by Lisa Jackson
There was no reason to try and reprimand her from hundreds of miles away. “Okay. Love ya. Bye.”
“Bye.” Click. Becca had hung up, and Maggie stared at the receiver for a few heart-wrenching seconds. Her baby was growing away from her, taking off with all the restless energy of a pent-up colt at the gate. Give her time, she told herself as she hung up. Remember how you were at thirteen.
Inside the diner the smells of grilled onions, smoke, and day-old grease lingered in an invisible cloud near the rafters. The heating system was wheezing as it worked overtime against the dropping outdoor temperature. Colored lights, strung over the windows as if it was nearly Christmas rather than early November, winked merrily. Someone had plugged a jukebox full of quarters, and country music played on and on, accompanied by the tinkle of silverware, the murmur of conversation, and the ripple of discordant riffs of laughter.
Thane sat on one side of a wooden booth, his jacket hung on a peg. A few glints of gray appeared in the stubble darkening his chin, and the lines radiating from the corners of his eyes aged him a bit, but he still possessed that raw animal magnetism that she’d found fascinating at nineteen, an innate sexuality that some men were cursed with all of their lives.
“Get her?” he asked, looking up from a plastic-encased menu that sported more than its share of burn marks from cigarettes smoked long ago.
“Yep.”
“Everything okay?”
“Other than rampant teenage attitude?” She picked up her menu, scanned the dinner selections, and avoided the questions in his eyes. Her relationship with her daughter was none of his business. “Have you ordered?”
“Just coffee.”
A slim waitress in a checked blouse, tight jeans, and scarf tied loosely around her long neck appeared with two cups and a thermal pot. “Regular?” she asked, and poured as they nodded. “Made up yer minds on dinner?”
“Burger and fries.” Maggie wasn’t in the mood to count calories or fat grams or anything else for that matter. “With the works.”
“Same—but cheese on the burger,” Thane ordered.
“You got it.” She whisked away, slapping the order on the counter separating the kitchen from the dining area.
“How far to Denver?”
“Too far.” Thane looked into the night. “We can’t outrun the storm, so we just have to drive as far as we can. Probably Salt Lake. I’ve got studs on the tires, chains in the back if we need ’em. We won’t be stranded.”
“How do you know?”
He swung his gaze back to her. “I won’t let that happen.”
“So now you’re God?”
His lips pursed. “Just don’t worry.”
“You take more risks than I do.”
“I’ll get us through this.”
“Look, Thane, I said I’d go to Denver with you. I said I’d talk to the police. I even said that I’d vouch for you, though God knows I don’t trust you for a second, but I’ve learned over the years that I shouldn’t rely on anyone, that I can stand on my own two feet, and that they’re steadier than anyone’s shoulder I’ve ever made the mistake of leaning on, including yours.”
A muscle worked near his temple. “So now we’re down to it, aren’t we?”
“Just forget it.”
“You know, Maggie,” he said, resting his head against the wooden back of the booth, “you’re starting to sound like a bitter woman.”
“I wonder why?” she threw back at him. She was edgy and nervous, saw no reason to hide it. “And really, who cares?”
“You do.”
“Do I?” She nearly laughed but he’d hit too close to the mark.
“It’s not like the girl I remember.”
She stopped short, her breath caught in her lungs. Don’t fall for this, Maggie. You’re way too smart, and you’ve been burned before. “I think we’d better not go into what you or I remember.”
“Why not?”
Was that her heart drumming? “Water under the bridge, cowboy. That’s all it is.” She took a sip of her coffee and was grateful that her hand was steady. This conversation was getting way too personal.
“I don’t think so.” Suddenly he leaned forward, his elbows landing on the Formica tabletop. “I think you’re scared.”
Damned straight. “Of what?”
“Me, for starters.
“In your dreams.”
“Not my dreams, kid. My nightmares.”
“Let’s not get into this, okay? It’s not the time, or the place. All we have to concentrate on is Mary Theresa.”
His steady gaze called her a liar.
