If I Disappear

by Eliza Jane Brazier

  I try to catch my breath.

  Your father blinks benignly. His eyes seem brown and blue at once, like he’s wearing color contacts. He is unexpectedly small, effeminate. His hair is the same matte brown as your mother’s, like they dye it from the same bottle. He pushes back from the table, sets his hands on his knees. “Nice to meet you, Sera. Addy’s been telling me all about you.”

  “There’s something—one of the horses is injured.”

  Your mother’s brow creases. “Which horse?”

  “One in the pasture by the barn.” Something stops me from telling her it’s Belle Star. I know she doesn’t like her.

  “Injured how?” Your father sticks a finger between his teeth and sucks.

  “She’s bleeding; her nose is bleeding. And she’s limping.”

  “Which horse?” your mother repeats.

  “Uh-oh,” your father says in a goofy voice. “Looks like I better get the shotgun.” He grins like I will find this funny.

  I realize now that I shouldn’t have come to them first. I should have taken Belle out of the pasture myself. I panicked, in the moment. This is their ranch; I thought I needed to get their permission. “We need to take her out of that pasture. I think the other horses are bullying her.”

  Your mother’s eyes expand and contract. She knows it’s Belle Star. “You can put her in the round pen.”

  “Should we call a vet?”

  Their eyes meet over the table; then your father says, “I better have a look at her first.”

  And your mother says, “You’re supposed to be feeding the horses.”

  I nod dumbly and walk out, shutting the door behind me. My limbs feel heavy as I walk back. I am nervous about going into the pasture, afraid the alpha horses will charge me again, but Belle Star stumbles right to the gate to meet me, as if she knows I am here to rescue her. I lead her slowly to the round pen, and she limps along beside me, blood gushing from her nose.

  I think of your gang, and I run my hand down her face, trying to see if she’s been hit, trying to find a fracture in the bone.

  I find a flashlight in the tack room. I angle it so I can see into the long chasm of her nostril, but I can’t figure out what’s causing the bleeding. I think, Stroke! Brain hemorrhage! Blunt-force trauma! I can’t even google it because I don’t have Wi-Fi.

  I think of your mother’s expression, her repeated questioning, as if she knew it was Belle Star or hoped it was. I think of the dead cat. The tumorous, wheezing dogs. I try to tell myself that this is normal on a farm. This is the “real wilderness.” I am being too sensitive. But the part of my brain your podcast triggers thinks, Serial killers kill animals too. I bring alfalfa for Belle Star. There is no water in the round pen, so I drag in a water trough from behind the barn and fill it with the hose from a nearby guest cabin. Once she is quietly grazing, I leave to feed the other horses.

  When I get back, your father is in the round pen with her, trying to look at her nose as she shies and throws her head.

  He approaches her again. She balks and runs, tripping, to the other side of the pasture. He grins boyishly at me. “Might be time to send this one to the great big pasture in the sky.” He points two fingers at her forehead, and she shies away.

  “I don’t think that’s funny.” My voice is steely.

  “No,” he says, chastised but still smiling. He slaps his hands together. “It’s a flesh wound, m’lady! Merely a flesh wound!”

  “Can we call a vet to make sure?”

  “Where we gonna get that kind of money?” He plays the same game your mother does. I think of the four hundred guns, the miniature train and the marble statue of Christ.

  “I’ll pay for it.” I know I shouldn’t put my foot down like this. I need to play along, to make them like me, but suddenly I’m wondering if working here is the right way to go about my investigation. They don’t want me to go to the police. They don’t want me to go to Happy Camp. They don’t want me to go near your house. Maybe I am approaching this from the wrong angle.

  But I remind myself that you were here. You lived here. You were here when you disappeared. And Jed will be back in a few days. Maybe he will be different from your parents. Maybe I will be able to trust him. I can’t risk losing my foothold here. And anyway, I want to keep an eye on Belle Star. I need to stick this out. I need to play the game, and I need to keep your family close.

