The Stars Shine Bright

by Sibella Giorello

  Downstairs, the man said something. He said it slowly. Too slowly. I picked up my drink and took a gulp.

  Wait. You’re always demanding the truth. So let me start over. I left early because I resented having to wait for you in the dining room. I was angry that I didn’t meet your Aunt Charlotte. And when Eleanor came into the dining room, I was fuming because you and I spent almost no time together. Unfortunately, my attitude affected Eleanor. She drank too much brandy and began reciting lines about “mendacity.” This was one of the worst days of my life.

  I could hear the woman downstairs. Her voice was rising. The man said she was overreacting. She told him he always said that.

  Want to know what was the best day of my life? When you agreed to marry me. I knew you still had doubts, but that was okay. I knew you would conquer them. But the distance between us is not helping. I’m constantly wondering how you are, where you are, what you’re doing—

  “So get a cell phone,” I said. Out loud.

  Down below, the man stopped talking. I held my breath, waiting. After a long moment they began whispering. Heated words. Sibilant whispers.

  —and I couldn’t wait to see you. Only now it’s worse. You look great. Tired, but great. And it’s not those clothes, though they’re nice. You look . . . alive.

  Do you know what I do every morning? Wake up and think about you. But I’m depressed by breakfast because you’re not there. I fill the day with things to do so that I don’t think about you. And then I go to bed, telling myself I made it through one more day.

  You know my family. It’s full of “perfect” marriages. For appearances. Remember, Raleigh, we said we would break that pattern. Be like your parents, in love. Truly in love. Forever.

  I miss you. I love you. I want you to be my wife.

  And right now you’re at a racetrack searching for a horse that belongs to a guy with a busted shovel for a face. It’s your job. I understand. Really, I do.

  But you want the truth. So here it is:

  You look so alive because you’re working around the clock. That’s you. Without that kind of challenge, you’re not happy.

  Oh, wait—the driver says it’s five minutes to the airport. I’m going to hurry, bear with me.

  I picked up my drink. But the soda wouldn’t go down my throat. I held the carbonated fizz in my mouth, letting the bubbles pop on my tongue, tapping against the roof of my mouth. Downstairs a door slammed. The woman yelled—inside the condo now—but the man was still on the patio. He was speaking slowly again. Reminding her about neighbors.

  Next week, God willing, I’ll be an uncle. But what I really want is to be a husband. And a dad. Now. Not next year. Or five years from now. Or whenever you decide to settle down.

  So here’s the truth again: you’ll be the one who got away.

  But it might be worse than that. Much worse, for me. You’ll be the one who wanted to get away.

  I see the planes, we’re here, I have to go, forgive this hasty sign-off. I am scribbling now, but perhaps it’s best. I love you, Raleigh. So very much. But consider yourself free. No strings anymore.

  Your friend forever, and with love always,

  DeMott

  P.S. I don’t have time to drop off this note. The driver has promised to deliver it to the address Eleanor gave me. I am tipping him heavily, so I am hopeful he will follow through. I have to believe that, because I can’t write this again. Ever.

  P.P.S. Knowing you, you’ll send back the ring. But don’t. Keep it. Please? That way I can be sure you’ll never forget me.

  The man was pounding on the door. I heard it open, and then their fight moved inside.

  The sky beyond the balcony held Orion, stalking the black depths, searching for enemies to slash. I tried to take a breath and when I couldn’t, I forced myself to name the stars. Jupiter. Summer Triangle. Dippers. Something had crystallized inside my lungs, suffocating me. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself nine years old again, standing outside with my dad, counting stars. He would be telling me stories and I snuggled against him, keeping warm through the tales of Copernicus and Hailey and Galileo fighting the church.

  Memories came back, so clearly they opened my eyes.

  “House arrest,” my dad was saying. It was a cold winter night in Richmond. We had hot chocolate in thermoses. “Galileo said the Earth was not the center of the universe. The sun was the center. And he was right. But for saying that, the Church put him under house arrest. For the rest of his life.”

