She took a sip of coffee, then settled her shoulders as though she was finished speaking for the day.
Shanty kept nodding at her and didn’t look away.
“And”—Nina’s eyes stayed focused on her drink—“over the years, I’ve had trouble standing up for myself, you know?”
Shanty’s head bobbed, and after another long pause, she must have decided that was enough torture. “Thank you for sharing your story.” She looked back at me. “Both of you. I know it’s not easy telling others your problems, especially when they’re things like we’re talking about. It’s so much easier to let them lie in the dark closets of our minds. Problem with that is those silly little memories turn into monsters if they’re left unattended. So . . .” She intertwined her fingers on the tabletop. “I’ve got some homework for you.”
“Besides finding a hobby?” I asked.
“That was a freebie.” She grinned. “For homework, I want you to smile at yourself in the mirror.”
Nina and I looked at each other, both frowning.
“That’s it?”
“Yep, easy smeasy, girls. Just smile at yourself in the mirror. You in?”
“Sure.” I shrugged. “I’m in.”
“Okay,” said Nina.
Shanty pulled her phone toward her. “Let’s exchange cell numbers so I can send you reminders and such. And do you girls wanna set up a regular time to meet each week? Maybe Monday or Tuesday night?”
“Tuesdays I have night class,” Nina said.
“Monday then?”
Nina nodded, and they both looked at me.
This was all weird and unusual, and I didn’t want to be a part of it, not really. But when I thought of the shards of glass still lying in the bottom of my pink mesh trash can, I nodded. “Yes, Monday’s good.” But like Shanty said, I would work on myself and not Brett, so come Monday—or any of the following Mondays—I would still have no reason to mention Brett’s addiction. This group was about self-esteem, not pain or humiliation or fear, and no amount of sharing would change that.
Besides, I had no real reason to be afraid. Not really. And I had no reason to explain the question that raced through my mind every time I talked to a man, whether it was my dad, or Michael Divins, or Graham. Or even that pesky pharmacist with the runway-model wife. It didn’t matter who the man was, I always wondered the same thing: Do you have a secret too?
Chapter Thirteen
LINE C—AUTO REGISTRATION AND RENEWAL
PLEASE HAVE PAPERWORK FILLED OUT BEFORE GETTING IN LINE.
The man was caught by surprise the first time it happened.
He had been standing in a long line at the county tax office, waiting to renew his auto registration with a dozen others, all of whom undoubtedly wanted to be somewhere else just like he did. One minute he was scrolling through sports statistics on his cell phone, and the next minute he was looking into the eyes of a beautiful woman, there on the phone’s small screen, wearing nothing but lace and eyeliner. She sat on an antique settee like the one his grandmother had in her apartment at the retirement villa. Actually, the woman wasn’t sitting on it. She was lying on it, which seemed out of place because the piece of furniture wasn’t meant to be lain on. He envisioned his grandmother perched on the edge of its satin cushion with her cup and saucer balanced on her knees.
But this woman was not his grandmother.
He glanced around to see if anyone was watching him, but the teenager behind him didn’t look up from the textbook she was reading, so he nonchalantly dropped his gaze back to the screen. He studied the way the woman leaned back on one elbow with her legs crossed neatly at the ankles. She had silver high heels on. She looked about twenty-five, but she could’ve been older. Her blond hair had been swept around the back of her neck, and it fell down her front, covering half her chest. He had the urge to reach into the picture and gently push it back over her shoulder . . . because he wanted to see more.
The line shifted, and he let the phone fall into his front pocket before he took a step forward. He crossed his arms, feeling the tension in his shoulders from too little sleep and too much stress. The lawyers were still after him. Would be until he got the ordeal settled once and for all, but in the meantime, he’d be wise to find a way to vent his frustrations. Usually exercise was his go-to, but even that hadn’t been helping lately.
