghetti with ground-beef sauce and Glory held a bottle of wine up toward Joseph. “Want some? It’s not all that great but not all that bad, either.”
“Wish I could, but it interferes with this medication I’m on. Thanks, though.”
“What kind of medication?” Juniper asked.
Glory sighed. “It’s impolite to ask such a personal question, Juniper.”
“But how am I going to learn anything if I don’t ask questions? It’s the Socratic method.”
Joseph laughed.
“You’ll live if you don’t. Now apologize to Mr. Vigil.”
“Please, it’s okay. I wish you’d both call me Joseph.”
Juniper set her fork down. “Mr. Vigil, I am sorry I asked such a personal question, even though I still want to know why you take pain pills, especially since you said your legs were okay. I’m betting it’s your back. I’m also betting you hurt it being a cop, am I right?”
Glory poured more wine into her glass. “Juniper, change the subject, now.”
“Okay. So, former officer Vigil, how do you make spaghetti sauce? Do you use the stuff out of a can? Do you put meat in it? Sausage? Carrots? Tofu? Mrs. Solomon says everyone has a family recipe. What’s yours?”
Joseph smiled. Glory looked at him as if it were news to her anyone could smile under these circumstances. “My grandmother used to make it with chile.”
“Like chili con carne?”
“New Mexican chile, I bet,” Glory said.
“Exactamente,” he said. “Southern New Mexico green chiles, roasted over a wood fire. You know all that because of your mom, right?”
“My grandmother, actually. She taught me to cook.”
Juniper cleared her throat. “Isn’t that really Mexican food and not Italian?”
“Good question,” Glory said. “Which is it, Joseph?”
Now that she was on her second glass of wine, every so often she smiled, too.
“Grandma Penny always called it spaghetti so that’s what I thought it was. First time I ate spaghetti in a restaurant, I thought they had a terrible cook.”
Glory laughed, nearly choking on the wine. Juniper laughed, too, but then she said, “Tell us some gnarly cop stories, please?”
“There isn’t anything to tell. I wasn’t on the force long enough to be there in the action.”
“I don’t believe you. What was your hairiest crime ever? Did you ever pull a gun on someone? Kill anybody?”
Joseph took a sip of water. “I didn’t like it. The second I could, I switched to the crime lab. I analyzed evidence, wrote reports, and took pictures of crime scenes.”
“But that’s cool, too,” Juniper said. “Just tell us a story.”
Joseph ducked his head and looked at the china plate smeared with meat sauce. A chip was on the rim, and had this been Isabel’s kitchen, she would have thrown that dish out so fast it would break the sound barrier. “Cops pull guns so infrequently you wouldn’t believe it. Just having it on your hip is usually enough, but sometimes things happen. I got shot.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Juniper said. “That’s why you have the limp! What happened? Was it a bank robbery? A suspect fleeing the scene? Grand theft auto? A meth lab employing underage children?”
“Meth lab, but the shooter was eighteen.”
“Whoa,” Juniper said. “You got shot by a teenage meth addict? No wonder you carry a gun. Do you have flashbacks? PTSD? Scars?”
Glory interrupted, “This is why you wanted a slice of bread, isn’t it? The medication upsets your stomach unless you take it with food. You must think I’m a shrew. I’m sorry.”
“You were just being a careful mom.” He hoped that was the end of things because he didn’t want to talk about Rico.
Glory looked at him steadily. “If that were my job, I’d be afraid every day of my life.”
“So did you at least shoot him back?” Juniper asked.
“No, I did not. I’d stopped being a cop a long time before this happened. I was there to take pictures of the scene. That’s all.”
Juniper leaned in on her elbows, rapt. The wind rattled the kitchen window. Joseph looked toward it and wondered if putty would silence it. Glory set down her wineglass.
“Oh, come on,” Juniper said. “You’re leaving out the good parts. We can take it.”
“You’re a pushy one, aren’t you? My grandmother would call you testaruda.”
“What’s that mean? Hormones? Adults blame everything on hormones.”
“Bullheaded.”
“Your grandmother doesn’t know the half of it,” Glory said.
Joseph’s pill was making him mellow, and with the absence of pain and an interested audience, he relaxed a little. “I’ll only tell one cop story, you understand? Don’t ask me again.”
“I won’t,” Juniper said. “I can
get a Bible if you want me to swear on that. We have a King James.”
