The Secrets She Keeps (21 page)

—

Shaye sat at the desk in her room. Her laptop was in front of her, and so was a bag of chips. The window was open. She’d found an old iron fan, which sat on the nightstand and blew her hair around. My own hair was still wet from the shower. I twisted it up and took the hair clip from my teeth and secured it there.

“Look at the cord on that. It’s going to catch this place on fire.”

She looked down at her computer. “What are you talking about? It’s brand new. Come here. Wait ’til you see.”

I didn’t bother to clarify; we could misunderstand each other and that was fine.
We should all—me included—be as generous with our partners as we are with other people,
I thought then.

I looked over Shaye’s shoulder. The email said:
Eric
—. Not
Hi, Eric
, or
Dear Eric.
This meant she was being stern. I saw the numbered lines implying conditions.

She minimized the letter, and it disappeared. “Not
that
.”

“You wiggled your way into
Horndog,
” I said.

“Ick, don’t say it like that. But you’d better believe it. Check it out.”

“Make it bigger.”

“
Jack
,” she said.

A black-and-white image zoomed large—a bucking horse barely out of the gate, all four feet off the ground, its mane straight up in the air. The rider on its back wore a plaid shirt and a tall hat, and he leaned forward from sudden motion, held on. A small crowd sat on the adjacent gate and watched.
Jack Waters of Tamarosa, riding Little Britches, Washoe County Roundup, 1950.

“Wow, 1950? That’s awful close, Sham. Nash had good taste. Look at him.”

“ ‘
My brother and I were bareback forever. My father had a stable. First time Pop rode a bull, there might have been a little brown bottle involved,’ Waters said. Waters, a dude wrangler at the ranch, competed this year in barebacks, saddle broncs, bulls, roping, and bulldogging.
Can you believe it?”

“What the heck is bulldogging?”

“Hey, I’d bulldog that guy.”

“It’s got to be him.
The
Jack,” I said.

“I spent most of the morning looking up
Jack Waters
and
Jack Waters, Nevada,
whatever I could think of. He couldn’t have had a more common name, could he? Thanks for that, buddy.”

“Now I’m definitely leaning toward not crazy.”

“Me, too. Look, we’ve got 1950, 1951. Jack Waters. And some kind of goodbye happening through the buried book.”

“Did you show her this?”

“Why, so she could lie to my face? She’s been in her room all day.”

“All day?”

“Stop with the tone.” It’s what our mother used to say. “She lives alone, Cal. She’s by herself every day.”

“She might need lunch, at least. She’s sick, remember?”

“She could hibernate for the winter, with all those donuts she ate. Jesus, Cal, you’re bossy. I’m not the little kid you can boss around anymore! Check on her yourself. Stop being such a control freak.”

“Only other control freaks accuse you of being a control freak.”

Shaye was still hunched forward, looking at that picture, when I started down the hall. Nash’s door was closed. “Jack Waters was
hot
,” Shaye yelled.

Well, that should have brought Nash out. I tapped on the door with my fingertips. “Nash? You hungry? Can I get you something to eat?”

No answer.

“Nash?” I knocked harder.

Silence.

My chest constricted; my heart squeezed like a fist. I rattled the doorknob. Locked.

“Shaye!” I yelled.

I heard Shaye’s desk chair knock over. She was there, fast. “She’s not answering. Something’s wrong.”

Shaye’s eyes were wide. “Oh, God, Cal. This is it. This is why we came when we did.”

“This isn’t why we came when we did. You know why we came when we did.” We had come for our own selfish reasons. This wasn’t the time for ridiculous metaphysical justifications, much as I loved them myself.

I jiggled the knob some more and shoved. “I think there’s something against the door.”

“Oh, my God, Cal. Shit! Holy shit! She probably…”

A terrible thing happened then. I shouldn’t even admit it, but Shaye started to giggle nervously, and so did I. We were slightly hysterical. Her breath smelled like Fritos. Tex was underfoot, seeing what all the excitement was about. “Stop it! Jeez, Shaye. Help me push.”

