Alma escorts an explosive Duncan Moi—although not explosive in the way she’d expected, simmering rather than erupting—to the bright, wide office he’s enjoyed since his earliest days as a new associate. Without speaking, he grabs a few document boxes and fills them with whatever comes to hand: framed photos of his boat and Porsche, glass tchotchkes from major deals, office supplies, a PlayStation, an assortment of silk ties and pill bottles from a lower drawer. Alma watches to prevent the escape of work documents and client files, but Duncan’s drawers are mostly devoid of work. He shoulders his golf bag, piles one box on the other, and turns on Alma. “This isn’t over, you bitch,” he snaps. “I’d watch my back if I were you.”
Alma watches Duncan’s retreat to the elevators, then walks back to her desk, fingering the key card, lost in thought. Louis, hurrying back from the kitchen with a glass of water, runs into her, spilling it all over both of them. They stand in front of Amanda’s desk, flicking water from their clothes and shaking it off their feet.
“I’m sorry, Alma.” The words sound awkward coming out of Louis’s mouth, but he manages them. “We should’ve gotten rid of Duncan a long time ago.”
“Don’t worry about it.” The apology, so long owed, torn from him at such obvious cost, would have thrilled her a week ago. Now it falls through a void, touching nothing. She looks him fully in the eyes for the first time in months and is surprised to discover that she’s several inches taller than he is. Louis’s face looks small and lost behind frail designer glasses as she pushes past him. He flutters out of her path like a pile of fall leaves—weightless, insubstantial, as he always has been, she realizes now. Her future here is before her on a platter, now that Duncan is gone and Louis at least temporarily defanged, and she sees like coming to the crest of a long-building wave that she wants none of it. A few feet into her office, she stops. “Louis?” she says without turning around.
“Yes?”
“I quit.” She starts walking to her desk, winking at Brittany, who sits cross-legged in one of Alma’s leather chairs, abusing a stress ball.
“You—you can’t quit! We’re about to close a deal!” Louis steps into the doorframe, grasping it on both sides, enlarged and irate. Brittany stands and moves to put the desk between herself and Louis.
Alma steps behind her desk and looks up at him in amusement. “Oh, you might be surprised what I can do,” she tells him. “I’ve finally got it worked out. There’s somewhere else I need to be.” She opens a drawer and begins to pile personal items on top of her desk: dark chocolate, ibuprofen, hand lotion.
“Alma, what are you doing?” he shouts. “This will affect your bonus!”
“Excuse me,” a voice says behind him. Alma looks up to see Amanda smiling at her. Louis lets her pass and Amanda calmly shuts the door in his face.
“You quit?” She grins. “For real?”
Alma grins back and waves a toothbrush at her former assistant before tossing it in a banker’s box at her feet. “Looks that way.”
“Well happy independence day. Good for you. Where will you go?” Amanda drops into a chair and kicks her feet up onto the desk for the first time.
“You’re going to think I’m out of my mind.”
CHAPTER 22
SIX DAYS LATER, 1 P.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME
The U-Haul grinds up the last rise in second gear. “Hey, I see them coming!” Pete shouts from the passenger seat.
“Who?” Alma asks, peering into the side mirror.
Brittany, squeezed between them with coats on her lap, cranes at the mirrors. “I can’t see anything!”
“It’s Chance and Mae, and I think— Oh yeah, Jayne’s there too, holding something on her lap.”
Alma slowly takes the turn into the drive and now sees the Murphrod cresting the last rise on the snowy road, bearing a well-wrapped welcoming committee. Alma would bet money that Jayne is carrying baked goods. She pulls in behind the house and backs up the truck to the steps, then they all jump down and come around the side of the house to meet the visitors, shrugging on coats, laughing and gasping as the wind catches them hard beyond the lee of the house.
Alma watches the truck advance cautiously on icy gravel, smiling at the sight. Pete puts an arm around her and they stand together while Brittany runs down the drive, coat open, hair flying, a native-born Montanan heedless of the cold. The pickup rolls in as Brittany holds the gate, then Jayne opens her door for the girl to jump up. There is still no cell phone coverage. There is still a huge coal mine a few miles up the road, its land agents circling like buzzards. There is still only an outhouse. Vicky and Walt are dead, Pete is a murderer, Brittany is a liar, Helen is a creature beyond Alma’s capacity to comprehend, and all this Alma carries up against her own skin, her own flesh the poultice that will draw out the poison for as long as she is strong enough. There’s a pain in her stomach that hasn’t gone away in days. Montana has drawn her close to whisper in her ear that evil exists, even in places of great beauty. Even in the people you love.
But evil is not the end of the story. Her arm is tight around her big brother and the land rolls out beneath them. The home place rises solid beside them, Charles and Eliza’s deep roots spreading above and below, intricate, textured, real. Everything changes. Nothing perishes. Alma is not whole, she is not healed, she is not everything the family needs. She’s an escape artist run out of tricks. All she has to offer is that she’s here. It will have to be enough. The effort of holding life at arm’s length is more than she can sustain, so here it is: the biggest risk, the act of commitment.
The heartbreaking arc of big sky unfolds over a landscape imprinted on their souls, repeated in their DNA, generation after generation, past and promise, curse and catalyst. Chance stops and Brittany leaps out with the Murphys to hike up the last curve of the drive, red-cheeked and smiling, Mae’s hand in hers, the girls’ hair blowing like festival flags. Alma lifts her chin and faces into the wind, and the wind smells inexpressibly sweet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CARRIE LA SEUR is an energy and environmental lawyer in Billings, Montana. She earned a doctorate in modern languages from Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, a law degree from Yale, and a bachelor’s degree magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College. She is a licensed private pilot who hikes, skis, and fishes the Montana wilderness with her family in her spare time.
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CREDITS
Cover design by Amanda Kain
Cover photograph © by Donald A. Higgs / Getty Images
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE HOME PLACE. Copyright © 2014 by Carrie La Seur. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Designed by Jamie Lynn Kerner
ISBN 978-0-06-232344-6
EPUB Edition July 2014 ISBN: 9780062323460
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