Earth to Emily (10 page)

My timer started ringing. I turned it and the gas off and grabbed a strainer.

Mickey and Laura looked at each other, and she nodded at him, shaking her sleek, brown bobbed hair.

He spoke. “Are they . . . intimate?”

I poured the pasta into the strainer over the sink, then turned on the cold water to rinse the noodles. “I don’t know. They don’t act like it, but then again, all they have is each other, and they’re human.”

Jack had on an apron with a cowboy Santa on it, and he slipped on a matching oven mitt. “I wondered if you guys wanted to shepherd them for a week or two, before I asked anyone else, because, well—” He stood there, his mouth open but no more words coming out.

“It’s okay to say it, Jack.” Mickey put his other arm around Laura, and he squeezed her to him. “Because you know we want kids but haven’t been able to have any of our own.”

“Yet,” Laura said in a fierce voice from inside his bear hug. “I’m retiring, and the doctor is hopeful that when I gain weight I’ll have better luck.” Sinewy muscle defined Laura’s body, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her anywhere.

“And because I couldn’t think of anyone I’d trust more with kids we aren’t supposed to have that need protection.” Jack opened the oven door and peeked in. “The garlic bread needs a few more minutes.” He shut the door. “Plus you’ve already had the foster training, haven’t you?”

“No.” Laura extricated herself from her bear.

Mickey looked down. “I jumped the gun on that. We weren’t ready.”

Laura’s stiff body language and crossed arms left little doubt as to who wasn’t ready of the two of them, then or now.

Jack didn’t seem to notice the dissonance in the room. Back when I was an active horsewoman, I’d known this vibe well. It was the feeling I’d get when saddle breaking a young horse, like once when I was forcing a filly to accept a saddle cinch. She was scared, and her eyes were wide and white rimmed. It was a sign to step back, to let things progress at a speed she was more comfortable with, so that she learned to give in instead of fight. I’d praised her and given her time to think about the saddle cinch loose around her belly, and an hour later, she’d let me tighten it without a fuss while she chewed the apple treats she’d taken out of my hand.

“No need to make any decisions now,” I said, as I poured the pasta back into the pot and dumped half a jar of pesto into it. I stirred it briskly with a wooden spoon, shaking a blend of Romano and Parmesan cheese in as I did, trying not to look like I was desperate to hear them say they’d host the kids. Snowflake showed up at my ankles, hopeful that I would spill a little cheese near her mouth. I pinched some and dropped it to the floor. She scarfed it up.

I saw Laura’s chest heave, and she moved an inch back toward Mickey. “It’s really bad timing for us.”

I could hear the wind outside and icy individual snowflakes pelting the window, the heater cycling on, and the dishwasher running with the load of lunch dishes. I’d forgotten to turn it on until we started cooking dinner. Jack and Mickey didn’t make a sound.

“I understand.” I did, even if I didn’t like it and prayed she’d change her mind.

Footsteps thumped down the stairs. Greg appeared, looking both ways at the bottom. To his right was the great room.

I hailed him from his left. “In here.”

He grinned and ducked his head. Water glistened in his hair, and I realized he didn’t have on his grimy cap. He shuffled into the kitchen, hands deep in the pockets of Jack’s too-large maroon New Mexico State University sweat pants. Snowflake pranced to meet him, and he bent down to ruffle her ears. “Where’s Far—”

I hurried to cover his slip. “Frannie’s still upstairs. George, this is Jack’s cousin Mickey and his wife, Laura.”

Greg stood up. “Whoa, now I can see what you meant about part of your family is Apache.”

We laughed. Mickey had long black hair that he wore tied back low in a leather thong accented with silver and turquoise. He couldn’t have looked more Native American if he’d had on a full-feathered headdress.

Greg blushed. “Nice to meet you, sir.” He held out his hand, and Mickey shook it. He nodded his head at Laura. “And you, too, ma’am.”

“Nice to meet you,” Mickey replied.

Laura smiled weakly at Greg.

I walked the pot of pasta to the table and set it down. “We’re having pasta, garlic bread, and a salad. I put some plates and silverware here on the table. Could you set them out in six places?”

“Okay. I mean, yes, ma’am.” Greg’s sudden company manners were endearing.

“Thanks. There are napkins out for each place setting, too.”

Jack pulled two bottles of salad dressing out of the refrigerator. As he walked toward the table with them he said, “Well, there she is.”

