“It’s okay, hon—” Mom said.
“No!” Dad retorted, tuning in once more. For the first time ever, at least as far as Zach knew, Dad was going to talk about something other than television—and instead he was trading it for about the biggest thing standing between him and reality over the last five years. “I started it. I started that fire.”
Zach dropped his fork, but fast as a wink he picked it back up again.
“Dad?”
“It wasn’t arson, if that’s what you think I meant.” Dad shot Zach an accusatory look. “Everyone said it was arson. That I did it so I could get the money. It wasn’t my fault the economy was bad and some other guy seven miles down got convicted of burning down his own ranch. That had nothing to do with me.”
“Dad—”
“I’m sure you would never.” Piper handed him another taco and pressed a hand to his upper arm. “Especially your Firebird.”
Dad’s eyes came alive and riveted on hers. “Right? I’d never.”
Libby took another pile of chips and drowned them in a bath of salsa, rather than the traditional method of dipping.
“Hello,” Libby said. “That’s why he won’t spend the insurance money. Hates the accusation. It’s why he won’t spend anything. Except on cable. He’d go crazy without TV.” She crammed her mouth full of chips, still clutching Teacup to the crook of her neck. Teacup looked more than content there.
“Libby—” Zach wanted to change the subject from the fire. It was one thing to talk about it as a close-knit family, but to have all their dirty laundry—arson accusations, possible mental illness or at least crazy behavior—on bold display from the second he brought Piper into the scene. “That’s not true.”
“You bet it is.” Dad swatted at the table again, this time with a steel fork. “I’ll show them.”
Yeah, he’d show them right up to the point where his daughter withered into a book-induced coma, compounded by malnutrition. Then again, Libby wasn’t doing all that poorly. She’d spoken so well, and she did seem happy and not undernourished. Maybe he’d exaggerated things in his mind regarding Libby’s handling of the situation. She was strong, resilient, waiting out the storm.
Because she believed it would end.
Libby had known the root of Dad’s maniacal frugality. Zach never knew. He should have asked her. No, he should have asked his dad, who seemed ready enough to talk about it, at least once he was full of tacos.
“It’s all right, Dad. We know you didn’t do it on purpose, and you know it, and the insurance company knows it as well, or they never would have made the payment on your claim.” What Zach also knew was that his words would bounce off his dad’s mind, not sink in, but he had to say them anyway. “That’s what matters. You’re innocent. You know it and God knows it.”
“I’m innocent. It wasn’t arson. I don’t care what those loudmouths say with their gossip and accusations.” Dad growled. “I’m going to prove it to them that I didn’t do it for the money. I’ll show them. I won’t spend a penny.”
“It’s all right, Dad. The money’s yours.” Maybe it was no use, not for tonight. However, a little wiser and a little more brokenhearted, Zach now knew the source of the sickness that had taken hold of Dad’s mind. Somehow, there had to be a way to fix it, and part of him believed the Firebird held the key. “Maybe you could just use it to fix the Firebird.”
Dad’s chin lifted at the word, and for a second a flicker of lucidity lit his eyes. “Just for the Firebird?” But just then from the other room came the theme music for Family Feud, and the light there extinguished, and he drifted back into the living room. How the TV had come back on, Zach didn’t know. Maybe a timer.
However, what Dad left in his wake was a new hope, a thousand feet high, for Zach to latch onto and begin to climb.
Now he really had to get that partnership. Dad had opened his door a crack, and Zach needed to wedge in there before it slammed shut again.
“Teacup likes attention.” Libby cupped the dog in her hands, and the two rubbed noses. “Don’t you? Don’t you like attention?” Teacup looked like a little white ball of bliss. “Can I keep her here? Just for the weekend? I need her. Don’t I need you? Don’t I?” The baby-talk started up. Did all women do that to puppies? Zach didn’t know, but he’d have to admit, he’d let a few coos slip at the dog when he’d held Teacup, too.
“We’d be glad to let you keep her until Monday, if you don’t mind,” Piper said.
