If I Disappear

by Eliza Jane Brazier

  “I wish I did. That woman is watching every goddamn thing I do and—” He stops short, as if he realizes how that sounds. “My apologies. I reckon I must be tired.” He kicks the dirt.

  “You don’t seem happy to be back.” Your name is on my lips, but I hold it back. Something tells me to wait. Someone who looks like this and talks like this, walking around without his wife. Someone in the middle of a divorce. I have listened to enough episodes to know: Jed is a prime suspect.

  “Happy to be here? I’m not.” He ruffles his hair so it curls in dark tendrils around his face. “Back home I worked on the rigs. Worked hard, long days. Never saw my wife. It’s no kind of life. I thought this might be something . . . work outdoors, go fishing and hiking and hunting. But it’s not what I was expectin’. And now I’m stuck out here.”

  “Why are you stuck?”

  “Grace got Abilene in the divorce. I can’t go back there.” He checks my expression and explains. “I done cast my lot.”

  I try to keep my expression neutral but I am thinking: He must have done something bad to make her leave. I see the scribble of your face. His wife lasted a week. He’s been here six months. He was here six months with you and your parents, alone. “You don’t have to stay here,” I say. “There are more than two options.”

  He cocks his head and smirks. “I always thought there was just the one option. I guess you learnt it different.” He sighs. “They pay well, all cash, tax-free. A little corner of heaven, right? It should go down easy, but it don’t. It should be a dream come true, but it ain’t.” He slides his hands into his pockets. “It is beautiful though. Even in the dark.”

  He stares ahead, hands tucked, like a romantic figure in a poem. I feel it like a pressure against my temples. My lungs hold tight. Is he really this dreamy character, or is he trying to appear that way?

  I think of your life, all the pieces of it. The suspicious townspeople. Your radical mother. Your loopy father. And Jed, your backyard crying cowboy. It feels so contrived, like a game you designed for me to play. Or is that just because I have been trapped in my wheel for so long, stuck in stories of good and evil, that now everything feels fake? And then I get this scary feeling, like I have disappeared, like this ranch is my vanishing point, one last bend in the road and then I cut out like a candle.

  And suddenly I want to tell Jed all of this, but I can’t because he’s a perfect stranger. Why is it that other people can sometimes make you feel the most alone? I have no one to talk to, no one close that I can trust. My mouth feels sewn shut. My heart is pulsing in my aching hands. I’m disappearing. And if I don’t find you, I’ll vanish without a trace.

  “Heck, I better get some sleep.” Jed swings his body around at once. “You want me to walk you back?”

  I am torn. I want to go to your house, but I can’t get past Jed. And I can’t trust him. I can’t trust anyone.

  “No, I’ll be fine. It’s easy.”

  His voice drops conspiratorially. “It wasn’t really a question. I can’t let a woman walk home alone.” I hate comments like that, but his accent softens my irritation. And as much as it embarrasses me to admit, I like the idea that somebody cares, even if it’s just enough to walk me a few hundred feet down the path.

  We walk back to my cabin, guided by the halo of his handheld flashlight. I want to trust him. I want to tell him everything—about the cat and Belle Star and the sick dogs and the way your parents seem sadistic, always laughing at something that isn’t funny. But I think: Suspect. I think: Wait. Still, I don’t know how long I can hack it out here alone. If you disappeared, someone must have taken you. If you are in danger, I am in danger too.

  We stop under the eaves, by the front door. His nostrils flare at the smell, and I feel embarrassed, like this really is my home. “Sorry they stuck you here. You oughta just stay with me; there’s three bedrooms. Lord knows I don’t need ’em.”

  I feel the invitation catch in my throat, like we’re on a first date and he’s asked me to come back for coffee, forever. “It’s fine. I don’t mind it.”

  “Well, I’d invite you over for dinner but I can’t cook worth a damn. If you ever need whiskey though, you can bet I’ve opened a bottle.” He steps backward until he’s five, ten feet away. He cocks his chin. “I hope you get along all right out here,” he says, like we may never see each other again.

  * * *

  —

  I fall asleep and wake up an hour later to the sound of a baby crying. Half in dreams, I think I’m another person, with a different life. I have to feed the baby. I have to hold the baby. I have to rock the baby. I am out of bed, cold lighting my bare knees when I realize I don’t have a baby, and I shiver like it’s something I should be afraid of.

  I climb back onto the bed, ignoring the feeling of dirt and dust between the covers, and I look out at the swollen bellies of the blackberry bushes gathered in the garden outside my window.

  The perfect place to hide bodies. I imagine the blackberries are so thick because they feed on human flesh, and I almost want to go out there and rip the bushes apart, cut them down so I can sleep without nightmares. You could hide anything in there.

  Episode 29:

  Open Season at Fortuna Ranch

  They found the bodies in a hunting freezer. They were stripped. They were cleaned. They were arranged to make the most of the space, so a bone was broken here. A neck was twisted there. They found seven bodies in one freezer.

  The next morning, I am up on a ladder outside the lodge, cleaning the windows. I’d fed the horses. I’d checked in on Belle Star, who seems less agitated now that she’s alone. Your mother roars up on her ATV. The dogs that follow her settle like sacks in the grass.