“One, two, three…” We threw ourselves against that door. Nothing.

“It’s too big to be a body,” Shaye said.

This sobered us up. She was right. I thought so, anyway. I had no real idea what deadweight felt like. “Try again.” We shoved. There was a scratching sound, wood against wood, and the feeling of something giving. I peered through the small crack we’d made.

“Oh, my God!”

“What?”

“I cannot believe this!”

“What? Let me see.”

“She’s not in there.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.”

What followed was something too humiliating to recount. It involved Shaye and me running out of the house and trying to climb up into the open window as Tex barked his head off inside. There were a couple of crates nearby, and Shaye had the bright idea to make a platform, and then I attempted that boosting maneuver with the fingers of both hands entwined—nothing I could maintain once I held Shaye’s weight. She stopped being pissed sometime after we got up off the ground and then we fetched a spiderweb-laden ladder we found in the barn. I got stuck halfway in the window with my butt hanging out, and Shaye struggled to push me the rest of the way. There was some shrieking involved and some pain. We were exhausted and our hair askew by the time we both flopped into Nash’s room.

“We’ve got to find that letter,” Shaye said. She’d turned into Nancy Drew all of a sudden.

“I doubt she’s taken off to meet him on their anniversary at the Empire State Building, Shaye. Oh, man, look at this.” I had a red railroad-track scrape across my stomach.

“Stop being a baby and help me.”

It didn’t even hit us at first. A full minute went by before Shaye said, “Oh, hell,” and the cleanliness of the room struck us both. There must have been a lot more than a box of photos shoved down into those trash cans. Nash’s room was tidy, and all that was left of the mess were a few innocent stacks of books.

“When did she do this?” Shaye asked.

“When you ignored her all day, thinking she was lying around sick in bed.”

We ransacked the place anyway, a pair of inept burglars. “Nothing,” I said. “No note, no letter, no anything.” Shaye stuck her hand under Nash’s mattress and felt around. I was on my knees, feeling up her desk, hoping for a secret drawer, when I saw something.

“Wait. Come here.”

Shaye knelt beside me. The photo was taped to the underside of the desktop. We craned to look. It was a black-and-white movie still, an image of a woman and a man at the front desk of a hotel, a bellman standing nearby. I plucked the edge of the tape with my finger to see if anything was written on the back. No. I pressed the tape in place again.

“Neither of those guys looks anything like Jack,” Shaye said. “This blows our whole story to hell.”

We sat on the floor, defeated. “Maybe Harris knew what he was talking about. We’re trying too hard to make sense out of…pieces. Pieces of senility.”

Shaye had a twig in her hair, and her chin sported a bar-code scratch. “I hate to admit it. I think you’re right. She’s lost it. She could be anywhere.”

We shoved the dresser away from the door. It took both of us to budge it; how Nash got it there, I’ll never know. We checked the trash cans and found them empty, save for a pile of ashes. She’d burned the lot of it, right under our noses. We called Harris, who wasn’t answering his phone. We argued over whether to call our mother.

“What good would that do?” I said. “She’s in California. She’s terrible in a crisis. I don’t want to take care of her while I take care of this.”

“You’re being mean. We should at least let her know what’s going on.”

“Fine,” I said, which conveniently rehashed every argument we’d ever had on the subject without saying more.

Shaye took off to search the grounds for Nash. The minute she got back, I’d call the police. I stayed by the phone, because someone always stays by the phone in the movies. I nervous-ate my way through the rest of the bag of chips. I thought about fleeing all our family dysfunction and taking the next flight out to Aruba. Being kidnapped by Mexican drug lords sounded kind of nice. Tex had settled into his hairy dog bed, apparently trusting there’d be a good outcome.