“Mind! I’d cry if you didn’t let me. I mean, I have school on Monday, and I doubt they’d let me take her, but I’ll take such good care of her until then, I promise. I promise!”
Piper laughed. “I believe you. And thank you. You’ll be so good at it, I’m sure.”
Libby’s eyes shimmered with excitement, and Piper turned to Zach and winked. Their plan had worked—better than Zach would have dared hope.
“Are you going to give me a tour of the ranch?” Piper squeezed his hand under the table. “It’s dark out, I know, but maybe we could just see the stuff near the house.”
“Yeah, maybe next time.”
“Oh, Zach, honey. She’s been so nice. Take her on a tour. I’ll clear up.” Mom got to her feet and began clearing the dishes. Zach hadn’t seen her lift more than a finger in months. How could he interrupt that progress?
“Thanks, Mom.” He took out his phone. “I’ve got a flashlight. Don’t rummage for one.”
Not that she would, or if she did that she’d find one, or if she found one it would have working batteries.
Piper followed him down the back deck steps, rickety banister and all, to the broad expanse of yard, barely lit by a quarter moon. Zach pulled out his phone, and Piper got hers going as well.
“It worked.” He led her across the gravel with a reluctance, but knowing if she’d seen his dad at the peak of mania and hadn’t run, even the burned barn and house wouldn’t faze her. “I never would have believed it. You were a hundred percent right. Dad opened up, once he had the tacos in him.”
“Tacos can be magical.” They walked across the yard, dodging a stray tractor part and a fallen tree.
“Why didn’t you run when you saw them?”
“Uh…” Piper looked at him askance. “Because they’re nice people?”
“But…the ashes.”
“Nice people get hurt by fires too.” She reached over and took his hand. “They’ll be fine. Where was his car? That’s what I wanted to see.”
Zach threaded his way through the hulks of burnt out tractors, a grain truck, a hay wagon—charred remnants of Zach’s life as a kid, and of his dad and grandpa’s lifelong efforts. Of what he might have been doing now if it weren’t for his pursuit of the law. If Zach had been here, instead of working, he could have stopped the fire sooner, prevented the total destruction of the three-generation family business.
Now the land sat fallow: ungrazed and useless; lifeless, like the empty shell of the house to the west—two stories of charcoal in a heap.
“Here.” He took Piper to the back of the barn, where the Firebird had sat during the fire and languished until Zach had secretly hauled it to the storage unit downtown, thinking he’d be able to break away from CBH during lunch hours to work on it little by little. Fat chance. “The night of the fire, Dad had just pulled the engine with the hoist, and was doing the body work. It was late. He’d been on the range all day, but he wanted to add a little more Bondo, so he was sanding it. The sander sent a spark. He didn’t see it. It landed on an oil-soaked rag. Dad went in the house. The rag smoked an hour before it burned.” Zach’s mind filled with flames and fumes. “The diesel tank for the tractors stood just between here and the house.”
“They’re lucky they got out alive.”
“Had nothing to do with luck. They were rescued.”
“Firemen?”
“Angels.”
“Angels!” Piper looked at him like he’d just said vampires or trapeze artists or Elton John. “How?”
“What’s the matter? I would have thought you believed in angels.”
“Well, I do. But—how?”
“One brushed my mother’s face with a soft, angel sleeve. One woke Libby with a song. Another clapped its hands and woke up my dad with a start. They all woke at once, but by different means.”
“Was it three different angels or all the same one doing a separate method for each person?”
“Ah, now that’s what we don’t know, but they all agree on the angel theory, no matter how far-fetched it might sound.”
“That’s wonderful. It’s beautiful. Thank you for telling me.”
“So you believe me?”
“Of course. I just wish I could have seen it happen. I’m fascinated by angels, and I’m sure I would have known it was an angel if I’d seen it, too.”
“Takes one to know one.”
She gave Zach a psh-aw, shoving his shoulder softly. He took the contact as an invitation and pulled her into an embrace.