  “Well.” She cuts off the engine. “He decided to come back.”

  “Did you think he wouldn’t?” I have not finished cleaning the inside panels, but I’ve moved outside, hoping to get another glimpse of Jed. There is something old-fashioned about this place. There’s a new man in town, and I won’t be able to sleep for days.

  She gazes out at the ranch, where Jed is, invisible to us. “I didn’t know, the way he took off. Here for six months and he wants to go on vacation? What does that sound like to you?”

  It sounds perfectly understandable. This place is isolated, even more so by the rules about not going into town, about not traveling past the perimeter. I can understand that after six months he might have felt like he was due a vacation.

  “He was supposed to bring back his wife. Did you see her?”

  It’s not my place to tell her about his divorce, and anyway I’m not supposed to have met him yet, so I say, “No, I haven’t.”

  “Well.” She leans forward on her ATV. “We’ll just see how things go now you’re here.” She starts her engine and speeds away before I can ask her what she means.

  * * *

  —

  I work for three days, falling into the routine even as the pressure inside me builds. I clean windows. I ride horses. I clean more windows. I ride more horses. But on the inside, I am frying, burning up. I tell myself I am building your family’s trust, burying myself deeper in your world, but every day the case gets colder.

  I pass by Jed a few times a day. He works on the roof of cabin seven, making repairs, shirtless, sweating. And I am no closer to you, no closer to him, no closer to anyone. I work and I read Dear Mad’m and I plan for the weekend, when I will search your house, search the ranch, search Happy Camp.

  I hope your parents will go to Ashland to resupply, but I know Jed might be here, and I don’t know how I will get around him. How can I look for you when there is always someone watching?

  There is a scream sewn backward inside my lips. My hands are aching, desperate to do something. The air is hot. My neck glistens with it, but you are cold and getting colder. And I need to do something. Yesterday, today, now.

  At ni
ght I listen to your podcast, every episode a clue, a hint, leading me toward Murder, Missing, Conspiracy. Every morning my head feels thick; my chest feels tight. Every day I am angry with myself for not getting closer, for not working hard enough, for not finding you.

  * * *

  —

  On Wednesday, your mother comes into the tack room and tells me they won’t be going to Ashland this weekend—they have enough supplies from the last trip. Isn’t that lucky? And I need to do something. I need to start asking questions, so I do.

  “Why doesn’t Jed ride? Isn’t he the head wrangler?” I am cleaning the silver rings of a saddle with a toothbrush. I keep my head down, working diligently.

  “He doesn’t know what he’s doing on a horse,” your mother snips. According to Jed, she’s never even seen him ride one.

  “It would be nice to have another person.” I pause, careful. “The horses are better when they’re together.”

  “They’ll go out together enough in the summer.”

  “But isn’t that what we’re practicing for now?”

  The thought has begun to climb on me, that this feels like the beginning of an abusive relationship. You have told me many times about how they progress, the relationships that end in Murder, Missing, Conspiracy. They often start the same way. They often start with this: He isolated her. Your mother tells me not to go to town. She makes me work alone. She buys me food so I won’t have to shop. Food and clothes and toilet paper so I won’t have to leave. I remember what you said about growing up here: It was the middle of nowhere, and I couldn’t escape.

  I need to break out. I need to find you. I can’t always please your mother. I can’t always please everyone. So I push.

  “I don’t know the guest trails. And you told me it wasn’t safe to go past the perimeter. I need someone to show me.” Jed told me he had spent months clearing the trails, even though he wasn’t allowed to ride them. “I need someone to come with me so I won’t be alone.”

  Your mother cocks her chin. I know she doesn’t want to go with me herself. She doesn’t like to leave the ranch. But she knows I am right. If I am going to lead the trails, I need to know where they are.

  “Fine. I’ll talk to Emmett, see if he can let Jed go for one or two mornings. To show you the trail.” She bounces on her heels. “Heck, it’s not like Jed is any use to him either.”

  * * *

  —

  You never said a word about Jed, which surprises me because he’s the kind of man women gush about: toned and tailored, with a habit of licking his lips, glaring moodily at shadows. He is attractive, and he is angry at the world, which makes him even more attractive, in my book. The next morning, as we tack up Angel Two and Jewel, Jed watches the morning mist like it stole something from him.

  I ask him easy questions first. This is what you taught me.

  “How long have you been riding?”

  “Forever. Since I was a baby.” He grew up in a small town. He worked on a ranch from the age of seven. I can tell he knows his way around a horse. I wonder aloud why Addy suggested otherwise.

  “She’s punishing me.”

  “Punishing you?”

  “It’s what she does.” He gently tightens the cinch and tucks the leather.

  It’s a crazy notion, but haven’t I noticed a sadistic streak? The way she laughed when she drove too fast on that first day? The glint in her eye when she asked me to climb up a fifteen-foot ladder unsupported to clean the lodge windows?

  I walk my horse to the mounting block; Jed swings on from the ground.

  “I’m supposed to take you down to the beach today; it’s across the highway.” He reins his horse around. I follow him down the main thoroughfare, past the lodge. The phone is ringing again.

