“A little late for that now, isn’t it, Mother?” I smiled to let her know I was sort of kidding.
“He’s a fine pilot. Didn’t I sleep like a baby the whole way here?”
I swung around the breakfast bar and into the kitchen interior, put an arm around her, and squeezed, as much for my benefit as hers. “You did good.”
Nell leaned back on the island, this time on both palms. “Jack got his pilot’s license before he got his driver’s license. He wanted to be a military pilot, but he was medically disqualified. A concussion when he was fifteen and thrown from a horse.”
I reopened the album to the picture of Jack when he first soloed and studied my fiancé/boss. “A concussion can keep you from becoming a military pilot?”
“It can. He was devastated.” Nell returned to her pot and turned the burner down. “He’s kept up with his pilot training and certifications all this time, the most advanced a private pilot can get.” She turned to me and winked. “I think it was to prove they were wrong to turn him away.”
I could vouch that Jack read a lot of flight books and magazines. “Yeah, he was off a day last month to re-up on one of his licenses or certifications or something.” I held up my empty hands. “Can I help? Set the table or something?”
Nell set me to work arranging bowls of chips, dips, and veggies on a wooden tray with aged iron handles. I had almost worked up my courage to ask how Jack and Lena met, when I heard a clanking noise out back, and then the door from the patio to the kitchen burst open, followed by Dad and Gordon. Seconds later, the door from the garage exploded inward and I heard the voices of Mickey, Laura, Greg, and Farrah in the hall.
The only person unaccounted for was Jack. I moved to the mouth of the hallway, swallowing my words and forcing a smile.
“Emily!” Farrah shouted. The dark-haired pixie flung herself at me, and I staggered back in a compound hug from her and the less vocal Greg.
“Oomph. Hi, guys.” I stood back to take them in.
I couldn’t believe it had been only four months since they came to New Mexico from bad foster situations in Amarillo, after they’d witnessed a murder. We’d nearly lost them and Mickey, too, because of what they’d seen, and they had a special hold on my heart. A tall young woman stood behind them, her eyes downcast, her pale face framed by an enormous volume of hair. She looked up, and my heart soared.
“Stella!” I said. I’d met Stella when she helped Betsy and me escape from her father, Paul Johnson. He was now in jail, and she lived with her grandmother.
Her smile was shy, almost apologetic. “Hey, Emily.” Last time I’d seen her, she was a half step away from heading in the wrong direction. That girl was sullen and rebellious. This one was clear-eyed and fresh-faced.
Farrah looped her arm through Stella’s. “Stell’s my best friend, Emily. We’re in school together.”
“That’s awesome. Stella can show you every cool thing around here.”
“She does and she’s awesome.”
Stella beamed, and I couldn’t help but return it times two. By loving Greg and Farrah, Mickey and Laura might just be saving Stella, too.
“Whatever, losers,” Greg said, and swung his hip into Farrah, knocking her into Stella.
Farrah pushed the taller, fairer young man playfully. “Greg says I’m not old enough to be a bridesmaid at your wedding, that I have to be a flower girl. That’s not true is it?”
I wound my arm around Greg’s neck in a faux chokehold. The boy was taller than me now. “I’m not sure if I’m having bridesmaids or flower girls, but if I do, you are definitely bridesmaid material, and Betsy would be right for flower girl.” I continued in baby talk. “Greg, on the other hand, would look great carrying a wittle bitty piwwow with a wittle bitty wing on it.” I let him go.
The smiles on the faces of the three teenagers made my heart zing.
“Hey, Standing Hair,” Mickey said, using the nickname he’d christened me with when we first met.
I smiled wide at him. “Hey, Mickey.”
“Whoa.” He pointed at his teeth. “I think we’re going to have to come up with a new name for you.”
Reflexively, I covered my braces and rubber bands with my hand.
“How about Metal Mouth?” Greg said.
Mickey clapped his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Not bad.”
“Ignore those two. You look great. How are those wedding plans coming?” Laura asked as she hugged me.
“Um, fine?” I said. “Alk-tay ater-lay?” Not so long ago our relationship had been tense at best, back when she worried I was going to mess up Jack’s life. How far we’d come.
