Dream Country (11 page)

“I do want to see you,” she heard herself say.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Tell me,” Daisy said, swallowing. “Where is Sage?”

He stared down at the floor. It was pine, polished to a high sheen. Daisy and Sage had stenciled a border around the edges many years ago: white daisies and silvery sage leaves entwined together on vines.

“Ben?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must.”

“No,” he said. “Honestly. We were together until—”

There was a green glass pitcher standing on the kitchen counter. It contained a bunch of yellow chrysanthemums Sage had picked a week ago, before she’d disappeared. Daisy had promised herself she would keep them until Sage came home. With one sweep of her hand, Daisy sent the pitcher flying against the refrigerator, where it shattered into a hundred pieces.

“Don’t lie to me!” she yelled. “You lied to the police, you lied to your mother. But goddamn it, Ben, you’re going to tell me the truth.” Choking on a sob, she stared down at the dead flowers lying in slimy brown water, then into Ben’s shocked eyes.

“Tell me,” she breathed, holding herself. “Tell me.”

Ben started to pick up the biggest pieces of broken glass, but Daisy grabbed his arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not violent. I didn’t mean to scare you. But I have to know. I have to hear what’s happening to Sage.”

“She—” Ben started, his mouth too dry to talk.

“Go ahead, Ben,” Daisy said. “You can tell me.”

“She was in Iowa, Mrs. Tucker,” Ben said. “Just like I told the police—”

“After you said she’d gotten off the train in Chicago? I don’t understand that. I don’t get it.”

“She told me to.”

Daisy’s heart was pounding. His voice was shaking, his eyes sunken like a raccoon’s. “She told you to lie to the police?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“She wanted time to get away—”

“Get away from what?” Daisy asked, her eyes filling again. Was home so bad? Was she such a witch?

“From the train.”

“But where did you last see her? What was she doing? What did she say?”

“She was going to shove her bike out the train door,” Ben continued. “She was going to ride through the cornfield and hide. The police figured out I was lying right away. They searched the fields around the train, but she was gone. I think she went backward for a while. She didn’t want to get found. I don’t think she will be, until—”

“Until what?” Daisy asked, so desperate to hear.

“She gets to Wyoming,” he said.

Daisy tried to breathe. Wyoming. She broke down with the relief of finally knowing for sure. Her instinct had been right: Sage was going to James. Using the back of her hands, she wiped her eyes.

“What was her route? How was she planning to get there?”

“She had a map. It was all planned out, side roads all the way.”

“Do you know which ones?” Daisy asked, staring into Ben’s eyes in an attempt to see the truth. Even before he replied, she could see he had no idea.

“I don’t,” he said. “She had the map.”

Daisy shuddered. She walked over to the telephone, silently told it to ring. All the women in Silver Bay thought she could conjure love out of old cow bones, and she couldn’t even keep her daughter at home. She couldn’t will her to call, no matter how hard she concentrated.

“You won’t find her before she gets there,” Ben said. “That’s what I came over to tell you. I’m not sure how I know, but I know. She’s determined to get to Wyoming—the ranch—and I’m positive she’s going to get there.”

“Is she pregnant, Ben?” Daisy asked.

“Yeah.”

Daisy heard herself moan. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms, picturing the blue stick in Sage’s jewelry box. Ben had just confirmed what she’d already known.

“Is she okay?”

“She’s feeling sick.”

“Then she’s not very far along . . .”

“Six months,” Ben said, as Daisy’s heart fell.

“Six—?” How was it possible that she hadn’t noticed? By six months, expectant mothers were starting to show. She hadn’t seen her daughter’s bare stomach in all that time?

“She’s been throwing up since the beginning,” Ben said, sounding miserable. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt her. . . .”

“Oh, Ben,” Daisy said. She wanted to hate this boy as much as his mother hated Sage, but she couldn’t. He looked so crushed, so upset about what was happening to Sage. The way he said she’d been throwing up, Daisy could hear that he cared.

“She wanted me to stay with her,” he said, his voice cracking. “I couldn’t. I want to go to school, not to live on a ranch in Wyoming.”

