The Temptation (Kindred) (19 page)

“But I don’t have anything of his,” I said desperately.

“I know where we can find something, though,” said Kelsey.

“What?” I asked, shocked.

“You should do this soon,” said Minerva sagely. “The Old Hag is dangerous and very real. There are many people throughout all of history who are said to have quietly died in their sleep. People say their hearts just stopped, or something of that nature. That is usually not what happened. In such cases, the Old Hag has taken them. She feeds on the energy of human souls. She needs a lot of them. She is voracious and said to want to rule the known universe.”

“You think she’ll kill Shane?” asked Kelsey.

Minerva took one of my hands, and one of Kelsey’s, and said, “Not if we can help it, she won’t. Now, go. Get that something of Travis’s and bring it back to me right away.”

Kelsey was already up, preparing to go, but I had one last question for Minerva.

“If we do this, and I get him back, is there any way my life will ever go back to normal again?” I asked. “I can’t imagine living around people like my mom who don’t believe me, hiding the truth for the rest of my life.”

Minerva’s eyes grew sorrowful, and I knew she understood personally what I was saying.

“I am sorry to say your life will never be the same,” she told me as she looked about her, as though remembering something from her own life. “But I am happy to tell you that you will become strong and smart enough through this journey to be able to navigate the rapids of humanity in a way that keeps you safe from their misunderstandings. You will have a happy life, Shane, if you do this right. And whomever you lose to them thinking you are crazy, you will find new friends who understand you.”

We left then. Kelsey hurried out to the street, and practically ran to her hybrid car.

“Here,” she said, tossing me the keys. “You drive.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because I’m the navigator,” she said, whipping her smartphone out of her handbag.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You’re driving us down to Belen,” she said with a conspiratorial grin on her face. “There’s this widow who runs a ranch out there. I think we need to use her bathroom because we got lost trying to find a dog breeder and, like stupid city girls, we can’t bring ourselves to squat behind a tree.”

“What?” I asked, completely confused.

“Just drive,” she said.

K
elsey and I drove along Highway 47,
south through the Isleta Indian reservation with its massive Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, through the suburb of Los Lunas, past farms, trailers, and long-abandoned adobe dwellings, following the scribble of water that was this area’s only major river. The ranch was set back from the highway a mile or so on a dirt lane, accessed by passing beneath a large metal arch bearing the name Hartwell Ranch.

The ranch appeared to be about forty acres, with stables and corrals. The horses wore blankets over their backs and seemed strong and well cared for. I spied the pinkish-beige stucco pitched-roof house set back from the farmland, with its large wraparound porch and three-car garage. A big, healthy family house. I wasn’t sure why this surprised me, or why I had assumed Travis would have been raised in a small, dumpy house or trailer. I guess it was because he was from Valencia County, his speech had a twang, and he wore a cowboy hat. I was embarrassed by how little I knew about the lives people lived in the rural countryside so close to my own home.

As we drove over the bumpy road, alongside a fallow, frozen field, toward the house, two large dogs gave chase on the field side of the fence, yapping and barking. I had the strangest feelings coursing through me as I looked at the place. This was my one true love’s home. It felt familiar to me somehow, as though he’d imparted a sense of the place to me through his touch. I felt I’d been here before, though I knew that was utterly impossible. It felt haunted by him, by Randy, too, just a little, and I tried to picture them as children here, playing, working, growing up. A shroud of sadness hung over the ranch, too, and it was palpably a place of undeserved sorrow. A place wrapped in a veil of shouldn’t-have-beens. A place of ghosts.

I parked in the driveway, and cut the engine. It was so quiet, and I felt so odd, as though I might see Travis come bursting out of the front door. I wondered what that might have been like, the two of us dating like normal teenagers, if he’d lived. But I probably never would have met him, he said so himself. The question was moot. It would never be.

Kelsey and I quickly went over our plan, agreed upon it, and exited the car. We walked to the door, and rang the buzzer. We were waiting for someone to answer from inside the house, but as it happened, our answer came from outside, from behind us.

“Can I help you?” called a tough woman’s voice.

