The Secrets She Keeps (33 page)

What a relief it was that he’d come back! My heart shot upward, a rocket of joy. Such happiness. Thank God, he wasn’t dead after all.

And then I woke, and the phone rang one more time before stopping. The truth hit. A rush of grief started behind my eyes and went to my chest, crushing everything in its path. Oh, Hugo. I missed him more than I could say. He’d been my friend and my companion, and the loss of him had left me bereft. Dead was so wrong. Dead was so sad and terribly wrong.

—

Nash seemed well that morning. She was dressed in her jeans and a red T-shirt, and she looked cheery. She had parked herself at the table, and Shaye scooped scrambled eggs onto her plate.

“I have a little surprise for you girls,” Nash said.

“Hmm,” Shaye said. “Surprises can go either way.”

“I’ve come around to your point of view. No more taking off in the car.”

“Wonderful,” I said. I poured myself a cup of coffee.

“You’re going to teach me to drive today.”

Shaye and I looked at each other. “Oh, super,” Shaye said.

“I’ve come to my senses.” She was shoveling in those eggs.

“Sausages?” Shaye asked.

“Keep the spirits up!” Nash said. She patted her stomach.

“I’ll have what she’s having,” I said.

Shaye sat down with us. Her plate was nearly empty. “You okay, Sham?”

“You bet,” she said.

“Perhaps we should go over some of the rules of the road first,” I said.

“Nonsense. Rules, rules, rules. We eat and get cracking,” Nash said.

“Well, I’m thrilled to see you’re in such a fine mood, Nash. Because I’ve been meaning to ask you something.” Shaye shoved her chair back, disappeared into the living room.

“What does she want?” Nash said.

“Don’t ask me.”

Shaye reappeared with the
Confidential
magazine that had been under the coffee table. She folded the cover back to a photo that she put under Nash’s nose. “What is
this
?”

“No idea,” Nash said, but her brows had turned down into a scowl.

“Let me see,” I said.

“June of 1951!” Shaye said, and handed it to me. “We looked right at it, Cal. It was right in front of us.” Blame our bad eyes or fate’s own timing, but, yes, there was the date in small white print, on the cover. There was a bridge in the photo, and a car in the water under that bridge. The car was upside down, wheels wrongly in the air.
“Director dead in Reno,”
I read the caption aloud. “Hey, that’s the bridge in town. The main one, over the river.”

“That’s where bridges usually are,” Shaye said. “Over a body of water.”

“Shut up, Sham.” I gave the magazine back. “I don’t get it. I’m sure there’s been plenty of stuff like this over the years.”

“I’m sure there’s been plenty of stuff like this over the years,” Nash repeated. She shoved her plate away. The joy in her eyes was gone.

“Who was he?” Shaye asked.

“Who?”

“You know who. This Stuart Marcel guy.”

“You never heard of him?” Nash’s jaw nearly dropped.

“No,” Shaye said.

“I’ve never heard of him, either,” I said.

Nash shook her head as if there were things she’d never understand. “Big important forgotten man. Well, well, well.”

“Who was he?” Shaye asked.

“Some big Hollywood type. How do I know. I live out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Nice try,” Shaye said. “I saw this before, but I didn’t understand then, because we hadn’t heard the name yet. But look who’s here. Our old friend Jack.
Dude wrangler Jack Waters, who witnessed the crash, said Marcel was ‘easily going eighty, ninety. Car suddenly veered off. Flew up and then angled down, like a one-winged condor.
’ ”

“Where did you get that?” Nash asked. Her face turned red. Her eyes blazed.

“It was right there in the living room!”

“That was not right there in the living room.”

“It was! Under the coffee table. It’s been there for years. I saw that thing when I was a
kid
.”

“It was under the coffee table, Nash,” I said. “Where it’s been forever. You sit right in front of it every day.”

Nash shook her head. She rubbed one eye with her fingertips. “I don’t believe it. It can’t be true.”

“You probably stopped seeing it,” I said.

“Summer of 1951. Jack Waters. This Hollywood guy. We were right, Cal, and I for one would like some answers.”

“The answers don’t belong to you, nor do the questions.” Nash set her mouth in a grim line. “I’ve lost my will. I’m in no mood to drive.”