  Your father frowns. “Okay! Okay! I’ll ask someone to come by, but I think it’s a waste of time.” He takes off his hat and fans his leg. “They usually get better on their own. Or they don’t. Anyway, we better get back to work!” He gives me a “stern” look, but every look is comical on his face, like he’s a rodeo clown performing a normal life.

  I get back to work, but I keep an eye on Belle Star, as if someone might sneak in and attack her when I’m not looking.

  The tack needs to be organized and cleaned. The other horses need to be checked out. One has a hoof cracked almost to the bone; your mother tells me to put oil on it. Half the horses have rain rot; their hair is matted and fungal from their being left to fend for themselves all winter. Your mother gives me a metal currycomb, and I scrape the infected hair out, leaving scaly patches of exposed skin. The horses are spicy. They’ve been off work all winter and they don’t like to be separated from the herd and they kick and they bite on the ground and they buck and they balk under saddle. They are nothing like the pleasant ponies of my youth. They are hardy. They are furry. They are stooped and barn sour.

  I am leading one down from the pasture, trying to avoid the clip of its teeth, when your father passes by on his ATV. He slows to smile radiantly at me and say, “We’re so happy you’re here.”

  It unbalances me for the rest of the day. We’re so happy you’re here. I can’t put my finger on it, but those words are like a fissure in my spine, a tickle in my toes. I feel dizzy with the oxygen and heady with the view—the river below and the mountains above—and my body aches, my joints feel locked, and it haunts me: We’re so happy you’re here.

  To my surprise, a vet appears that evening. He drives up in a big black truck. It sends a shiver down my spine and I watch him closely. His name is Moroni. He’s thin and wiry with pale orange hair and a patch of crusted red skin on the back of his neck. Hank Williams Stage 2.

  He greets your parents warmly, exclaiming over how well they look and how good the ranch looks and how does your mother get her plants to grow? Where did they find that particular shade of red to paint their shutters? How nice the air is out here!

  “It’s like you bought your own special atmosphere!” he trills dumbly as they show him all the new additions.

  They take so long about it that I wonder if he is the vet at all, but eventually, they lead him to Belle Star. The blood has dried in a dark slash down her lips

  Moroni hobbles into the pasture and confirms what your father said. “It’s just a cut, inside her nose.” Belle Star is lame from the shoulder. He says she probably strained a muscle in a fight with another horse.

  “I don’t think the other horses like her,” I say. Your mother sniffs. “Maybe we should leave her here.”

  “That’s an idea,” Moroni says, noncommittal.

  He shoots the shit with your parents for a while. Eventually I put together that he is friends with your brother, Homer, that they go to the same church, a church your parents used to go to, but they stopped because of the goddamn liars and people in that town.

  I want to talk to Moroni alone, to ask him about you, but I need to be careful. Your parents are watching.

  I decide to excuse myself early, even though I don’t want to miss anything, so I can double back and wait for him outside his truck. It’s parked on the other side of the lodge, out of view of your parents’ house. I should be able to talk to him alone. Still, there is a chance one or both of your parents will walk with him, so
instead of waiting out in the open, I duck into one of your mother’s gardens.

  I recognize the gate from the website, the careful swirl of the wrought iron. But in the pictures, there were roses and baby’s breath and wisteria. Now there are blackberry bushes, tangled inside the fence, choking the gate, curling up the stand of a birdhouse and stuffed inside like a thorny nest.

  This garden is a blackberry stronghold, so thick and high at the center, like it covers a blackberry planet. And along the edges, the vines bleed out, reaching farther and farther, so insidious, you don’t see it at first, the way it curls along the edge of the barn, twists in a vine over the fence of a nearby pasture, stretches in a chain beneath every guest cabin.

  It pricks my ankles, my arms as I duck down. The smells of mud and rot are warm around me. It is amazing how much life smells like death.

  I wait. My left leg falls asleep. Then I hear footsteps approaching. I peer over the brush as nerves twinkle under my skin.

