“What?”
“You don’t want to go there, sis, you being the church mouse and all. I got something to bargain with, so we go, and we offer it in exchange for information.”
“You want Loreena to go with you?” Dominic asked.
Crystal drummed her fingers on the table. “You got a car, don’t you?”
Loreena frowned. Crystal couldn’t have cared less when Dirk was pummeling her brother, but now she wanted to rush off and find him? “I don’t have a car,” she said.
“I didn’t mean you.”
Loreena turned toward Dominic. “He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Well he’s here, and he keeps interrupting, and if you don’t have a car, I bet he does. Right?”
“You want me to take you to Kelley,” Dominic said.
“No. I’ll be riding Saul’s bike. I want you to take her to Kelley.”
Loreena grimaced. “Me?”
“Don’t you give a shit about your brother?”
A bear woke up and crawled inside Loreena’s skin. This woman, who had left Saul to die at the hands of Dirk, was questioning her loyalty to her brother?
Crystal pushed the chair back and stood up. “Look, I know some of Saul’s friends. I have an idea where this Frank is. I’ve got something good for him, so I’m going to go talk to him, and I’d rather not do it alone, but if you’re too much of a little Miss Priss to come, fine.” Leaving the chair in the middle of the aisle, she walked out.
Loreena bowed her head, her hands hot inside her gloves. Clomp clomp clomp, Crystal stomped toward the door. This was wrong. It felt wrong. But larger than that was the feeling that she couldn’t let that woman mess it up even more for Saul. She imagined Crystal talking to Frank, blabbing about what had happened with Dirk. It could be that Saul’s boss didn’t know what had happened, at least not Saul’s part in it, but Crystal could ruin that in a hurry.
Loreena stood up.
“You’re going to go?” Dominic asked.
Uncle Don would never take her. She thought about how she might ask him, how she might put it so he would agree, but there was no way she could think of to present it that would end in him saying anything but no. If Saul was truly missing, he would say, they should call the police, and the police were the last thing Saul needed. She gripped her purse tightly to her ribs. Dominic was a stranger. It wouldn’t be wise to involve a stranger.
“On one condition,” Dominic said.
Loreena lifted her head, eyebrows raised.
“We do the interview on the way.”
It took her a minute to register what he was saying. “You’d drive me there?”
“I planned to spend the afternoon with you. We can do that just as well in my truck as here.”
“But it’s all the way to Kelley. It’s close to three hours.” Her uncle would never approve. Three hours away, with a stranger and Saul’s girlfriend? She wanted to go back, change her clothes, put on her flat shoes, but he would never let her out again, not with Dominic waiting at the door.
“I should have a pretty good story by the time we get back.” He reached into his pocket for his wallet.
“But none of this, it can’t—”
“No, no, of course not. But we’ll have time to talk about the rest.” He placed the money on the table and stood up. “Ready?”
“My uncle won’t agree. If I go back, he won’t.”
Dominic hesitated. “It’s up to you. We don’t have to. But if you want to, you can wait for me about a block away from the church. I’ll get the truck and bring it to you.”
A getaway, without her uncle knowing.
“We’ll call from Kelley, so he doesn’t worry.”
Loreena tossed the idea around in her mind. Dominic assumed she was an adult, that she could make this decision on her own. And shouldn’t she, make the decision? She was twenty-one, an age at which most women made their own decisions. If she didn’t go, she would spend the afternoon back at her house pacing the floor, worried about her brother, while his useless girlfriend went off to cause who knew how much trouble. It was a few hours on the road, and she wouldn’t be alone. These thoughts twirled in her head, but they were like radio noise in the background. All she could really focus on was the knot that had been growing in her stomach ever since Crystal told her she hadn’t seen Saul since that night.
“I’ll call him,” she said. “From here. Can you get Marcie?”
Dominic turned to scour the café for the waitress.
“You coming?” Crystal shouted from the door.
7
Dominic’s truck smelled of dirt, dust, and coffee, with that same trace of pine that seemed to follow him everywhere. The bench seat had a firm cloth cushion, the floor mat crackling with pebbles under Loreena’s pumps. Crystal took up a post behind them on Saul’s bike, the engine emitting a steady growl that vibrated the windows. Sitting with her right elbow on the armrest, Loreena pointed her face toward the afternoon sun. That something else could have happened to Saul kept her agitated, and she shifted positions every couple of minutes, unable to get comfortable.
Then there was the call with her uncle. That hadn’t gone well, either, to say the least. She’d kept her voice down while talking to him, but she was sure when Marcie took her arm on the way out that her distress had been obvious. At least she’d managed to buy some time. If she’d gone home, she felt sure he would have found some way to stop her from stepping out with Dominic again.
“He was okay with it, you going?” Dominic asked.
The question startled her. It had been quiet between them since they’d left town, Dominic having retrieved his truck and picked her up a block from the church. She’d been grateful for the silence, but now the questions would come, and she wasn’t sure how to answer them.
“No, but at least he knows.”
“We can go back, if you like.”
“I’d just sit and worry.”
“Did he have any ideas about where your brother might be?”
