Come In and Cover Me (32 page)

A softening of his face. “I never said I didn't want to be here with you. I said I knew I should leave.”

“Then why are Non and Lynay here if I didn't bring them here?”

He shrugged.

“Aren't you supposed to be wise and all-knowing now that you're dead?” she asked.

“Your mortal mind would shatter from the depths of the wisdom I can impart.”

“You are full of crap.”

He laughed and flipped his hair out of his eyes. “You love me.”

“Always,” she said. She loved his hair. “I thought you were a gift, you know. I thought that the fact that you came back to me was a gift from God. You coming back, keeping me from being alone in that house—it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Really?” he said.

“Well,” she said, “maybe not.”

“Ren?” called Silas. He was just outside the door. “You okay? Ready for bed?”

“Yeah,” she said, the relief hitting her again full force. Silas's voice was cheerful and strong and safe from harm. “Coming.”

“Bye, Rennie,” said Scott, and he touched her face as gentle as a song.

She told him good-bye and meant it.

“You're snoring,” she said, ramming her shoulder into his.

“Sorry.”

He did not roll over, and she knew the silence would not last. She elbowed him when he started again.

“You're still snoring,” she said.

“You used to like me,” he said, rolling over to his side.

“I still do. When you're not snoring.”

“I'm not listening to a word you're saying,” he slurred. “You treat me like a dog. A dog you'd rather kill and eat.”

She got up to use the bathroom, and when she came back, shivering at the chill in the air, she slid under the covers with one lunge, curving herself close to him to soak up his warmth. He murmured, nothing intelligible, and his hand landed on her thigh. He always reached for her when she climbed back into bed, whether he was awake or not. Now, as his hand settled on her cool leg, he frowned in his sleep. He began rubbing his palm against her skin briskly, as if he were hoping to start a fire. When her thigh had warmed to his satisfaction, his hand stilled. He leaned in to her body.

“You're a gift,” she said in his ear.

Silas insisted on showing her the warm spring that fed the creek. It took half an hour of driving and another half an hour of hiking to make it there. They didn't bother with bathing suits: From their vantage point, they would see anyone approach from a mile or more away. The source of the entire canyon's water supply collected in a pool no more than twenty feet across, then trickled down the rocks farther into the canyon. The water was only waist-high, so they had to bend their knees to properly submerge. The sun reflected off the water and onto the juniper, running through the branches like an electrical charge.

Scott was gone. Ren did not miss him. She felt closer to him than she had in some time, really. He had left all his songs in her head. After the skin on their toes and fingers had crinkled, Silas said he needed to cool off, and Ren walked to the edge of the pool, toes sinking into algae, stumbling on an occasional rock. The view was impressive. The water fell like a ribbon down the hill. Something splashed a few feet behind her. A short branch bumped against her arm.

“What are you, twelve?” she called over her shoulder. “Stop throwing stuff at me.”

Another splash. Then another. She swiped at the branches at first, shoving them away, making a face at Silas. He shrugged, both hands hidden behind his back. She turned back to the view. The branches continued to float past her, and she stopped trying to avoid them. They collected in the water around her, and as she got used to the rhythm of splashes, she stopped noticing them. The warm water lulled her. Suddenly a hand clasped her ankle, tugging just enough to make her lose her balance and tumble forward. She fell facedown and came up sputtering.

Silas was behind her, water dripping into his eyes, pleased with himself.

“Apache duck hunting,” he said.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“That's how the Apache hunted ducks.”

“I'm the duck?”

“Yeah. You're the duck.”

She splashed him, using both hands. “What are you talking about?”