“And whatever you do, Walker, don’t try and second-guess me or psychoanalyze my motives, or read more into my words.” She hooked her thumb at her chest. “I tell it just like it is, okay?”
The waitress returned on hushed shoes. A plastic smile curved her glossy apricot-hued lips as she slid two platters onto the table. “Can I get you anything else?”
Yeah, a one-way ticket back home.
“This’ll do,” Thane said, then quirked an eyebrow at Maggie, inviting her opinion without saying a word.
“Just catsup.”
“Comin’ right up.” She turned, snagged a plastic squirt bottle from the counter, and plopped it in front of Maggie.
“Thanks.”
“If ya need anything, just give a holler.” She motioned to the counter, where a refrigerated case spun slowly, showing off an array of confections. “You just might want dessert, and our lemon meringue pie is to die for. No kiddin’. Baked fresh.” She pivoted on a soft-soled pump and focused her attention on a table of men with round bellies, flushed faces, baseball caps of various colors, and toothpicks wedged into the sides of their mouths.
Maggie ate in silence, and Thane didn’t bother trying to break into her thoughts or making meaningless chitchat. In a small diner where everyone talked, laughed, smoked, and flirted, they ate in stony silence, the past edging into Maggie’s thoughts, eroding her equilibrium while the future towered in a dark mysterious cloud ahead. When they were finished with burgers, fries, and a wedge of pecan pie with ice cream at Thane’s insistence, he reached for his wallet.
Maggie delved into her purse.
“This is mine,” he said, eyeing her as she extracted her wallet.
“No way.”
“I practically shanghaied you to get you to come with me.”
She pulled out a ten and rested her elbows on either side of her half-eaten hamburger and the goo that had been most of her dessert. “Look, Walker, let’s get one thing straight, okay? I pay my own way. Yes, you talked me into coming, but I would have flown to Denver anyway to find out what happened to my sister. So we’ll split everything down the middle.” With that she reached for her ski jacket.
“Is that so I don’t get the wrong idea?”
The tops of her ears started to burn as she stood and shoved her arms down the jacket’s thick sleeves. Quickly, she forced her hands through the gloves that she’d stashed in one pocket. “I guess.”
She wanted to wipe the amused smile from his beard-shadowed chin. “You want to make sure I don’t think this is some kind of convoluted date, right?”
“You’re so damned conceited, it’s unbelievable.”
“It beats paranoia.”
“Barely.”
His smile faded as he tossed a matching bill onto the table. Anger flashed in his eyes. Without another word, he grabbed his jacket with one hand and Maggie’s elbow with the other.
“What’re you doing…wait.”
Silently he pulled, forcing her past the front desk, through double glass doors to the vestibule and into the dark night, where snow continued to fall. A quiet seething rage emanated from him as they strode to his truck. He unlocked the door for her, then climbed into the driver’s side. After tossing his jacket into the space behind the seat where her laptop was stowed, he jabbed his key into the ignition. The engine turned over as she buckled her seat belt. He crammed
the gearshift into reverse and backed out of his parking space.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” he said as he threw the truck into first, maneuvered around a semi rolling into the truck stop, and eyed the desolate stretch of highway heading southeast. “I need your help. Period. I don’t expect anything more than your help in finding that damned sister of yours and helping me clear my name.” He clicked his headlights onto high beam, and snow swirled and danced in the glow. “You don’t owe me a thing, so I thought I’d take care of the expenses. This isn’t part of some grand seduction, Maggie, it’s a simple case of paying you back for your inconvenience.”
Her face was hot, her cheeks burning, but hopefully he didn’t notice in the dark cab as he scowled and squinted through the windshield.
He flipped on the wipers, then adjusted the control for the defroster. “Got it?”
