Farrah had gotten the hang of the rudimentaries of horseback riding in five minutes, and she was keeping up a steady stream of chatter to her mount, Lilac, a fifteen-year-old brood mare with a white star in the middle of her red forehead. I had clipped the lead line from Lilac to my saddle on Jarhead, the former racer whose special treasures had ended up at ABC Half-Price Resale in Amarillo.
Pink splotches brightened Farrah’s cheeks, and she was far more talkative than she’d been since I’d known her. “I like your—” She pointed toward her teeth, lips bared.
I knew what she meant: my gap. I had a love-hate relationship with it. “Thanks. It’s because I didn’t wear my retainer after I got my braces off, but it’s not bad.”
“I think it’s cute.” She lowered her voice, and motioned her head toward Jack ahead of us. “Does he like it?”
“Jack?” I laughed, remembering my orthodontist’s lecture and Jack calling me Snaggletooth. “I don’t know.”
Jack didn’t react, so maybe he hadn’t heard the question. I wondered what he thought about it. I hadn’t had much of a gap when I met my soon-to-be-ex-husband, Rich, but over the years it had widened back to the size it had been pre-braces. Rich hadn’t liked it.
Louder, she asked, “Are you guys married?”
My mouth worked a little, searching for words, and Jack’s head turned back toward Farrah. Then his eyes locked on mine, and I could feel the heat rushing to my cheeks.
He said, “Huh. No, we’re not.”
Greg didn’t give any sign that he was keeping up with our conversation. He had a two-handed death grip on the saddle horn in front of him, his knuckles strained and white. His tall horse, Buzz, had a rolling gait that seemed to be giving Greg the willies. Jack had clipped Buzz to the saddle on Jumper, the tall black thoroughbred who was Jack’s normal ride.
Farrah nodded. “Is that why she calls you Jack Ass?”
I broke in quickly. “It’s a term of endearment.”
She cocked her head. “What’s a term of endearment?”
I stuttered a little. “I-i-it’s a nickname for someone you like.”
“You call people you like Jack Ass?”
Jack said, “The girl has a point, Emily.”
I couldn’t think of an answer before Farrah thought of her next question. “Are you married to anyone else?”
“No,” Jack and I said, almost at the same time.
“Have you ever been married to anyone before?”
“Yes,” we said, again in tandem.
“Do you have kids?”
I shook my head.
Jack cleared his throat. “A boy and a girl.”
I drew in a breath as quietly as I could and held it for several seconds. Jack had never mentioned his kids in front of me.
“Do they live here?”
Jack drummed the fingers of his left hand on his saddle horn. “Follow me.”
He clucked to Jumper, who moved off, tugging Buzz behind him. I worried about Greg for a moment, but he didn’t panic. His eyes were the size of silver dollars, and not the Susan B. Anthony kind.
I squeezed my ankles against Jarhead and he broke into a slow lope before I pulled him up beside Jumper, Lilac following suit, and Farrah giggling like a kid on a carousel.
I leaned into Jack and whispered. “Where are we going?”
Jack didn’t answer.
Silence fell over us, save for the soft plop of the horses’ hooves on the snowy ground. The tall trees muffled even that noise, creating a cathedral-like atmosphere. The air grew colder as the horses climbed. Heat and the smell of sweat and leather clung to the animals. I marveled at the moment, these kids—orphans, runaways, witnesses to a murder, victims of abuse—here, in these pristine conditions. It was like the forest was giving them back their innocence. I could feel the tension easing in them, and me.
After ten minutes, we reached a partially cleared hilltop. The ground fell away over a pond on its far side. A large coyote was drinking and his head shot up at our approach. He sniffed with his nose in the air. His enormous ears twitched our way and he lifted one front paw, preparing to bolt. He froze, statue-still, for long seconds, then bounded into the forest. I wondered what he was doing out in broad daylight, but guessed he was hungry. The ranchers hated the coyotes. The clever animals preyed on livestock when their natural food sources dwindled, especially in the dead of winter, like now. Their reputation had been tarnished of late, too, by the poorly named coyotes that crossed the border with contraband of various kinds, usually drugs. But I admired the animals. They were survivors, often relying on their wits and bravery to stay alive when other animals perished in dwindling habitat and harsh conditions.