I spun to see a trim, seemingly strong woman who was probably in her late forties or early fifties, standing maybe fifteen feet from us, holding a wooden-handled ax. She wore jeans, work boots, and a large flannel jacket that seemed like it might once have belonged to a man because of the way she had the sleeves rolled into thick cuffs. Her hair was back in a ponytail, and she had a kerchief tied around her head the way some women did when they performed chores. Her face was pretty for her age, though she did not seem to wear makeup or carry herself in a way that said prettiness mattered to her, and in her expression and the set of her jaw I instantly saw Travis. He had her soulful brown eyes, and her dark hair and full mouth. They were so alike that I gasped a little at the sight of her, and had to work very hard to retain my composure in order to effectively pull off our plan. There was no doubt about it. This was my Kindred’s mother.

“Hi!” Kelsey called out cheerily, always having been a better actress than I was.

“Hello,” the woman replied politely but coolly. She didn’t smile. I wondered if she ever did anymore. I could not imagine the pain she had suffered in her life, losing everyone she loved, having herself perhaps been brutalized by Victor. He’d taken everything from her, and I loathed him.

“We’re sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Kelsey continued, even though in the plan it was supposed to be me doing most of the talking. She probably knew I was frozen with shock. “We were just down here looking to get a puppy from a breeder, but the address we had was wrong, and we got lost, and now, and this is the embarrassing part, we really have to pee.”

The woman cracked a bitter half grin that seemed a good bit annoyed, though I couldn’t tell what annoyed her more: the fact that we were the type to buy designer dogs, or the fact that we didn’t know how to pee in the countryside. She sneaked a look at Kelsey’s shiny hybrid Prius, and smirked to herself. It was not the sort of car you found on ranches, generally.

“Come on in,” she said. “Let me just put this ax out back. Be right there.”

Kelsey and I exchanged a significant look that marked our success with step one of our mission. The woman returned with a stern, carefully guarded expression on her face, and opened the door with a set of keys. I noticed she unlocked three locks on it, even though this was the sort of area where most people felt safe leaving doors unlocked. If I had been her, I would have done the same thing. She knew the tragedy life could dish out unexpectedly. She wanted no more loss. She was never going to be vulnerable again.

The house was spotless, and spacious, decorated in a no-nonsense middle-class style that reminded me of the rooms you’d see in department store catalogs. The floors were of tile in places and pristine cream-colored carpet in others. The furniture was high-quality, but not showy, wholly functional, which spoke of a certain kind of family that might sit down to homemade chicken potpie. We’d never had anything like that; my mother had always preferred to microwave ready-made food for me, or to get takeout from the gourmet market’s deli, because she was so busy. Travis’s mom seemed busy, too, running a horse ranch; but she seemed like the type who’d make time for family and cooking. It smelled of potpourri in the house, apples and cinnamon, and of a pot roast cooking. Photos were in a variety of charmingly mismatched frames everywhere you looked, so many photos: photos of Travis and Randy, Randy and Travis, as babies, toddlers, children, teens.

This house was no longer a home; it was a shrine.

“There’s one off the kitchen there, and another down the hall past the door, there,” said Travis’s mother, looking at us curiously as we made much of squirming to hold our bladders in control. Kelsey went for the kitchen, leaving me to the hallway.

I hurried down the somewhat darkened corridor, noticing the walls were coated with photos, many from rodeo contests, all of them bearing Travis’s face. The locket around my neck warmed and glowed more and more brightly as I took in these pictures, and I covered it with my hand to stifle the light. My heart ached terribly, and I fought back tears. I missed him with such fervor it threatened to topple me. He’d been so talented, so decorated, and he’d had such a lovely mother. Such a pleasant home. Such potential for joy and greatness, and the family through no fault of its own had been caught in Victor’s crosshairs. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair. Where I had simply felt a fear and resentment of Victor, within the walls of this house I now felt a vengeful streak rise like anger in me. I wanted to take him down for what he’d done to this family, to my love, and to me.

I found the bathroom, stepped in, and closed the door. It was a green-and-white wonderland of shine and gleam, spacious and filled with living plants in pots with crocheted holders, more photos, and perfect towels and little dishes of soaps in the shape of seashells. Like the rest of the house, it smelled freshly scrubbed and as though no one had ever done in it what bathrooms were known for. It was pleasant, but also almost unfathomably sad, because the woman who tended to it all had clearly not moved on, was not ever going to move on. She was keeping things as they had been, in perfect working order for the day when those who’d once shared this space with her would return.