“There were these shallow residual lakes left behind after the Rio Grande flooded,” he said, spitting out water. “And there were these ducks that would gather in the lakes. They looked like very tasty ducks to the Apache. The ducks, of course, were highly suspicious of anyone coming close to them. The Apache would try to creep close enough to them to shoot or catch them, and the ducks would just swim to the other side of the lake. So the Apache started floating a bunch of big gourds out into the water, and the gourds would drift just like the ducks were drifting. If the ducks had drifted to one edge of the lake, the gourds drifted over there, too. The ducks got used to the gourds and stopped paying attention. But then the ducks started disappearing one by one: A man would wade into the water behind the gourd, using the gourd as camouflage, walk up to a duck, grab its foot, and pull it under.”

He was so damn pleased with himself. She sprang up and out, her hands landing on his shoulders with all the force of her weight, and pushed him down into the water. He didn't go under as she had hoped—he twisted and wrapped both arms around her waist, trying to flip her under instead. She took him with her, arms wrapped around his neck and legs around his waist. She started laughing while she was still underwater, swallowing great gulps.

As they both surfaced, an image of her mother, unexpected, flooded into her head. Her mother teaching her to dive, to wrap her toes around the concrete edge of the pool, to raise her arms over her head so that they touched her ears. Her mother's arm had been firm across Ren's belly button, showing her how to curve into the water.

“You're smiling,” he said.

“So are you,” she said.

“But you're smiling at something that's not going on in this pool right now.”

“It's nothing,” she said, still smiling.

She watched his mouth tighten into a firm line, and something pulled sharply at her insides. She bent her knees and sank lower into the water, up to her chin.

“I was remembering swimming lessons,” she said.

His mouth softened. “How old were you?”

“Six, I think.”

“Were you any good?”

“I was a very good floater.”

This intrigued him. “Let's see.”

So she showed him her dead man's float and her jellyfish and her corkscrew. Her mother had shown her that one. Face half in, half out of the water, she felt her hand scrape against algae, and she felt her leg brush against Silas. Another memory rippled past—one afternoon in high school. Her mother had been in an unusually good mood, a playful mood, the kind of mood that Ren's memories told her had not existed after the accident. Ren had come through the front door after school, and as she started toward the refrigerator, she heard her mother's voice calling “Marco” from somewhere upstairs. It was a favorite childhood game, one her mother had loved to play in the house as well as in the pool. Scott had loved it, too. Ren had felt the pull of the old response: She'd called “Polo” and sprinted into the kitchen on her tiptoes. She'd heard her mother coming downstairs.

“Marco,” Anna had called.

“Polo,” Ren had answered from the kitchen before creeping into the dining room, hoping to make it upstairs while her mother was in the kitchen.

She'd turned the corner to find her mother waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.

“Gotcha,” her mother had said, grinning. There had been no sadness on Anna's face, and she had reached out one graceful hand and run it through Ren's long hair.

Ren couldn't remember what had happened next.

She closed her eyes and stood up. She staggered away from Silas, steps heavy in the water. “Hey,” she said. She turned toward him and made a show of putting her hands over her eyes.

“Marco,” she announced.

She heard splashing and attempts at quiet.

“Polo,” called Silas from somewhere behind her. She leaped toward the sound of his voice.

It was early when Ren heard the gunshot. There was only pink in the sky—no sight of the sun itself. The birds were loud and shorttempered. She had lain awake for hours in the middle of the night, and obviously Silas had decided to let her sleep when he left their bed.

Just one gunshot.

She was swinging out of bed as she woke, already throwing the sheets back before she even remembered where she was. She did remember Non's threat, though, which had resumed its status as a threat as soon as she heard the shot. She had been wrong. She had left Silas to the ghosts.

She threw open her door, striding into the kitchen in nothing but her T-shirt, which she tugged down nearly to her knees. Noises echoed around the walls of the canyon, whether a birdcall or a car door slamming or a gun, and it was hard to place the sound. It could have been fifty yards away, or it could have been a mile.

“Silas?” she called. Louder. “SILAS?”

Nothing.

Then Ed opened the screen door, pretended not to notice her lack of pants, and pointed toward Santina Canyon. “He said he wanted to go for a quick climb. Didn't sleep well, wanted to burn off some nervous energy, get his head straight. He left half an hour ago.”