  “That phone is always ringing,” I say.

  “That’s the reservation line,” Jed says. “Far as I can tell, they’re pretty lacksydaisical about taking bookings. I wouldn’t be surprised if the summer comes and we’re still the only ones here.” I smile because I’ve never heard anyone use the word “lackadaisical” in real life, even if he did pronounce it wrong.

  We are both quiet as we pass your parents’ house. Jed’s shoulders stiffen and he watches it uneasily. Then we head down the drive, toward the highway. A wide semitruck blasts around the bend in the road, and Jed pulls Jewel up.

  “They always show up right when you’re about to cross,” he mutters. Jewel prances as we wait for the truck to pass, and then we cross the road together.

  On the other side, we head down a steep trail. I glimpse the river through the trees: heavy, brown, propulsive.

  “This is the trail,” he says. “Apparently it’s a ‘showstopper.’”

  It is beautiful, but so is everything out here, and I don’t care. We are off the property. It’s like I’ve been holding it in. I can’t contain it anymore. I can’t hold on to you. “Did you know Rachel?”

  “Rachel?” His horse slips. It slides down the trail, and he leaps into action to rebalance it, twisting his back and angling his seat until the horse comes right underneath him. He peers back at me, up the steep hill. “How do y’know who Rachel is?”

  “Addy told me.”

  “What did she tell you?” His eyes bore into me, searching for you.

  “She told me what happened to her.”

  He pauses, works the words through his mouth like a crank. “What did she say happened to her?”

  “About the gang. Addy thinks she was murdered.”

  He goes quiet then, stiff through his spine like he’s been run through with a rod. His body sways with the horse as we reach the bottom of the incline. Before us the land crawls out, awash with sand. It’s a deserted beach, like the island in The Black Stallion, wide and pale with scribbles of brush.

  “Wow,” I say appreciatively. And then, “Is that what happened?”

  He flips the long strands of his reins to the other side. “I don’t know what happened to Rachel.” I can’t tell if he’s choosing his words carefully or if it just sounds like he is because he talks slowly.

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “I guess around Easter, maybe.”

  “What day specifically? And what time? How did she seem?” I wish I had a tape recorder, a calendar, some way to quantify exactly when and how you disappeared.

  His voice shallows. “You seem pretty invested in a stranger’s story.”

  I debate telling him the true reason I am here. He is just as likely as anyone to be involved in your disappearance. But in spite of this, I want to trust him—maybe only because I have no one else to trust. And the truth is, I’m not getting anywhere on my own. I need someone on the inside, someone who was here when you disappeared. I need someone.

  “I listened to her podcast.” His hips slide forward on the horse, but I can’t see his face. I look for clues in the line of his broad shoulders. “Before she disappeared. That’s why I came out here. To find out where she went.”

  “You’re shitting me,” he says, but not to me. He speaks out into space, as if speaking to you. Then he ducks his head and lowers his voice. “Let’s just keep on with the trail.”

  He quickens his horse, directs it toward a copse of trees. My lower back stiffens. Where is he taking me? Is this really the trail? Or have I trusted the wrong person? Is he taking me into the woods to cut me up? (Forty-six stab wounds in the face, so we know it was personal. The bullet entered her head at her temple, no exit wound. Signs of struggle. The first place to look for DNA is under the victim’s fingernails.) Did his wife really go back to Texas? Has anybody verified it? Or did he murder her and bury her in the woods? Did you find out? Did he kill you too?

  He leads me away from the beach, along a lilac-strewn path. In spite of your mother’s warning, I am not carrying a gun, but I consider all the weapons at my dispo
sal:

  I could gallop away on my horse. (He could gallop faster.)

  I could wrap the reins around his neck and choke him to death. (He could cut them with the knife sticking out of his pocket.)

  I could charge him on horseback. (He could clothesline me, tackle me to the ground.)

  I could use his knife to slit his throat. (He could turn it on me, thrust it in my neck so my blood would spit warmly on his fingers. What would it feel like to die that way? Would the pain sharpen or would it feel like a gradual loosening, like all the knots in my nerves were untied?)

  And I think: Trust. I have to trust someone.

  We reach the woods. He doesn’t say a word. And after a while it becomes clear that he’s not going to kill me or tell me your secrets. He’s not going to do anything at all.

  “I need to find out what happened to her.” I squeeze the reins between my fingers.

  “Why?” he says, genuinely confused.

  “She did for all those people, on her podcast. She cared enough. To look. To find out. To try to save them. I have to do the same for her.”

  “She didn’t save anyone.” He reins his horse up. “She lost herself.” Satisfied with his conclusion, he continues up the trail.

  I let my horse jog to catch up. “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean? I mean, she saw murder everywhere, ill intentions. She got lost in her own stories. Thought everyone was out to get her.”

  “Like her mother does?”

  “Rachel is nothing like Addy; don’t you say that.” Anger flashes through him. I can see what he would look like in the killer role. Because he is angry. Beneath his cool, slow words, his anger is aimed, always at your mother. So why does he stay? Is tax-free money really enough to burn alone in isolation? Or is there something else that keeps him here?