“Jeez, will you stop annoying the waitress? I’ll have the shrimp cocktail and the mixed greens salad. Bring my sister the Valium.”
“Har-de-har-har, Rose. You have no idea what I want. You never did.”
“Fine, then. Order. I have forty-five minutes, then I have to get back to work.”
“He makes you punch a time clock?”
“No. I just don’t take more than an hour for lunch.”
Lily ordered the same salad, no dressing, and the fruit plate, from which she planned to eat only the melon. “Why do you work that job, Rose? It’s beneath your intelligence. Do you do it to be near Doctor Cute? He was really good with Buddy, but I don’t trust him.”
Rose set down her water glass. “Let’s see, I don’t have a college
degree, I need the money, plus I really enjoy the humiliation factor of having you point out to me that what I do for a living lacks status, importance, and a future.”
“Come on, that’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“Do me a favor, Lily? Don’t explain what you did mean. Let’s just talk about something other than my job.”
Lily leaned forward across the table. “You slept with Doctor Cute while I was gone, didn’t you? You keep smiling for no reason. Plus, you were extra kind to the waitress.”
“What if I did?”
“Let’s hear the details.”
Rose raked her hands through her hair. “Aren’t we both a little long in the tooth for these dissections? You notice I didn’t ask you what you were doing all last week with Tres Quintero.”
“Oh, but you should have, Rose. It was the
Kama Sutra
, backwards, forwards, up the stairs, I lost track of how many times.”
“You slept with him?”
“Used up two boxes of condoms.”
“Lily, you just met him.” The shrimp cocktail arrived and Rose unfolded her napkin and set it in her lap. “Never mind. It’s none of my business what you do.”
Lily watched her sister eat a few bites, then put her silverware down. “You think I’m immoral because I like getting laid.”
“I never said that.”
“The look on your face says plenty. Between you and Shep I’m ready to head back to California.”
“What’s the matter with Shep?”
“Hell if I know. He wouldn’t even come outside and talk to me today.”
“Maybe he wasn’t feeling well.”
“He was feeling well enough the night before to lecture me on my sex life.”
Rose folded her hands on the tablecloth. “A lot can happen overnight.”
“You did sleep with the vet!” Lily said. “I knew it.” Rose sighed. “Believe whatever you want, Lily.”
“Why is it such a big deal? Why can’t you tell me a few measly fine points and share like a sister?”
“I don’t feel like it. Some things are private.” “I tell you everything. You’re being stingy.” “You tell me far more than I care to know.” “Oh, and that’s a sin, right?”
“What I do with Austin’s none of your business, Lily.”
The salads arrived, and Lily picked up her fork. She stabbed the tines into the glistening berries. She wanted to pick them up and one by one, throw them at her sister. “There’s worse things in the world than me enjoying sex, Rose Ann. Lots worse. Murder, for ex- ample.”
“We’re in a public place, Lily. Lower your voice.”
“Hey, I’m a paying customer, I’ll talk as loud as I want to.”
Her sister pushed away the half-finished shrimp and stared at the salad plate before her. “For crying out loud, Lily. I wish I knew what it is you’re trying to get at.”
“Do you believe true penance can put anyone back in God’s graces?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Even adulterers?”
Rose looked stricken. “Where did this sudden interest in morals come from? Is Tres married?”
“No, divorced. Maybe it’s not my morals I’m thinking about.
Maybe it’s somebody else’s.”
“Lily, this subject is getting really old.”
“Come on, Rose. I want to know. If you’re not going to tell me what you did with Austin, at least answer my question.”
“Even adultery, yes. I guess if I had to pin it down, there’s only one sin I find unforgivable, and that’s holding on to grudges. If we can’t forgive each other, I kind of think we’re lost as a species.”
“Jeez, Rose,” Lily said. “doesn’t that strike you as
slightly
hypocrit- ical, since you refused to talk to me for five whole years?”
Rose looked down at the table. She pressed her lips together, straightened out her napkin, and set her fork on top of it. Then she stood up and pushed her chair in. “Where do you think I came up with the idea?”
She left Lily sitting alone at the table.
Not too long after Rose’s departure, the waitress came by with the check and complimentary toothpicks, packaged in tissuey white paper. Lily unwrapped one, stabbed it into the leftover shrimp and assembled a
fruit and seafood kabob. She arranged the salad greens around it and sat there fuming.