I knew how she felt, and yet I dreaded becoming like her. How could I not? Travis’s pull was so strong, and our love for each other so perfect and enormous, there would be no moving on from him. There simply couldn’t be. I had to find him. I had to save him. I had to bring him back into my world, because a life without Travis was unthinkable now. And this, I reminded myself, was why I was here, in this house, now. To steal a piece of him from her. I didn’t want to add to her misery, or take anything away, but I reasoned that in doing so I could possibly bring back part of him to her world.

Because I didn’t actually need to go to the bathroom, I waited a moment, then washed my hands, drying them on one of the stiff green towels that smelled of dryer sheets and felt like it was never used.

I cracked the door open, and listened. Kelsey, true to our plan, was busily asking Travis’s mom a million questions, trying to get her to let Kelsey see her horses. While she carried on in this way, I sneaked down the hall another couple of doors, until I came to the room I felt belonged to Travis. I did not feel his hand or thoughts guiding me as I had in dreams, but I just knew. I entered and recognized the room as surely as if it had been my own, and wondered if somehow Travis had transferred knowledge to me in my sleep.

I went directly to the wooden shelf affixed to the wall above the dresser. It veritably sagged with fancy trophy belt buckles, dozens and dozens of them, all with his name on them and many demonstrating he’d won first place. I ran my fingers over them, my lip caught between my teeth and my brow furrowed with concentration, trying to remember which was the one he had loved the most. His soul was my soul, I told myself. Even if I could no longer feel
him
, I could feel what he’d felt, if I just allowed it to happen. I stopped on a small buckle, worn down and nondescript. He’d been four years old when he won it, according to the date. It was for something called “mutton busting” and he’d come in first place. It was the oldest trophy here, and from the warmth I felt emanating from it, his most precious. His first win, the time when he first realized he had a calling for rodeo. I swiped the little buckle, stuffed it easily into the pocket of my jacket. I hustled out of the room as quickly as I could, ducked down the hall, and found Kelsey standing with Travis’s mom at the far end of the kitchen, pointing at something outside. Seeing me, she stopped.

“Hi,” I said as naturally as I could fake.

“All set?” Travis’s mom asked me. I could tell Kelsey was getting on her nerves.

“Yes, thank you so very much.” I shot Kelsey a knowing look so she’d understand I’d accomplished our mission.

“You’re a lifesaver,” Kelsey said to Travis’s mom. I didn’t know if my friend recognized the irony in her choice of words, but I certainly did.

“You girls need directions out of here?” Travis’s mother asked, almost seeming sad to see us go. I wondered if she ever had guests or visitors.

“Sure,” Kelsey said, though we didn’t. As Mrs. Hartwell told us how to get back to the interstate, I felt an overwhelming urge to throw my arms around her, to tell her how sorry I was, to ask her if I could come and visit her often. I wanted to tell her I’d seen him, I knew him, that both her sons were still out there somewhere. But I couldn’t do any of that. I couldn’t risk having her think me crazy, too. I didn’t want to open up old wounds for her, or clog her life with any more turmoil or pain.

“Thank you, Deidre,” I said, as she showed us to the door. “Have a wonderful day.”

She looked at me in surprise.

“How did you know my name?” she asked me.

Caught, I waffled and blushed. I stammered and tried to think up a lie. “Um, I, uh, I saw it on the mailbox, Hartwell Ranch, and then in the hall, the pictures, there was something with your name.”

In truth, I knew her name from the news stories I’d read about the deaths of her sons. She narrowed her eyes at me, sensing the lie, her body growing rigid with defensiveness as she seemed to wonder who might have sent us here. Where she’d previously seemed only sad, she now seemed afraid. I wanted so much to tell her she did not need to fear us, but I couldn’t.

“Kids around here generally refer to adults as Mister and Missus,” she said suspiciously, “in case you girls ever get ‘lost’ again.”

“Thanks,” Kelsey said, shoving me out the door. “Have a great day!”

Travis’s mother gave us a mournful look and did not answer. Her eyes were wide with worry now, but also filled with painful memories she had no idea I understood as deeply as I understood my own being. The ache I held in the center of my heart for Travis expanded in that moment to include his mother, and I felt dizzy with grief—but with the trophy in hand, and Minerva maybe able to help me find him, I was hopeful for the first time. As we walked out of the house, the heat from my locket grew stronger, and I pulled it out from under my shirt to keep it from scorching my skin.