Only Flesh and Bones

by Sarah Andrews

  Pitifully, I said, “No, that’s not all.”

  “What, then?”

  I squeezed my fingertips into my face until I saw lights on the backs of my eyelids. “Sure, I finally felt all that pain I’d been holding back, but also I felt … I felt this raw, oozing sore where my heart should be. It’s like I can’t love anyone, and I hate my mother. Or feel like I don’t even have a mother. Or like I do, but I can’t let myself open to her. I’m scared shitless of her; it’s as if I think she’s going to take me down by the cottonwood trees and drown me in the creek. And I … I told Chandler. He got it out of me. I don’t really feel like that, do I?”

  “Don’t you?”

  I felt numb.

  Tina said nothing for a long while. At last, she spoke slowly and carefully, making sure I understood her. “It’s the great surprise, to find that even when we’re grown, we still need our parents; that deep inside, we’re still only children. You’re right, Em, most people live a more careful life, but perhaps they never learn what you have. Perhaps they aren’t willing, as you are, to walk through their own personal underworlds. Hell’s a scary place, Em, and even when we want to go there, clear out the demons and reclaim our own darkness, it’s damned hard to take that first step down the stairs. For that, sometimes we need to find someone as crazy as Chandler to seduce us into going.” She looked away. “Count yourself lucky, Em; some people’s Chandlers aren’t such gentlemen.”

  “Like Cecelia’s,” I said bitterly.

  “Like Cecelia’s. He screwed up that time, didn’t he? She was too damned young and confused to deal with him. It wasn’t the first time he’d blown it, and it won’t be the last. But then, sociopaths don’t really care, do they? It’s all a game to them.”

  I thought of Chandler’s tender young bride, who had gone home sick, a wreck. That bullet, Miriam had dodged. She had waited until she was much older and stronger to visit hell.

  Tina was still talking. “Isn’t it awful when people make mistakes? But you’re smart and twice Cecelia’s age, and you are going to learn from this experience.”

  “Don’t make me sorry I told you this stuff.”

  “Em, I don’t want to take your sorrow away from you. But I must say this: little children cling to their mothers, or to the mothers they wish their mothers were. Part of growing up is learning to step out on your own. To fight your own fights.”

  In rising fury, I said, “You’re suggesting I don’t know how to fight?”

  “I’m suggesting that deep inside of each and every one of us is a little girl who wishes that mommy and daddy would magically take care of her forever. We’re vulnerable. We can fight tooth and nail to learn all there is to learn, and grow as strong as we can, but we’re still just human beings, still vulnerable to our feelings and our needs. And we can do everything perfectly, right all our wrongs, and still be killed. It’s painful realizing that on our best days, we’re only flesh and bones.”

  I pondered that one for about a minute, which, as she was saying, was about all I could stand. Then I set it aside, making a bitter joke. “So you’re saying that messing around with psychopaths is all part of growing up.”

  “You think you’d do it again?”

  “No,” I said, a bit too quickly. But even as I said it, the memory of another trip to hell with another man-devil crowded my mind. What was it going to take for me to learn?

  Tina gave me a wry smile. “Well, even if you do, you’re normal. It’s not human to learn quickly. We like to try something a couple times at least, just to make certain we didn’t miss the shortcut that lets us get away with eating nothing but sugar, or which makes the house clean itself. But learning from our mistakes and growing up are kind of the same thing, don’t you think? So you get to choose: are you going to sweep your fears and failings under the rug like Cecelia, pity yourself and blame them on someone else like Cindey, or get down there and face them?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Then let someone help.” Tina sat up and put her hands on her knees with a little pat. “Well. Thanks for coming in. I appreciate knowing what happened.”

  I dug my hand into my pocket and pulled out my beleaguered checkbook. It would be a while before the ebbing tide of my finances began to flow again, but I had resolved that morning that I would, sooner or later, find another job as a geologist.

  Tina said, “Put it away. This visit’s on the house.” She stood up and began getting ready to go out, picking up her coat and her purse. “I’ll walk out with you. Got to pick my daughter up from school.”

  As I watched her preparations, I felt a rising panic at the thought of walking out the door myself. “Tina,” I began.

  “Yes?”

  “You got another minute or two?”

  “Sure.”

  I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. Tina stood expectantly by the door.

  Well, what the hell, I thought. “You’re right: this Chandler thing has me thinking. Um, why do women find men like that attractive? I mean in the real world, not this underworld stuff.”

  “Why a bad man instead of a good one?”

  “Yeah. It seems every time I meet a good man, I push him away. Like this guy Jim Erikson. I look at what happened between us and I know damned well I set that meeting up for failure. I pushed him away.” I stopped, awash in longing. “And hell, someday I might even like to have a kid or two—I don’t know—but it seems important to have a decent relationship first, one that can last. And then there’s this itch I have to have a job. No, a career. I … I’m having trouble sorting all this out.”

  Tina smiled. “That’s it? That’s all the underworld you’ve got to walk through?”

  I smiled back in spite of myself. “Well, that’s the easy stuff on the top steps.”

  “I see. And you’re thinking maybe it would be nice to have company along the way?”