She stepped back and side-eyed me. “You okay?”
I nodded. “I want to hear how the process is going with those two.” I pointed to the backs of Greg and Farrah, who had moved into the kitchen and were sampling food.
She held a finger to her lips. “And I have a proposition for you later.”
From the kitchen, Nell shouted, “Where’s Jack? It’s almost time to eat.”
Good question. “He said he’d be back soon,” I said.
“And I am.” Jack’s hand suddenly landed on my neck, gently kneading it.
I leaned backward into him, turned my head to his face and whispered, “Where have you been?”
He raised his left eyebrow and waggled it, a special skill of his that always flipped a switch in me. I tried to look stern, but he just kissed my nose and nudged me back upright. “Hey, what’s to eat around here?”
“Barbecue.” Gordon held up a pair of tongs and a large metal roasting pan. “Going to bring it in now.”
“But Emily’s a vegetarian. What’s she going to eat?” Farrah chirped.
Silence fell, except for the hiss of my escaping breath.
“Vege—”—and here Gordon made a noise like a cat hacking a hairball—“—tarian?”
I looked at Jack, begging with my eyes, but he crossed his arms and grinned. “Emily, did I ever tell you my father won the New Mexico State Fair barbecue contest three years running?”
“They made him an honorary lifetime member of the New Mexico Cattle Feeders Association for his contribution to the industry,” Nell chimed in.
“Oh.” I swallowed. “That’s fantastic.”
“Do you mean to tell us you don’t eat meat?” Gordon asked.
“Um, no, sir, I don’t.”
“What’s wrong with your girl?” Gordon bellowed, turning to my father.
“Must be her mother’s influence,” he said.
“She didn’t get it from me,” Mother declared.
Everyone but Farrah, Stella, and me laughed.
“I think we can all agree that it’s my father who’s had the influence on me. Look at this.” I reached for my purse hanging from a peg on the wall, pulled out my baby Glock and handed it to my dad.
He checked to make sure it was unloaded then passed it, handle first, to Gordon. “Got her this for her fifteenth birthday. Read the barrel inscription.”
Gordon pointed the barrel at his face. “Wrong Girl,” he read. He turned to Jack. “Wrong girl, son? She don’t even eat meat.” And he laughed.
Farrah grabbed my hand. “She may not eat meat, but she shot the man that was trying to kill Greg and me. The guy that shot Mickey.” Her voice was shrill, and everyone turned to look at her. Her eyes widened. She cleared her throat and in a softer voice added, “So there.”
I hugged her.
“Thank you for that, Emily.” Nell smiled at me and I smiled back, a little wobbly. “And on the subject of blessings like Emily, who will ask for the Lord’s blessings on our food tonight?” Nell demanded, hands on hips.
Gordon gave thanks, and we adjourned to the enormous wooden picnic table under the small stand of aspen trees in the backyard, everyone carrying a dish or platter with them. Bruiser did his best to help, and Nell sent him to another horse blanket, this one beside the door to the house. Bruiser minded her, but he moved slowly, in a hangdog sl
ouch. I loaded up on potato salad and filled my iced tea glass with white wine. Jack sat down beside me and raised his left eyebrow at me. I ignored how jauntily it framed his amazing eyes and the way they looked in his handsome face and stuck out my tongue at him instead.
I eyed my potato salad hungrily. Eating was no cakewalk these days, with the constant ache, the protruding metal, and the interference of the bands. I reached my lips out to claim a bite and hoovered it in, chewing as gently as I could.
“I’ve got Emily’s new name,” Mickey announced. “Seabiscuit.”
“That’s it,” Greg shouted. “She looks like a horse when she eats.” He puckered his lips.
“Not very nice, guys,” I muttered, pushing my plate away. Jack squeezed my shoulder.
“Jack,” Gordon called from the head of one of the picnic tables.
Jack swiveled his head toward his father, who was brandishing his Bud Light. “Yes, sir?”
“In honor of this occasion, I want to make a toast.”
Clanks and rustles sounded as everyone lifted up their glasses.
Gordon stood. “To my son. My only child. May you and your lovely Emily be as happy as your mother and I have been, for as many wonderful years.”