Daisy listened.

“My mother told me not to come over,” he said. “She’s ballistic. I know she thinks Sage should have gotten an abortion.”

“Did Sage want that?” Daisy asked, knowing she didn’t, feeling bizarre talking about this with Ben Davis. Sage was sixteen; she should be playing soccer, carving pumpkins, planning her Halloween party, thinking about college.

He shook his head. “She thinks she’s having a boy.”

The blue stick,
Daisy thought.
A sign.

“I love her,” Ben said, his voice breaking again.

Daisy nodded. She believed he did, but what did he know? He was just a kid himself. When even adults couldn’t stay in love, withstand the pressures of togetherness, she knew she was glad that he and Sage hadn’t eloped, that he hadn’t married her. She and Sage would figure this out. She would do whatever it took to make sure Sage and the baby were taken care of.

“What are you going to do?” Ben asked.

“I’m going to go to Wyoming,” Daisy said. Until he had asked the question, Daisy would have said she was going to stay right here and wait. In spite of Louisa’s call and Hathaway’s encouragement, Daisy had thought her place was home by the phone. But something about the way Ben had said Sage was going to get there—to Wyoming—about picturing her daughter six months pregnant—still sick!—made Daisy know she had to leave right away.

“I’m sorry,” Ben said again.

“I know.” Daisy took his hand. It was cold, and as she looked out the window she saw that he had ridden his bike.

“My mother won’t let me use the car,” he said, following her gaze. “The police said they were going to arrest me, but they didn’t. I guess they believed me when I said I didn’t kidnap her.”

“I know you didn’t, Ben.”

“No one could kidnap Sage,” he said, trying to make her smile. “She’s amazing. She’s strong, she knows what she wants. She’s going to be fine, Mrs. Tucker. Honestly, she will. She won’t disappear.”

Daisy pulled her hand away. She looked down at the floor, gleaming in the late-October sun. Her gaze fell upon the painted flowers and leaves, white petals and silver-green leaves entwined. Decorating the floor together had been her idea, the year after she and Sage had moved east from Wyoming. She had handed Sage a brush, shown her how to twist the bristles as she stroked, making a perfect sage leaf. For the three or four days it had taken to paint the floor, Sage had never left her side.

Daisy thought of Jake, of the reason she and Sage had moved east in the first place. She looked Ben straight in the eye and said coolly, “Anyone can be kidnapped. Anyone can disappear.”

Mothers and fathers, mothers and fathers. Oh, what a perfect world. Hold me tight, and sleep will take me, all through the night.

All through the night, through the night, through the night.

Sweet dreams, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.

Happy families, what a joke. He cleaned his nails with a hunting knife and nicked the skin. A big bubble of blood came up, and he sucked it and spit it out. Blood never bothered him. He’d gotten used to it long ago, living where he did, growing up around ranch land. When he skinned his knees and ran to mama, well, she was just a little too busy to kiss it better.

He got used to cleaning up his own cuts. You might say he knew where the Band-Aids were kept. He’d rummage under the sink for peroxide and gauze, even the worst time, when he’d snagged his behind on a rusty nail. Jesus, trying to clean that wound by himself, half turned around, looking over his own shoulder while his mother slept in the other room. His father? Who knew where his father was?

Who ever knew where his father was?
All through the night . . .

Poor little lamb,
his mother had said when she saw the jagged cut across his buttocks, down the back of his leg.
Poor little lamb.

More like poor little cow, he thought now. The range was endless, dotted with cattle. Cows grazing on land too vast for the imagination to comprehend, yet too small for other varieties of stock. Sheep, for instance. Lambs.

The knife was large and sharp. He had sharpened it himself, using age-old methods, with spit, oil, and a whetstone. Back and forth, back and forth. Hiding had its boredom. One way to pass the time was to keep his equipment in top condition.

Another way was to eavesdrop. From his hiding places, he watched the cowboys. He knew the trails they took, the places they liked to rest. Sometimes they talked, and sometimes their voices carried.

