The Secrets She Keeps (24 page)

I stayed in my car and took pictures from my half-open window; I focused on thick haunches and muscular necks, knobby knees that didn’t look capable of supporting the weight they carried. From there, I could hear snorts and the thrum in their throats and the scrape of hooves on ground. Two foals hung by their mothers’ sides like shy kindergartners on the first day of school. The truth was, they were wild animals, and I was invading their privacy.

I was about to head back to where I belonged, when my phone rang. “If I don’t get myself a cheeseburger soon, I may just fire my gun at the next innocent cholla I see,” Kit Covey said.

“That is not the kind of land management we’re looking for,” I said.

“Can you meet me at Rudy’s?”

“If onion rings are part of this plan, then yes.”

“I can assure you, Ms. McBride, I never met an onion ring I didn’t very nearly propose to.”

—

I’d reached the paved road when something odd happened. My tires slid sideways. It felt like no mechanical failure I’d ever experienced—more like a mysterious magnetic force, a god or alien yanking the tablecloth but leaving the place settings intact. I wished for another motorist, someone to lock eyes with to confirm what just happened, but no one else was on the road. If some glowing disc appeared in the sky to haul me off to another planet, it’d be my good fortune. I could use a story to sell, what with my daughters’ college tuitions.

“Did you feel the earthquake?” Kit Covey asked, after we’d handed back the plastic-covered menus to the waitress. This was the second time I’d sat across a table from him, though this time the lights were bright and the seats a squeaky red vinyl. Someone’s lost napkin was down by my foot, and I kicked it away.

“So that’s what that was. I’ve felt them in Seattle, but everything shakes. Here, the whole ground seemed to shift.”

“We’ve got fault lines all over. The Pacific plates meet the North American plates here.” He placed the edges of his hands together, creating a flat surface. “Geological accommodation zone.”

It was funny how familiar he was beginning to seem. I was getting used to his face, the wrinkles around his bright-blue eyes, and the tousle of his brownish-blond hair, sprinkled with gray. He was familiar but not enough to quell my nerves. Every word out of my mouth or out of his, every gesture, even a sip from my Coke, had a pitched awareness, an energy. “I’m a geological accommodation zone,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Lately, yeah. Shifting with the tremors that come along.”

“Shifting gets exhausting. Let me tell you.”

“It does.”

“Sometimes, though…what else is there to do but shift, right?”

“Right.”

“You have to.”

“Yep.” I twisted my purse strap around my finger.

Kit turned the saltshaker in a small circle. Out beyond the window was the tall sign, Rudy’s, that rose high above the desert, and across the street there was an old Mobil station, which still had the winged horse riding its roof. I wanted to cry. I don’t know why, except that something seemed wholly decided, decided by me, and my heart felt crushed. It wasn’t just those wide strong shoulders in that soft denim shirt or those hands—and, dear God, I’m sorry, how much I wanted them on me—but it was also the
way
I wanted. I hadn’t wanted anything like that in a long, long time. As the waitress topped off our barely touched water glasses, I felt I was saying no to much more than Kit Covey—I was saying no to something that had been exposed when I was cracked open out here, maybe from that first moment I thought I heard thunder. Still. Thomas deserved my loyalty. And I deserved to be the kind of person who would give it. He might yank that quilt over his half of the bed when he was angry, but, most often, that quilt covered us both.

Our food arrived. The onion rings were fried heaven, and I polished off that burger. There was something in the desert atmosphere that made you so, so hungry. Kit passed me the napkins and talked about his daughter and laughingly admitted a joke that Steve Miller and Lorraine had played on him. I told him about Shaye and that tractor and about the April Fools’ Day when Amy put every stuffed animal they ever owned in Melissa’s car in the high school parking lot. We discussed whether anyone ever needed to really wait for anything anymore. He confessed a fear of dying young and told me about his old horse, Mack, who got ill and bucked him. I told him about Hugo. He asked if I had a picture, and I showed him, and my eyes misted up when he said what a fine dog he was.

“Do you know where we are?” he asked.

“Rudy’s? Is this a trick question?”

He smiled. “No. Out here. It’s called Dog Valley.”