I shivered, remembering the mask of the Clown, the Apache Mountain Spirit Dancer that I had seen on my last visit to New Mexico, as Betsy and I ducked into Jack’s plane and her kidnappers bore down on us with guns. The Clown had worn the snout of an animal on his face, and the ears of an animal in his headdress. I had thought it was a wolf, then, but maybe it was a coyote. This creature today reminded me of the Clown, and brought some of the magic of New Mexico back to my conscious thought.
Jack stopped his horse. I felt his eyes on me, and I looked over at him. We held each other’s gaze for a moment. I barely breathed.
Then, with his eyes still locked on mine, Jack pointed to his left, to the edge of the clearing, at a collection of about a dozen headstones of varying ages, sizes, and angles. A low, rusted iron fence surrounded the plot. A cemetery.
“A few years ago, I had a case against a very bad person, a man who made teenage runaways work for him as prostitutes.”
I snuck a glance at the kids, wondering if they saw the parallel to their precarious situation. They didn’t react.
Jack was still telling his story. “I started getting death threats, but I ignored them. One day after my wife picked our kids up from school, she came to my building to borrow my car. She called me, but I didn’t pick up. She parked and loaded the kids and my son’s yellow Lab puppy into my car. When she turned it on, a bomb exploded. I heard it—everyone for miles around heard it. I realized when I got outside that it was my car, but I hadn’t checked my messages. I didn’t know my family had come, and I didn’t know they were in it. I stood there watching it, not knowing. I couldn’t have saved them, but still, I didn’t know.”
A warm wetness worked its way down my cheeks. I’d known what had happened to Jack’s family from his secretary, Judith, but the version she’d told me was from her perspective. It had been sad, but nothing like his. My mouth fell open but no words came out. Still, Jack’s eyes held mine.
“Someone was trying to kill you?” Greg asked.
“Yes. And got my family instead.” Jack swallowed and his Adam’s apple worked hard to get it down.
“Did he go to jail?”
“Not for that.”
My hand covered my mouth. “Oh God. I’m so sorry, Jack.”
He inclined his head to me, acknowledging my words. “There wasn’t much left when the firefighters were done. But there was enough to give them a place here, to be remembered, at the family cemetery”—he pointed—“facing the sacred White Mountain.”
His words drew my eyes upward, and I realized that the cemetery had a perfect view of Sierra Blanca Peak to the north, the jewel of the Sierra Blanca range. I swiveled my head around, searching, but the clouds blocked my other views. Thanks to Jack’s cousin Mickey, I knew that to the southwest was the Three Sisters Mountains, to the northwest the Oscura Peak, and to the southeast the Guadalupe Mountains. The mountains provided a frame of reference for directions within the Mescalero Apache territory and were embodied in their sacred Mountain Spirits. I understood the placement of the cemetery now, and I was glad his family had found a resting place there.
“See the dark spot against that hillside?” I looked up and saw Jack was staring in the same direction as me, and that he was talking to me.
I peered again at the next hi
llside up the range. I did see a dark spot. “Yes.”
“That’s the old Sacramento Silver Mine. My family’s occupation before my grandfather got us into horses.”
“Like the photograph in your office?” He kept a black and white of an entrance to an old mine on his wall of fame back in Amarillo.
“Yep.”
“That your wife took.”
He turned to me, nodding. “The summer before she was killed.”
“She was very talented.”
He smiled with sad eyes. “Yes, she was.”
Jack dismounted, stepping over to help Greg off of Buzz while still holding on to Jumper’s reins. I hit the ground ready to give Farrah a hand, but she’d already slipped off Lilac’s back on her own.