We all looked up to see the diminutive Farrah in the kitchen entry, nearest Laura. The girl could have been her twin, twenty years before.

Farrah lifted her hand in a wave. “Hi.”

Laura whipped her head toward Mickey, her eyes welling with tears.

The six of us shared cleanup duties after dinner. Afterwards, Jack showed the teens how to operate the electronics in the living room, and soon the sounds of a horror movie’s overly dramatic soundtrack echoed off the walls and ceiling. Amused, I walked to the staircase to take a look into the great room. Jack’s mother had plastered family photographs over the entire far wall. In the corner nearest the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the Sierra Blanca and Sacramento Mountains stood an enormous Christmas tree. I’d gotten a close-up of it earlier, and someone had strung it with popcorn and barbed wire, burlap ribbons, apples, and metal ornaments in the shape of the Wrong Turn Ranch “WTR” brand. Gold twinkled from it, the only illumination in the high-ceilinged room now, other than ambient light from the kitchen and the TV screen. Shadows loomed off the ceiling beams, and darkness hugged the corners like a blanket around the shoulders of the room. From the reflected glow of the screen, I saw one dark head, a small dark body, and one slightly lighter head and slightly larger white body, plus a white blob where Snowflake had opted to hold the couch down between the two of them.

I couldn’t help but compare it to my own childhood Christmases, and it made me miss my dad. I remembered the year I found a bridle under the tree with instructions to go look in the little barn in the pasture behind our house. My first pony awaited me there. He was feisty, white, and just right. Dad had given me a leg up to his bare back, and I’d thrown my arms around his neck, my face buried in his scratchy mane.

“Well, what are you going to name him?” Dad had asked.

I had known his name from the moment I’d laid eyes on him. “Cotton,” I said reverently.

More than twenty years later, my eyes teared up at the memory. I had outgrown Cotton, and the pony had moved on to another home and another child long before my father left. I shook myself and wiped my eyes. It wouldn’t do to sully the present with memories of a past I couldn’t change.

Jack walked up to me.

“They look contented,” I said.

“Yep.” He put his hand on my shoulder, which made me want to kiss him again, but Jack gave me a slight tug, then released my shoulder. We returned to the kitchen together. He went behind the breakfast bar and I stayed on its near side.

“Coffee, anyone?” Jack asked.

Mickey, Laura, and I raised our hands.

He laughed. “I’ll leave the Tylenol PM out on the counter.”

He added water to the coffee maker and opened the bag of cinnamon roasted beans that I loved. He filled the well of his coffee grinder and pulsed the on button. The machine whirred and grred and whined. He turned it over and tapped the side until the soft ground coffee fell into the removable clear lid, which he in turn dumped into the gold filter in the swing arm of the coffee maker. He popped the arm shut and hit the start button. Seconds later the gurgling and drizzling started, and the wonderful toasty aroma filled the kitchen.

I sat down at one of the cowhide-covered stools at the breakfast bar, feeling only a little bit guilty as Jack retrieved four tan WTR-branded porcelain mugs from the cabinet. “Do you need help?”

“Nope. I’m about done.”

I watched, transfixed as he grabbed a carton of Half & Half from the refrigerator and set it beside the antiqued wooden tray that remained permanently on the granite counter. It held a tub of sugar cubes in white and golden brown, honey, cinnamon, a crock of stirring sticks, and a bowl with yellow and pink fake sugar packets in it.

He caught the direction of my gaze. “My mother’s setup.”

“It’s great.”

Mickey came around for two mugs. “Yeah, good ole Aunt Nell has never done coffee halfway, Standing Hair.” He winked at me, teasing me with the “Apache name” he’d christened me with on my last visit, in reference to my bangs.

Mickey poured two coffees and added cream, brown sugar cubes, and cinnamon, then stirred them. He walked one mug over to Laura and kept the other for himself.

“Thanks, hon,” Laura said.

I filled the spot Mickey had vacated by the pot and prepared my cup. A generous splash of cream went in first, then a shake of cinnamon and two packets of pink stuff. I topped it with coffee, not bothering to stir. I sunk my face in the mouth of the mug and inhaled. Deep, dark, wonderful scents flooded my olfactory system and I sighed. Better than red wine. Or at least as good as.

As if he’d read my mind, Jack said, “I’m getting old—or rude. Beer or wine?”