  Moroni twists to look behind him, lips poised over a joint and a match. With a rush, I realize that I have seen him before. I recognize the mottled back of his neck. He’s the guy from the coffee shop. The one that threw his arms around the woman who broke the teacup and said, Where have you been? He is alone. He lights the joint.

  I stand, my leg encased in pins and needles. I untangle my feet from the branches that claw my ankles and step out of the garden. “Hi.”

  He lifts his chin. He doesn’t ask why I was hiding behind a bush. He doesn’t even look surprised. Instead he spews a massive cloud of herbal smoke, then shakes his head. “I can’t stand that fucking bitch.”

  I am taken aback. Ever since he arrived, he has been praising your mother up, down and across: her gardening, her housekeeping, her taste. “Sorry?”

  “That woman,” he says, like we are on the same page. “I can’t fucking stand her.”

  I step back. Something in his tone makes me physically afraid. He stalks to his truck. He grabs the handle and swings open the door. I need to ask him about you before it’s too late. “Did you know her daughter?”

  “Rachel?” He snorts. “That bitch was crazy.”

  My stomach burns, but I force myself to keep a cool exterior. “Crazy? How?”

  This stumps him for a second. He holds his joint inches from his lips. “Well, first of all, she hated men.” And just like that, I hate him.

  “That’s—” I bite my tongue. “Why do you say that?” My voice is saccharine, so I sound like a woman who likes, or at least tolerates, men.

  He cocks his head. “Never had a boyfriend.”

  “I would imagine there weren’t a lot of people to choose from.”

  “No. Not if you hate men.”

  “Did she have any female friends?”

  “Nope.” He rubs the lizard skin on his neck. “She just kept to herself. That’s what I mean: psycho.”

  “How is keeping to yourself psycho?” He looks at me like I’m psycho, then climbs up onto his seat, happy to leave. How do men do it so fast? They make you feel like a “crazy woman” with one look. “What happened to her?”

  “Ha!” he says like we both know what that means.

  “What?’

  “Well, look at her mother. You want to know what happened to her, look at her mother. It’s obvious.” I don’t know if he means she hurt you or if she drove you insane. Or both.

  “Do you think she did something to her?”

  “Hey.” He pinches his joint in an “okay” gesture. “I gotta say no more.” He shuts the door behind him. “Probably? Rachel got outta here. Probably? She’s on a beach somewhere sipping a margarita. Or else?” He points two fingers and the joint. “That psychopath peeled her face from her skull. But you didn’t hear it from me!” He trills gleefully and the engine guns and he zooms past me, past the lodge and past your mother’s house, out onto the highway.

  I hear your voice, telling your story: He told her exactly what happened, down to the grisly details. He warned her. But like so many witnesses before her, she didn’t believe him. If only she had . . .

  Episode 25:

  Secrets We Keep

  “It’s always the husband.” That’s how the saying goes. And this time the rule held true—it was the husband. It just wasn’t hers.

  Before I go to bed, I make a plan. I set my alarm for one thirty a.m. I will go down, in the dark, alone, to your yellow house. I will try the front door again. I will bring a credit card in case it’s a lock I can jimmy. I will try the back door. I will look for a way in. I don’t know what I expect to find. But it’s late enough that I will be able to search without being caught, and that alone makes me eager to go.

  Your mother drawing the lines has made everything feel closer, like the perimeter is a purse string tightening. And even though I know I can leave—that she can’t stop me, perhaps she wouldn’t even try—I can feel the shape of the barrier in my mind, feel its hold on me, like a wedding ring, like a new job, like my parents’ eyes.

  Sometimes it seems easier to let other people control me. It’s what I’ve done all my life. It feels safer, when I can’t trust myself, to trust anybody else. Part of me wants to let Addy take control. And another part of me wants to break free, to break out, to be the psycho bitch Moroni said you were.

  I push open the rickety screen door, ready to reset it when it swings off its hinges. Then I step down onto the dirt and follow the edge of the cabin to the trail.