“I started out as a cop. I ticketed speeders, drunk drivers, and went on domestic-violence calls. Every day was difficult. In the lab I thought I’d be insulated from all that. There was a missing person’s case, where we found the girl too late. There are some pictures you don’t want in your head, trust me.”
Glory, who had just taken a drink of her wine, suddenly had a coughing fit. Juniper looked down at her plate, stunned.
“You wanted to know,” he said. “I warned you.”
Juniper got up from the table so quickly her chair nearly toppled over, but at the last moment Joseph stood up and caught it. She booked it down the hallway and into her room, slamming the door. Cadillac followed her, then came back to Glory. She let him out the back door. Joseph looked at Glory. “Man, this place is like the Bermuda Triangle. I mean well, but everything I say around you two comes out wrong. I’m sorry.” He started to get up but she placed her hand over his arm.
“Let me explain. You’re new here, so you probably don’t know. Juniper is Casey McGuire’s younger sister, the girl who went missing in the late nineties.”
Joseph felt the weight of all that food in his gut. “¡Qué idiota!” he said under his breath. “How can I apologize to her?”
“I’m not sure you can.”
“But this is terrible. I have to apologize. I reminded her of what happened to her sister, and worse, I implied the level of violence … ”
“Casey being gone is a fact of life. Juniper’s learning to deal. She’s come a long way since the pirate wedding, but, oh, her backslides are Olympian. Today, I can’t even go into it. Want some decaf? I make great decaf. That’s because on nights like these I pour a big old shot of whiskey into it. You can have one shot, can’t you?”
“I can have a sip. Will you let me clear the dishes?”
“As long as you let me load the dishwasher. It would be too much for your back to bend down to the racks. I don’t even like doing it.” She turned on the tap to fill the saucepan to let it soak. Suddenly she put her hand across her eyes and Joseph could tell she was trying not to cry. “Why does everything have to be so hard for that girl? Why can’t she catch a break?”
He touched her shoulder and felt it tremble. “Seems like she caught a huge break, finding a home with you.”
Glory looked at him, rubbing her eyes with soapy hands. “I don’t know. Trying to get her to behave, do her schoolwork, you have no idea. I think I’m making things worse.”
“Doesn’t look like that from where I stand.”
They worked alongside each other quietly, with only the click of dishes and silverware fitting into their slots to break the silence. Not a sound came from Juniper’s room. When the coffee was brewed, Glory poured Joseph a cup and added cream. “Oh, gosh. I didn’t ask, I just—”
“Made it just like your husband would have liked it,” Joseph finished. “It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.” She poured it out. She filled another cup for him and fetched a bottle of Scotch from the cupboard above the fridge.
They sat down at the table again, waiting for the coffee to cool enough to drink it. Under their feet, the brown dog sighed. Juniper came out of her room, her eyes puffy and her face flushed. In her hands was a large manila envelope.
“Hey,” Joseph said, standing. “I didn’t mean to dredge up sad memories. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
Juniper said nothing. She undid the clasp on the envelope and poured its contents onto the kitchen table. Out spilled newspaper articles, flyers, and bumper stickers reading BRING CASEY HOME. They just about covered the tabletop. Juniper looked up at Joseph and smiled. “It’s like you were sent here to help me,” she said, just before she started crying. “You can be the one to find my sister.”
Part III
J U N I P E R T. M C G U I R E
A dog will never forget the crumb thou gavest him,
though thou mayst afterward throw
a hundred stones at his head.
—SA’D, Gulistan, A.C.E. 1258
Chapter 8
HONEY,” GLORY SAID as Juniper pushed papers toward Joseph, “we’ve been all through this. After such a long time, it’s unlikely—”
“There’s always hope. Miracles happen sometimes. Elizabeth Smart came home. That could happen to Casey. Right, Joseph? Cops solve hopeless cases, don’t they?”
Joseph ran his hand over his mouth, trying to find words that wouldn’t drive the shattered bits deeper into this girl’s already broken heart. “How old are you, Juniper?”
“I’m nearly fifteen.”
“Then you’re an adult. Sometimes adults have to face facts.”
Her hopeful expression crumpled. “Facts aren’t right a hundred percent of the time! What good are they? I hate facts. I hate whoever took my sister. And I hate you!” She swiped the table clean with her right arm, brushing all the papers to the floor before she put her head down, sobbing.
