by Stacy Finz
Emily shook her head. Clay had his hands full with that one. She went back to making her lists. When she looked outside twenty minutes later, another couple had joined Justin and his friend. The four of them were floating on the river in inner tubes, laughing and drinking . . . beer. Even from a distance, she could see the Coors label clear as day.
At least the cigarettes wouldn’t kill him right away, Emily mused. Even the alcohol, in a controlled environment, could be seen as typical experimentation and given a pass. Booze and water, though—a lethal mix.
She didn’t want to get involved. Didn’t want to embroil herself in another family’s problems. Lord knew she hadn’t been able to take care of her own family. But if anything happened to Justin and his friends, Emily couldn’t live with herself.
She rummaged through her newly designated junk drawer until she found the Post-it Clay had left, and dialed his house. When there was no answer, she considered leaving a message—her civic duty done. Instead, she punched in his cell number.
“Hello,” he answered on the fifth ring, sounding harried.
“Clay, it’s Emily Mathews. I’m sorry to bother you, but Justin and a few of his friends are over here inner tubing and . . . they’re drinking beer.”
There was silence on the line and for a minute Emily thought the call might’ve been dropped.
“He’s supposed to be at camp,” Clay finally said, sounding weary and frustrated. “I’ll be right over. Thanks.”
She snuck another peek at the river. By now, the girl had moved into Justin’s tube and he had his hand down her bathing suit bottom. Emily tried to look at the good side. At least Lolita was distracting Justin from the beer. Hopefully Clay would get here before the boy had time to stick anything else down those skimpy bottoms.
Emily continued to alternate between watching the window and making her lists, including organizing a mise en place for a cassoulet she wanted to test for the book. The kids were probably safe since they hadn’t had time to get really tanked, and the river wasn’t all that deep. But her mother’s words—“a person can drown in a bowl of soup”—kept her vigilant.
When she heard a vehicle come to a screeching halt, she kept her eyes pinned to the window and opened it a crack. She watched Clay hike down the trail to the beach, where he caught the little hoodlums off guard. In his surprise, Justin nearly dunked the girl in the drink, trying to untangle himself from her.
Clay gathered up a few stray beer bottles, shoved them into the small cooler one of the kids had brought and tucked the Playmate under his arm. Then he tapped on his watch. “You”—he pointed at Justin—“have five minutes to get home.” He glanced at the others, who’d made a mad dash to shore and were gathering their things. “When I count to ten you three better have disappeared.”
He didn’t have to count. Emily had never seen young people move so fast, scrambling up that hill like they had the devil on their heels. Justin took up the rear, stopping only for a brief second to catch her eye in the window.
And to flip her the bird.
“I think Justin’s having sex,” Clay said, gathering up a fistful of beer nuts. “That’s in addition to the smoking and drinking.”
Rhys twirled sideways on his bar stool and gave his best friend a wry smile. “He’s fifteen. I believe that’s when you lost your virginity. Candy Olsen with the big . . . blue eyes . . . as I recall.”
“This is different.”
“How’s that?”
“He’s my kid.”
“Ah,” Rhys said. Funny how that changed everything. “So this is what I have to look forward to.”
Clay waved Sophie over. The Ponderosa’s owner, whose baby bump was just beginning to show, strode up to the bar to take his order. “The whole damn town’s knocked up,” he muttered loud enough for Rhys to hear, and asked for a refill on his beer.
“How ’bout you, Chief?” Sophie asked Rhys.
“Just a Coke.” Rhys was on call while his best officer, Jake Stryker, was on vacation. In a tiny department all of them had to pick up the slack when they were a man down—even the chief.
“How’s Maddy doing?” Sophie asked.
“She’s still got morning sickness.” Rhys peeled the paper off a straw. “She has it twenty-four hours a day, so I don’t know why they call it morning sickness.” Although the doctor said the nausea and all the other weird symptoms, like Maddy’s sudden aversion to most foods, was a good sign. His wife had had two miscarriages during her first marriage, and they were white-knuckling it through this one.
“I’ll bring her some bread pudding later,” Sophie offered. “It was the only thing I could manage to get down in the first trimester.”
“Thanks, Soph,” he said as she scooted down the bar to serve a couple Rhys had never seen before. Maybe guests from the inn. His wife and her brother owned the Lumber Baron, which they’d brought back from the dead with a complete restoration. The Victorian was now the crown jewel of Nugget.