I couldn’t just wait there. Of course, it’s when you stop waiting for the phone to ring that it always rings. I was down the porch steps when I heard it inside. I practically broke my neck trying to get to it in time. I lunged for the receiver and panted my hello.

“Is this Nash McBride’s niece?”

“Yes.”

Here it was. The phone call. She’d been found on the freeway, maybe. Hit by a semitruck, or who knows what else. My stomach felt sick with dread and with that deep sense of failure that constantly nips at the heels of responsible people.

“My name is Deke Donaldson, and I’m with J. J.’s Autos?”

“J. J.’s Autos?”

“Your aunt is here.”

“Thank God! Is she all right?”

“She’s just fine.”

“Did you find her wandering nearby? Oh, I’m so glad she’s safe, I cannot tell you.”

“Well, she was wandering in the showroom for quite some time. She liked the Benz with the heated and cooled front seats and the adjustable air bladders for customized back support, but she settled for the Ford Fusion Plus Hybrid with the sunroof.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your aunt just bought a car. Problem is, she has no way to get it home.”

“What? Is she there? Put her on the phone!”

“She’s waving her hand at me. Wait. No…She says she’s too busy. She says she can’t talk right now. Perhaps you can come and get her?”

He sounded a little desperate.

“We’ll be right there.”

The poor man actually breathed a sigh of relief.

I called Shaye. “Found her,” I said.

“Oh, thank God!” Her voice wobbled, near tears. “Is she okay?”

“She bought a car.”

“She bought a
car
? Are you kidding me? She went to buy a car without telling us? How’d she get there? Do you know where I am right now? I just left the dude wrangler’s cabin! There was a squirrel corpse in there! The whole bony skeleton was laid out like it was freaking Halloween!”

“Get a move on,” I said.

—

“You cleaned out your whole room. You
burned
stuff. What’s that about?”

“I don’t keep what I no longer need.”

“Well, if you wanted to go into town, you should’ve just asked. You didn’t have to sneak out.”

“I can’t find how to put this seat back,” Nash said. She hunted around down by her feet, near the brand-new floor mats.

“Why did you buy a
car
? We told you. If you want to go somewhere, even if you want to see Jack again, we could just take you!”

“Jack, nothing. I don’t care about Jack. Listen to these speakers,” she said. She turned the dial, blasting some hip-hop song from the CD still in the player of the showroom model.

“How did you expect to get this home when you don’t drive?”

“I thought that nice boy might give me a little refresher. I used to drive, but it was a long, long time ago.”

“Well, now we’re going to have to go back again to get
my
car. And Shaye may never forgive you. Poor thing. Look at her.”

That tractor could go maybe fifteen miles an hour. Shaye looked miserable as she puttered along, pulled as far to the side of the road as possible.

I rolled down my window. “How you doing?”

“You don’t have to ask me every five minutes!” Shaye shouted. “I told you, go on ahead!”

It was wrong, I knew it, and I would have to pay for it, but I couldn’t resist. “How’re the crops looking?”

“Shut up, Cal. I mean it. Shut the hell up.”

“Look on the bright side. Your magnetic personality
did
bring you a new hobby.”

She shook her head, glared at me. “Damn you!” she yelled from the high black tractor seat. Still, there was the tiniest lift at the corner of her mouth, the barest hint of a smile. It was a good one, and she knew it.

“Wait ’til you see the voice-activated communications system,” Nash said.

“Wait ’til you see the dual-speed windshield wipers,” Veronica says.

Nash clears her throat. She tries to sound like she’s in charge. “First thing you should locate is the
brake
.”

“Look, a heater,” Ellen says.

If her mother knew about this, she’d kill her, Nash thinks. She’d kill her
again
. The Styleline Deluxe is only two years old, with all the features. Alice makes Danny wash the desert dust off it every few days. Ellen is behind the wheel. Veronica and Hadley are in on this together. Lilly leans against the porch railing, shading her eyes against the afternoon sun to watch.