Earth to Emily

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  “Tomorrow,” Jack replied.

  “You two driving?”

  “Flying in my plane.”

  “Sweet! Carry me with you?”

  “Uh . . . I guess we could . . .”

  “Perfect. I take a bus to Albuquerque from there.”

  Jack looked at me. “Okay, then?”

  Not okay. But what could I say, really? She was my friend, she was stranded, and if Jack didn’t object, then how could I?

  “Okay, then,” I said, and hard as I’d tried to sound enthusiastic, my voice rang a false note to my ear, but neither Jack nor Ava reacted.

  “I’ll get a report on conditions and text you when I know more in the morning,” Jack said to me.

  “Sounds good.”

  I stood my ground in the cold, trying to wait Ava out. I opened the door. “Better get in before you freeze to death, Ava.”

  She put her arms around Jack and tilted her head back. “I falling in love with Texas, Jack.” She kissed him, on the mouth. “See you tomorrow.” She walked in the door, then cocked her hip and put a hand on it. “You coming, Emily?”

  “I-I-I . . .” I licked my lips, my eyes darting between Ava and Jack. I wanted to give him a chance to kiss me. This was supposed to have been a date. But there was no way the ultra-private Jack would put his lips anywhere near mine with Ava staring at us, if he’d even been considering it at all.

  “Ava, give us a moment?” Jack smiled at her and gestured toward the inside of the house.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  “Ohhhh yah.” Ava disappeared from the open doorway, but not before shooting me a lascivious grin.

  When she was gone, Jack closed the distance between us. “I thought we’d never get rid of her.”

  “Me either.” My heart pounded harder, and I was afraid he could feel it through his chest.

  He took off one glove then slid his hand under my hair at the base of my neck. I closed my eyes and his warm lips covered mine. They were soft and full, and they clung to mine like I realized I was now clinging to him with both my hands. He nudged my lips apart and took my top lip into his, sucking gently. I groaned, and I reached up to grasp the back of his head. Within seconds, we’d drifted away from the porch light and Jack’s hands had worked their way inside my wrap, my top, and the silky bra I was suddenly oh-so-glad I’d worn. The man had lightning hands, but mine found his butt just as fast and I squeezed and pulled him close. As cold as it was outside, suddenly, I had an urge to rip a few layers off. Jack turned my back to the wall of the house and leaned into me, harder and harder. His lips broke from mine and he kissed his way down my neck, his lips rough against my cold skin.

  “Ooooh,” I gasped.

  He didn’t answer, which was good, because I didn’t want him to stop what he was doing. I grasped his hair with both hands and laid my head against the wall.

  “Emily, I making hot tea. You want some?” Ava said, her voice shattering the silence only inches from my eardrum.

  I yelped, and Jack’s face shot back from my chest.

  Ava grinned. “Oh, sorry.” She turned away. “Um, um, um,” she said, shutting the door behind her.

  “Awkward,” I said to Jack. But she’d probably arrived in the nick of time to save us from a citizen’s arrest for public indecency from the nosy neighbor lady across the street who used to bang on the window when I made out with my high school boyfriend in his car. That wouldn’t have looked good after my bogus bust by Burrows and Samson last week.

  Jack didn’t answer. He pushed me back against the wall, and his mouth claimed mine.

  To hell with the neighbor lady, I thought, and ripped his shirt hem out of his jeans.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Luckily, the runway was clear and the temperature in the thirties the next morning. In the plane it was a nippy forty-five degrees, but as much as I hated the cold, I couldn’t have been happier. Jack put Snowflake’s kennel in the backseat, and when Ava suggested that she ride up front as a first-timer in a Skyhawk, he told her that he was putting me in shotgun so he could hold my hand. Which he did, off and on, for most of the three‑and‑a‑half‑hour flight. My arm actually got tired from holding it up to reach his, but I didn’t care. I wouldn’t have cared if I had to flap my arms to get us there. I was that happy.

  White blanketed the landscape below us most of the way, but the sky was clear and a vivid blue, like the Caribbean Sea around Ava’s home island, St. Marcos. It matched my buoyant mood. As we began our descent over the Sierra Blancas toward the tiny strip on Wrong Turn Ranch, however, the clouds grew thicker. Soon we were cruising along above an endless blanket of gray cotton balls. Jack had to let go of my hand, and his face was intense, his eyes locked onto the instrument panel. My head started to ache.