  I remembered thinking, Not possible. This is just a story.

  “Raleigh, I want you to know this.”

  “I got it, Dad. The sun is the center of the universe.”

  “But the other part. About Galileo. How he refused to deny the truth.”

  “The moral is, never give up.”

  But my dad shook his head. He surprised me. Always.

  “At some point, life will seem difficult to you. Really difficult. That’s life—Raleigh, look at me.”

  “I’m looking.”

  “When those hard times come, I want you to remember how Galileo found the truth.”

  “With a telescope.”

  He laughed. “Yes, that was part of it.”

  But he pointed to the sky. Black velvet. White lights.

  “Those stars are there, every day, waiting in the blue sky. We just can’t see them. This is what I want you to remember. The stars shine bright when it gets dark enough. The invisible becomes visible.” He paused, watching me. “I don’t expect you to understand this. But someday, I hope you’ll remember.”

  The weight of his words pressed into me now, and something splashed on my hand. Hot, wet. Madame walked out to the porch and stared at me. I scooped her into my arms, her body warm from our run. I wanted to bury my face in her fur, but I forced myself to look up.

  The stars were bright pinpricks of light. Diamond dust, cast over a black sea. But they were changing now, streaking, each one stretching into a silver sword. A white cross. They looked like those stars in the night sky of medieval paintings, all the stellar depictions of night in Bethlehem. The way artists painted stars in Galileo’s time. For symbolism, I always thought.

  But maybe those painters had seen those actual stars, there in the night sky. Like this.

  Because that’s how the stars looked now, seen through tears.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Before dawn, eyes puffy from tears and insomnia, I drove over Snoqualmie Pass with a dog and a thermos of coffee. An hour later we had dropped down to the other side of the mountains, where a rising sun burnished the bare hills to raw gold and the air shifted from evergreen scents to sage. Best of all, no black Cadillac was following me.

  And no black Jeep.

  Last night, while I was literally trying to run away from my problems, Jack had left a message on my cell phone. The preliminary background search of Paul Handler said the former foster kid was now twenty-nine years old, owned thirty-five acres just outside Yakima in a small town named Selah, and his juvie record was sealed. The latter meant Handler had committed a crime before turning eighteen, but under Washington law that record couldn’t be opened unless he committed a crime as an adult. And he hadn’t.

  “No immediate threat,” Jack said.

  I replayed the message. But I was listening for something other than the facts. Jack’s tone sounded as dry and flat as this basalt plain the Ghost was now flying over. His closing comment was a clipped, “Have a safe trip.”

  Have a safe trip?

  No sarcasm. No jokes. Basically he was saying, Have a nice life.

  Which was pretty much what DeMott told me in his letter.

  There was plenty of time to think about how Freud would diagnose my reaction to all this. Motoring east with caffeine and the canine, I decided the little doctor would tell me that I was in denial. Throwing myself into work after a broken engagement. And sadly, Freud would be right, because by the time I reached the town of Selah, it really did see
m like my problems were on the other side of the mountains.

  I looked over at Madame. Snoozing on the passenger seat. She opened one eye.

  “Denial works,” I told her.

  She went back to sleep.

  I used my cell phone’s GPS to find the dirt road that wound back and forth alongside the Yakima River. The road leading to Handler’s property. But waterfront property in desert climates always went for a premium price, and I wondered how a former foster kid like Handler could afford this spread. A vineyard came up on my left side, laid parallel to the road, where the sun cast hazy rainbows in the morning’s irrigation spray. After that I saw a field of horses, running powerfully across the desert land. One was black. I slowed down, taking a good look. In addition to a white blaze, it was much smaller than Cuppa Joe.

  I passed an entrance sign for Dark Horse Ranch, and just past that I saw three yurts staked at the base of a short rounded hill. The middle yurt’s flaps were rolled up and a handful of guys milled around an outdoor stove, holding mugs and plates. I climbed out of the Ghost. The air smelled of coffee and potatoes.

  “You’re staying,” I told Madame, rolling down the car windows.