A girl was coming.

Making her way west, just like the wagon trains. There’s gold in them thar hills. There’s grass for grazing and ground for planting and trees for cutting into fat, handsome building logs. Dreams come true out here; that’s why people came west in the first place. Happy families, everywhere you looked. Just look.

The knife was sharp, the rain had stopped falling, the cows were grazing again, and a girl on her own was coming west. Wild, wild west.

Sweet dreams, little lamb.

Chapter Eleven

F
lying across the country, Daisy watched the ocean and cities of the East give way to the flat Midwest. She saw the Mississippi River flow, the boundary waters glisten, the Rocky Mountains rise, the badlands darken.

Looking down, Daisy’s throat ached. She and Sage were on their way to the same place. Was it really possible they hadn’t been back in twelve years? “Let her be safe,” she whispered, her forehead against the window.

She felt pressure in her chest, like a hand on her heart. She thought of Sage on her bike, looking up at the plane flying overhead, following the white trail all the way to Wyoming.

Louisa had offered to pick her up at the Riverton airport, but Daisy had said no. She wanted to be as independent as possible, so she had decided to rent a car and drive to the ranch on her own. As the plane circled the airport, the sky seemed hinged to mountaintops. The land itself was red, rust, and purple, as bright as sunsets back east. It would be beautiful to anyone, spectacular to an artist. Daisy closed her eyes, moved and excited by the view. Something inside her stirred, a part that had been asleep for a long time.

Heaven is wide,
she thought. Remembering Wyoming, she saw the big sky all around. It had spread outward from their little house, and she had believed that she and James had found the very center of heaven.

“There’s a place for everyone,” she had told him one cold night when the sky was deep and beautiful, when the aurora borealis painted fire and ice over the stars, “and this is our place.” That night she had felt she could touch the wind.

Flying westward, she felt like howling. She didn’t want to be seduced by the land, by the big sky.

Sage would show up soon, she told herself. They would be in and out of the state quickly. Many years ago Daisy had come west here, looking for inspiration for her work. She had found true love, given birth to two children. Then Wyoming had taken everything from her.

As she waited at the Hertz counter, the airport seemed to be full of pregnant women. Daisy stared at them all, trying to gauge how far along they were. One stood in the line behind her, staring at the ceiling while her husband talked trout fishing with the man behind them.

“When is the baby due?” Daisy asked, hoping her voice sounded normal.

“End of December.” The woman wore jeans and a bulky plaid jacket. Close to Daisy’s age, she had curly red hair, lines around her eyes and mouth.

“So, you’re . . . seven months pregnant?” Daisy asked, trying to imagine Sage nearly this big. Was this what all those bulky clothes had been about? Daisy thought back to summer, how Sage hadn’t wanted to spend any time sitting on the beach.

“Just about.”

“Your first?” Daisy wished the line would move faster before she did something stupid. She felt the mad urge to reach out, touch the woman’s protruding belly. Her fingers actually tingled.

“At my age, can you imagine?” the woman asked. “You have kids?”

“Twins,” Daisy heard herself say, just as the man ahead of her took his keys and rental agreement, and went out to the parking lot.

“Two at once.” The woman laughed. “Hope you had ’em young.”

Daisy pasted a polite smile on her face and wondered whether she was going insane. She stepped up to the desk, found the slip of paper bearing her reservation number. “I did,” Daisy said.

As the clerk processed her reservation, another pregnant woman passed by, pushing a stroller, and Daisy followed her with her eyes. That gave her two pictures to consider: Sage pregnant, Sage as a new mother.

She grabbed a road map of the area. It had been many years since she’d been in Wyoming. She didn’t want to waste any time losing her way.
In and out,
she thought. She walked out the terminal door into the cold, fresh air.

Daisy threw her bags into the midsize Ford and began to drive. She kept both hands on the wheel, her eyes on the road. She wanted to stay as focused and contained as possible. Anytime she raised her gaze, she saw mountains. There they were, the Wind Rivers: majestic and rugged against the blue sky. She kept her eyes trained low, straight ahead.