  The pitch of the engine changed and we started descending. In seconds, we’d bumped and bounced into the pit of gray cotton balls, and they clung to us, obscuring our vision. The ground could be coming up on us fast, or a mountain peak could be right in front of us. Despite the temperature in the plane, a cold sweat ran down my back. I snuck a look at Jack, and saw he was sweating, too. The gray cottony clouds seemed to go on forever, but finally we slipped out the bottom of them. Then I saw a mountaintop poking through another layer of gray cotton below. These were ominous, darker, more like mounds of ash. I put my head down and started whispering a prayer: “Dear God, if you could help us land safely, I promise to be nicer to my mother.”

  Before I got to amen, a hand tapping my shoulder startled me. I whipped around. It was Ava. I leaned toward her as far as I could, as she leaned toward me. Her dark skin seemed to have a gray-green undertone. I couldn’t hear her, but I read her lips.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  I gave her a thumbs-up sign. Just then, everything around us went dark. The Skyhawk bounced as it hurtled across the sky and toward the earth. I turned back around and clutched the armrests. The turbulence shook us so hard that I lost my sensation of up and down and sideways, with the only light coming from the instrument panel inside the plane. I could barely see Jack, only enough to know he was keeping his eyes on the dashboard controls. Nausea came over me, and my mouth went dry. The plane bucked violently, and my seatbelt cut into my lap as we dropped straight down. I felt my mouth stretch open and my ears pop. If I was screaming, I couldn’t hear myself.

  But as suddenly as we’d started shaking and dropping, we stopped falling and floated out of the clouds. The ground was below us, maybe five hundred feet, and I could see the orange windsock that marked the runway at the ranch ahead. I wiped sweat from my forehead and noticed my hands were shaking as hard as the Skyhawk had moments ago. I felt a nervous vibration in my throat.

  I studied the ground and took deep, calming breaths. The snow here was only patchy, and it looked like someone had plowed the runway, because it was completely clear. Those were good things. Everything would be all right.

  The plane’s wheels hit the dirt. Fifteen minutes later, we had loaded an unsteady Ava along with Snowflake and our bags into the Suburban—which took twice as long as usual since we’d brought presents for half of Tularosa—had fueled and hangared the plane and were on our way to the ranch house. I turned my phone on and it searched for a signal. When it found it, it made a series of burps and whistles I’d never heard before. Today. Today I was resetting all the dang tones into something recognizable. I read the screen. Three voice mails. Six text messages. Twelve emails. I viewed the list of numbers from which I had voice mails first. All three calls were from an unknown number. I didn’t play the unknown-number game. Telemarketers, probably. I put my phone down, then, worried about Betsy being snatched by Immigration, I picked it back up and pressed play anyway, then put it to my ear.

  A man said, “Emily, Merry Christmas.”

  I pressed my fist to my mouth, hard. A gravelly voice from the past. A voice I hadn’t heard in nearly a decade from a person I hadn’t seen in fifteen years. But I would recogniz
e this voice until the day I died, even though it sounded older. It was a voice that turned me into a child who’d been left, again, in a split second. My father, Johnny Phelps.

  His message kept playing. “I know you’re probably surprised to hear from me. I would really like to talk to you and explain what happened. I’ve missed you more than I can say, and I love you.”

  The voice mail ended. Swallowing down bile, I pressed play for the next one.

  “Uh, I forgot to tell you how to get hold of me. Please call me as soon as you can. There’s some things you need to know, not just for me, but because they’re important for you.” He recited a phone number.

  The voice mail ended. I put my phone in my lap and breathed in and out a few times. I wanted to get the last one over with, so I looked down, and fat teardrops rained on the iPhone screen. I had to wipe them away with my sweater before I could play the last voice mail. I felt Jack’s eyes on me, and he reached out and took my left hand.

  “Emily, one more thing. If you could please talk to Jack, tell him it wasn’t me that took that stuff, I would appreciate it. I’ve made my mistakes, but I don’t take another fellow’s things. Thank you, Sweet Pea. I love you.”