  She glanced out the window at the yurts, then placed her paw on the gearshift. Preparing for some getaway.

  “You are an amusing animal.”

  I walked toward the tents. The soil was so dry my Dolce & Gabbanas were kicking up clouds of dust. A ranch house sat in the distance. And two large horse barns on either side of a horse arena. Quite a spread.

  A stocky man stepped out of the middle yurt, moving toward me quickly, almost urgently. As if he wanted to reach me before I reached the tent. Arnold Corke had called ahead, I could feel it. But I wondered if he would play dumb.

  “Help you with something?” he asked.

  Dumb, I decided.

  “I’m looking for Paul Handler.”

  “I’m Paul.”

  His brown hair was long and his short beard was blond, the ends twisted into a short tail hanging off his chin. His mouth was thin, almost sardonic, but his eyelashes were lush and dark. I decided the light-colored beard was a bleach job. An affectation. Like the small metallic arrows that pierced his brows, also thick and dark like the eyelashes. Jack’s background check said this guy was only two years younger than me. But his appearance, combined with Raleigh David’s, made me feel middle-aged.

  “I’m Raleigh David.” I extended my hand. His fingers were rough, callused. “Arnie probably called you.”

  For the next moment, he seemed to weigh the gain-loss of truth versus lies. I could tell, because I was doing the same thing.

  “Yeah,” he said finally. “Arnie did call me. What can I say? I messed up. I should’ve changed the title on that trailer.”

  “So you do own the trailer, license plate E-K-W-A-S?” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. They sounded more like Raleigh Harmon, FBI agent. I tried to recover. “I’m just wanting to make sure I didn’t drive all the way out here for nothing.”

  “Yeah, that’s my trailer.” He shrugged. “I don’t see what the big deal is.”

  “Arnie didn’t explain?”

  “Something about a horse stolen from Emerald Meadows. With my trailer. But I just laughed. That’s not even possible.”

  “We have an eyewitness.”

  “They’re lying.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  His thin mouth pulled back, a tight smile. Challenging. “You want to see the trailer for yourself?”

  I was trying to play it cool, but he was so much cooler it was throwing me off balance. Yes, I expected Corke to call him. Yes, I expected him to play dumb at first. But I didn’t expect him to be this forthright.

  I followed him past the yurts. The figures inside were indistinct, shaded from the sun. Moving like shadows. I sensed a hush as Handler passed, and when we came to the short hill behind the tents, I saw three rows of trailers. Six were narrow singles, two were doubles, and three were quads—two stalls in front, two in back. And one red school bus. Its dust-covered side advertised “The Pony Express.” Handler saw me staring at it.

  “We do pony rides,” he said. “Birthday parties. For kids.”

  “You breed horses for pony rides?”

  He laughed and once more caught me off guard. Too relaxed. Not the least bit nervous.

  “Arnie would only sell me that trailer if I agreed to take in old nags.” He shrugged. “No big deal. They’re perfect for kiddie rides. And it pays for their keep.”

  He moved through the trailers, stopping at a faded white single. “Here you go.”

  One wheel rested on its rim, flat. I got a bad feeling and kneeled by the license plate, wiping away the dirt from the metal.

  EKWAS.

  Handler was unlatching the back doors. The hinges screeched, dry and rusted. “Maybe you’d put a horse in this thing, but I wouldn’t.”

  The trailer floor was orange, at least where the floor still existed. Most of it had rusted away, leaving behind a lacework of crispy oxidized metal. The grass was growing through the holes.

  He closed the squeaking doors. “See what I’m saying. My trailer didn’t take your horse.”

  “It’s not my horse.”

  “Then why’re you looking for it?”

  “It was taken from my aunt’s barn. The guy who owns it isn’t the understanding type.”

  “Who owns it?”

  “Salvatore Gagliardo.” I raised my hand against the bright sun, reading his expression. “You know him.”

  He nodded. “Abbondanza.”

  “Right.”