This pleased me to no end. We paid our bill and stood by our cars; a truck whipped past, and the noise roared in my ears and blew my hair around. Kit looked at me, and I looked back. He pulled a strand of my hair from my mouth, where it had caught.

“You have one more minute?”

“Sure. I’ve got nothing but minutes.” It was a lie. Lately I’d realized just how many had passed and how few I had left.

“Follow me.”

We climbed through a hedge of sage behind Rudy’s, and Kit trotted off. I kept up, running behind him, though it was hot and I could feel that heat pressing right through the cotton of my shirt. Everywhere you looked, there was only desert and more desert. You could get so lost out there.

“Right up here,” he called over his shoulder. Shaye would have accused me of watching his ass, but anyone would have watched.

I saw where we were heading, what he wanted to show me. It was a deep scar in the ground, a long, endless crack that looked nothing if not purposeful. It was two or three feet across and many yards down, exposing strata, layers of color.

“Wow,” I said.

“This is a small fault. Can you believe it? It doesn’t even have a name. These things? Some of ’em go for miles. Some are fifty to sixty million years old.”

“It goes on forever!”

“Miles and miles.”

It was shocking and dramatic, and I felt a childlike delight at seeing it. “So far down!”

“The ruptures, they almost always follow preexisting lines. Zones of weakness, they’re called. Stress and strain is basically what it is.”

“Damn! My camera is in the car.”

“Think you’ll be able to remember it without a picture? Here?” He tapped his temple with his finger, grinned.

We stood very close together, hard rock beneath our feet, heat bearing down.

“When I close my eyes,” I said. And I closed them then. I felt sixteen again, soaring, that way you do when your whole life is ahead of you. He might kiss me. But when I opened my eyes, he was only looking at me, happy.

“Incredible?”

“Incredible.” Incredible and majestic. Dramatic and unreal. You knew logically that the earth was a living thing, but the very ground beneath your feet, the ground you counted on for stability and structure—it was beautifully and terrifyingly temperamental. It could break apart even as it held you in place, and here was proof.

—

“Look what I got!” Shaye called from the stairs, before appearing in the living room, wearing a new denim skirt and a sleeveless Western top with pearl buttons. She had a new pair of boots on, too. She turned so we could admire her.

“I see what you’ve been doing all day. Nice shopping, little buckaroo,” I said. She looked adorable in her ponytail. I got comfy in the leather chair by the piano. Tex settled by my feet.

Nash, who was stretched out on the couch, smiled. “That’s just what the girls used to do. We’d take them into Reno. Get them outfitted in Western wear.”

“The women who came to the ranch?” I asked.

“They loved the getups! A lot of them thought there’d be Indians out here, like in the movies,” she chuckled. “It was the first time many of them had even been out West. Most of them were thrilled! Some hated it, of course—they’d leave early, in a huff, as if we’d planned the dust and what the heat did to their hair, just to make them miserable. But the rest, they came to love it. The slowed pace, the fun, the companionship. The food! After their six weeks were up, when they told the judge they were residents and planned to stay in Nevada, well, they were sincere. They never did stay, not a one I knew of. But I do believe that when they said it, most of them meant it.”

“What would they do all that time?” I asked. “Six weeks out here…”

“Oh, sit by the pool, ride horses, dance, drink, gamble. Sometimes we’d take them on an overnight trail ride or to the rodeo. In the early days, they liked to ride on the old steam train, the Virginia and Truckee—it looked straight out of the movies. Winters, we’d play a lot of backgammon or take them skiing. Trips to Reno, shopping, the bars. Meetings with lawyers. We’d go to Tahoe, see a show. Talked! God, how everyone talked and gossiped! Though some kept to themselves. Some brought their mothers.”

Shaye poured us drinks as a pot roast simmered in the oven, and Nash took a sip and then crunched a melting ice cube. Honestly, it was way too hot for a pot roast and I’d had a week’s worth of beef for lunch, but Shaye was determined to use that old cookbook she’d found.

“I can’t believe how we never hear about any of this,” Shaye said. “Why don’t you guys ever talk about it? Mom barely says anything about that time.”

