The Secrets She Keeps (38 page)

She held my hands. I was so grateful for this woman, my sister.

We sat in the quiet, while I took in the truth. Birds rattled the branches of a tree, had a conversation about something, maybe us. A lizard darted past as if embarrassed to be caught naked. Nature went on, ignoring our human crises. I felt exhausted, as if my center had been dug out with a spoon. But something new sat there, in that empty, excavated space—the small, slight glimmer of relief.

“Look who’s back,” Shaye said. I thought she meant me at first, but then she hooked her thumb in the direction of the pasture, just beyond the old riding ring.

“That old lug,” I said. It was Rob, with his huge lumberjack shoulders and big dejected head.

“Have you ever noticed he has a beard?”

“It’s a 7-Eleven-guy beard.”

“You know what? I’m actually going to miss him when I go home.”

I really looked at her, for the first time that morning. I turned my teary red eyes right on her. “You’re going home. You decided.”

“I paid that lawyer for his hour and got the hell out of there. Sometimes you need to do something to know you don’t want to do something, right? I’m not ready to give up. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I mean, a stepfamily, God. Two people get married, it’s hard enough, let alone when six people do.”

“I’m glad, Shaye,” I said. “I am. I like Eric. He’s nothing like Mathew was, or Quentin.
Nothing
like. You
needed
to leave them, you really did. But in spite of his decisions right now…”

“In spite of his decisions right now, I made a good choice this time. I did. Before, I chose the lightning, hoping it’d save me from the thunder, you know? Does that sound like a country-western song?”

“Bring me your moody, your dark, your psycho masses…”

“Right. Hey, I know my mother when I see him.”

I smiled. “But Eric’s a good guy.”

“He is. That’s what gives me hope. That’s the thing. Thomas, too. We’re lucky.”

“We are.” She squeezed my hands.

“Cal, we’ve got to get out of here before our six weeks are up.”

“I love you, Shamu,” I said.

“Oh, sweetie. I love you, too.”

“You know what we should do tonight? We should raise a glass and toast this damn place and everything that’s happened here,” I said.

“Better believe it. Moo!” Shaye yelled in Rob’s direction.

“Careful. You might get him riled up.”

“Does he look like he’s capable of getting riled up?”

“That’s not what you said when you were screaming your head off the other night.”

“Oh, and you were the picture of bravery? Well, he’s more scared of us than we are of him.”

“Remember? Mom used to say that about the boys in junior high.”

“Mooo!” Shaye yelled again. She did a pretty good cow.

Rob lifted his shaggy head and stared us down. When he took a few bored steps in our direction, Shaye squealed and grabbed my arm, and we jumped up, knocking the lounge chair sideways. We ran into the house as if he was after us, just for the thrill of it.

—

I knew there’d be no gather that day. Kit had told me they’d be on site, sorting horses by sex and age and temperament, deciding which animals got to stay on the rangelands and which would go on to the corral facility just outside Carson City. I was surprised how many different trucks were there. Many large, long trailers were parked in a row near the temporary pens. The first round of mustangs would be going on to their new lives.

“Cowboy, you got a visitor!” Lorraine yelled when she saw me.

“Looks like it’s lunchtime, gang,” Kit said. He hopped over a gate and came my way. His sky-blue T-shirt was half untucked from his jeans, and damn that man if he didn’t nearly saunter.

Steve gave a catcall, whistling with two fingers. “Enough of that, fellas!” Kit called over his shoulder.

“Sorting looks like a horse audition. Him over here, her over there, yes, no…” I said.

“Can you tell? And all of those guys needing medical care.” He gestured toward a small caravan already heading out.

I followed Kit around to the far side of the long line of trailers. A woman closed up the back doors of the last one, shaking the latch to make sure it was secure. I could hear the horses in there. One thrashed against the side, flinging his large body, making his outrage known.

Kit took my hands. “You came to say goodbye.”

I couldn’t answer that. My heart was in my throat. “He wants out.” I nodded toward the truck.

“He only knows that he doesn’t want to be where he is now. It’ll all look different tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Kit…”

“Come here.” He pulled me close. “You don’t have to say anything. I know. I understand.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? For what? If you’re sorry, I should be, too. I’m not in any place to…There’s no need for apologies, none at all.”

He held me for a long time. I took in his smell and the feel of him. I took it way in, as if it were a whole lifetime. My heart felt crushed. I could cry again. I would miss this man. Still. I may have drifted like a seed to my life, but even seeds settled where they might best thrive.

Finally, we stepped apart. “I’m going to miss you,” he said.

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

“You’ve done more for me than you know,” he said. “Thank you. Truly.”

“No, thank
you
. So much.”

“In here.” He tapped his temple.

“Always.”

The driver of that trailer had gotten in. She honked the horn long and loud to warn of her departure. One arm appeared out the window and she waved, and then the trailer lurched forward, with all its wild and complicated cargo.

—

When I got back to the ranch, only Shaye’s big SUV and Nash’s new Ford Fusion Hybrid were out front. So I was startled to see a third person on the porch, someone with Nash and Shaye. His hands were up over his head, and with those strong shoulders of his, he was lifting the last corner of that swing onto the shiny bolt now screwed into the recently reinforced beam. Shaye held up the other end, and Nash’s arms were crossed, her bossy pose. Tex lay with his chin on his paws, watching, but when he heard my car, he scurried to all fours and sprinted to the driveway, barking his head off. I hadn’t had a greeting like that in a long time.

Or a greeting like the next one.

He ran to the car, and when I got out, he took me into his arms. He held me hard. “God, Cal. You are a sight for sore eyes. I have been such an idiot.”

“Thomas,” I said.

“What have we been doing?”

“This is a surprise,” I said.