“I’m sorry,” Joseph said, bending down and picking up the papers one by one, even though it hurt him to do so. He straightened the wrinkled pages and automatically began sorting them by date, latest to oldest, until he reached that first bold headline in the Monterey Herald:
LOCAL GIRL MISSING—FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED
When Casey McGuire’s dog returned from a walk without her, police issued an Amber Alert …
Joseph’s hands automatically reached for the beige file folder with the police department logo on the front, but it wasn’t there. This wasn’t his job anymore. Besides, only the details the public was allowed to see were here in Juniper’s possession. Certain aspects were purposely held back. When a case went cold, usually one detective close to the community kept it on his desk and checked every couple of months for anything possibly connected to it. Occasionally the police got a break. Joseph took a breath. “We’re friends, Juniper. True friends don’t lie to each other. Nothing good ever comes of lying or secrets. That’s why I’m being straight with you, as much as it hurts you to hear it.”
Glory put her arms around the girl. While Juniper sobbed, Joseph sat down at the table, scanning the papers as he went. He couldn’t stop himself from reading. It was all there, the hopeless stench of a bad ending, beseeching parental pleas printed on newspaper that had dried out and turned brittle. Rusted-paper-clip imprints. The delaminating plastic edge of a button with Casey’s school photograph smiling out into her short future. Detectives pretended not to let such things affect them, but stories ate at them, the same way they had Joseph. He carefully straightened the pages, knowing how sacred they were to Juniper, slid them back into the envelope, and rewound the string closure. Then he looked at Glory, who returned his glance with so bleak an expression all he could think to do was motion toward the door and mouth, I’ll go now. She shook her head no, so he waited, as uncomfortable as he was listening to the girl’s weeping.
“If I could, do you know what I’d do?” he said, touching Juniper’s shoulder.
“Besides make it not have happened?” she mumbled.
“Of course, but since I can’t do that, I would make you some ch’il ahwéhé.”
“What’s that? Some kind of memory-erasing potion? Why not just give me a lobotomy?”
“Cota tea from the green thread bush. It’s good for stomachaches, it purifies the blood, and when my grandmother made it for me, just looking at the golden liquid in my cup always made me feel braver than I really am.” He looked at Glory. “What are the chances of you having Navajo herbs in your spice cabinet?”
She chuckled. “Not good.”
“Next time, I mean it, when you guys come to my place for espagueti dinner, I’ll make us a pot of cota tea. You should plan to arrive early so we can go down to the lake and look for arrowheads. There’s a good rock to sit on and watch the sun set, and right now is too early for tourists to spoil everything with their Jet Skis and motorboats.”
“Oak Shore,” Glo
ry said. “That’s where you live? I haven’t been there in a while, but it used to be such a pretty place.”
“Still is, so long as you look toward the lake and not the houses. When I was a kid, I thought that rock was where all the sunsets went, like solar collection. I figured it slept in the lake all night, then seeped out by morning to become the dawn. It was alive to me then. I’ll make us green-chile spaghetti, New Mexican style.”
“That sounds nice, doesn’t it, Juniper?” Glory asked.
Juniper lifted her face from Glory’s arms and looked at Joseph. Her skin was blotchy and her eyes as swollen as if she’d been in a fistfight. “You really can’t help?”
“No,” he said, maintaining firm eye contact. “Losing someone you loved so much never stops hurting.”
“It sucks beyond sucking,” Juniper said, standing up and wobbling a little. “I think I’ll go to bed now. Where’s my dog? I want my dog.”
“I let him out back,” Glory said. “Go wash your face and I’ll fetch him for you.”
Joseph said, “Thank you for inviting me to dinner, Juniper. I like your spaghetti recipe, but I have to say, I think mine’s better.”
Juniper laughed for real, but one of those fake smiles he considered a plague of the Caucasian race followed. If you’re sad, be sad, he wanted to say. She walked down the hall. He heard a door click shut, then water running. At the back door, Glory whistled for Cadillac and brought him to Juniper when she came out of the bathroom. She took her dog with her and closed her bedroom door. Joseph and Glory sat at the table, their coffee cold. She took both cups and emptied them in the sink.
“Why did you ask me to stay?” he asked.
She turned around, her silver hair falling loose from its bun, strands swinging one second behind her. He saw a glimpse of her true self then, and how she made herself plain on purpose, proving Lorna’s words. Glory was scraped-raw vulnerable. As if someone had removed her outer layer of skin. She was always going to be prettier than she let herself believe, and this ability to ignore that natural beauty was what made the older sister so critical of her life. Maybe keeping a distance was part her grieving, a way to stave off feelings. Though how it was possible to remain distant with Juniper on board he could not imagine.
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