“Well, your mother left when she was young. She hated it out here. I left, too, but only for a short while. To go to school. I couldn’t stay away, though. Anyway, who wants to hear their parents’ old stories? I didn’t want to hear mine. And in many ways, it was a painful time. Divorce wasn’t like it is now. Women were ashamed. People were hurting. Every kind of hurt. Absent husbands, mental cruelty, meddling in-laws, brutality. Some women never left their rooms. Some went a little wild, wearing casual clothes for the first time, tasting alcohol—”

“Sleeping with cowboys,” Shaye said.

Nash rolled her eyes. “In spite of the fun we had—and, God, did we—it was still heartbreaking. Every trip to the courthouse. Every one.”

“We still feel ashamed when we get divorced,” Shaye said. “I do. Did. Really ashamed.”

“Not that kind of shame.”

“Like a failure,” Shaye said.

“Not that kind of a failure. A woman back then?
He
was what she
was
. It was all
him, him, him
. If you lost him? Couldn’t keep him? If he treated you bad? It said everything about you. What you were worth.” She shook her head. “We had the occasional career girl but not many. Hollywood types. A playwright, once. We couldn’t imagine a life like that. She was a curiosity to us.”

“Jack Waters. He’s the one I’m still curious about,” Shaye said. We were both holding out hope that Nash’s actions had a purpose, in spite of the evidence to the contrary. We were still wishing for old, broken love, love lost, instead of so much else gone.

“Jack, Jack, Jack,” Nash said. “All you two talk about.”

“Well, you got pretty emotional when his letter came,” I said.

“He was our head wrangler, that’s all. I didn’t get emotional because I heard from Jack. I got emotional because I heard from the
past
.”

The phone rang. Nash sat up. “Is that my cell?”

“Kitchen phone,” I said. “Want me to get it?”

But she’d already risen and was heading out, bringing her drink with her. She’d become awfully fond of the stuff since we’d arrived.

“Think we should cut her back on the booze?” Shaye asked, reading my mind. “She hasn’t been that chatty since we got here.”

“Probably not the best thing for her, but at this point she should be able to do what she wants, don’t you think?”

“I tried to get her in that car today.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“Didn’t have the chance. You should have seen her, Cal. It was weird. It reminded me of Joshie when he went through his fear-of-dogs phase. He wanted to like them so badly, but they scared him to death. She wanted me to teach her, but she was practically shaking. She wouldn’t even get behind the wheel.”

“If you hadn’t driven in sixty years, you’d be scared, too.”

“It was more than that. I’m telling you, it was strange.”

Being eighty would be strange. Being eighty and learning how to drive again, even stranger. From my place in the living room, even without being able to distinguish what was being said, I could tell Nash was talking to our mother. Gloria probably felt left out with all of us there. Nash’s voice had turned snappish. There were bites and edges in her tone, the hills and valleys of pitch that meant long-held grudges and reluctant devotion.

“She’s talking to Mom,” I said.

Shaye ignored this. “It’s
still
about
him
, Cal. Too often, it still is.”

“
Him. Her
.”

“I guess so. I guess we all do it. Don’t you think women still do it more, though, as much as we don’t want to admit it? What about all those successful women you see, married to some loser they have to take care of? Some pothead who can’t keep a job? I drank this too fast,” she said. She was a tipsy little cowgirl. Neither of us ever drank much in our real lives. The occasional glass of wine was it for me.

“I tend to think people are people, I guess,” I said.

“You know what? I’m coming to the conclusion that this place has done its job for me. I gotta go home.”

“
Home
?” My voice betrayed me. It was shrill and panicked, relaying things I’d rather not have anyone know, not even Shaye.

“I don’t want to go. I’m dreading it. But I can’t stay away forever. We may never know the shame those women felt, but I tell you, I have a good lot of my own. I mean, Cal, I’ve been divorced twice.
Twice
. I can’t even tell people that. I erase the marriage in the middle! Isn’t that horrible?”

“Quentin,” I said, as if his name alone told the whole story. “I swear, he put a spell on you and took you captive.”

“That’s exactly what it felt like, but it doesn’t matter. Eric’s daughters—God, it’s so hard. But this time I’ve picked a mostly good guy, you know? Finally. It’s actually
possible
to make it. This is my last chance at relationship redemption.”