“I’m serious. What you did for them tonight was wholly angelic. I can’t thank you enough.”
The nearness made him want to kiss her again, but her attention diverted, and she aimed her flashlight at the ceiling above where the Firebird had sat.
“Is that it, there?” A dark hunk of metal hung suspended from a winch and pulley system, about ten feet up. “The engine. You said he pulled it with the hoist.”
Zach let his arms fall from around her and stepped toward the dark mass.
“I hadn’t been out here to look before now.” When he’d extracted the car from the burn site, he’d hired the work out and had the company bring it to the storage site downtown so he could work on it. Going back in person had been too painful at the time. Not that it was a lot less painful now, but—a little, thanks to Piper. “I think—I think you might be right.”
“If you have the engine—do you think it was fire-damaged?”
“The fire trucks would have doused it.”
“How much would that hurt it?”
“Hard to tell.” But what he did know was that this was exactly the right engine for the vehicle. Chances that he’d find one as ideal as this even with all his searching on the internet in his spare time (what little there was), he’d never find anything this right.
“You’re a genius, Piper.” He sent a quick text to Vito, the owner of the company that pulled out the Firebird’s body in the first place and took it to the storage unit downtown. “I’m having it checked out pronto. How do you do it, Piper?”
There was that question again.
“Do what?”
“Everything. Be so amazing?”
Water off a duck’s back, the compliment slid away.
“If it’s not too damaged,” she said, “I’ll help you with it.”
“You don’t work on cars, too, do you?”
“Not valuable ones. But old ones, yes. That’s all Mom and Dad had when I was growing up. They went from a vintage, clunker VW Bus to the worst, gaggiest Ford Pinto station wagon you ever saw.”
“The kind that exploded if the car got rear-ended?”
“That’s the one.” She shut off her flashlight. “If it was a cult classic, he and Mom had to own one, at least for a few months. They had a weird life-checklist.”
“And you worked on them? What, with your dad?” Zach tried to picture it, but he couldn’t really see this gorgeous, curvy girl as an adolescent in jeans handing her daddy an oil filter or whatever. Age-progressing her backwards didn’t work. “Impressive. He doesn’t sound like a bad dad.”
“Oh, despite his current eating proclivities, he’s pretty good.”
Same could be said for Zach’s dad, at least the pre-fire version. Even now, he had his standards of integrity he clung to like superglue—warped though they seemed to the normal outlook on life.
“You didn’t tell them we’re married.”
“Sorry.”
Piper leaned against him. Looking back up at the engine, Zach saw it hanging there like his Dad’s life: in suspense until something came along and put it back where it could be useful and move again.
“Actually, I’m glad, because I don’t think you should tell them, after all.”
“Why not?” Sure, Zach had postponed the inevitable, but only because he’d been wary of whether in their state of craziness they’d ignore the announcement and offend Piper. Yeah, he probably should have told them on Monday—like when it happened, or ideally, before it happened, and he should have invited them to come be the witnesses, rather than have his two biggest career opponents’ signatures on such an important, life-altering document.
Maybe he’d assumed Grandma Vada would leak the news, letting him off the hook for the announcement. So far, no dice.
“We have to tell them,” he said. “Grandma Vada knows.” And if Grandma Vada knew, the whole biker bar probably knew, and soon the whole of Hill Country would know.
“But, let’s not.” Piper’s eyes pleaded with him. “Now that I’ve met them, if you tell them and we’re just going to dissolve things right away—”
Right. They could get hurt. They clearly loved Piper, or at least her tacos. Zach could pound his forehead with his palm. But on the other hand…
“We don’t really have a choice, though. Not considering Agent Valentine. Don’t you know she’s likely to grill family members first and foremost?”
“Please,” Piper pleaded. “Think of your little sister. Libby is so dear. Her heart is fragile. Why else do you think she’s buried in fiction?”
“Because she loves a good story? Plenty of people, fragile or not, like to read.”
Piper shot an eyebrow at Zach. “That much, as a teenage girl?”