“What do I say to Jack?” she asked me, quietly.
I wiped my pooled tears and squeezed her arm. “Nothing.” I shook my head. “There’s nothing you can say, except you’re sorry.”
She walked toward the cemetery, as did Greg, but she paused to whisper something to Jack, who nodded and hugged her around the shoulders with one arm before she moved on. I watched as hers and Greg’s paths converged. Greg opened the creaky little gate and they stopped in front of a headstone. Farrah knelt and rubbed snow from its face.
Jack turned, meeting me as I moved toward him, Jarhead following me. My arms wound around Jack of their own accord. He looped his around my waist, and I laid my head against his chest. “I am so sorry about your family.”
He squeezed hard.
“I was wondering if you were ever going to tell me about them.”
I felt his head nod. “I’m a little slow, but I get where I’m headed, eventually.”
Jarhead’s muzzle pressed into the back of my head.
“The horse is getting jealous,” Jack said.
I laughed, softly, and rubbed my tears off on Jack’s coat then held perfectly still, afraid of breaking the spell, of Jack’s arms pulling away from me. I watched the two teenagers in the graveyard and listened to his heartbeat.
Greg called out, “There’s an Indian name on this one.”
Against my ear, Jack’s voice rumbled in his chest. “My family is part Apache.”
“Was your wife Apache?”
“No.”
Farrah wiped another headstone. “Some people think I’m Indian, but not like your Indians here. Like from the country of India. I’m not, though. My family is mostly Syrian. Sometimes I think it would be easier if I were from India.”
Greg’s fists balled. “People blame her when they do bad things to her. They tell her it’s because she’s a Muslim, and that she and her family should go home.”
Jack squeezed me tight again.
“Only I have no family. Not anymore. They were Muslim, but I’ve never even been to a mosque. Not that I remember, anyway. I’ve always been in ‘Christian’ foster care.” She made quotes in the air around her head. “I want to learn more about the Koran someday. I think it would help me understand my family.”
“So you don’t have any family here in the U.S.?” I asked.
“No. My mother died in a car crash in Amarillo when I was little. My dad and brothers disappeared back home before I was born.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Jack turned toward the kids, one arm still around me. “Family makes us who we are, even after they’re gone. If it were easy, we would be less.”
My mind flitted to the father I took after, the one who had run away, and the mother I loved but was nothing like, the one who had stayed. To the family Jack had lost that still shaped him. To the fact that all of us here had lost the people closest to us.
Farrah nodded. “It’s hard sometimes, but I wouldn’t want to be someone else.”
She stood up and walked through the plot, her hands trailing on the tops of the stones, her champion beside her.
Jack turned to me again, and this time he leaned down and pressed his lips against mine. They were warmer than I’d have expected out there, and so, so soft. Mine clung to his for long seconds. When the kiss ended, he pulled me to him again. I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t get past the lump in my throat as I hung on to him for as long as I could.
***
Mickey and Laura leaned against the gold, rusty brown, blue-gray, and tan granite island countertop in Jack’s kitchen. Or his parents’ kitchen, rather, although they now traveled the states in an RV and only came home every year or three. Mickey had one arm around his dark wife’s tiny waist, and he was nodding as Jack spoke. Snowflake gobbled down kibble from her silver bowl to their left, by the hallway to the garage. The kids were upstairs getting cleaned up, Farrah in my room, and Greg in Jack’s.
“Emily took in some more lost children. These two are teenagers. A boy, George, who’s fifteen, and a girl, Frannie, who’s fourteen.” It felt odd to hear their cover names from Jack’s mouth. “They’re runaways, and they’re witnesses to a murder. We shouldn’t have them, but we didn’t know what else to do.”
“Shouldn’t have them like ‘could go to jail for it,’” I said.
Jack nodded. “We’ll have them here for the weekend, until we can figure out a plan for them.”
Laura looked from Jack to me and back to Jack. “What about their families?”