She pushed her chair back. She snatched that magazine from Shaye’s hand, and a moment later we heard the rattle of the fireplace damper. There was the
schwick
of a match before all evidence of a car, a bridge, and Stuart Marcel went up in smoke.

—

“Jesus, Shaye, what were you thinking? I mean, first off, a picture of a car crash before we go out for a driving lesson? And why didn’t you tell me about this, anyway?”

“I don’t have to check everything I do with you, for starters.”

“It’s just, she was in such a good mood. How about
timing
?”

“How about
your
timing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ragging on me, right here right now. Can’t you see that it isn’t the best moment to get on my case?”

“I’m sorry, okay? What? What’s going on?”

“I’ve got an appointment later today.”

“What kind of an appointment?”

“With a lawyer.”

“Oh, no. Really?”

She turned away, folded her arms. She was crying. I tore off a paper towel and handed it to her. She blew her nose. “You know. Might as well, while I’m here.”

—

I hung my camera around my neck. There was no sign of Rob the buffalo, so I walked slowly as I took in the entirety of that dilapidated place. I lingered at the pasture and the stables, and I stood for a while by the empty pool. I snapped a photo of the blue-and-white tiles that circled its center and one of the long cracks in the cement deck, where Shaye and I had run in bare feet before our mother told us to slow down. Through the dirty windows of the small pool house, I could see lounge chairs piled up like sarcophagi in a crypt.

Avalon and Shangri-La and the Ritz and the one that was now nameless—I tried to really see them in a deep, permanent way, a way that might let me hold on to them when this place was gone, which would surely be soon. A fast, elusive creature scurried under a porch. The tar roofs of the cottages had gone brittle. The signs with the letters burned into wood spoke of cheer and old, good times. I took photos of each so that I could keep those cabins forever, in some form, anyway.

The lake seemed still, until something leaped out and made ripples that made more ripples. Sun played on the water, and I captured this, too. I sat on a rock and ringed my arms around my knees. I also remembered Shaye and me here as girls, trying to skip stones, managing only to fling them across, where they’d sink with a deep
clunk.
Then, Shaye’s braids were golden and mine were brown. We were Snow White and Rose Red, one who liked to dance in peaceful meadows and one who liked to stay home with Mother, meeting evil dwarves and the son of a king disguised as a fierce bear.

There, I was hit again with a feeling I’d had rather frequently as of late. Deep in the night, or even in broad daylight, a sense of the transitory would abruptly arise, shocking me, slapping my clueless self with the truth of my own age and of how much time had already passed, and so suddenly, too, it seemed. It would hit hard. And it made me want to keep hold of everything and to toss it all away. How could you even talk about this? What were the words for it? I just didn’t know where it all went and how it went that fast. What we lost over a lifetime seemed so great.

I reached my hand down, splashed my face with cool water. I walked on after that; headed to the place I knew I was heading all along. I needed to see the view from that ridge, feel the jolt of majesty, take in the grandeur of the timeworn tapestry made of orange and tan and yellow threads.

There. Ah, yes. Blue threads, and white, and brown, and somewhere, too, though I couldn’t make them out, the threads of those horses with their velvet noses, and the threads of ranchers and cowboys and women and men and animals all through the years.

And, too, I could see a new pattern in the living fabric, the finished picture of those splayed wings, the long chutes, the circles of holding pens. There was motion below, ants dashing and darting about, tiny figures scurrying with their own purpose, looking the way we must look to God. The ring of my phone startled me.

“I was just seeing if I could find you,” I said to Kit Covey. “I’m standing on the ridge right now.”

“Are you? Look for a guy riding a horse. I’m waving.”

“Well, I can imagine it, but in truth I’m too far away.”

“Jasper’s waving now.”

“Ha.”

“I called with some news,” Kit said.

“Tell me.”

“The first gather.”

“It’s time?”

“Tomorrow.”