  “I sold his trainer some horses awhile back.” He wiped his hands on his jeans, removing the dirt picked up from the trailer’s handles. “Which horse is gone?”

  “Cuppa Joe.”

  He froze. Now I saw worry in his eyes. No more Mr. Cool.

  “That’s impossible,” he said.

  “They also left a note. They plan to kill him after forty-eight hours.”

  “But—” He squinted, frowning, thinking. “But I sold that horse to them. Last summer. The bigmouthed Wop, he came out here himself.”

  “Jimmy Bello?”

  He nodded. But the frown remained. It angled the piercings in his brows, like arrows pointing at his eyes.

  “I drove Cuppa Joe over the Pass myself. What a nightmare. He almost jackknifed us, kicking and bucking. I was ready to open the trailer and let him run off. But I got paid good money for him.”

  I glanced at the old white trailer. Under the tires, the blades of grass were long and unbroken. I kneeled down again, making one last-ditch effort. I rubbed my fingers over the lug nuts holding the plate to the trailer. But the soil was thick, undisturbed.

  “You think I have that horse,” he said.

  I looked up. He had a disarming ability to switch attitudes in an instant. Now he looked vulnerable. I wondered if his conscience had a volume knob.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Do I look suicidal to you? I’d need a death wish to steal a horse from that barn. And I didn’t even like Cuppa Joe. When he left, I threw a party.”

  “And you’ve heard nothing about this, aside from Arnie’s call?”

  “Look around.” He swung his arm in a half circle, taking in the fields. “If you see that horse, take him. Please.”

  I stood up slowly, trying to gauge my thoughts. Juan could’ve misread the plate. But what were the chances on the other end? That Handler sold Cuppa Joe to Abbondanza, and now the trailer traced back to him. I didn’t like those odds. And I didn’t believe in coincidences.

  But the foster kid was already doing his own calculations.

  “Why was Cuppa Joe in your barn?” he asked.

  “The track shut down Abbondanza. Bello was using snake venom.”

  “What a creep,” he said, with feeling. “That stuff can give a horse a heart attack. But I still don’t see why you were keeping Cuppa Joe. For him.” He said it
like I was an accomplice to the snake venom.

  “When the trailers came to take Abbondanza’s horses, Cuppa Joe refused to go.”

  “There’s a surprise.”

  “My aunt’s barn had an open stall. Just until he calmed down.”

  “Who’s your aunt?”

  “Eleanor Anderson.”

  “Eleanor?” He raised his eyebrows, the swords leaping. “Living legend Eleanor? She’s your aunt? How cool is that.”

  I nodded, feeling an undeserved swell of pride. And I decided to trade on it. “I could really use some help. Any idea who might’ve taken Cuppa Joe?”

  “Whoever it is, they’re crazy. I can guarantee that. Not only is that horse a total brat, the guys running that barn don’t fool around.”

  He started walking away from the trailers and I followed him. But he stopped at the base of the hill, reaching into his back pocket. He took out his wallet and removed a business card.

  “If your aunt ever needs horses . . .”

  I was about to answer, with a lie, but a woman was running down the hill, behind Handler. She was sledding on her feet, leaving a trail of dust behind her.

  “Paul!” she yelled. “Paul!”

  He turned around.

  “What?” He sounded irritated.

  Her face was sweating. The dust clung to her skin. Heavily freckled skin. The dust made the freckles look like more dirt.

  “Horse—” She panted. “Horse stuck. Kids. Again.”

  Handler took off, running up the hill. The girl turned to me. Her freckles were so numerous it was difficult to read her features. The color of old pennies, the dots covered her eyelids and her lips and her ears, even extending into her hairline. Red hair. Long but matted, hanging heavily behind her shoulders.

  The word came to me like a thunderbolt: dreadlocks.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She took off without a word.

  Handler was already halfway up the hill. He had a powerful stride, pure muscular determination. But the girl didn’t follow him. She ran toward the yurts. I watched the thick ropes of hair swinging across her back, and Juan’s words echoed in my mind. Dreadlocks. Dirty. Muy dirty.