She chuckled. “Uncle? He’s about the last person who would know where Saul is.” Besides, she hadn’t said anything to him about where they were going, or why. It was bad enough arguing with him about spending a few more hours with Dominic—for the interview, she’d told him. They were going for a walk. It would be a while longer. He had demanded she come back, finish the interview there. They could use the sanctuary, he’d said, or the house. Whatever she wanted.
“I want to take a walk in town,” she’d told him.
“You don’t know this man,” he’d said, anger creeping into his voice.
“A few hours, Uncle. I just called to let you know.”
“I see,” he’d said. “Well, I’ve been informed.”
She hadn’t known what to say to that, so she’d simply hung up. Who knew what she would face when she returned home? Another lecture, she imagined, and she was growing weary of them. Maybe Saul was right. Maybe it was time for her to leave the church and get a place of her own. The thought had always seemed frightening before, being alone in some other part of town she didn’t know well, but now she could imagine some of the benefits, like being able to go where she wanted when she wanted, and returning home without having to brace herself for someone’s anger or disappointment.
She didn’t know how much time passed before she realized her rudeness. She’d left the conversation with Dominic hanging. Shifting her weight toward him, she cleared her throat.
“Thank you for taking me,” she said. “I’m sure you had other plans.”
Dominic adjusted the fan, bringing cool air into the cab. “I did. To spend the day with you.”
She blushed. “Not chasing down my brother, I don’t imagine.”
He didn’t say anything.
Loreena cursed her lack of sight. If she could see his face, she’d have a better idea what he was thinking. She ran her fingertips along the door. The vinyl covering felt bumpy, as if filled with tiny bubbles. She imagin
ed it was grey, a dark charcoal gray that hid all the dust and grime collected over the years. This was an earthy man she was riding with, someone comfortable in the mountains among the trees and lakes and campfires.
“You really think he’s in some sort of trouble?” Dominic asked.
“I don’t know.” It was embarrassing. Here she had tried to avoid the subject of Saul during the so-called interview, and now he had become the focus of their attention. Any hope she might have had for impressing Dominic had disappeared the second Crystal entered the café.
The truck bounced over a frost heave, the seat springs squeaking underneath them. “Is he…involved in drugs?” Dominic asked.
Loreena leaned back, resting her head against the headrest. How much to tell him? “This is not for the article, right?”
“Just talking,” he said. “Actually, I’d like to help—if he really is missing, you know. It’s a little scary.”
Loreena hesitated. Dominic could go to the cops, even after they got back. “I really don’t know.” She turned toward the window. The glass was warm. “He says he’s working for this guy, Frank, but I don’t know what he’s doing.”
The truck produced a steady accompaniment of squeaks and whispers and clanks, unnerving at first as Loreena wondered if it was going to hold together, but after a while she caught on to the natural rhythm. In a way it was soothing that it wasn’t so quiet, the sounds giving her more clues as to the passage of the road under the tires. The motorcycle engine came along steady after them, and she tried to imagine Saul riding it, his skinny body maneuvering it flawlessly, and decided it had to be a smaller bike, though she hadn’t had a chance to check it out before they’d left town. How could so much have happened in three years?
“So this place we’re going,” Dominic said. “Do you know anything about it?”
“Just that Saul’s boss is supposed to be there. Crystal knows the name of the place, once we get to Kelley.”
Dominic rubbed one hand on his pant leg. “Frank, you said. His boss. Can’t be the most upstanding character, right? I mean, not like we’re going to see the manager of the Piggly Wiggly.”
Loreena turned toward him. “You don’t have to do this. Really.”
“Do you want to go back?”
It was the second time he’d asked her. She couldn’t deny being frightened about what lay ahead, and about what they might discover, but it was the only choice that made sense, the only one she could live with.
“I want to find out what happened to him,” she said. “I mean, Crystal sounded so cryptic.”
“She seems a little dramatic.”
“Are you worried?”
“Why should I be worried? Sounds like this guy regularly has people beat up, right? Nothing to worry about.”
Loreena smiled at first, but then wondered if he was joking. She tapped her fingers on her thighs, a rendition of a Mozart sonata, one she often “played” on her own imagined keys. The scene with Dirk popped into her mind. Were those the kind of people Saul worked with all the time? “You’re right. I don’t know if this was such a good idea.”
“Do you want to call the police instead?”
“No.” Her brother would never forgive her.
“I’m not sure this guy Frank is going to help you. He doesn’t sound like someone who gives anything away for free.”
The idea had occurred to her. Anyone that employed someone like Dirk would probably not be interested in helping out a concerned sister. “We could just look around.”
“We could.”
“Maybe we can find someone else to ask.”
“To folks like that, information can be valuable.”
“Crystal did say she was bringing something to bargain with.”
“Can’t help but wonder what that is.”
“She says she knows some of Saul’s friends. Could have gotten it from them.” It had to be drugs. What else could it be? But she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Maybe it was money—the money Saul was supposed to take to Frank in the first place.