“How you planning to handle this with Justin?” Rhys turned back to Clay. “I presume you’ve already had The Talk.”
Clay scrubbed his hand under his cowboy hat. “Not really. I figured I’d wait until he’s twenty.”
“Yeah? How’s that working out for you?”
“Maybe I’ll ship him off to military school,” Clay said, but Rhys knew his friend was full of crap. He was just getting to know his boys and they were everything to him. “The kid’s gotten out of control. The tenant had to call me because he and couple of the other troublemakers he hangs out with were drinking at the Hot Spot.”
“Sean?” Rhys asked knowingly, and Clay nodded. “I call him Sean of the Dead, ’cause I’m going to kill him one of these days.” Just the other day he’d caught the kid vandalizing mailboxes.
“Soon would be good.”
Rhys laughed. “Speaking of the tenant, how’s that going?”
“Good enough, I suppose. She likes the barn, though Justin’s not too happy about me renting it to her. She’s sure a sorry-looking creature.”
Rhys jerked his head in surprise. “You mean sad?”
“I mean unattractive.”
“Are you out of your mind?” He lifted his arms, baffled. “She’s a good-looking woman. Maddy thinks she’s a dead ringer for Gwyneth Paltrow.”
“When did the two of you meet her?”
She’d come into the police station a couple of days ago while Maddy was there bringing him lunch. But he didn’t want to spread her information around town. In Nugget, you tell one person something and it spreads faster than a robo call. “We’ve seen her around the square.”
“Well, she’s not my thing.”
No, Clay’s thing was Rodeo Queen Barbie—tits out to here, big fake hair, and a plastic smile. Rhys loved the guy like a brother, but when it came to women, Clay was shallower than a birdbath.
Odd, given that he was one of the smartest men Rhys knew. And one of the kindest. He’d give a stranger the shirt off his back. Save a man’s life. Although Clay never talked about it, he’d been awarded the Silver Star for shooting down an Iraqi MiG from a single-seat fighter, which according to the New York Times hadn’t been done since 1968. Clay could fly a fighter jet and rope a steer faster than anyone Rhys knew.
So why he needed a trophy woman on his arm was beyond Rhys’s comprehension. You’d think he would’ve learned his lesson from Jen. But apparently not.
“Okay,” he said. “So don’t marry her. But it wouldn’t kill you to be her friend.”
“Of course I’ll be her friend. From what I can tell she’s a nice lady.”
“And probably a very good cook,” Rhys said. Everyone in town was talking about how Emily Mathews was a famous cookbook author.
The door swung open and Colin Burke wandered in. The men made room for him at the bar, but Colin helped himself to a seat in the back corner. Sophie brought him a drink and unrolled a set of blueprints on the table. She and her partner, Mariah, were thinking of building a f
amily home on a piece of property they’d fallen in love with outside of town. Rhys had heard about it from Maddy, who was best friends with the Ponderosa ladies. Maddy’s brother, Nate, was the father of their unborn child.
“They hiring Colin?” Clay asked, glancing over at the two huddled in the corner, examining the building plans.
“If they decide to go through with it, I’m pretty sure he’s their guy.”
“The man’s different, but does beautiful carpentry. I hired him to put an electric stove in the barn for Emily. You wouldn’t believe it hadn’t always been there. What do you think his deal is?”
Rhys shrugged. The guy certainly kept to himself, but no law against that. Maddy trusted him implicitly. After all the amazing work he’d done in the Lumber Baron, she was his biggest champion and best customer. Between their house and the Lumber Baron, she’d bought more than a dozen of his rocking chairs and had recently commissioned a crib.
“Don’t know,” Rhys answered. “But he sure has a nice place up there on Grizzly Peak.”
That’s as far as they got in the conversation, because Rhys got a call on his radio, a fender bender on the south side of town and two very angry motorists.
Athletes might love running in high altitudes, but the low air pressure sucked for a baker. Emily had to throw out her third batch of croissants. They were unmitigated flops—flat and doughy.
She continued to play with oven temperatures, cooking times, and flour measurements. But she still hadn’t reached the magic formula and was ready to give up.
Maybe she couldn’t focus because she’d had the dream again. It was always the same: Emily frantically searching for her daughter. Looking in vacant lots. Looking in old buildings. Looking in ravines. Shouting her name: “Hope.”