  “Something like that. But not a psychologist. Not a ‘Sit down on the couch and I’ll tell you what’s the matter with your head.’ No offense, but I’ve met a few lately, and I was thinking of someone more like an … assistant. Or a teacher. Or a guide.”

  Tina cocked her head to one side. “I don’t know about leading you anywhere I haven’t been myself, but I do have a good flashlight.” She thought for a while. “Yeah, I think we could make it work, and I’d be glad to walk with you as far as you’d like to have my company.”

  “That would be nice,” I said. “Some light for my darkness.”

  ACNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks go to Robert B. Kayser, my once-upon-a-time boss at ANGUS Petroleum, now head honcho land baron at the Spur Ranch Company, Douglas, Wyoming, for his depth of insight regarding all sorts of stuff, not least of all range ecology and minerals and ranching ecomomics. My special thanks also to J. David Love, autochthonous geologist, Wyoming State treasure, and sentient being, for his encouragement and detailed review; and Kelley Ragland, editor on the rise, who was tough enough to require the very best of this manuscript.

  My unending thanks to Damon Brown, ace pilot and patient husband, for helping this occasional pilot construct the flying scenes herein, and for tolerating yet one more book writing experience with his half-crazy insomniac wife.

  Thanks also to: John Perry (“storms move around that valley like rogue buffalo”) Barlow for corroboration of flying experiences around Jackson’s Little Hole and Hoback Canyon; Susan Gearheart, R.N., M.S., for help with certain unseemly medical details herein; Dave Edwards, manager of the LaBonte Hotel, for an unforgettable tour of everything down to the poker palace in the basement and that “friction fire” between the income and the mortgage; Deborah Dix, Director of Public Relations, the Brown Palace Hotel; and Dr. Baldhard G. Falk, who smoothed out certain details of international trade.

  I could not have written this without the excellent and constructive criticisms of: the Golden Machetes—namely, Mary Hallock, Thea Castleman, Jon Gunnar Howe, Kenneth Dalton, and Ruth Wright; Jerretta Kayser, Lise McClintock, J
aqueline Girdner, Robert J. Bowman, and good and always

  Clint Smith.

  TITLES IN THE EM HANSEN MYSTERY SERIES

  Killer Dust

  An Eye For Gold

  Bone Hunter

  Only Flesh and Bones

  Mother Nature

  Fault Line

  AVAILABLE FROM

  ST. MARTIN’S/MINOTAUR PAPERBACKS

  CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR THE NOVELS OF SARAH ANDREWS

  “[Em Hansen is] a clear-thinking, straight-talking heroine whose unabashed naivete is endearing.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  ONLY FLESH AND BONES

  “Andrews handles [the] possibilities with a sure hand as she introduces an endless supply of secondary characters whose company is a delight. Thoughtful and uncertain, Em is especially appealing as she makes the quiet point that murder involves more than flesh and bones.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[A] fine mystery with an edgy and vulnerable heroine … There’s action and passion, introspection and suspense. Em is smart company, and we learn her mind and heart along with her.”

  —Booklist

  “In the fourth book in the series, Andrews moves away from the rig to issues of mothers, daughters, and ranch life. But she continues to tell a good story.”

  —New Orleans Times-Picayune

  MOTHER NATURE

  “Complex and engaging … Snappy dialogue and fully realized characters, especially the immensely appealing Em, turn the field of geology into a fascinating background for a mystery.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Mother Nature is an intriguing who-done-it. However, what turns this into an interesting tale is the deeply developed characters (especially Em) and the brilliant insight into geology. Surprisingly, the geological aspects of the story are … extremely fascinating.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  POSTSCRIPT

  There is usually an author’s note at the end of an Em Hansen mystery, but this time Miriam gets the last word. We found another volume of her journal. It was written on the clouds above the wide Wyoming prairie:

  Date? The no time infinite time!

  I am one now, and touch my finger to the non-linear journal of eternity. In my wildest moments among the living, I had no idea how fine. I spent so much time when there was time and in time running from the dark being half of one and all to another, now I am all of us and none. Ha ha! Darkness and light are one.

  HERE’S AN EXCERPT FROM

  SARAH ANDREWS’ NEXT MYSTERY

  BONE HUNTER

  Now available from St. Martin’s/Minotaur Paperbacks!

  ITS all true. When the squad car rolled up behind me and the loudspeaker blared, “Hold it, right there!” I was, in fact, trying to break into George Dishey’s house. But I had an excuse. Really.

  It’s true that I had chosen to attack a window at the back of the house so I would not be seen, but think about it: If I’d thought I was doing something wrong, I would have at least waited until dark. I wasn’t standing there in those shrubberies, hurrying the job, jamming that knife blade into that window sash that recklessly because I was afraid anyone would think I was breaking in, which I of course was; no, I was hiding in the backyard because I was afraid the neighbors would see me and make unpleasant presumptions about my social life.

