The Secrets She Keeps (34 page)

She began to crawl on all fours. Oh, dear God, it was too strange and dreadful to take in. It was terrible, that sight, this old woman on hands and knees. She inched along the floor toward the piano.

“Okay,” she said.

“What are you doing?” I tried to stay calm, but inside I felt anything but calm. “Nash, get up.”

“Get out from there!” Shaye yelled.

Nash had reached the piano now. She crouched there, as if seeking shelter. But this was the thing. This was always the thing: Inexplicable actions are not so inexplicable at all when you know what’s underneath.

There was an envelope taped to the old ribs and bones of the bottom of the soundboard, where Shaye and I would surely never have looked. Nash crawled back out, and she reached her hand toward me to help her up. She handed over the package.

“Here,” she said.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Open it.”

My fingers were on the clasp when there was the stomp of boots and then Harris’s blocky frame in the doorway. He was out of breath. “Nash!” he cried. “Girls! I heard a shot.”

My God, the old people there—their excellent sight and hearing. His shirt was buttoned wrong and his pants were half zipped, but the concern in his eyes was as solid as it came. He put his arm around Nash. He knew as well as we did that what was happening was significant, because Nash looked both defeated and defiant, and there was still the smell of the gunshot in the air. “Are you all right?” he said.

“Well, this is perfect, isn’t it?” Nash said. “Fine. I give up! I’ll tell all of you at once! How can I keep it a secret any longer, anyway? I can’t. I just can’t. I’m too tired. I’ve been looking for months. Only thing I had was a date of birth. The correspondence and records and research, the phone books! Well, I finally found him. Right when the mustangs arrived. Like I said, they’re a
sign.
”

I was mistaken about Trevor Tompkins being long gone. There was the sound of that helicopter again, coming in close. Shaye stood next to me, and Harris gripped Nash’s elbow as I slipped the papers out.
Missoula County Department of Human Services
, the letterhead read. An old black-and-white photo was attached, the small, slightly yellowed image of an infant, swaddled tight in a blanket, showing only a tiny bit of a sleeping face.

“Damn,” Harris said. There were still things to be discovered about her after all.

“You gave up a baby,” I said.

“Yes, I did,” Nash said. “That’s exactly what I did.”

There is the sound of that airplane again, coming in close. Ellen stands next to Nash, and so does Hadley, and the airplane is so low, it kicks up wind and sends their dresses blowing around their knees and their hair around their faces. Ellen puts her hand on her hat.

“Looks like a crop duster. They do the grapes not far from our house,” she says.

“No crops here,” Nash says, and as soon as she does, she finally realizes what that plane is. It is not a crop duster or some stunt plane, like the one she and Jack watched at the air show last summer. This plane has to do with those horses she saw in that truck, with the gaping wounds and dull, dead eyes.

“It’s awfully low,” Ellen says.

“Veronica!” Hadley shouts toward the house. “Come on! My God, she’d be late to her own funeral.”

Ellen and Hadley are also going to court with Veronica. It was decided the night before, and it was Ellen who said it that time:
All for one, and one for all!
Now they wait in the driveway next to the Styleline Deluxe. Its doors are open to cool it down before they have to get in. Lilly will stay behind to rest. Cook and Jack and the boys will be there with her.

“There’s the party girl,” Ellen calls.

Veronica is in a smart pink suit with a jacket that flares at the waist. She’s wearing a large-brimmed pancake hat, white, set at a jaunty tilt. “What’s the hurry, ladies?” she says. “They won’t start the divorce without the bride!”

—

Nash sits in the front of the courtroom. A fan blows overhead, creaking and tilting in such a way that Nash envisions it spinning madly off its fixture and crashing down, beheading a few of them along the way. She picks at her fingernails from nerves. This morning, there’s still been no word from Alice, and now she’ll have to stand and speak again. When the hearing begins and they are called forward, she will be required to say only three words—
Yes, Your Honor
—but without those three words confirming residency, Veronica will remain in a state of holy matrimony.