Mickey and Laura looked at each other and shook their heads. He said, “None for us tonight.”

I remembered the last time I’d been here, how much we’d all had to drink, how the company had cheered me up, and how well the night had gone—despite the fact that I was recovering from surgery post-miscarriage and tube rupture—until my friend Collin got too drunk and made a pass at me and a donkey’s fanny out of himself. And then? After a wonderful night with Jack, how poorly the next day went. Jack had gotten the wrong idea about Collin and me. Mickey and Laura had barely spoken to me that day, and it had marked the beginning and the end of Jack’s and my fledgling relationship, until the flickers of the last few days. I sure as shootin’ wasn’t messing things up with him again.

I shook my head, holding in a sigh. “I’ll pass, too.”

“Mickey, do you mind looking at a few things with me in the office?” Jack sounded casual, but my radar went up. I’d seen the office on the far side of the great room—with its shelves of books and big desk and high-backed leather chair—on my last visit, but no one had used it in my previous two visits.

Mickey kissed Laura on the lips. “No problem. Let me top off my cup, first.”

The men left and my ears followed them. I didn’t want to be left alone in the kitchen with Laura, with this awkwardness. We hadn’t seen each other in the two months since that very bad day. Our last conversation hadn’t gone well, and she was partly responsible for the bad information Jack got about Collin. I didn’t blame her, though. Most of the fault was mine—well, Collin’s, really—and Jack was her family. I had just been some new employee of his that no one really knew. She was at the table behind me, and I stayed facing the kitchen, sipping my coffee, trying to decide how to handle our sudden pairing.

“Hey, what are you guys watching?” I heard Mickey saying, in the living room.

Farrah answered. “
The Fourth Kind
.”

“Well, I gotta warn you, that’s some seriously bad medicine.”

“What is?” Her voice sounded worried.

“That owl there, with his head rotating all the way around.” I knew what he was talking about. I hated horror movies, but I’d watched
The Fourth Kind
with Rich, and that scene with the owl’s head rotating around freaked me out. “You’re in Mescalero Apache country, and around here, owls are like ogres. They carry off little children. I wouldn’t be watching a movie about owls if I were you.”

Farrah laughed, sounding relieved. “It’s not about an owl. It’s about alien abductions in Alaska. You should talk to Gr—George, though, because he used to play this game called Owlman.” She made an ooooooo-oooooooo sound.

“Shut up,” Greg said. I smiled into my coffee cup.

“Well, all I know is that in our legends, the Coyote is the only one ever to defeat the Owl.”

Farrah laughed. “Yeah, George never won when he played Owlman either.”

Sounds of scuffling in the great room broke out.

Laura spoke, tearing my attention away from their shenanigans. “You’ll never guess who I ran into in Alamogordo last week.”

The universe of southern New Mexico residents we both knew was small. I could count the ones I was acquainted with on one hand, and most of them were present tonight. But I rotated my barstool to face her and pretended to be stumped. “Who?”

“Tamara.” Collin’s fiancée, or ex-fiancée, rather. An army pilot. She’d dumped him after he cornered and kissed me, right upstairs.

“How is she?”

“She’s great. She said she’s been dating a UFC fighter.”

“Not Collin?” Collin had vowed to win her back last time I’d talked to him.

“Nope. She said she doesn’t believe he’ll ever change, and she doesn’t want to be the woman he resented for trying to make him into someone he isn’t. I would have thought you’d have known.” She looked down at her hands around her mug.

“No, I haven’t talked to either of them since—well, since the last time I talked to you.”

She ran her bottom teeth over her upper lip. “You and Collin didn’t date?”

“Heavens no. Never. We’ve been close family friends for years, but after that weekend, I haven’t even talked to him. He knows I am none too happy with him.”

Laura frowned, her black eyes dark and deep. “I’m sorry about what happened with you and Jack, and any part I had in it. Mickey and I are a bit protective when it comes to him.”

I nodded once. “A bit” was an understatement, but I couldn’t pretend I didn’t long for family bonds like theirs. “What matters is that I found Betsy and got her back safely that weekend. I try to forget the rest.”

Laura smiled. “How is Betsy?”

“Good, I think. I don’t get to see her. She lives with an ultrareligious foster family who has weird rules. But when I talk to her, she always mentions how she misses that horse we rode in our getaway. Thunder.”