There was nothing between the road and the mountains but range. Sheep and cattle grazed. Wind-stunted cedars grew along straight ridgelines; silver sagebrush covered the rolling ground. Although the air was cold, Daisy kept the car window open and the perfume of the West blew in: sage, spice, fur, and dust.

Emotions filled her chest. She tried to push them down. Memories returned, beginning with the first time she’d been in Wyoming. Born and raised in New England, she had been amazed by the things she saw here. She had been bowled over with inspiration. The size of the mountains, the expanse of the sky; she had known that everything in Wyoming was bigger, that any love that existed here was too deep, too consuming, too overpowering for a girl like her to understand.

She passed a rock formation spray-painted with the name “Sacagawea.” Graffiti Wyoming-style, a tribute to the Shoshone girl kidnapped in a tribal raid. Jamming on the brakes, Daisy pulled over. She stared at the boulder, reading the name. From Daisy’s first days in Wyoming, Sacagawea had intrigued her. Many of her first western necklaces had been inspired by her: carvings depicting courage, mother-love, living in nature, stepping into the unknown.

Taken from her people, from everything that was familiar, Sacagawea had been so brave. Horrible things happened to her, and she’d just gone on. Kidnapped from her family, she was sold as a wife to a fur trader. Daisy could think of nothing more disgusting than being forced to marry someone she didn’t know or love, to have his baby.

But Sacagawea had loved her child. She and Baptiste, her infant boy, survived their three-thousand-mile journey with the Lewis and Clark expedition. She protected him, no matter what. People always thought Daisy had named her own daughter Sage after the beautiful sagebrush so common to Wyoming soil, and it was partly true; but Daisy had named her, also, after Sacagawea, the Shoshone girl of courage and endurance.

Getting strength from the sight of her name now, Daisy pulled back onto the road. She found herself raising her eyes, looking around.
You can’t ignore mountains, especially not these,
she thought. The Wind Rivers were already capped with snow. She stared at the purple peaks, the brown cliffs. Once she started looking, she couldn’t stop. The mountains were filled with mystery and magic, wind and spirits.

By the time she reached the gates of the DR Ranch, it was getting dark. She drove through the tunnel of cottonwood trees. With her windows open, she heard the creek flowing over stones and fallen trees. The main house was warmly lit, the stone and logs glowing like a jewel box. Smoke curled from the enormous chimney, vanishing into the dark red sky. Daisy saw horses in the corral, watching her as she came around the last bend.

Louisa was standing in the window. She stepped outside onto the porch, the wind blowing her red shawl. Parking the car, Daisy felt her heart beating in her throat. Her skin tingled, as if she was trespassing on haunted land. She hadn’t been to the DR Ranch since the day she and Sage had left for the airport and their flight east. Looking around now, scanning the barns and the paddocks and the house itself, she felt dislocated, as if she’d gone back in time.

“Hello, stranger,” Louisa called, coming down the wide porch steps.

“Hi, Louisa.”

“You made it.”

Daisy nodded, about to say something about the flight or the drive or some other conversation-making comment, when Louisa swept her into her arms. She smelled of wood smoke and Wind Song. Holding Daisy very tight, she seemed unwilling to let go. Daisy didn’t want to step away; she clung to Louisa as if for dear life.
Jake and Sage,
Daisy thought.
This is where my babies used to live.
When Louisa finally stood back, Daisy saw that she was wearing the Bear Mother necklace.

“Has there been any word?” Daisy asked. “I’ve been out of touch since early afternoon, and I told Hathaway to call here if she heard from Sage. I also gave this number to Detective LaRosa, she’s coordinating the search—”

“No word yet,” Louisa said.

Daisy nodded, feeling dizzy again. A burst of wind came around the barn, blowing bits of brush. It fluttered Louisa’s shawl, and as she drew it closer around her body, her fingers jangled the bones and metal of her necklace. She met Daisy’s eyes.

“I’m wearing it for Sage.”

“Thank you,” Daisy said.