In some of the dreams, the particularly cruel ones, an ethereal voice would call back to Emily, “I’m here, Mommy.” And there, in a sunny yellow dress, Hope would appear like an apparition. Her daughter’s dimpled hand reaching out to her, only for Emily to wake up and find her gone.
The nightmares were like reliving those first frenzied hours when Hope went missing. The horror version of Groundhog Day.
Emily had expected the dreams to stop in Nugget, a place that held no history and no memories of her daughter. But she found that the smallest triggers—a familiar smell, a brief recollection, even something as benign as the bathwater running—could catapult her back in time, when she’d lost everything.
She was on her fourth batch of croissants when the phone rang. The sharp sound made her jump. No one had called her on the landline since she’d moved in. Marge, and occasionally her mother, who lived in Scottsdale, called Emily’s cell.
“Hello,” she said, fearing that it was someone looking for the late Mrs. McCreedy and Emily would have to be the bearer of bad news.
“Emily?” came a deep voice.
“Clay?” In the background she could hear a man chanting, “Dollar bid, dollar bid.” Unable to disguise her curiosity, she uttered, “Where are you?”
“A cattle auction in Dinuba. Can you hear me?”
“Just barely.”
“Hang on a sec. I’m walking away from the noise.” Through the phone, the auctioneer’s repetitive call slowly dulled. “Better?”
“Much,” Emily said.
“I’m hoping you can do me a big favor. Cody’s complaining he’s sick and the camp folks want me to pick him up. The kid’s probably faking it, but those are the rules. Unfortunately, I’m five hours away. I’d ask the neighbor, but she’s pregnant. If Cody has anything even slightly contagious her husband will kill me. You think you could pick him up and let him hang at your place until I get there?”
Emily sucked in a breath. Absolutely not, she wanted to say. She was the last person on earth who should be entrusted with a child. Not to mention that they hardly knew each other. Didn’t he have a regular babysitter?
The silence stretched until Clay cleared his throat. “You still there?” She thought about disconnecting and blaming it on a bad connection. “Emily?”
“Sorry,” she said. “I got distracted.”
“Look, ordinarily I wouldn’t ask. But I’m in a jam. He’s a good kid and won’t be any trouble.”
She supposed that was his tactful way of saying, he’s nothing like my other son. “You’ll be along to get him soon, right?”
“As long as it takes to make the drive.”
Five hours. An eternity. But how could she tell him no?
“The camp counselors won’t have a problem with a stranger picking him up?” They certainly ought to.
“Nah, I told them who you are,” he said. “Thanks, Emily. I owe you one.” Before they hung up, Clay gave her directions to the camp.
Not long after she pulled into a parking lot at Lake Davis, where twenty or so kids prepared to go kayaking. A few adults in bright red T-shirts with logos Emily couldn’t make out attempted to herd the boys and girls into groups, shouting instructions. At a picnic table near the public restrooms sat a forlorn Cody. Even from a distance, Emily could see the slump in his shoulders and the dejected way he held his head.
She locked the van and headed toward him, shading her eyes from the sun with her hands. “Hi, Cody.”
“Did you talk to my dad?”
She nodded. “I’m going to take you home with me until he can get you. Okay?”
“Do you know how long?” Apparently he was as unhappy with the situation as she was.
“About five hours. How are you feeling?” She reflexively felt his forehead. “You don’t feel warm.”
“My stomach hurts,” he said, his gaze dropping to the table where he took enormous interest in a splintered piece of wood.
His father seemed to think he was a malingerer. Emily suspected he might be right. But the boy obviously didn’t want to be here, despite the opportunity to enjoy beautiful weather and a fun day on the lake.
“We’ll get you home then. Let me tell one of the counselors and we can go.”
He shrugged, then turned his head to stare out over the water.
Emily went in search of someone in charge, signed out Cody, and waved for him to meet her at the van. He crossed the parking lot like it was a death march and climbed into the passenger seat.
“I’m gonna call my dad to see where he is,” Cody said, pulling a phone from his pocket.
“Okay. But I just talked to him a little while ago and he hadn’t left yet. He was still at a cattle auction.”
Cody fidgeted with the phone while Emily got her bearings, trying to remember whether she’d turned right or left into the parking lot. She needed to get out more and learn her way around. Nugget was such a pretty place. Dense forests, open meadows, rivers and lakes.
“I told him he should have flown,” Cody said. