by Lisa Wingate
The pieces fell together in my mind. A truck used to install windmill towers could have a hydraulic lift, generator, and pneumatic tools—all the things needed to extract a large slab of rock. “Jocelyn said something about a windmill salesman the day I came to the Jubilee.” I glanced at Zach, feeling all the significance of windmills. He was waiting for the Bales brothers’ windmill service the day we met. We’d had one of our first kisses atop a windmill… .
He didn’t look at me, just scanned the parking lot, his eyes a frosty green. If he was thinking of windmills, or me, it didn’t show. “My truck’s blocked in.” He addressed Gracie instead of me. “I’ll ride with Robert.” Without another word he strode off across the parking lot, with Robert hiking his pants and downing the last of a Dr Pepper.
Gracie slanted a glance after him, then back at me, her tongue tracing the outline of her straight white teeth. “What in the world did you do to him? I’ve never seen him like that.”
“You weren’t livin’ here when Shawna took Macey away,” Becky muttered, shoveling a load of guilt on my shoulders.
Gracie clearly didn’t want to step into the muck of that conversation. “I’d better go,” she said as Robert’s car started and pulled onto the road. “I’ll let you know what we find.” She headed off across the parking lot, jogging like a basketball player headed for a free throw.
I vacillated, my mind moving at light-speed into the universe of what-if. What if they found the Jubilee tracks, and I wasn’t there to see it? What if the other Bales brother had a gun? What if things got dangerous? What if something happened to me, and Sydney was left alone? What if something happened to Zach? What if he got angry and reckless and did something rash?
The idea clenched my stomach with surprising power. “Becky, will you ask Collie or Laura to watch Sydney?”
“They’re not here yet, but Pop and I will watch her. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine. There’s lots of kids here.”
I vacillated again. On the roadside, Gracie was getting into her car.
Ramming her hands onto her hips, Becky huffed impatiently. “Gosh, go already, will you? You know you want to.”
“The dog’s in the car.”
“I’ll check on the stupid dog, OK?” Smacking her lips, she rolled her eyes. “Geez. It’s no wonder Zach likes you. You’re as much of a pain in the butt as he is. When you want somethin’, you gotta just say so. If people don’t like it, tough.”
“You’re right,” I said, then turned and dashed after Gracie, hollering, “Gracie, wait. I’m coming with you!”
To her credit, Gracie had the decorum not to ask about Zach and me as we sped down mile after mile of gravel road, skidding around curves and kicking up loose gravel. Gracie piloted the vehicle like a NASCAR driver, and by the time we reached the fence of corrugated metal that surrounded B & B Windmills, we were right behind the other sheriff’s department car. Gracie whipped past him at the driveway in a maneuver that knocked me sideways.
“Sorry about that.” She glanced in the rearview with a triumphant smirk. “There’s a little competition between the girl and the good-ol’-boy network around here.”
When I uprighted myself, we were moving through a boneyard of sideways windmill towers and decaying skeletons of fans and fins that must have been building up for years. The kind of place where anyone or anything could be hiding.
The thought sent a heebie-jeebie through me. I sank lower in my seat. Gracie surveyed the junkyard as we moved through, then pulled up in front of a two-story metal shop building with faded yellow paint and rust in an oozing pattern like dried blood. “Must be the sheriff’s not here yet,” she said, peering down the lane toward a rotting house that appeared to be abandoned. Opening the car door, she climbed out in one lithe movement, adjusting her gun holster like she expected to use it. I exited the car and stood near my door, listening for human sounds. There was nothing but the rhythmic clang of loose tin slapping against iron pipes, which was quickly drowned out by Robert’s approaching cruiser. They parked beside us and Zach got out, staring at the barn with his hand still on the car door as Robert unfolded himself from the seat with a groan, stretched, and tucked in his shirttails as if he were headed into the diner for coffee.
Gracie leaned casually against our car. “Guess I’m first on the scene again.”
Robert sneered. “Yeah, yeah. We gotta wait for the search warrant, anyway. All that college education, you oughta know that. Didn’t they teach—” He glanced up as Zach slammed the car door and started toward the barn. “Hey, Zach, wait. We gotta get the … ” Zach was already slipping through the door into the barn. Robert lifted his hands helplessly, turning back to Gracie. “Well, now what?”
“Leave him be.” Gracie drummed her fingers against the cruiser’s hood. “There’s no one here. If he goes poking around in there, it’s just trespassing. If we go in, it’s illegal search and seizure.” Inside there was the sound of metal against metal, and then the hollow slap of something hitting the cement floor. Gracie exhaled irritably, checked the driveway, then motioned to me. “Go tell him not to touch anything in there. The sheriff will be here any minute.”
“All right.” Closing my door, I walked to the barn and slipped through the gap between the doors, where Zach had disappeared. The interior was dim and the air smelled of musty hay and old grease. I stood for a moment, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
“Zach?” I called.
No answer.
“Zach?” I took a few steps farther into the barn, the interior coming into focus until I could see that it was cluttered with stacks of hay on one side, parts of windmills and towers lying in the center of the aisle, and a variety of tractor implements parked in the far corner. Near the farm equipment there was a small office door with a poster of a buxom Valvoline girl.
I heard someone shuffling in the loose hay behind the tractor implements. Crossing the room silently, I had a fleeting vision of old Western movies, where the good guy gets ambushed in a cluttered barn and lies helpless while the heroine walks blindly into a trap.
“Zach?” I whispered again, moving closer to the farm equipment. No answer, and the sound stopped. I inched forward, trying to peer around a wagon. If it was Zach back there, I was going to kill him for scaring me to death. If it wasn’t … If it wasn’t, I didn’t know what I was going to do. Crouching down, I tried to see under the wagon wheels. Against the wall I could make out a shadow, moving just slightly, and I heard a low sound, between a growl and a groan.
A new possibility rocketed through my mind. Maybe whatever we’d heard falling had landed on Zach and he was hurt. “Zach!” I called.
“What?” The door with the Valvoline girl swung open, and I jumped like a clumsy cat, landing on my rear end in the dirt. Zach stood in the doorway with his head cocked sideways, like he couldn’t imagine what I was doing there.
“Geez, you scared me to death,” I complained, standing up and dusting myself off, forgetting for a moment that we weren’t on speaking terms. “I thought you were hurt or something.”
Stepping out, he closed the door as casually as if he weren’t trespassing and potentially messing up a police investigation. “Why would you think that?”
“I heard a noise, and then you didn’t answer. I was worried about you.” Was it my imagination, or did he, just for an instant, look pleased when I said that? “Anyway … well … Gracie says not to touch anything.”
He shrugged, looking past me toward the door as if he wanted to be out of there, away from me. “There’s nothing here, anyway. A three-foot slab of limestone would be pretty hard to hide.”
“I heard something over in the corner.”
“Coons, probably. The barn’s full of them.” He kicked a tuft of old hay, which was crowned with what I assumed was raccoon poop. “Which also means there hasn’t been much work going on here. This place has been left to the coons for a while.” Turning his shoulder toward me, he started for the front door.
I sideste
pped to stop him. “Isn’t that strange, though? If they were really doing business in windmills, wouldn’t this workshop be in use? There wouldn’t be coon scat everywhere.” What I really wanted to say was, Zach, I’m sorry. Don’t walk away. Talk to me. Instead, I was talking about raccoon poop. Looking up at the ceiling, I took a long breath, then let it out. “Zach, listen—”
“I can’t, Lindsey.” He cut me off, reaching out and grabbing my arms, setting me out of his path like a tin soldier. “I’m doing the best I can to give you what you wanted. You said no more, you had to leave, you couldn’t do this.” He motioned to the space between us, throwing my own words, my actions, back at me in a sharp ricochet. “I can’t be your friend, Lindsey. I can’t chitchat long distance about the custody battle and the ex-husband, or exchange cards at Christmas, or play Watson to your Sherlock until you decide it’s time to pull out and head home. It’s too hard. I’m sorry. I’m past the point of playing games.” He strode toward the door, and I could feel the space growing inch by inch.
My heart clenched, wringing tears into my eyes. This was it. All or nothing. My one chance. “Why didn’t you tell me about Macey?”
He stopped, stood statuelike in the stream of light from the door. The moment seemed to stretch on and on, the air silent with the scents of dust and old hay, waiting for movement.
Outside, a car door slammed. Gracie hollered something as a second door closed; then engines roared and tires squealed, flinging gravel against the barn. Zach and I jerked to life, running through the maze of junk to the door just as both police cruisers sped toward the old house, in hot pursuit of a black truck bolting cross-country over the pasture. The truck blasted through a barbed-wire fence, then hit the county road and disappeared in a cloud of dust with the police cars following.
We watched the road until the dust settled and the sirens faded into the distance.
“Guess we’re stuck here,” I said finally, sitting on an overturned barrel and looking at my hands. I wasn’t sorry we were stuck. I wanted him to answer my question. “Zach, why didn’t you tell me about Macey?”
He shrugged like it didn’t matter. “Why would I have brought that up?”
I felt a pinprick near my heart, the adrenaline of the last few hours slowly draining away, leaving me confused and raw. “Why wouldn’t you have?” I countered. “There I was, pouring my heart out to you about Sydney and everything we’ve been through this past year. How much I’ve missed her this summer. How hard it’s been to be separated from her, and you don’t say a word about having a daughter of your own?”
“Macey isn’t mine, Lindsey.” He leaned over a rusty metal barrel, gripping it with both hands like he might pick it up and throw it somewhere. “She isn’t coming back at the end of the summer. Her mother took her away and gave her to some guy who happened to have the right DNA. I don’t see her. I don’t hear from her. All I can do is hope she’s safe.” Closing his eyes, he let his head fall forward. Every muscle in my body ached to comfort him.