A pack of cowboys rode in, and Daisy tensed. She looked for James among them, but he wasn’t there. Recognizing Paul March, Victor Lansing, and some other ranch hands, she watched them ride around the barns to the back pasture.

“The Marches and Lansings are still here?” she asked.

“Yes, they are. James runs a good operation, just like his father did. I’ll say that for him.”

“How is Dalton?” Daisy asked.

“He’s my mountain,” Louisa said. “That’s how he is.”

Daisy nodded, wondering about the pain—fleeting, hardly apparent—in Louisa’s eyes. Louisa hadn’t changed a bit in the twelve years since Daisy had seen her last. Her hair was still red and lustrous, her skin nearly unlined, her makeup dramatic. Beneath the scarlet shawl she wore a low-cut black velvet top over a flowing patterned skirt. Daisy wondered whether she was booked to go onstage that night.

“We’ll have time to catch up later,” Louisa said. “But right now you must be dog-tired. Let me take you to your cabin. That sound good?”

“Sounds very good.” Daisy knew that all she wanted was a hot bath, a chance to close her eyes and get used to the idea she was back here. The sensation of being in a time warp was intense: She would look up and see James loping down the trail, holding the twins on his saddle.

“I’ve put you out back, down by the river. Remember that little house, the one that used to have green shutters?”

Daisy’s heart lurched. “I remember.”

“Well, it’s all ready for you. With the old shutters, it’s the closest thing we have to a seaside-looking cottage. Like it belongs on a sea cliff on Nantucket or somewhere. But don’t you know, someone took the shutters off to paint and didn’t stick ’em back on?”

Daisy knew that little house very well. Although she and James had lived in it together only briefly, some of their most important history had taken place there. She felt like asking for a different house, telling Louisa she’d sleep in the attic, the basement, anywhere. She wanted to jump into her rented car, drive to a motel in Lander, speed east across country, find Sage along the way. But she was polite, and Louisa had gone to all this trouble.

“Don’t worry about the shutters,” Daisy said.

“Good,” Louisa said. “I won’t.”

How bad could it be to sleep in that little house after all this time? Daisy could stand it. She was here for Sage, and she didn’t have to let the past get in the way.

“Does James—?”

“He knows you’re coming,” Louisa said. She paused, as if coming up with something more to say. “One of the hands came back to say he had some big crisis down on the spring range, so—”

“You don’t have to apologize for him,” Daisy said. “I didn’t expect him to be here.”

“I put you as far from James as possible,” Louisa said confidentially, wrapping her right arm around Daisy’s shoulders. “You know he lives at the way-other end of the ranch.”

“In our old house,” Daisy heard herself say.

“Yep. He’s still there. I picked the little house so you won’t be running into each other every ten seconds. I know this reunion, under these circumstances, can’t be easy for either of you.”

“Thank you.” An animal scurried through the chaparral, and Daisy jumped. She felt so uncomfortable being back here, as if she was wearing someone else’s skin.
It won’t be this bad tomorrow,
she told herself.
The feelings will pass.

They always did. Daisy knew from experience. A lazy hawk circled overhead, riding the updrafts above the setting sun. Daisy tilted her head back to look. She wished she could fly herself, lower than any plane, looking in every corner for her missing daughter. She wished Sage would come through the ranch gates today, tonight, tomorrow, soon.

Standing beside Louisa on the land that used to be her home, Daisy looked up at the sunset sky over the Wind River mountains and wished with all her might for something that didn’t have a name.

Making headway, Sage had ridden her bike for twenty-five miles, through more cornfields than she could imagine. Iowa seemed endless. She’d slept in a barn the night before, eating grains and vegetables left for the animals. Twice she’d milked cows, relying on vague memories from a lifetime ago: Her grandfather had sometimes taken her and Jake to the barn, filled their cups with milk warm from the cow.

Alone on the road, she could not imagine food more filling and soothing than milk. She coasted into a small town with three stores, a post office, and a bowling alley. The parking lot was crowded. Sage hadn’t eaten since dawn, and she was so hungry and weary, she didn’t think her feet could pedal one more time.