—

I couldn’t stand the sound of Dr. Yabba Yabba Love’s voice on that radio show, but Nash and Shaye seemed to like it, so I kept my mouth shut for once. That night’s episode:
You seek what you know, so you’d better know what you seek.
Shudder. From my spot on the couch with Tex at my feet, I could hear Nash’s old message machine whir on in the kitchen. It made a series of strange clicks and cheeps, like birdcalls. One ancient device, anyway, had bitten the dust. Still, it made me think of the beautiful time before message machines. It was lovely, really, not to know who’d called. To wonder, and maybe even be surprised. To not be able to be found, even if only by a distant and insistent voice wondering where you were.

It got cool there in the desert in the evenings but not cool enough to require the crocheted blanket that was over Nash’s knees. She had a hot-water bottle tucked behind her back, too, and was giving us the silent treatment. Shaye had tried to talk her into taking some pills for pain, but she just frowned and shook her head. We all knew the time was coming when she wouldn’t have that option, which is likely why she decided not to take them.

I was about to suggest we all watch another old movie, when a noise drowned out Dr. Love. It was the sound of a helicopter, the
thwacka thwacka
of blades, low and close. I knew what it was. I even knew
who
it was: Bureau of Land Management pilot Trevor Tompkins, the man with the wet sandwich yesterday. That helicopter would be taking off again at 7:00
A.M
., bright and early, and I would be on the south hill near the site, watching the gather below.

“Listen to that!” Nash said. She looked at Shaye and then at me, and her eyes had changed. They spit sparks, same as a fire when the wood is seasoned and almost too ready to be burned.

We kept quiet. Tex sat up on alert, and I stroked him with my foot to calm him.

“I know what that is,” she said.

“Nash,” I said.

“Don’t
Nash
me. Do you hear how low they’re flying? Do you know what that does? I can’t just sit here and do nothing!”

A glass on the table rattled from the din. Nash threw off that blanket; someone somewhere had made this careful pattern of chain stitches and slipknots with their own patient hands, but now the thing went flying, and so did the fat red water bottle. It went airborne before landing with a big plop on the floor, which caused Tex to leap to his feet and hide by my legs.

Before I knew it, Nash was out of that room, and there was the
thud, thud, thud
of her determined feet hurrying up the stairs. And then there were Shaye’s, running up after her. “Nash, come here! Stop this!” she said.

I picked up poor Tex, who was cowering, and I crooned into his little triangle ear. There was a crash upstairs and the sound of rooting around, and Shaye’s voice, talking in a calm way I’d never heard before.

I needed to help my sister, but before I could even move, Nash came barreling back down. She took the stairs so fast, she was lucky she didn’t break her neck. “We’ll see who’s scared now. Those bastards!”

I blinked. I didn’t believe what I saw, frankly. It was all so sudden, and what was in her hands didn’t make sense. She was holding a rifle. An actual rifle. It wasn’t the kind of life I led, one that involved guns and people who had lost their minds holding those guns.

Shaye raced after her. The calm voice was gone; it had turned into a shriek of panic and fear, one that shook me out of my disbelief. My sister and I had always turned to each other to understand—no, to
witness
and make
real
—the shared crazy experiences of our lives, and right then was no different. “Jesus, Nash! What are you doing? What do you think this is, some action movie, some shoot-out? They won’t even see you down here. We’re the only ones you’re scaring.”

“Oh, they’ll see me, all right,” she said. She headed for the front door.

“Dear God, tell me that thing isn’t loaded,” I said.

“What am I, an idiot?” Nash replied.

“Give me that,” Shaye said.

And that’s when my sister lunged for the old woman. They stumbled; now she’d break a hip for sure. There was an explosive crack, and the sound of something actually zipping through the air, and the boom and shatter as the roof of that damn cuckoo clock blew right off.

Shaye held the gun. I’d want that girl by my side in a crisis any day. Even if what she did next was to open the door and run like hell and throw that thing as if it were on fire to the dirt-filled bottom of the pool, where it would lay alongside the boot and who knew what else.

Nash was on the floor. She put her head in her hands.

“Nash?” I whispered.

Shaye was back. Her face was red and she was breathing hard. We’d just experienced something traumatic, a natural disaster arising from an old fracture, buried deep. That helicopter—it was long gone. A whoosh of cool air came through the open front door, and there was only the sound of crickets.

“All right,” Nash said. “All right. Fine.” We needed to call an ambulance. That’s what had to happen. This was the woman Harris had warned us about, the one who’d tried to bury a book by the lake.