“Cheers,” Nell said, and everyone repeated her and drank.
Gordon held up his hand.
“Oh no,” Jack said, but only loud enough for me to hear.
“I want to share a story about my son.”
Several people chuckled.
“Now, you all know I’m proud of Jack. He’s a handsome fellow”—this got lots of laughs, since they looked so much alike—“a fair enough pilot, decent with a horse, and he’ll work hard when he has to. Course, he screwed that all up when he became a lawyer.” More laughs. “But for all that, Jack makes some fairly rash decisions.”
Jack reached over and took my fingers in his under the table.
“Take for instance back when he was with the District Attorney’s office in Alamogordo. One day Jack was parked in a lot that didn’t take anything but cash, which he had none of.” Gordon pulled out his wallet and flipped it open. “He offered his credit card”—Gordon held one out toward my dad, who reached for it, but Gordon held onto it—“but the attendant said no.” My father shook his head and pulled his hand back. “He offered a check.” Gordon put his wallet back in his pocket and pulled out a checkbook. He stuck one in my dad’s direction. Dad knew the game now, and he shook his head. Gordon nodded. “But the attendant said no. So Jack told this woman he worked for the ADA, that he was a public servant.” Gordon smiled. “She said lucky she wasn’t charging him extra for that.” He raised his beer bottle to acknowledge audience appreciation. “She refused to let him go through. Jack said, ‘but it’s just five dollars.’ She said, ‘I don’t care how much it is.’ Jack asked her, ‘What the heck do you expect me to do? I’m no magician. I can’t make cash appear. And there’s a line of cars behind me.’ She said, ‘Sorry, sir, you can’t pass through this gate without paying.’ So Jack said, ‘Oh yes, I can,’ and he drove right through the arm blocking his way. Boom! Tore it right off.”
Jack was shaking his head, and I noticed his neck was a little red near the V of his shirt.
“The next morning he gets to work, and his boss walks down the hall from his corner office—the DA himself—and says, ‘Know anything about an arrest warrant out on an ADA for destruction of property and theft?’ Jack stares at him like a deer in the headlights. The DA said, ‘I think a check to repair the property and pay for the parking might clear things up.’ So that is how my son, Jack, ended up paying a thousand and five dollars for parking that day.”
Gordon bowed, and everyone clapped.
Jack shook his head. “I was young and impetuous, like my father.” As Gordon sat, Jack stood, and Mickey hooted. “What Dad didn’t tell you is that when he was the age I was at the time of the alleged parking lot incident, he ordered a steak well done at Doc Martin’s in Taos.”
“Who’d ruin a perfectly good piece of meat?” Mickey asked.
“Regardless of whether he should have, that is what he did. He and his buddies put away a few before their food came. When it did, Dad swears the steak they served him was still mooing. He motioned for their waiter. Poor fellow came back and Dad drew his revolver, threw his steak over his head, and shot a hole through it, right into the ceiling. Dust and little pieces of the ceiling came down on all their heads. Steak landed on the table. Dad stuck his pistol into the back of his pants, put the steak back on the plate and handed it to the waiter. Said, ‘Now that I’ve killed it for ’em, could you send this back to the kitchen so they can cook it?”
I laughed so hard I had tears in the corners of my eyes.
“Bet that steak cost about what my parking did.” He raised his own Bud Light. “Cheers to my father. Guess I’m just a chip off the old block.”
“Cheers,” we all echoed.
My phone vibrated under my thigh where I’d stashed it. I snuck a peek and saw that it was an incoming Skype video call from Betsy. I rarely got to see her or talk to her, and we hadn’t scheduled a video call. Longing coursed through me, and I pressed to accept the call as I scrambled out of my seat and walked a few feet away from the table.
“Hi, Betsy!” I tried to keep my voice down, but I heard rustling behind me and knew everyone was watching me.
Her sweet voice chirped, “Hi, Emily. Your screen is dark. I can barely see you.”
“I’m at Jack’s ranch and we’re in the backyard. The sun is going down.”
“I wish I was there. Why can’t I live with you now?”