  It was that kind of neighborhood. George had taken pains to let me know that. “They’re good Mormons,” he’d told me the evening before, lowering his voice as if they could hear him, even with the doors and windows locked, in the so-called privacy of his own living room. “You know how it is,” he had continued, with a dramatic sigh. “Here I am, the eligible bachelor, making a decent living. Those good Mormon mommas watch me like a hawk.” He’d lifted one index finger to one eye, demonstrating the look with all the dramatic flair for which he was famous. “Guess they think I’d make a good catch for one of their umpty-jillion daughters to breed with.” He laughed, throwing his unlovely head back so that his grizzled beard stuck out like a shelf, and cast a sidelong glance at me to see how I was taking his bait. “Hah! They think there’s still hope of converting me!” Here he’d smacked his lips, as if he’d just consumed an especially rich morsel of food.

  I hadn’t replied. I couldn’t imagine any self-respecting Mormon targeting a “Gentile” with a grizzled beard. And even as un-politically correct as I am, I don’t like that judgmental kind of talk; it always leaves me cold. And I knew that George Dishey had a reputation for being outspoken, even argumentative, for the sake of the publicity that picking a fight would bring him, so why argue? Give me a break; he was the internationally famous Dr. Dishey, and I was just Em Hansen, the barely made it through undergrad hack geologist from Chugwater, Wyoming. Besides, he was at least twenty years my senior and paunchy, so my honest reaction to his implied overture would have been downright rude. And I was, in fact, in the delicate circumstance of being his houseguest, he was an unmarried man and I, an unmarried woman, neighbors do talk, and, well, even in my moments of greatest self-confidence, I hate engaging in controversies or otherwise attracting attention to myself.

  So. So I fell for his line and did my best to pretty much sneak in and out of his house, grabbing my bags out of my rental car when it was time to head for west as if there was something wrong with my being there. Which there wasn’t. Okay, so I wasn’t proud of the fact that I was taking lodgings with this peculiar man in Salt Lake City rather than coughing up the money to stay at the posh ski resort of Snowbird with the rest of the conference attendees. You see, that’s why I was there, to speak at a symposium on forensic paleontology at the annual conference of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists. Or at least that’s what George Dishey had told me I was there to do.

  But back to that highly embarrassing moment when I was caught trying to break back into his house. It was a Sunday morning, the first day of the conference, and George had left early, without telling me where he was going or why. I wouldn’t even have known he was gone, except that when the phone rang, it woke me up, and even through two closed doors and the veil of sleep, I could hear him hollering into it, and then I heard the door slam and the sound of his vehicle starting up and pulling away from the parking slip. The forensics symposium wasn’t scheduled until the afternoon, so I’d gone back to sleep for a while, then later had gotten myself up and showered and stumbled around until I found an iron and an ironing board, and had pressed the creases out of my best blouse and slacks and gotten dressed. As I helped myself to a breakfast of prefab frozen burritos, which the microwave had rendered scalding on the outside and still hard on the inside, I had wondered idly where he had gone and when he might return. By eight o’clock, I had grown restless. By 9:00, I’d begun to worry. By 9:30, it had occurred to me that I could leave anytime I wanted, and I had complimented myself on having had the foresight to rent a car at the airport so I’d have my own transportation. George had argued hard against this, saying we would of course go and come from the conference at the same times anyway, but I had learned too often that when working with men, independence of motion is essential.

  On top of everything, I was supposed to deliver that speech at the symposium, and I was a bit nervous about it. Okay, I was scared stiff, and pacing up and back in George Dishey’s kitchen, wondering where he’d gone, wasn’t exactly soothing. I decided to drive around town awhile before heading up into the mountains to the east, where the conference was convening. It was a nice sunny autumn day, the city had a smile on, and I had not seen it since I was too young to remember. So I wrote George a brief note saying I’d see him at Snowbird, gave my hair a last brush, cussed under my breath that it still didn’t look quite right, walked up to the front door, and then stopped.

  What if the neighbors saw me leaving? What, in fact, would they think? Was this town still so conservative that having a woman in his house without benefit of wedlock might compromise his career? And worse, might I draw an unwelcome opinion fest fro
m some self-righteous church lady?

  In the end, I had waited until I saw the neighbors file out to their minivans in their Sunday finest, gave them ten extra minutes to make sure they didn’t double back for their prayer books or something, and all but dashed out to my car, slamming the front door behind me. That was silly, I know, but there you have it. I was sprinting down the sidewalk, thinking nothing more clever than Will some tardy church lady see my slacks and know I’m not heading to church? when I realized I had left the keys to my rental car in the house. As I skidded to a halt, that realization collided with the next, which was, that I had no key to George Dishey’s house, either. He had not offered me one. Good old George had managed to exert some control over my comings and goings after all.

  So you see, it was all very innocent, and, in fact, it was with the best intentions that I was breaking into George Dishey’s house. And if I was acting a mite covert, it was because I was worried about his honor, not my albeit felonious-looking activity. Honest.

  When I heard that loudspeaker go off behind me, I about jumped out of my skin. The pocketknife I was using to jimmy the lock on the bedroom window jerked free of my grip and gouged deeply into my left thumb. That left me stunned for a moment, and of course an instant later my thumb began to hurt like fury, but at least that gave me something to squeal about while I organized my thoughts.