Loreena slipped off her shoes and crossed her stockinged feet up underneath her, holding onto her shins. It wasn’t only Dominic questioning this whole thing. It didn’t sit right, but she could think of no other way around it. Saul hadn’t shown up, and two weeks was a long time. He could have just dumped Crystal, but it seemed unlikely after the fun they’d had at Chelsie’s bar, before Dirk arrived. And there was the bike he’d left behind. Could Crystal have another reason for taking them all this way? Loreena couldn’t think of what. She leaned her head back. Her best hope was they would find Saul in Kelley and all this would be resolved. If not, she didn’t know what the next step was.
They slowed to make a turn. “You said 75, right?” Dominic asked.
Again his voice startled her. “We’re at the highway already?”
Crystal’s bike sputtered and popped behind them, and then revved up again as they coasted around the corner.
“One hundred sixty-nine miles, the sign says.” Dominic stepped on the gas as they straightened out. Crystal answered with a belly-rumbling acceleration.
The girl had to be after Saul, for some reason. Even if all she wanted was a way to do more deals or make more money, she wanted to find him, and Loreena did, too. For the moment, that made them allies.
“We’ve got some time,” she said.
________
Once they were on the highway, the truck rolled along a little more smoothly, the squeaks and grunts subdued under the whistling of the wind past the windows. It had been years since Loreena had been on the road for any time at all, and she’d forgotten how the minutes and hours could stretch out when you had nowhere to go. She was glad she’d eaten what she had of her burger, but she wondered about Dominic. She hadn’t heard him eat much of his soup.
“Tell me something about your life,” she asked. “Otherwise I feel like a lab rat, being the subject of your story and all.”
He shifted in his seat, stretching his back. “What do you want to know?”
“What did you do, before you were a writer?”
“Worked on a dude ranch.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “What’s that?”
“We took people into the country on horseback. Led them in, led them out, packed the supplies, set up camp, that sort of thing. Sometimes some of the fellas would rope a few calves for them, show them how it was done.”
“So you were a cowboy?”
“In a way, I guess.”
“Did you wear the hat and everything?”
He chuckled. “I tried for a while. Good shade from the sun, but I lost it too many times. A brisk wind comes up and off it goes, and then you’re chasing it while you’re still on your horse, and when you catch up to it you have to get off and go rooting around in the bushes or the creek or wherever it ended up. When you finally do retrieve it, it’s usually dirty and dusty and full of weed seeds you have to pluck out one by one, and still some of them end up stuck in your hair at the end of the day. All this happens while the customers and the other cowboys are watching, of course.”
She tried to imagine him in a cowboy hat, gray shadows across his brown eyes. “You’ll have to put one on sometime, so I can see.”
Turning to her, he started to say something, then stopped.
“I can see it, if you let me feel it.”
“I knew that.” He let off the gas as they came up behind a big rig, the diesel fumes heavy on the air. Crystal’s bike crackled behind them.
“So you’re out there riding the range,” Loreena said, “telling folks how to steer their horses, how to build a fire and set up a tent, and one day you just decide to be a writer?”
He pressed on the brakes and shifted down. “Pretty much, really. Getting out in the country like that, people open up. They tell you their stories. The fresh air pulls it out of them. Everyone’s lost something, and it’s always what they most want to tell you about. Someone in their family, their job, their kid
s, their spouse. One man had lost his arm, another his home, another his oldest son. People want someone to know about their heartbreaks, to find someone who can be a witness.” He paused. “After a while, I realized I could do that. I was good at that. And I wanted to get these stories down somewhere, you know, so they would last, instead of just vanishing into the spines of the evergreens around the camp-fire.”
Loreena listened, absently drawing her finger across her lips. “I don’t think I’d ever want a witness.”
Dominic stepped on the gas and passed the rig. When he’d settled back in his lane, he asked, “Is that why you stayed in the church? To remain unknown?”
She thought about it. “Maybe. I mean, there is a sort of solitude there, among the glass windows, when the congregation is gone. But my uncle goes on about God all the time, so I feel like I’m being watched, anyway.”
“Mm.” He changed hands on the steering wheel. “Might make a person look for somewhere to hide.”
Exactly.
“But there must be something. I mean, imagine you went to this dude ranch, and you rode horseback way out in the country on a gentle, tall animal that made you feel safe, and this nice, handsome guy…”
“Handsome?”
“Just go with me here.”
She smiled. “Okay. Very handsome.”
“This nice, very handsome guy helps you with your horse, gets him all saddled up, leads you into the mountains, and sets up camp in this beautiful spot overlooking a pristine lake. He fixes you a hot meal over the fire, maybe some fresh-caught trout, beans, cooked apples and marshmallows, and as you eat this delicious food and rest your tired muscles, you watch the sun go down and paint the sky orange, the evergreens stabbing the clouds with their thin needle branches…oh, wait. I’m sorry. You wouldn’t be able to see that.”
Loreena had closed her eyes, the scene stretching out before her. “I think if I were you, I wouldn’t have left.”
“Well, I described the best parts.”
“There were others?”
“Oh, sure. Like the nights we got rained on, or when a horse went lame and we had to walk all the way back to the ranch, or when you had to do fence repair after a long couple days out.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “Or the fact that it’s lonely.”
Loreena's Gift Page 11