Behind her, Mary Alice’s face appeared. Her stern voice broke in. “Betsy, you don’t have permission to be doing this.” She grabbed the mouse and clicked. The last thing I saw was Betsy’s sad, startled eyes and round mouth, then the image disappeared. All that was left was her icon photo by her name. Two low ponytails, sparkling eyes, and a giant smile with a missing front tooth. My eyes burned, and I put my hand to my mouth to hold back the sob that wanted to burst out. Instead, I put my phone into my pocket and gazed up at the sky. The sun was setting in a flame of orange, pink, and yellow on the horizon. Something else in that direction caught my attention: the silhouette of a small animal running across the pasture.
“Hello, fox.” I turned back toward the table.
This brought my own father to his feet, and I wished I hadn’t drawn attention to myself. I slunk back into my seat.
“When Emily was little, she was convinced she was an Indian. I guess it started with some books Agatha gave her, but she also loved to hear stories about her Hopi great-grandmother. I guess she was about four or five when she announced to us one day that she was going on a vision quest.”
I looked at my mother, and my throat closed. She was gazing up at my father in pure adoration. I had some reservations when she took him back, fifteen years after he left her, and just after he got out of prison. But she loved him. She really, really loved him, and I almost lost track of his words watching her. It made me feel small, worrying like I did about his criminal record. And it made me feel desperate to have someone love me like she loved him. My heart seized up. I wanted it so bad tears stung my eyes and my mouth went dry. I looked at Jack, but his gaze was locked on my father. I swallowed and fought my way back into the moment. He was telling a story about me, and I couldn’t flake out now. Maybe later, but not now.
“She went out into our unfenced backyard with nothing but a cookie and a sippy cup of milk. She wandered around for a good long while, then she came barreling through the door. ‘Daddy, Daddy, my spirit animal is a fox. I saw it. I saw my spirit animal.’ Sure enough, I looked out back, and there was a red fox in the field. It stared at us for a minute, then ran off. After that, you couldn’t convince her of anything else.” He took a sip of his beer while people chuckled. “I don’t know, maybe she was right. She’s always been a clever girl. So raise a glass to my Emily and her spirit fox.”
&nbs
p; Funny, I had forgotten that story, but it resonated with me, partly because of the little fox who liked to visit our Shangri-La backyard, and partly because my dad was right, I needed to use my brain and quit letting my heart jerk me around. Needed to. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to, though.
Cheers and clinking glasses rang out.
Jack stood again. “I’ve got something that needs taking care of.” He knelt before me like he had when he proposed on my parents’ back porch. What was he doing now? I felt my eyebrows burrow into my forehead. “Emily, will you please do me the honor of actually marrying me here at Wrong Turn Ranch, one month from today?”
Farrah shouted, “Yes, she will!”
I batted my eyelashes a little, trying to seem to my future in-laws like I was appealing and feminine and sweet, and not like a snake-handling vegetarian who was irrationally opposed to setting a wedding date. “Mmm,” I said, trying to smile while wobbling my head side to side, like I was in a Bollywood movie.
Everyone seemed to take my response as a choked-up yes, and I put my arms around Jack’s neck and pulled him down to me. I buried my face in his chest, but his warmth and familiar musky scent didn’t soothe me like it usually did.
While our family buzzed around us, he said, “That wasn’t a yes, was it?”
I pretended not to hear him.
Chapter Five
After we helped clean up from dinner, Laura and I snagged bowls of peach cobbler and homemade ice cream and snuck outside to chat under the stars. Part of the back porch was covered, but it led out onto a large wooden deck open to the sky, looking out on the picnic table where we’d eaten our meal. I chose a cushioned sun chair with its back up in a seated position. I snuggled my dessert into my lap and lifted my face on an inhale.
Then my phone rang.
Laura raised her spoon to her mouth but spoke first. “Do you need to get that?”
I pulled the offender from my pocket and read the screen. Nadine, and a picture of her looking like a much more curvaceous version of Dita Von Teese, the burlesque star who was once married to Goth rocker Marilyn Manson. Only Nadine was prettier.
Hell to Pay (What Doesn’t Kill You, #7): An Emily Romantic Mystery Page 6