“Got it,” she replied tightly, and felt like a fool. Of course he wasn’t interested in her, that wasn’t the point. She thought about holding her tongue, then decided it was best to clear the air. “I just wanted to lay down the ground rules,” she said, slowly forcing her hands from their clenched fists to relax. “It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“Amen.” A car appeared around the corner, flashing the interior of his truck with white, artificial light. She noticed his profile: Hard. Set. Determined. One hundred percent male. A strong, sometimes fierce man. Someone who didn’t always tell the truth; she knew that from the past. So what secrets was he keeping? What was he hiding? She looked away, through the passenger window to the trees, tall heavy-boughed guardians of the night. Snow clung to their branches, and in other circumstances she would have found them and the steep hillsides they were climbing breathtaking. Tonight they seemed foreboding, casting a spell of fear and desolation.
Where was Mary Theresa? Was she alive? Oh, God, she had to be. Maggie’s throat thickened. Staring into the stormy night, she crossed her fingers and sent up silent prayer after silent prayer for her sister.
Surely Mary Theresa was safe. Surely when they got to Denver they’d find out that the ever-flighty Marquise had just left town for a few days and forgotten to tell anyone. But as much as she tried to convince herself, she felt a chill in her blood that had nothing to do with the weather, and as the snow turned to icy pellets that battered the hood of the truck and slickened the road Maggie couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Terribly and irreversibly wrong.
Be safe, Mary, she thought, closing her eyes and remembering her sister as she always had been—a free spirit who, though self-centered, was a person everyone fell in love with. Everyone including Thane Walker. Even he hadn’t been immune to Mary Theresa’s charms. But then why would he have been? He had been a man, and all men, it seemed, were susceptible to Mary Theresa Reilly.
Maggie had first noticed it years ago, when Mitchell, their cousin who had been raised as their brother, had been alive. They’d been young then, barely seventeen, only a few years older than Becca was now, but already Mary Theresa was developing her charms, honing them on all the boys they knew, including the one whom Maggie had considered her brother…
PART II
Rio Verde
Northern California
1979
Chapter Five
From beneath the water’s shimmering surface, Maggie saw Mary Theresa, sunglasses propped on the bridge of her nose, string bikini showing off every inch of her tan, stroll along the edge of the swimming pool. She kicked out a lounge chair, away from the overhang and shade of the eucalyptus tree, then plopped down just as Maggie’s lungs, burning from her length of time under the water, forced her to swim frantically upward. Shooting through the surface, Maggie gasped, gulped in air, and tossed her wet hair out of her eyes.
“What are you doing?” her twin asked, the corners of her mouth turned down in flat-out disapproval.
“What does it look like? Underwater laps.”
“Why?”
“I’m gonna try out for the swim team.”
“Again?” Mary Theresa sighed dramatically and dabbed at the corner of her mouth where a canker sore dared show on her lips. “You know you’re not going to make it. Just like the last time you tried out when we were in high school. Junior college will be lots tougher.”
“But I talked to the coach. So did Mitch.”
Mary Theresa’s pouty little mouth acted as if it had been drawn together by purse strings, and she swatted at a bee that buzzed near her head. “You asked Mitchell to put in a good word for you?”
“Yeah.”
“With the women’s coach at the college?” Mary Theresa asked, as if Maggie was dense as tar.
Maggie flipped onto her back and started swimming backward. She didn’t need any of Mary Theresa’s crap. Not today. “Uh-huh.”
“Will wonders never cease?”
“What’s it to you?” Maggie knew she shouldn’t let Mary Theresa get to her, but she couldn’t help it. Mary Theresa had become more and more distant and it seemed to have started three or four years ago, about the time her sister’s breasts had developed into “round, ripe melons,” as Billy Norton had been so proud of saying when they’d all been in the eighth grade. Billy was a pimply-faced geek whose talent for math made him think he was God’s gift to teachers and all females on this earth.
“Your sister has the biggest tits in the whole damned school, and that includes Mrs. Nelson, so what happened to you?” He’d looked to his circle of friends for some support as they’d stood in the hallway near the library. It was just after lunch about two days before they’d graduated from George Washington Junior High. The other boys had sniggered loudly, but had been blessed with enough decency to look embarrassed. “I thought you were supposed to be identical twins.” Billy was always persistent.