The lawyer is on one side of Veronica, and Nash is on the other. Ellen and Hadley whisper behind them, and Nash can’t hear what they say, but Veronica can. At least, that must be why she gives a little snort just then. What has been said is easy to guess, though. Gus is wearing a stylish suit the color of new hay, with a bow tie of blue and white. His hat is on his lap. He is dashingly handsome. Yes,
dashingly
. His dark hair is parted at the side, and his long nose points down to a straight mouth. He turns the brim of his hat in his hands and tries to peer at Veronica as Nash and Ellen and Hadley try to peer at him, and as his attorney, a man as plump as a summer peach, shuffles papers in the briefcase open on his lap. But the snort isn’t about Gus, exactly. The snort is about the young woman who sits behind Gus, a woman not much older than Nash. Her hair is as dark and shiny as Stuart Marcel’s Cadillac, and she twists a handkerchief in her hands while keeping her eyes fixed on the back of Gus’s head.

“Genevieve Morley,” Veronica whispers to Nash.

“Well, that’s good,” Nash says. “Isn’t that good?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Veronica says. “He’ll never be happy unless he’s miserable. And she’s likely to make him happy.”

The judge enters. It is the Honorable Rice Clay, who has his own cattle ranch in Washoe. The divorce business is lucrative. They all rise. Genevieve Morley cries softly but still loud enough for them all to hear.

—

They stand on the Bridge of Sighs.

“This is it,” Hadley says. “The start of your new life.”

“My new life,” Veronica says. “You know, I want to bathe without someone checking to see if I’ve slipped on a bar of soap. Feel an empty bed without bare legs brushing against mine, legs that are asking, asking, asking something of me. I just want to be
alone
.”

It sounds shocking, and Ellen’s eyebrows are arched, but Veronica seems to mean it. Strangely, Nash can see the sense in it. The idea appeals to her, too. She has lived with the press of her sister’s moods and her mother’s expectations, and all at once she cannot imagine a lifetime of someone else’s needs. Neither can she imagine choosing the drama of heartbreak or the passion of love over the steady deliciousness of peace. That choice, to be alone—it has never even occurred to her before. It doesn’t seem like a real option. No one chooses that on purpose, as far as she knows, and too bad.

Veronica twists the ring off her finger.

“Wait,” Ellen says.

Veronica stops.

“Wouldn’t you rather keep it in the vase at the ranch? It will be there forever that way.”

“Get rid of it,” Hadley says. “That man would have put you in an asylum, one way or another.”

There is a moment of indecision. Veronica holds up the ring to the sky and lines it up so that the sun shines through.

“Nash?” she asks. “You’re the deciding vote.”

She would love to keep a part of Veronica at the ranch forever. But she wants Veronica to be entirely free. She wants to see that ring fly.

“Throw it,” she says, and Veronica does, and the ring is airborne, sailing up, up, and then down, disappearing into the great Truckee River as they all cheer.

—

“I’m going to miss you,” Ellen says. She leans forward from the backseat, pops her head right next to Veronica’s.

“I’m going to miss all of you silly girls, I am,” Veronica says. “I thought I’d be happy when I saw the last of this place.” Her window is rolled down and her hat is off. Nash can’t wait to get home and be rid of her own suit and stockings.

“Boohoo. You’re all breaking my heart,” Hadley says. “We’re mooning like sad old cows. Let’s have a drink and celebrate before you have to leave. Life goes on, and that’s worth toasting. Nash can make us a mule.”

“A last mule,” Ellen says. For some reason this sounds funny, and they all laugh.

They drive down County Road, jarring and knocking, kicking up dust. They take the turnoff to Tamarosa, right by the old Joshua tree, with its spear-like leaves, spiky hands reaching for the sky. Now, in summer, its ripe green-brown fruit has fallen and is rotting on the ground below, a feast for weasels and foxes and ladder-backed woodpeckers.

“Home again, home again,” Ellen says, as they drive under the arch. “Tamarosa.”

