The Virgin of Small Plains (23 page)

“When you get to the cemetery?” he called out to Deputy Flournoy. She turned around to hear the rest of it. “Get the Virgin to give us a pass on the tornadoes, okay?”

The deputy grinned. “Will do, Sheriff.”

Only after he’d said it did Rex feel the cringe inside, and taste the guilty bitterness, that came from joking about her. She deserved better than that from him.

Chapter Twenty

August, 1986

The summer before his senior year, Rex couldn’t stop thinking about the girl he knew only as Sarah. It wasn’t as if she had never entered his mind previously. She had already played a starring role in his fantasies, back when he used to catch glimpses of her cleaning houses in town. But then she had stopped coming to Small Plains, and he had mostly forgotten about her. Actresses, or girls he knew, took her place in his imaginings. Now, though, after seeing her in the shadows of the Newquists’ ranch house, where Patrick had stood talking to her with his damned bare chest sticking out, now all of Rex’s other fantasies were swept clean off the movie screen of his mind. Now there was only Sarah, hot and sexy, beautiful and willing Sarah. Or, at least that’s how she was in his dreams.

In your dreams!
he scoffed at himself, but that didn’t stop him.

He didn’t tell anybody about seeing her at the Newquists’ place—not because he was keeping his word to his brother, but because he wanted to keep her his secret. If he didn’t tell anybody about that day, not even Mitch, then they couldn’t take it for granted that she was Patrick’s girl, instead of his. In his fantasies, he could erase Patrick altogether, or fight him to the death for her. If Rex could have spent the next month in his room, on his bed, with the door locked, he would have spent it doing nothing but making up erotic fantasies about her.

He had to go back to school a few weeks before Patrick left for K-State in Manhattan. What with football practice every day, and the ranch work that never stopped for anything or anybody, and what with also getting started with his senior year, he managed to distract himself enough to keep from driving out there until the day Patrick officially left.

It had killed him to be in school all day, leaving Patrick back home, free to do what Rex didn’t want him to do—find Sarah, be with Sarah, make Sarah fall for him. Or, just “make” Sarah. That was the nightmare scenario, the extremely likely possibility of his brother in bed with the girl of Rex’s dreams.

She was way too good for Patrick. Rex hoped she realized that.

Not that he actually knew her, or anything about her.

But, on general principles, any girl was too good for Patrick, in Rex’s view. And, anyway, he could tell just by looking at her.

Though he hadn’t done so yet, one day he planned to casually inquire of Mitch if he knew what Sarah’s last name was, and what town she was from. If Mitch didn’t know, Rex planned to casually ask one of the women Sarah had cleaned for, if he could remember—or find out—who they were. He could ask Mrs. Newquist, but he’d rather not. Mitch’s mom had a way of turning any question back on whoever asked it, in a way almost guaranteed to make them feel stupid or embarrassed. Rex already felt stupid and embarrassed; he didn’t need Nadine Newquist to make it worse.

He planned that once he had Sarah’s last name and knew her town, then maybe he’d just happen to have some reason to drive to that town. And maybe he’d just happen to run into Sarah, and the two of them would start talking, and then you just never knew what might happen after a remarkable coincidence like that…

He didn’t let himself really ever admit it was impossible. These were his fantasies. He could make them star any woman he wanted, and he could make them turn out any way he wished them to.

One of his fantasies was that after Pat left for K-State, Rex would drive up to the Newquists’ ranch house and she would still be there, for some reason. He didn’t care why. Maybe they had hired her to clean it, that was a good enough reason for his fantasies. Maybe she had left something there from the day he had seen her with Pat. Or, and this was his favorite, maybe
something,
some inexplicable inner urge, whispered Rex’s name to her and made her drive out into the country, without knowing exactly why. Maybe she’d have a feeling that her fate, her
destiny,
her own true love awaited her somewhere just off Highway 177…

It could happen, he told himself.

In your dreams,
he told himself, as he actually drove out there.

No one could have felt more shocked than he did when he drove onto the Newquists’ ranch, pulled up to the house in his truck, and saw her.

She was standing in the front doorway, staring at him with an expression of alarm on her beautiful face.

“Who are you?” she called to him, sounding defensive and nervous.

He got out of his truck and quickly identified himself. “I’m Rex. I didn’t know you were here. I mean, I didn’t know anybody would be here. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bother you—”

She seemed to relax a little, and she interrupted him by saying, “Okay.”

He was so surprised to find her there, as surprised as she looked at the sight of him. She looked a little younger than he remembered, and just as beautiful. She was wearing white shorts that showed off her long, tanned legs, and a loose, orange T-shirt that gave him the impression she didn’t have a bra on. She had her long straight hair tied low on the back of her neck, and she was wearing dangly earrings that sparkled in the sunshine when she moved. Rex felt his body responding. He wanted to whip off his cap and hold it over his crotch to hide what was happening to him. Instead, he stared fiercely at her face, keeping his eyes above her collarbone.

She shaded her eyes with one hand, suggesting, to his immense relief, that she couldn’t see him all that well in the bright sun. “Oh! You’re Pat’s brother, aren’t you?”