  Sweet Pea? He had the nerve to call me Sweet Pea when I hadn’t heard from him in years? And what was this about Jack? My Jack?

  I jerked my hand away from My Jack and pressed play again. Listened again. Pressed play again. Listened again. There was no denying what I’d heard. My father knew Jack. Jack knew Dad.

  Well, Merry frickin’ Christmas to me.

  I dropped the phone in my lap then my face in my hands and sobbed.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Jack stood on the other side of the door to my bathroom. “I’m sorry. Your dad made me promise to let him tell you. I shouldn’t have waited this long.”

  I was mad enough to kill him, possibly madder than I’d ever been at anyone in my whole life. I sunk into the bubble bath up to my eyeballs, wanting to tune him out, but wanting even more to hear what he had to say. I would have to wait and kill him when he was done.

  I eased my ears and mouth out of the water and hollered. “You should have told me the first second you knew!”

  Jack’s voice grew frustrated. “Looking at a picture of you and your dad in a family album while sitting in the living room with your mother, you want me to say, ‘Hey, isn’t that Johnny Phelps? I put him in the slammer’?”

  “I didn’t even know he was alive, much less that he was in prison!”

  “How was I supposed to know that?”

  “You found out soon enough. You could have told me then.”

  “I needed to figure some things out first.”

  “What?”

  “Things.”

  He kept talking, but I sunk beneath the water again where I didn’t have to hear him. He could have all the good reasons in the world but the fact remained that I deserved to know my father was alive. I deserved to know where he was. Jack could have found a way to tell me, but he didn’t. I came back up for air.

  Jack said, “Are you even listening?”

  “I’m not sure. What did you say?”

  There was a thrump against the door, and when he spoke his voice sounded different, farther away. I pictured him, leaning against the door, arms probably crossed, eyes on the ground twelve inches in front of his boots. My heart tugged a little, and I smacked it away without mercy.

  “I said I’ve been trying to tell you for a week. Things kept getting in the way.”

  “A week? Seven twenty-four-hour days? And you couldn’t find any time in them?”

  “It’s not like you tell me everything, like who that guy was you were talking to at church last night.”

  I submerged again. The things I ran out of time to tell him and the things he couldn’t find time to tell me were so different they weren’t even events in the same rodeo. They were different like bull riding from ballet. The silence of the water thrummed in my ears. I felt my long hair floating, touching my arms. I came up for a breath.

  “So tell me now.”

  “This would be easier if you’d let me in.”

  “I’m in the bathtub.”

  “I won’t look. I can’t talk to you through a closed door.”

  “In a minute.”

  “Okay.” Something started scratching against the door. “Snowflake, no,” he said in an alpha voice. The scratching stopped. “I met your father ten years ago. In Alamogordo. After he was arrested for murder.”

  “Murder? My dad is a murderer?” I jumped to my feet, and water sloshed over the sides. I didn’t care.

  “He’s a good guy that got caught up in a bad situation.”

  “What kind of bad situation?” I sank slowly back into the tub. More water sloshed out.

  “He should be the one to tell you.” Jack paused, waiting for me to let him off the hook, I assumed, but I didn’t. “He got injured and couldn’t rodeo, had money trouble, picked up odd jobs. Got crossways with someone he worked with.”

  Oh no. I squeezed my hands into fists.

  “They got in a fight. He killed the guy with a broken beer bottle. Your dad said it was self-defense, but it didn’t look good.”

  I became aware that I was rocking back and forth in the water, arms wrapped around myself, keening softly.

  Jack whispered, his voice sounding agonized, too. “Are you okay?”

  I made myself stop the noise. I hated that he heard me. I hated being this weak, this vulnerable. I snapped, “Just finish.”

  Again, I heard a noise like he turned, and then his voice was louder. “I was the prosecutor. He had a shit court-appointed attorney, but no priors, so I took a plea for involuntary manslaughter. He got out in November.”

  “So where’s he been since he got out?”

  “Here.”

  “Here where?”

  “Wrong Turn Ranch.”

  “He was here at Wrong Turn Ranch?”

  “Up until two weeks ago, yes. Working for Mickey for a month.”