His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out, holding it at arm’s length as though distance might lesson the sting of whatever message was coming through this time. But, no . . . it didn’t. His thumb made a single tap, and the words disappeared from his sight—but not from his mind. He supposed the lawyers were only doing their jobs.
He inched forward in line again, then closed his eyes momentarily, wishing his problems away. When he opened them again, he glanced down at the screen. He had forgotten the woman on the settee, but she was still there, smiling. As though she wanted him. As though he hadn’t made a mess of things. As though the two of them shared a secret.
Chapter Fourteen
Group text from Shanty to Cecily and Nina: I really enjoyed meeting with you two!! Thanks for trusting and sharing. Looking forward to Monday night, but between now and then . . . think happy thoughts!!!
Cecily: See you then.
Nina: :)
Sunday afternoon, I sat in the stone gatehouse at the entrance to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, watching my dad work. As a maintenance ranger, he typically spent his time building, repairing, or cleaning the park’s facilities, and he didn’t often find himself checking in visitors behind the front desk. “They’re short-staffed today,” he had said. “Come and keep me company.”
And the idea had sounded perfect.
The gatehouse had been built eighty years earlier out of local stone and rock, and I’d always felt the building, though outdated, fit the canyon perfectly. It was rugged and earthy, so it blended with its surroundings, and it was appropriately small in comparison to the immensity of the canyon that lay just out of eyesight. I had grown up in and around the park’s rock buildings, and they seemed as much a part of Dad as our own cabin.
“How’s the new job?” He didn’t look at me when he asked—an indication of how badly he wanted to know the answer.
“I’m just helping until Graham finds someone permanent, but it’s going all right, I suppose. Sometimes it’s pretty boring, just sitting in the office. I’m thinking I might”—why was I telling him this?—“take up a hobby. Something to do while I’m waiting.”
He didn’t say anything for several seconds, and when he did, I heard laughter behind his words. “Knitting might be just the thing. Not too loud or distracting.”
“I’m not knitting.” I plopped into a chair near the window and rested my foot on the sill. “And no embroidery or cross-stitch either.” My mother had tried to teach me all three with little success. Not that she had been interested. She’d just gotten it in her mind that a mother and daughter ought to experience that sort of thing together, but my best memories were those times she didn’t try to be with me. We just were. Painting our nails, making cookies, buying groceries.
Dad’s elbows rested on the counter, his fingertips touching to form a tent near his chin. He gazed, unseeing, at a display on the wall, and I knew he was thinking of Mom too.
“We should get out more,” I said.
He hummed. “You mean you should.”
“No, I mean we both should. I’m not the only one who gets lonely.”
“I don’t get lonely.” He frowned as though I had said a string of curse words.
“Do too.”
“Don’t.”
“How often do you get out of the house? And work doesn’t count. I mean out of the house just for fun.”
“Aw, now. I have a pretty good time at work, Cess. You know that.”
“Yeah.” I stared out the window, wrinkling my nose at the scraggly brush that dotted the pasture. “She’d want you to get out more. She’d want both of us to.”
>
He didn’t answer, and a few minutes later, he seemed glad when a car approached the gate. “What do you know, there’s Michael Divins. And I bet Mirinda’s with him.” The Corvette, still fifty yards away, approached slowly as though its occupants were looking at the scenery.
I still hadn’t admitted to Dad that I’d gone out with Michael, and I didn’t plan to admit it now. Seeing him with Mirinda was awkward enough, even though I had assumed they’d get back together. Barbie and Ken.
Dad stepped onto the porch as the driver’s door opened.
My foot slid off the windowsill and hit the floor, and I leaned forward to watch through the dusty window. When Michael climbed out of the car, he had an amused look on his face, as though he were the only one who knew the answer to a riddle. He took a step toward Dad and gave him a casual fist bump.
And then there was Mirinda. The two of them could have made their own commercial. Two larger-than-life models in a sleek car. If you spend eighty thousand dollars on a vehicle, you can look like this too! You’ll be beautiful and sexy, and the envy of all your friends!