“I know that, but I could have—”
“Could have what?” Throwing himself away from the oil drum, he paced a few steps, then turned back. “Commiserated? Joined me in raging against the machine? What good does that do?”
“Listened,” I corrected. “I could have listened. I know I can’t make it go away, Zach. Reality is what it is, but Macey is part of you. She’s part of who you are.”
Sighing, he shook his head, then stared out at the horizon with the faraway look I’d first noticed in the newspaper. His eyes moved to a pattern of invisible thoughts, then finally refocused on me with an intensity that held me motionless. “Lindsey, I didn’t tell you about Macey because … ” He drew a breath, let it out, closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “Because I didn’t want you to think I was looking for an instant replacement.”
Rising to my feet, I moved closer, my hands outstretched in the space between us. “I never thought that.”
“I knew when you found out, you’d think I was after a quick fix, a standin mother-daughter package to take the place of Shawna and Macey. It wasn’t like that, Lindsey. You and I were a totally different thing.”
I winced at the word were, dropped my hands. Maybe the damage I’d done was beyond repair. Maybe I’d destroyed whatever was between us. “I know that, Zach. I knew it even after Pop told me about Macey. I just … I wasn’t strong enough to go with my heart. I used the news as an excuse to run home, where things are safe, and predictable, and there isn’t any risk. It’s what I do. It’s how I … get by.”
His eyes met mine, and for a long moment we looked deep into each other. I felt my heart pull from my chest and fall in again, just as it had beneath the Lover’s Oak. I wanted him to say something, to make the leap with me. I ached for it, but the answer didn’t come. Instead the wail of a siren broke the silence, growing steadily closer until he turned to look. I watched the strong profile of his face, my soul filled with a yearning like I’d never known. Unable to bear watching him any longer, I looked down at my feet. Gracie’s cruiser was coming up the driveway. The moment was gone.
Something caught my attention near my foot, a piece of rock, freshly chipped, not the right color or composition for the gravel driveway. Squatting down, I picked it up, spotted a smaller chip, and grabbed it, too.
When Gracie pulled up, I held out the chips to her. Looking around, I could see several more. “Evidence,” I said, as she took them from my hands. “These are all over the place. I’d bet almost anything they came from the riverbank at the Jubilee—all the components are right. If we take these to the track site, I can say for sure.” Zach flicked a glance my way. Was he wondering if I was going to stay? Was he hoping I would?
Gracie nodded, setting the rock chips in the seat beside her. “The sheriff cut Benny Bales off down at the crossroad. They’re taking him back to the department for questioning. We’ll show him these rocks and tell him we’ve got an expert who’s pretty sure they came from the Jubilee track site. I doubt if it’ll be long before he comes clean after that. Benny’s not the smartest egg in the basket.” Fingering the rock chips triumphantly, she unlocked the back doors. “Hop in. I’ll take you two back to the wedding. I have to lead the processional out before I head to the office.”
Zach and I climbed into the car, silent, not looking at each other. I turned toward the window, feeling the sting of tears. I wanted this to work out. Somehow this had to work out. It couldn’t be over.
I laid my hand on the seat, wishing he would slip his fingers over mine. Nothing. No movement toward my side of the car. He only stared ahead thoughtfully.
We arrived back at the Lover’s Oak just in time. Beneath the yawning tree there was a wedding about to take place. Gracie dropped us with the onlookers, then parked the cruiser in the road with the lights on to stop traffic, in case there was any, which seemed unlikely, since everyone in three counties was at the wedding. Gathered around the tree in bright dresses and starched Western shirts and jeans stood all the inhabitants of Loveland and most of San Saline. They’d come to watch something special, to celebrate the renewal of vows of two people who knew forty years ago that they were in love, and nothing else mattered.
An usher hustled Zach to the front, where Jocelyn and Pop stood with Sydney. I waited silently in the back, feeling uncertain. Nearby a guitarist began playing the wedding march, and I realized the musician was Laura’s husband, Graham. He missed a note and winced, and my sister smiled at him as the wedding procession began weaving through the crowd toward the base of the tree. At the head of the column, Collie’s tiny daughter, Bailey, toddled bravely along in a diaphanous white dress, her chubby hands spewing flower petals along the path, her curly red hair adorned with a ring of yucca blossoms. Behind her Collie and True smiled at each other, holding hands as they ushered Bailey through the crowd.
Near the base of the wedding oak, Dandy Roads looked like an old-fashioned circuit preacher, dressed in high black boots, black
jeans, a black brocade vest, a white shirt, and a tall black hat. Holding a worn Bible, he read from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians about the true nature of love—what it is, and what it is not. It is not boastful, not proud, not self-seeking, not easily angered. It does not hold a grudge. It is patient and kind. It protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres, and never fails, even when we turn away from it.