I should have told her right then
, Lily thought. Sometimes Rose acted so prim and penned up inside it made Lily want to scream. Of course, that was the way a person’s mind worked if she was having really great sex with somebody she loved, some- body who
loved her back
. Lily cut one of the berries in half and studied the pink, meaty flesh. She envisioned it infested with worms, which was basically how she’d stayed thin her whole life.
Rather than look for her, Lily let Rose walk the three blocks back to work. She dialed her voice mail on her car phone and was surprised to find no new messages. Next, she dialed her answering machine in California and other than a few hang-ups and a yet another tele- marketer wanting to sell her the
Register
, there was no news. Out of desperation, and to make certain she still existed, she called Eric. “Just thought I’d check in,” she said to her boss. “See what’s up.”
“I’m in the middle of something, Lily. Is this important?” “Don’t get nervous.”
“You said you wanted to be left alone.” “So I did. See you in a couple of weeks.” “Whatever.” He hung up.
She threw her cell phone onto the passenger’s seat. First Tres, then the mare, then Rose, now stinky Eric. Apparently this was her week for rejections. She turned the heater down in the Lexus and drove up the highway to her parents’ ranch. Sans Buddy, the ranch dogs didn’t bother barking on her arrival, and Shep was nowhere in sight. She stood at the fenceline petting Rose’s mare, who was turned out into the arena with a few of the older geldings. Winky was nothing special to look at. She didn’t even sport a decent lineage. Rose had an instinct for such things, however, and Lily bet this horse would probably throw a beautiful gray colt. She scratched the mare’s neck and tried not to think about how well everyone seemed to live their lives without her. The term “old maid” caromed through her mind. She started for the house, then turned. Once again, she knocked on Shep’s door.
“Shep? You want to come up to the house and play backgammon with me? I promise I won’t cheat. I’ll fix you a steak for dinner, nice and bloody the way you like it. And a baked potato with sour cream and chives. I’ll even throw in garlic bread. Pretty please, Shep?”
“Thank you, no,” he said through the closed door.
Lily tried the knob. It wasn’t locked, so she let herself in to the small room with the cot bed covered by a faded Indian blanket. Cowboy paintings covered the walls, and a braided rawhide whip lay on the table, where the old man sat writing out a supply list on a legal pad. So far it read, “Four-way, vitamins, hoof paint, thrush medicine, shavings, and painkiller.” Lily wondered if the last item was for him or the horses. “Come on, Shep. It’s insane for both of us to be here alone and sitting in separate corners. You’ve got to eat sometime, and I’m feeling lonely.”
He set his pencil down and rubbed his forehead. “Go pet your fairy dog.”
“Can’t. He’s in the shop. You’re pissed at me because I ran off with Tres for a few days, aren’t you?”
“Like I said earlier, your sex life is of no interest to me, Miss Loose Drawers.”
“It used to be. We used to talk about everything. By the way, do you have a glue gun?”
“Not anymore. What in hell do you need to glue back together?” “Mami’s sculpture. You weren’t lying. Buddy really did a number
on it.”
He rummaged through a drawer and retrieved a glue gun and replacement cartridges. “There. Now get lost.”
“Sheppy,” she wheedled, “don’t be mad at me.”
He looked her square in the eye. “I ain’t mad. I’m dying of prostate cancer, and I’d like to do it in peace.”
Lily’s face went hot with shock. “Don’t talk like that.”
He looked up at her. The grizzled face seemed to be nothing more than tired skin lying slack against bone. His eyes shifted this way and that, as if he didn’t quite know where to fix his gaze. “You rather come out here and find me dead some morning? That’d suit you better? What am I supposed to do, just shut my mouth on the subject until the night arrives? How in the hell do I know when that night is going to be?”
Lily set her purse on the floor and eased herself down onto his lap. She stroked his cheeks and touched his ears, grown long with age like a horse’s. “Is that what the doctor told you today?”
He nodded.
“How long does he say you have?”
“Year maybe, if I do the chemotherapy.”
She kissed the top of his head. “Come back with me to California. I know some doctors who are absolute magicians. You might not have to lose your hair.”
Shep shook his head. “I don’t have the right clothes for the great prune state.”
The shock flooded her with adrenaline. “You’re not going to do the chemo, are you?”
He pushed her away. “Lord, you’re heavier than a stock saddle, and your butt is all bone. Get off me.”