I only got a glimpse of my ex-sister-in-law, but it looked like she had her hair in a ponytail. Michael and my dad talked for a few minutes, but it didn’t seem like the detached conversation of a park ranger and a random guest. They were chatting like they might have been continuing a conversation they’d started earlier.
When Dad came back in the gatehouse, I didn’t even wait until he had closed the door. “You know Michael Divins?”
Daddy straightened two brochures in the rack by the counter. “We’ve met.”
“Where?”
“Aw . . . here and there, I guess.” He rubbed his jaw with his thumb. “Canyon’s a small town. By the way, did you hear that he’s hosting next week’s fundraiser, that big bingo night to raise money for the tornado victims? I heard he’s the emcee.”
“That’ll be good publicity for Midnight Oil.”
“I don’t think it’s just that, though . . . I get the impression Mirinda asked him to help out.”
So Mirinda had a soft spot for disaster relief. Who knew? “It’s sort of weird that Mirinda’s at the park,” I said. “I never figured her to be the kind to enjoy the outdoors.”
“Rumor has it Michael has fallen in love with the canyon—hiking especially—and Mirinda has fallen in love with Michael.”
So now it was love. “Wait. Mirinda hikes?”
“Apparently.”
I got the feeling there was something he wasn’t telling me, but I didn’t push. If he wanted to talk about something else, I had something in mind.
“So, tell me about those medical bills.” I cocked my head to the side and waited.
Daddy tucked his chin. “You’re so much like your mother.”
“So they tell me.”
A puff of air slipped between his teeth. “Well, there are a lot of bills, Cess. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.”
Suddenly the room felt like a suffocating sauna. “Good Lord, Daddy,” I whispered. “Have you been paying on it since she died?”
“I’ll be paying it the rest of my life.” He frowned. “But there’s no chance of you inheriting the mess. Or so says my lawyer.”
I was stunned. Daddy had been carrying this burden all alone, and now that I had finally come home, I had nothing but a measly income. I was no help at all. “It’s impossible,” I said.
He sat in the only other chair, halfway across the room. “There’s a way out.”
That sounded so dramatic. A way out. Like a movie where the hero single-handedly digs himself out from under the thousand-pound wreckage of a collapsed building. “What do you mean?”
His gaze fell to his hands, which were sitting limply in his lap. “I could sell the cabin.”
Those five words sent a wave of desperation through me, like a violent wind blowing through the canyon’s depths. How could he even think such a thing? Our family had been canyon dwellers for generations.
“Selling the cabin would be like selling your soul,” I said.
He nodded slowly, not taking his eyes from mine, and we stared at each other without speaking. We didn’t need words to understand what the other wasn’t saying. We were mourning. First for my mother and all the memories that went along with her, then the possibility of losing ourselves. Of becoming ordinary people living in an ordinary house on an ordinary lot on a street in town.
“So, your job’s all right then?” Daddy rubbed his palm against the arm of the chair, seeming to study the grain.
“Yes. The job’s all right.”
He wasn’t asking about my job. He was asking about me, about my emotional health, about Dr. Harper and whether or not he was counseling me. About whether I would be able to handle it—mentally and emotionally—if he had to give up the spot of land that acted as our family’s anchor and tied us both to my mother.
I shook the negative thoughts from my mind. “Graham sent me to a women’s support group that meets at Midnight Oil.”
His shoulders relaxed, so I kept talking.
“Turns out there are only two other women besides me, and one girl won’t hardly talk, so I’m not sure she counts. And you’ll never believe who leads it.” I laughed. “Shanty Washington. Remember her?”
“Espinosa. She’s married to Al.”
“How do you know Shanty’s husband? I thought he was from New Mexico.”
“He was, I reckon, but he’s been in Canyon for years now. He’s a regular guy.”
This surprised me. I hadn’t figured Shanty to have a regular guy for a husband.
“So . . . ,” he said. “Shanty leads this group you’re in. What do y’all do?”