I answered, stirring boiling pasta as I did. “Both of them said their parents are dead. No other family in the picture. They’ve had a terrible time of it.”
She sucked her lips in and spoke in a softer voice. “Have they been in any trouble with the law?”
“Only for running away from abusive living situations.” I lowered my voice, too. “Don’t get me wrong. They’re tough and savvy. There’s probably not much Gr—George wouldn’t do to protect Frannie.”
My timer started ringing. I turned it and the gas off and grabbed a strainer.
Mickey and Laura looked at each other, and she nodded at him, shaking her sleek, brown bobbed hair.
He spoke. “Are they . . . intimate?”
I poured the pasta into the strainer over the sink, then turned on the cold water to rinse the noodles. “I don’t know. They don’t act like it, but then again, all they have is each other, and they’re human.”
Jack had on an apron with a cowboy Santa on it, and he slipped on a matching oven mitt. “I wondered if you guys wanted to shepherd them for a week or two, before I asked anyone else, because, well—” He stood there, his mouth open but no more words coming out.
“It’s okay to say it, Jack.” Mickey put his other arm around Laura, and he squeezed her to him. “Because you know we want kids but haven’t been able to have any of our own.”
“Yet,” Laura said in a fierce voice from inside his bear hug. “I’m retiring, and the doctor is hopeful that when I gain weight I’ll have better luck.” Sinewy muscle defined Laura’s body, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her anywhere.
“And because I couldn’t think of anyone I’d trust more with kids we aren’t supposed to have that need protection.” Jack opened the oven door and peeked in. “The garlic bread needs a few more minutes.” He shut the door. “Plus you’ve already had the foster training, haven’t you?”
“No.” Laura extricated herself from her bear.
Mickey looked down. “I jumped the gun on that. We weren’t ready.”
Laura’s stiff body language and crossed arms left little doubt as to who wasn’t ready of the two of them, then or now.
Jack didn’t seem to notice the dissonance in the room. Back when I was an active horsewoman, I’d known this vibe well. It was the feeling I’d get when saddle breaking a young horse, like once when I was forcing a filly to accept a saddle cinch. She was scared, and her eyes were wide and white rimmed. It was a sign to step back, to let things progress at a speed she was more comfortable with, so that she learned to give in instead of fight. I’d praised her and given her time to think about the saddle cinch loose around her belly, and an hour later, she’d let me tighten it without a fuss while she chewe
d the apple treats she’d taken out of my hand.
“No need to make any decisions now,” I said, as I poured the pasta back into the pot and dumped half a jar of pesto into it. I stirred it briskly with a wooden spoon, shaking a blend of Romano and Parmesan cheese in as I did, trying not to look like I was desperate to hear them say they’d host the kids. Snowflake showed up at my ankles, hopeful that I would spill a little cheese near her mouth. I pinched some and dropped it to the floor. She scarfed it up.
I saw Laura’s chest heave, and she moved an inch back toward Mickey. “It’s really bad timing for us.”
I could hear the wind outside and icy individual snowflakes pelting the window, the heater cycling on, and the dishwasher running with the load of lunch dishes. I’d forgotten to turn it on until we started cooking dinner. Jack and Mickey didn’t make a sound.
“I understand.” I did, even if I didn’t like it and prayed she’d change her mind.
Footsteps thumped down the stairs. Greg appeared, looking both ways at the bottom. To his right was the great room.
I hailed him from his left. “In here.”
He grinned and ducked his head. Water glistened in his hair, and I realized he didn’t have on his grimy cap. He shuffled into the kitchen, hands deep in the pockets of Jack’s too-large maroon New Mexico State University sweat pants. Snowflake pranced to meet him, and he bent down to ruffle her ears. “Where’s Far—”
I hurried to cover his slip. “Frannie’s still upstairs. George, this is Jack’s cousin Mickey and his wife, Laura.”
Greg stood up. “Whoa, now I can see what you meant about part of your family is Apache.”
Earth to Emily Page 10