Zach pulled a breath. “Either way—we have to tell her. We have to tell them that we’re married. Keeping it from them puts us at risk.”
“Telling them puts them at risk.”
“This whole thing puts everyone at risk.”
Not if he and Piper didn’t break up, the thought hit him. Then everything would be hunky dory. Except, that wasn’t the deal, not in their business arrangement. Once his promotion came and her green card got finalized, this was over. Finito. Besides, didn’t she have a boyfriend? Maybe Chad Whatshisname was more of a factor than Zach wanted to discover.
“If they answered that we’re not married, and it ends up getting you deported, they’d feel horrible.”
“I hadn’t thought about that.” Piper looked like she still wasn’t sure.
“Zach! Zach!” Libby’s voice hollered to them across the barnyard.
“Maybe it’s Teacup.” Piper grabbed his hand, and they jogged across the gravel in the deepening night and came running up to the house.
“Oh, there you are. I just wanted to tell you Teacup can do a trick. See?” On the front porch, Libby had set up three teacups in a row and had Teacup leap from cup to cup on cue as Libby snapped. “She’s brilliant. Thanks for bringing her, but thanks for—”
“But what?” Zach could see something on Libby’s face. “Thanks for the salsa? You sucked that down like there was no tomorrow’s garlic breath to worry about.” Frankly, he ought to be the one worrying. He was going on his honeymoon in a couple of hours—with Piper Quinn—and he’d eaten at least as much salsa as Libby had. He’d better pick up some mints.
“Oh, my goodness, that salsa was the tops.” She fluttered her eyelids as if the memory transported her to nirvana. “But what I meant was thanks for bringing Piper—more even than Teacup.” Libby’s eyes shone brighter than he could remember in a long time. “She’s…well, she’s magical.”
“Magical?” Piper laughed. “I’m a chef. Food is what I do.”
“Well, your food got my dad to turn off Jeopardy. If that’s not witchcraft, I don’t know what is.” She threw her arms around Piper, making Teacup yap in that process. The two shot apart, both comforting the dog.
Zach could do with some of that doting affection himself. And with any luc
k, even if he couldn’t have a full dose, he could potentially at least get his five-minute limit now and then over this honeymooning jet trip. A lot could happen in five minutes. Or even three. He’d at least insist on three now and then. Like in the waves. And in the hotel’s pool, and in their room, and…
“You’re not going to be like the other girls, are you? The ones Zach brings by and then we never see them again?”
Zach’s stomach plummeted. So that was how Libby saw his past relationships? Maybe Piper was right, and their feelings really were at risk and he’d better not tell them. He glanced at Piper to see how she would react.
“I—” Piper blinked half a dozen times. “I hope not.”
Those words sent relief through him like a hot wave. She hoped not. Well, good. With that, he knew he would have to risk his family’s short term emotions, since he was playing a longer game, getting his partnership and helping Dad with the car to bring him out of that funk.
“Great news, chickadee.” Zach poised to spring it on her. “Dad, Mom?” Zach went up and pushed the door open to call into the living room where the TV blared once again. “We have a little announce—”
Zach’s phone rang the firm ringtone. Boy, Cora was working it late tonight. Huh, not much later than he himself would normally work on a Friday night.
Well, a Friday night before he’d met Piper. For the past two Fridays, he’d been away from his office and basking in her beauty instead.
“Hang on. Hold that thought.” He held up a finger as his parents came outside and stood on the rickety wooden porch beside Libby.
“Your jet is ready. Wheels up in twenty minutes. They’ll charge us for the extra fuel if you keep them on the tarmac, though, and neither Crockett nor Bowie nor Houston will like that, may Bowie and Houston rest in peace.” Cora could joke. That fact shouldn’t surprise Zach, but it did. “Remember: you’re up for the promotion.” She clicked off, and Zach did the math.
“Wheels up in twenty minutes.” He looked at Piper, who was giving him the finish telling them now look, but he couldn’t. Not now. “Sorry, guys. It looks like we have to dash. There’s a flight we have to catch.”
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