“Just talk, but she wants me to get a hobby.”
“Hence the knitting.”
“I’m not knitting.”
Daddy glanced out the window and then stood as another car approached the gate. “So what else does the fearless leader want you to do?”
“Smile at myself in the mirror.”
Daddy paused with his hand on the doorknob. “That one might be harder, I reckon.” His face grew so solemn it seemed his skin might crack. “Yep. That one might be harder.”
Chapter Fifteen
Dad and I ended up playing gin rummy for an hour, and as I unlocked my car to head home, Michael and Mirinda drove by the gatehouse on their way out of the park. Michael didn’t seem to notice me, but Mirinda’s pouty gaze held mine until they passed, like a three-year-old with a new toy. Mine!
Whatever.
I settled into the driver’s seat and frowned at the sports car, then opted against following along behind them all the way back to town. Instead, I turned the other way and headed deeper into the park, content to wind back and forth through the canyon while I nursed my mellow mood.
Lowering my window to enjoy the fresh air, I marveled that the canyon floor was so different from the hazy view I saw daily from the back deck of our cabin. Down here in the depths, the view was nearsighted and tall, and I inhaled the earthy scent of juniper along with another smell that I could only describe as rock. It didn’t seem like stone should have a scent, yet the smell of the canyon had always been the same.
Two miles into the park, I pulled into a lot near the Capitol Peak trail to enjoy the scenery, but the last rays of the sun reflected in my rearview mirror, causing me to squint. A quick shove to the glass put it at a safe slant, and I nestled a hand behind my head as I watched tourists snap pictures of the sunset. I heard myself sigh, but when my eyes passed the skewed mirror, my smile startled me.
I grinned often enough, but I didn’t usually see myself doing it. Now that it had happened, Shanty’s challenge rang in my ears. My smile had been a result of the beauty and peacefulness of the canyon, and I couldn’t fool myself into believing I had smiled at myself in the mirror.
My eyes narrowed as I watched the girl in the glass with her head lying at an angle against the headrest. She looked calm, unperturbed, somewhat
confident. Her lips twitched as though a gnat were buzzing around them, and then the corners lifted, resulting in a smirk instead of a smile. I sat up straight, gripped the mirror in one hand, and swiveled it so I could study my reflection. I was frowning now, put out with myself.
Blinking to erase my scowl, I lifted my eyebrows. My teeth showed a little, and smile lines appeared on my cheeks, but something about the entire thing seemed artificial, like a store mannequin with a molded expression and hollow circles for eyes. I shoved the mirror away and let my hand fall to my lap, sending a slash of pain across my thighs.
The cuts hadn’t yet healed, but I had downgraded from gauze bandages to oversized Band-Aids. Just that morning I’d stopped at the store for more ointment, and the obnoxious pharmacist had once again rattled on and on about his wife’s beauty. It was enough to make me cut myself again.
Not really.
I started my car, then paused, with one hand on the steering wheel and another on the gear shift, as something—someone—caught my eye from the road.
A man was on the shoulder, pushing a mountain bike, and from the looks of things, he was having trouble. He was too far away to have seen my debacle with the rearview mirror but not so far away that he wouldn’t notice my car. I instantly recognized his scruffy beard and stocky build. Graham Cracker.
I rubbed my palms across my cheekbones and, without thinking, pinched my lips between my fingers, smashing any remaining trace of my ridiculous smile. Graham was the last person I wanted to see immediately after failing at something so trivial, but I could hardly turn around and drive away.
When I pulled my car onto the road and climbed out, I got a better look at him. Judging from his cycling shorts and matching shirt, he was an avid cyclist. He was even wearing the funny shoes. “I didn’t know you were a biker,” I called.
“Exercise helps me relieve stress.” His helmet hung from the handle bars.
I looked at his bike, not expecting to know what was wrong, but it was obvious. “How’d your wheel get bent?”
Looking Glass Lies Page 7