“And I thought you were supposed to be smart. You figure it out,” she’d retorted angrily, though she’d been dying inside and had wanted to drop through the stain-covered carpeted floor. What was it about boys that found a girl’s breasts so fascinating? It was as if they’d been weaned too early and were, ever since, dying for a peek, or touch, or even grosser yet, a taste of some girl’s tits. The bigger, the better.
“You’re just jealous ’cause you got sold short,” he’d hooted.
“Tell me about it,” she’d said, then narrowed her gaze on his oversize shorts in the area where his alleged male anatomy had been hidden. She’d breezed off, wounded on the inside, her cheeks burning, her eyes filled with unshed tears. Around the corner she made a mad dash to the bathroom, where it took almost ten minutes to regain her composure. By the time she’d returned to the library, class had started. All the kids, sitting in their seats, had stared at her as she’d taken the only desk left, in the front of the room.
Mrs. Brady didn’t ask any questions, just scribbled on a yellow pad, and handed Maggie a copy without so much as faltering over one single syllable as she ranted on and on about the new computer system the school was supposed to get—if there was enough funding, of course. Money was tight in all the public schools, but Mrs. Brady was ever-hopeful. Maggie had clutched the tardy slip in her sweaty fingers, slunk to the desk, and prayed for the humiliating day to be over.
“Hey, what’s the difference between Maggie Reilly and a singer who’s off-key?” Billy had whispered loud enough for her to hear. She felt hot tears glistening in her eyes.
No one answered, and Maggie hardly dared breathe.
“Nothin’,” Billy said under his breath. “They’re both flat.”
More nervous chuckles. Maggie snapped her pencil in two. Mrs. Brady’s eyes, behind the shield of thick glasses, narrowed on Billy. A tear drizzled from Maggie’s eye, and she brushed it angrily aside before enduring the longest forty minutes of her life.
In the end, because of the tardy slip, she’d had to suffer through work detail, cleaning the hallways of litter before she’d been allowed to graduate.
Billy Norton hadn’t been one to let sleeping dogs l
ie. He’d found out what day her work detail was scheduled and, knowing she would have to clean it up, had spread the remains of his lunch—an uneaten sloppy joe and french fries drizzled in catsup—on the floor. To add insult to injury, he’d also filled a condom that was probably way too big for him with meat from his sloppy joe, then left the ugly mess in the hallway by the seventh-grade stairs. He and his gang had gotten away scot-free while Maggie had to pick up the icky thin sheath and discard it, along with the rest of the garbage, into a big plastic bag.
All because she had been blessed with smaller boobs than Mary Theresa.
What a joke.
Now, as she stroked easily backward through the sun-warmed water, she told herself not to let Mary Theresa bug her. Lately Mary had been edgy, restless, and secretive. Several times Maggie had come upon her sister and cousin Mitch, whom her parents had adopted before the twins had been born and after his mother had died. They just hung out watching TV or listening to tapes of the Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd. They’d been laughing and talking, pushing each other. Upon spying Maggie, they’d both shut up, smiled falsely, and acted like stone statues. They pretended that nothing was out of the ordinary when there were all sorts of weird vibes sizzling through the air.
It was as if Maggie was suddenly the outsider, when, for most of her time on this earth, she and Mary Theresa had considered Mitch a pain in the butt—the one member of their family who hadn’t fit in.
Mitch had worked hard to foster that separateness, not wanting his younger, dweeby cousins-cum-sisters anywhere near him from the time he’d entered kindergarten. He’d acted as if Maggie and Mary Theresa were strychnine, and his attitude had only gotten worse as the years rolled on.
When the girls had been in second grade, their mother insisted that he walk them to school. He’d grudgingly agreed, as he’d had no choice in the matter, but the minute they turned the corner and were out of view from the kitchen window, he’d ditched them and sworn he’d “beat the shit” out of them if either twin had the guts to rat him out to their parents.