“You haven’t been answering your phone, so I called here….I left a message.”

“On the ranch machine? I think it’s broken.” Shaye and Nash still stood on the porch, those snoops, pretending to be busy but clearly trying to listen in. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, Thomas.”

“We do.”

“I’ve got twenty-two years’ worth of things to say to you.”

“We’ve got time, Cal.”

“I am so angry with you.”

“I know. We’ve both been angry. We’ve both been—”

“Lonely. I’ve felt so lonely.”

“We’re going to talk, Cal. As long as we need to. We’ll talk our heads off.”

“Thomas, jeez. We’ve got some stuff to fix. And our house…” I said. I didn’t know where to start.

“It’s too damn big for us.”

“We have so much—”

“
Stuff
,” he said. “I feel burdened by it.”

“You do? I do, too.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know why suddenly, but I do.” I felt choked up. I always worried that if I cried, I’d never stop, and now look. It was true. I was feeling too much. It seemed like I had been away on a long, long trip, and was once again packing for another.

“We can have a big huge bonfire on the lawn and really give Mrs. Radish something to gawk at.”

I laughed. Stupid Mrs. Radish. Thomas hugged me again.

“I miss our girls so much,” I said into his shoulder. My voice wobbled, near tears. “I don’t even know what to do with myself I miss them so bad.”

“Oh, man. I know. How could they just leave us? God damn them.”

I laughed. So did he. But much passed between Thomas and me when we separated and looked at each other then. Tiny, wrinkled fingers and reading aloud and school plays with costumes made from T-shirts and glitter. Oh, we were pitiful, the way we loved our kids.

“This place. God, Cal, it’s really changed.”

“It’s a
mess
. All I could see at first was the mess. And everything that needed to be
repaired
.” At least the swing was up now. Thomas and I, we were so very much alike.

“It’s still beautiful, though. I mean,
look.
”

I did. I looked at the riding ring and the dirt-filled pool and the acres of dry yellow and orange land stretching out to yellow and orange hills, all still stunning. In spite of the fallen fences and the places where the mustangs stormed the grasses and the plain old passage of time, it took your breath away. It stood fast, against every storm and drought. I was glad he could see what I did.

“I think there’s a rifle in the pool,” Thomas said.

“There is.”

“I was so worried,” Thomas said. “I took the train down! It was fantastic, Cal. We should take the train! But when I got here, there was no one at the station, and I figured you didn’t want to see me, and then they misplaced my bag, and I thought, shit, what else could go wrong.”

Nash and Shaye had finally found their good manners. Nash called from the porch. “If you two will excuse us…”

“We’re going to go start dinner!” Shaye yelled cheerfully.

They disappeared inside, but Tex just sat his little butt down to watch what might happen next.

Well, here’s what happened next. I looked at Thomas, and I saw home.

“It is so good to see you, Mack,” I said.

At the precise moment that Nash’s heart is breaking, just as she stands in front of Mrs. Macy Milburn’s agency, holding her true love in her arms, Jane Reynolds Fremont arrives at the train station in Carson City. Someone from Tamarosa Ranch was supposed to fetch her, but no one is there, not a single person, and now her bag seems to have gone missing.
What else could possibly go wrong?
she thinks. She throws up her hands in frustration, and then she collapses onto a bench, puts her head in her hands, and begins to cry.

As Nash holds that baby close against her and removes Mrs. Fletcher’s wedding ring, she has no idea about Jane Reynolds Fremont. The newest problems, their latest guest—they are all things she’ll learn the next day, when the exhausted and distraught Mrs. Fremont finally arrives by taxicab. Even if Nash did know, though, she would not have been able to think about anyone or anything else right then, certainly not about the way life just keeps going forward, as she prepares herself to hand over the bundle that is Edward Austen. It is the right and true thing to do, she understands. She is tempted to flee with him, to make a new life with him, but that is not what is meant for Edward Austen or even for her.

Now she fills out the paperwork—
Mother: Lilly Edwards, Los Angeles. Father: unknown
—as Mrs. Macy Miller prattles on in a decisive voice.
We will find him a good home, Miss Edwards
, she says.
I have a list right here. A family in Montana, one in Idaho, several in Colorado
…Mrs. Miller’s arms reach out.

It may be the right and true thing, but as Nash kisses that hard little nose one more time before saying goodbye, her heart feels destroyed. Nash buries her own nose in him, and she takes in his smell and the feel of his tiny gripping fingers as if it were a lifetime.

She can barely see through her tears on the way back to the ranch. But when she arrives home, all of the women are there to bring her back in, like a herd of cattle circling around its injured one. Veronica, who has long since missed her plane, is making drinks, and Hadley insists that Nash sit and tell them everything, and Ellen, who has Boo up on her lap, says how proud she is of Nash. The funny thing is, Nash is proud of Ellen, too. She was so strong. Strong enough that she looks different now.

Even Alice is there. Home, finally. She takes her daughter in her arms. “Oh, my girl,” Alice says. “My darling girl.”

It is not in celebration that they raise their glasses, their Moscow mules made of vodka and ginger beer and lime. It is in respect and awe of all they have seen and experienced together. The toast is a promise they all make to one another. The deepest and most unbreakable vow to a bond that needs no words. No one says anything as they raise their arms. There is only the clink of glass against glass.

—

Nash knows that Thomas is following a good distance behind her. He thinks she can’t see him, but she can. No doubt those girls are in that car, too. Likely, niece Callie has given in and decided to bring Tex along. He is probably riding on his toes, with his nose out the window, catching all the smells he’s been missing while stuck on the ranch so long. When Nash gets back, just before she sends them all home so she can begin to die, she’ll make Callie promise to look after him. The little dog has taken a liking to her.