Ed was reaching for his windbreaker. Ren had already grabbed both hiking boots before she remembered she needed jeans first. She ran back into her bedroom, leaving the door cracked.

“By himself?” she called.

“Yes, by himself.”

“With a gun?” She hoped it had been his gun, not someone else's.

“He never goes up through the canyon without a gun.”

She wiggled her heels into her boots as they were headed out the door. Paul rounded the corner of the building, picked up speed, and caught up with them as they started jogging toward the canyon.

“Who was that?” he asked, out of breath.

“Don't know,” Ed said. “Could be Silas was just trying to scare off a snake.”

They had walkie-talkies in the bunkhouse, but Silas hadn't taken one. No one ever remembered to take one. Ren resisted the urge to call his name again. It would do no good until they had climbed into the mouth of the canyon.

They stalked through the wide patch of grama grass, under the branches of the wild walnuts, sped up and jogged down the gravel path to the canyon. They drew closer and closer to the sheet of rock with its carved-out handholds. There was nothing but rock in front of them—no movement, no sound other than the crackle of gravel under their own feet. They all called Silas's name.

“He's still up there,” said Ren, even though they all knew it. “He'd have to have come past us otherwise.”

They scaled the wall one by one, limbs still stiff from sleep, Ed going first and Ren going last. Ed was surprisingly agile, and Paul—in the middle—was surprisingly nervous. “Heights,” he said.

“Never seems to bother you hiking up to Delgado,” said Ed, pushing off with one leg, heaving with both his arms, and hoisting himself onto the flat rock at the top.

Paul wasn't taking his eyes off his fingertips and their tight grip in the handholds. “It's different,” he said.

“Come on,” said Ren. Her hand was inches below Paul's boot, and she was itching for the next grip. “Look straight ahead of you and focus on one hold at a time.”

Silas would surely guess they had heard the shot. He would know they would worry. If he were okay, he would have headed back to the bunkhouse, surely. They should have seen him by now, scrambling down an incline, easing through a fissure, head peeking over the rock wall to ask them what the hurry was.

There was only one path to follow once they reached the entrance to the canyon—the rock closed off all other options. A path of pebbles and struggling weeds wound through boulders and towering rhyolite. The rocks climbed to the sky. The three of them passed through the first natural amphitheater, welcoming the air and light as the rock opened wide around them. A few steps on flat, easy ground, then they climbed the four steps up to the next level of the canyon.

Five minutes later, stepping into the second circular room of rock, they saw the blood. A thin trail of it ran across dirt and rock, past a catclaw, and then nothing. It was still wet. There was more rock than dirt, making it impossible to decipher footprints or other signs of movement. It was a quiet space. Nothing unusual but the blood.

Squatting on their knees, the three of them looked for a trail that wasn't there. They called Silas's name again, separately, overlapping, sometimes in unison, a rhythm like church bells. Once Ren thought she heard a response, one syllable on the wind, but then there was nothing. The tall, narrow walls did strange things to sound. She suspected the rock might be swallowing up their voices after they echoed around this one chamber, not letting them escape into the air.

“He's fine,” said Ed. “He's walked through here a thousand times.”

No one answered him. There was nothing to say. There was only watching and searching and moving one foot after the other. More long minutes of walking. Maybe ten, maybe twenty. The pink of the sky had fallen away to solid blue. They walked until the canyon walls widened and shallowed, more the height of a house than a skyscraper. For the first time, there was a glimpse of the world beyond Santina Canyon: The yellow-green fields on the other side of the canyon stretched out to the smooth sky. Some of the ledges and openings led out to those fields eventually. Their one passageway had expanded to several possible routes, none visible for more than a few yards before the rock concealed them. Ren, Ed, and Paul checked their watches, picked a direction, and agreed to meet in an hour if no one heard or found anything.