Lily knelt down on the floor next to him. “I love you, Sheppy. I don’t want you to die. Please do the chemo.”
He picked up a deck of cards, shuffled, and began to deal them out. “You’re a spoiled brat, Lily. Always thinking of yourself. I want to hang on long enough to see your sister’s mare through her birth- ing, then Saint Peter is welcome to this sorry old bag of stove-up bones.”
Tears ran down her cheeks. “Are you in pain, Shep?” “Not much.”
“What are you taking for it?”
“Codeine or something. Upsets my stomach.”
“There’s no reason for you to hurt at all. Let me call your doctor.
We’ll get you a different prescription.”
He laid his age-spotted hand over hers. “I never did much like swallowing pills. I could purely relate to the horses on that score. Now don’t be sticking that lower lip out. You’re supposed to be the tough one. Everybody dies sooner or later, just never when it suits you. Grab that other deck of cards and let’s play double solitaire. Loser cooks the steaks.”
ose’s first thought as she opened the back door that morning was,
Oh, I’ve missed this
, and a fraction of a second later,
I wonder
how long until spring
.
All night long she’d listened to the wind blow,
rattling the old windows in their wooden frames, a reminder that her house needed attention. Now, from halfway up the wheel wells of her Bronco to the mailbox on the post at the end of her drive, everywhere she looked, there lay a pristine white blanket of snow. It was six
A.M.
, and Max was neighing for breakfast, so she began shoveling a path, working toward the barn.
If nothing else, her efforts expelled some of her anger toward her sister. She’d forgotten how peaceful—and insane—it felt not to be speaking to Lily. For example, Rose could feel grateful and amused by the simple things in life: a cartoon in the
Floralee Facts
that caught her by surprise, or Chachi’s antics when he desperately wanted to finish the milk in her cereal bowl. That solitary way of looking at things had its pluses: Even this snowfall moved her. Lily, particularly when her poisonous tongue was in action, could cast a pall over the sunniest day, confusing Rose completely. Following their restaurant fight, Rose had immediately picked up the phone to call Mami, hoping to unload as well as gain an ally, but her mother was in California. Some dire dog business had beckoned, and off she flew. Paloma’s sympathetic ear made a good substitute until her friend made a simple observation. “What do you expect?” she said. “Her purse is a mess,” inferring that its contents belied Lily’s carefully assembled exterior.
Maybe so. Which made Rose think of Austin—erstwhile handbag
inspector—who seemed to have caught whatever virus had infected Lily. Lately he nit-picked the orders she asked him to approve, and despite their sleeping together—and sleeping was all they did—couldn’t have been more distant. When Rose made her bed in the mornings, taking hold of the sheets, she had to convince herself the vet lay there from time to time when he needed comforting. Words seemed unnecessary. Austin held her, and the shine of his eyes let her know that the horse he’d been trying to save from colic earlier in the day hadn’t made it, or the surgery he’d performed on a dog that had been hit by a car wasn’t enough to make a difference. When the vet got locked up inside himself like that, Rose was afraid to touch him, fearful she’d say the wrong thing. He never showed up with alcohol on his breath, but there were mornings at the clinic when he’d head upstairs without saying anything except, “Cancel my appointments,” and sleep twelve hours straight on the futon balanced on top of his books. Oh, the idea of whatever this was between them moving beyond such nights seemed about as likely as the plot of one of her romance novels, which lately annoyed her with their outlandish masculine heroes. The only bona-fide hero Rose knew was Shep Hallford. Thinking of him made her stop shoveling, lean on the handle, and take deep breaths to keep from breaking down.
A couple of nights ago she’d driven up to the ranch to check on Winky, who was now entering her fifth month of pregnancy, almost the halfway mark, which meant time for another vaccine. Shep kept charts on every horse, almost as detailed as Austin’s medical files, only Shep’s handwriting was legible. She figured she’d double-check to make sure he’d already given the injection. Thankfully, Lily was elsewhere, so Rose was spared a face-to-face continuation of the morals debate. In the bunkhouse Rose had found her father’s wrangler emptying whole bureau drawers into trash bags. His hair wasn’t combed, he smelled like he could use a shower, and from the look of things he’d been at this “housecleaning” for some time, because his room furnishings were down to a few Spartan posses- sions. Rose had seen the same terrified look in Bijou’s eyes the day the awful man brought him into the clinic. “Shep, there’re storage boxes in the barn,” she said calmly.