“He’s here, you know.”

“What? Where?”

“In the stable, actually. No one ever asked for him, and we couldn’t stomach the idea of sending him back over there to Paul’s place. The police had arrested everything that moved over there, and the future of the animals was so uncertain. We think of it as a rescue.”

“I’m so glad. What happened to Paul’s daughter?” His teenager had facilitated our rescue by breaking us out and giving us Thunder. She hated her father, and it turned out she was right to feel as she did about him. He was a monster, trafficking, enslaving, and selling off Mexicans desperate to live in the U.S.

“She went to live with her grandmother in Alamogordo, I hear. Her mother’s mother.” Laura nodded. “If I thought that it would have helped her in any way, I would have given Thunder back, but the girl was in the same fix the animals were.”

I wrapped my fingers around my mug. It was still warm. “Betsy’s going to be happy to hear Thunder was rescued. It was amazing how she fell in love with him that night. She was scared of him at first, of course, but within minutes he had this mesmerizing effect on her. She was calmer and more confident.”

Laura finished a sip of coffee, then smiled. “That happens. We’ve sold some of our older horses to an equitherapy group.”

“Equitherapy?”

“Equine therapy, for humans. It’s basically pairing damaged souls with gentle horses, and letting the magic you’re describing happen.”

“Lilac had a similar impact on . . . Frannie. The girl’s been physically and mentally abused, really suffered from the bad things people have done.”

Laura peered closely at me. “Sexual abuse?”

“Apparently so.”

“Geez. Poor thing.”

“Yeah.

Laura closed her eyes for several seconds, then sighed as she reopened them. “Well, enough of that serious stuff.” She stood. “Little girl’s room. Back in a flash.”

I was alone in the kitchen, and I felt it. I wandered into the great room. Greg and Farrah were asleep in front of the movie, her head on his shoulder, his head on her head, and the sleeping Snowflake evenly distributed between their laps. I grabbed an afghan from the arm of a giant club chair and draped it across their legs, then moved on toward the office. I’d never entered it before, and I stood to the side of the door now. I could hear Jack talking inside.

“Besides the saddle, there was a box of our stuff. I’m not sure I got it all. If I can get an inventory, I’ll go back and see.”

I inched closer and heard Mickey.

“No problem. Any ideas where he got it?”

“Not yet.”

“So, have you told Emily about—”

I stepped in. “Hi, guys. Has Jack told me what?”

Both men stared at me like I was Medusa. Jack stood beside a desk whose top appeared to be made of reclaimed lumber. He rubbed at something on its bare surface with his thumb, eyes downcast. “Uh, I was telling Mickey about what we found at Alan’s shop.”

Jack’s cheeks puckered, and his eyes shifted around the room, landing everywhere but on my face. To the grandfather clock by the French doors, to the black iron stove by the window, to the plaid wing chairs facing the desk.

“Why do you look like that?” I said, and then realized how loud my voice was. Like yelling loud. Whoops.

“Like what? I don’t look like anything.”

But he did.

Mickey said, “Jack told me that your client ended up with our Wrong Turn Ranch things, and that, um, he’s basically being forced to sell stolen merchandise.”

I slitted my eyes back and forth between them. They looked and sounded skittish, like two colts before a thunderstorm. I leaned against the built-in bookshelves and crossed my arms over my chest.

“So Mickey and I were discussing the robbery here, and how we’d thought it was an inside job. And we still think it probably was. But now it seems maybe it’s connected to something bigger.”

“Hey, guys, what’s going on?” Greg walked in, rubbing his eyes, with Farrah stumbling along behind him. She was holding a yawning Snowflake in her arms.

“I heard loud voices. Did the party move down the hall?” Laura slipped in behind them and walked across to Mickey, who was standing by the stove. She moved slightly in front of him, facing me, and it registered on me how wan she looked. Mickey pulled her closer against his chest.

I recapped quickly. “Mickey and Jack were talking about how our client, who is being forced to sell stolen goods, was coincidentally selling stuff that was stolen from here.”

“Whoa,” Greg said.

To Jack, I said, “So, someone that works here is involved, you think?”

“Possibly.”

“Do you know who it is?”

Mickey said, “We think so, but he bolted.”

“What do the police think?”

“We didn’t report it.” Mickey released Laura and shoved his hands in his back pockets, swaying from foot to foot.