  Mickey knew, too. And Laura. Half of Otero County probably knew. My head pounded, boom, boom, boom, like a mallet against a drum. My father, who I hadn’t seen in fifteen years, had been working for Mickey. But that meant he worked for Jack, since it was Jack’s family that owned Wrong Turn Ranch. My father worked for Jack. Until two weeks ago. And now Dad was calling me, wanting me to make peace between Jack and him.

  My lips felt numb when I spoke. “Jack, why did he leave?”

  The water had grown cold in the tub. I twisted the left spigot. As hot water poured in, I heard Ava’s voice. I moved to the end of the tub nearest the door, careful to avoid scalding myself, but trying to catch what she said. She didn’t whisper, so it wasn’t too hard.

  “Good evening, Jack. Emily okay?” Again, her island accent seemed so strange to me, first in Texas, then in New Mexico.

  “She’s upset with me. She’ll be out soon.”

  “I put dinner on, all right? Take your time. You two taking care of me, let me do something for you.”

  “We have a big group tonight. It’s too much.”

  “How many?” Ava’s voice said.

  “Nine.”

  I added up names in my head. Jack, Ava, Emily, Mickey and Laura, Greg, Farrah, Judith, and me. That was eight.

  “Who’s number nine?” I blurted.

  “Uh, Collin.”

  I shouted, unable to contain myself, and turned off the water at the same time. “What? Collin is coming to dinner? All the way from Taos, on Christmas? I thought you hated Collin?”

  “I got over it. I asked him for help on this smuggling thing.”

  “Oh. My. God.”

  “He had to be down to Las Cruces Monday anyway. He’s stopping by.”

  I heard Ava’s voice again. “Collin? My girl Katie’s brother Collin live in New Mexico. That Collin?”

  “The same.”

  “Nine people then. Can I cook anything I find in your kitchen?”
r />   “Uh, yeah, and there’s several very well-stocked freezers in the garage.”

  “I on it.”

  This was perfect. Collin, who had messed up my life last time I saw him, coming tonight, when my life had gotten back on track only to tank again. The competing scents of bath products—vanilla soap, coconut shampoo, cinnamon-apple bubble bath, freesia conditioner—suddenly made me feel nauseous. I lifted the tub drain and dried myself off in fast, rough strokes. I donned a robe from a hook on the back of the door. I wrapped the tie around my waist and knotted it. I pulled open the door, and Jack fell into me, pulling my robe open a few inches as he caught himself. Snowflake jumped in the air and put her front paws on my shin.

  “Jack!” I jerked it closed.

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m getting dressed now. I’ll talk to you later.”

  He looked at the ground and his posture was so hangdog it was almost comical, except that this wasn’t funny, and I wasn’t laughing. He turned and left, with a dejected Snowflake behind him.

  ***

  The downside of throwing Jack out of my room, I discovered later, was that he went straight to the kitchen to cook with Ava. Her lilt and flirty laugh rang through the house. I pictured her displaying her assets to their greatest advantage for him, and it raised my hackles. It wasn’t like me to be so insecure and jealous, and I hated it in myself, but there it was, green-eyed, shrewlike, and on the rampage, even though Ava was only being kind and thoughtful. Well, I could do penance later. Right now I hated that I’d gotten my hair wet and that I had to waste the time drying it when Jack had her fun-loving nature and sexy smile as a contrast to my anger and harsh words. Which didn’t change the fact that I was mad at him—very, very mad—and that I wasn’t sure if I could ever trust him. He had a disturbing habit of withholding important information, and this time it wasn’t his secrets he kept from me, but mine. I jerked a wide-toothed comb through my tangles. It hurt. Good.

  I went into the bedroom and pulled warm clothes out of my suitcase. More voices had joined Jack and Ava. Young voices. Greg and Farrah? I tried to muster up a smile, but my mouth wouldn’t do it yet. Still, it would be great to see them. I slipped into Levi’s and a purple mock turtleneck, then shoved my feet into fur-lined Crocs my mother had given me for Christmas. I’d never owned—or wanted—anything like them. But they were mine now, so I was going to give them a try. I grabbed my phone and headed back into the bathroom. I flipped my hair upside down and aimed the blow-dryer at it with one hand and scrolled through my missed texts and emails with the other.