Apparently she saw him well enough to recognize him. Rex felt a confusing mixture of worry and pleasure. On the one hand, he was surprised she had ever really seen him. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he wanted her to remember him from that day.

“Yeah,” he confirmed for her. “Pat left for college.”

“Right. K-State.”

He hated it that she knew.

“You were here before,” she said.

He nodded, wondering if she thought he was an idiot.

“You made Patrick leave.”

He thought he saw her smile, just a little.

Rex was tongue-tied. All he could do was nod again.

“Why’d you come out here?” she asked him.

He thought fast. “I’m looking for Mitch.”

She looked alarmed again. “Mitch Newquist? He’s coming here?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know. I’m just looking for him.” Feeling as fake as a dimestore cowboy, Rex asked her, “You haven’t seen him?”

When she shook her head no, he didn’t know what to do next. After an awkward moment, Rex turned around to leave. But she called out to him, with a tone of urgency in her voice that made him turn around in a hurry. “Hey! Don’t tell anybody you saw me here, okay?”

He took a couple of steps toward her. “Why not? Aren’t you supposed to be here? Why
are
you here, anyway? Are you, like, cleaning the house for them?” He didn’t see a car that she could have driven here. Come to think of it, he didn’t recall seeing any vehicle but Patrick’s the last time he was here. A wild idea came to him out of nowhere. “You’re not, like,
living
here, are you?”

Once again, he was totally surprised when she said, “Yes,” and then, “Would you like a beer?”

Would he ever.

She invited him onto the porch that first time, but not into the house, and brought a cool bottle out to him. “You’re not having one?” he asked her, feeling awkward if he was going to be the only one to drink. She shook her head. Rex quickly got over his hesitation and sucked down a swig, reveling in the beer, the forbiddenness of it, and being on a porch alone with a gorgeous girl.

“I’m living here,” she said.

He sat on the porch railing while she leaned against the frame of the screen door, and explained it to him, or part of it, anyway. “You don’t know my family,” she began, a statement with which Rex could only agree. “If you did, you’d know why I have to get away from them. My dad—” She stopped, shook her head, then started in with another sentence entirely. “I can’t tell you the reasons. They’re personal. But Judge and Mrs. Newquist know about it, and they told me I could stay here, until I figure out somewhere else to go.”

“You’re hiding from your family?” he asked her.

She nodded her head. “Please, please don’t give me away.”

“I wouldn’t!” he promised her, feeling terribly protective. He felt horrified for her. For a girl to have to hide out from her own family like this—from her father—it could only be something horrible, like beatings, or…worse. Rex thought,
incest,
but couldn’t bear to hold the word in his head for longer than an instant. He didn’t know who her father was, but whoever he was, Rex already hated the man and would have gladly killed him for her.

“Does Mitch know?” he asked her. Rex could hardly believe that his best friend could know something like this, and never spill the beans. He hastened to assure her, “If he does, he never told me, and he tells me everything.”

“Mitch doesn’t know I’m here, at least, I don’t think he does.”

“Really? I guess that’s possible. We don’t use this place. Him and his friends, I mean. His folks would kill us if we ever did any damage to it.”

It amazed him that the Newquists had given their party house to anybody, much less to a girl who only cleaned for them. Rex had never thought of Mitch’s folks as being that generous, or sensitive to other people’s troubles, but he could see that he had badly misjudged them. When push came to shove, as it maybe literally had with Sarah, unfortunately, it seemed that the judge and his wife were okay.

It was funny. Now he was going to be the one to keep this secret from Mitch, and it was Mitch’s own house, so to speak. Rex kind of liked having a secret that Mitch ought to have known, but didn’t. But he also thought he was going to have a hell of a hard time keeping it. Or at least he thought so until Sarah looked at him with her strange, beautiful, pleading eyes, and said in a near whisper, “If you tell anybody I’m here, you could get me killed. I’m not kidding. They’ll come after me, and I don’t know what they’ll do. Please, please, you’ve got to promise me never to tell Mitch, or anybody else.”

Of course, he swore on his life that he would never do that.

It was only when he was on his way home, just moments later, that Rex realized that his brother must know. She trusted Patrick not to tell anybody? Obviously, she didn’t know his brother very well, or she’d know that Patrick drunk was an even bigger blowhard than Patrick sober.

At first, it really worried him to think of Patrick entrusted with such a secret.

It was only later, a couple of days later after the glow had worn off a little, that Rex began to feel the first tug of doubt. How secret could something be if Patrick knew it? And how likely was it, really, that Mitch’s mom, who wouldn’t give a spare sandwich to a bum if he was starving to death on her doorstep, would turn her precious ranch house over to a “mere” cleaning girl? But if all of that was unlikely, then so was Sarah’s story, and if that wasn’t true, then what the hell was she doing out there?

Still, he said nothing to Mitch, or to anyone else, just in case it was true.

He started going out there every few days to check on her, to see if she needed anything, to try to figure out the truth of the mystery of her being there. And he tried a few other gambits that wouldn’t give anything away.