They appear just to her left, as sudden and unexpected as a train on an unused track. She hits the brakes. Ellen screams.

“Shush!” Hadley orders.

Ellen quiets. What fills the car now—it could be the sound of a train, too. It’s that loud, that rhythmic, hooves hitting earth and hitting earth, so many hooves, so many horses; it is one thundering train. They are right there on Tamarosa, flying past the mailbox, sleek black and brown, bursts of white. There are flashes from savage eyes and a sudden show of teeth. The car rocks. There is dust and more dust and haunches and knees working like steel axles, and there is huffing and the high-pitched
wheee
that sounds like brakes on metal, but there is nothing man-made here.

The women are speechless, as is appropriate when witnessing an act of God. Veronica grips Nash’s hand. Hadley’s face is pressed to her window, and Ellen rolls hers up madly. It is over so fast. Nash might think she imagined it if it wasn’t for the sudden smell of sweat in the car and the realization that she’s been holding her breath. The horses have crossed the road and are now disappearing. Hadley leans her head out, to see if she can watch them farther, but Ellen pulls her back.

“Get in, dear God,” Ellen says. Her voice trembles.

“That was the most magnificent thing I have ever seen,” Hadley says.

Magnificent
—it seems like such a small word. Nash feels as if she’s been struck by lightning.

“Christ, I need a cigarette,” Veronica says.

“Tell me that won’t ever happen again,” Ellen says. “I thought we were going to be killed.”

“They were right
here
. What were they doing right
here
?” Nash asks.

“That’s what I want to know,” Ellen says.

Then Nash realizes. “It was probably that airplane.”

“Well, it scared them!” Hadley says.

“You’re lucky if you ever see them,” Nash says. She can barely breathe. Everything Jack has said makes sense now. “Once in a life, maybe. If.”

Hadley reaches and shakes Veronica’s shoulder. “You see? It’s a sign. Today is your lucky day, my dear.”

“Get me and thee to a mule, fast,” Veronica says.

“I feel lucky, all right. Lucky to be alive,” Ellen says.

Nash lets go of the wheel. Her foot has been pressed so hard to the brake that the Styleline Deluxe lurches and stalls when she removes it. She feels changed at the sight of those horses, she does, but that’s the nasty yet crucial thing about change: It’s not a permanent condition. It marches forward, hand in hand with time itself, transforming, adjusting, altering the view in small ways and large. If you could hold it and keep it in place, it might make everything a damn sight easier.

In Nash’s mind’s eye, the horses are still galloping past, and there is still the boom and rumble of them in her head. But as she drives farther onto the ranch, she takes in other pieces, wrong pieces. A section of fence by the front pasture has been destroyed, and ground is ripped up. There’s a scar in the land, a torrid mark that extends beyond the farthest acacias of Tamarosa. She parks. She has a bad, bad feeling. Something else is wrong. The front door has been flung open. There is a bridle dropped on the walkway, and Bluebell is in the ring, running in mad, distressed circles. Boo is outside. He does not even look up from a dark spot he is sniffing and licking on the ground.

“Holy hell,” Veronica says.

Nash yanks the brake, and the minute she does, she sees it—a long line of drops, bright-red drops, and they start near the ring where Bluebell is, and they work their way past Al Johns’s borrowed truck in the driveway and into the house. She is out of that car, fast. “Stop! Stop that!” she yells at Boo. She flings her arm at him as she rushes inside, and the women are somewhere behind her. They clearly are, because she hears Ellen whispering, “Dear Mary, Mother of God,” just before there’s a terrible noise, a sound like a rabbit dying, the cry that comes as a coyote bites into the flesh of its neck.

Lilly lies on the floor near the piano. They’ve tried to prop some pillows beneath her; her knees are raised, and her yellow dress is soaked with blood. She is up on her elbows, and her eyes are panicked, same as the eyes of those horses. Jack and Danny kneel beside her, and Danny’s face is white and scared. Jack holds her hand.

“Thank the Lord you’re here,” Danny says.