  I planned to use the light on my phone, but even that feels risky. Every tree shrouds your mother. Your father laughs under every rock. This land is theirs, so very theirs that I feel like I am trespassing even when I am inside my own cabin.

  I take the far path, along the perimeter. Alongside it a cliff falls down to the highway below, and the edge is uncertain. The sheer drop unbalances me; I feel it always like a magnet, pulling me off center. I move from tree to tree, sometimes tripping on a root, feeling safer when I stay close to the woods.

  The pathway brightens and the journey becomes easier, and it’s only when Jed’s house appears that I realize it’s because his outside light is on. Was it on before? Has it been on all this time?

  My nerves are like threads pulled taut. In my mind, Jed is cast as a villain. Was he really on vacation? Or was he hiding your body?

  Jed returned to the ranch in the middle of the night. Sera Fleece left her cabin sometime after midnight. She left a trail. It ended outside his house.

  I speed up. My feet crack the dead leaves. A figure rises from the dark. I open my mouth to scream, and he lifts his hand to stop me. I smack his hand away.

  “Hey.” He has an accent. “Hey, hey, hey now. Just take a breath. You scared the daylights outta me too . . . or the night-lights.”

  My breath is pounding. My fingers are numb. But I can’t scream; I have no reason to scream, and I don’t want to wake your parents but I want to scream. I feel like a scream has been waiting, like tears held back over years, like it’s been waiting a long time to rise up and peel open the night. Jed’s fingers brush my shoulders, directing me to the rock on the point of the cliff, the one that looks out onto the highway and the bend in the river. Only now it looks out into the black.

  I perch, shuddering under his limp touch, so he releases me, steps back and observes me. I observe him too, in the glow that traces one side of his body. He is dressed like a cowboy, with jeans and boots and a flannel shirt. He has loose dark hair and dark eyes that seem to leak into the skin below. His lips are a ring. His hands are spread, like I might run, like he might have to catch me. “My God, you scared me,” he says. “Who are you? What are you doing out here?”

  “I’m Sera. I work here.”

  “Work here? Since when? Doing what?”

  “Cleaning windows. Riding horses.”

  His expression sours. “She lets you ride the horses?”
r />   “Yes.”

  He makes a derisive sound. “That woman. You know they hired me as a wrangler, their head wrangler. Been here six months. You know how many times I’ve ever ridden a horse?” He loops his fingers into a zero. He is still for a moment, staring at the ground; then he kicks the dirt. “God Almighty. That woman really is something!”

  “I’m just glad there’s someone else here.”

  This twists his lips up. “Name’s Jedidiah Combs, by the way—Jed—although I don’t doubt that woman told you all about me.”

  I want to ask him about you, but I know I should feel him out first. Everyone is a suspect, even the ones I would like to trust. I watch him closely, searching for signs.

  He stuffs his hands in his pockets and moves up toward the cliff. “This is my spot. I have coffee here every morning. Sit on that rock.” His eyes dart back in my direction. “What are you doing out here after dark?”

  “Couldn’t sleep.” And then to mask it, “You were on vacation?”

  “She told you I was on vacation?”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  “I was getting a divorce.”

  “You’re married?” I say like I don’t know.

  He rubs his neck, gazes out at the black. “My wife and I came up here together ’bout six months ago. She lasted about a week. Then she went back to West Texas—Abilene, that’s where we’re from.” He shakes his head. “I went back there. She won’t take my calls. She won’t see me. That’s fine. I just want her to take my money.” He stuffs his fingers in his pockets.

  “I’m divorced,” I offer. “Every time I say it, it seems like a lie, even though I know it’s true.”

  He smiles back. “Yes, ma’am.” He takes a few steps toward the ridge. “Back less than an hour and already I can’t breathe.” He arches his back and pulls air into his lungs.

  “It’s so quiet out here, I can’t sleep.” I don’t mention the voices, the way that sounds suddenly pop, and I can’t tell if they’re right outside or miles away. “I feel so alone,” I say, and wish I hadn’t. People are never supposed to confess to feeling alone, even in a place like this, where it’s obvious.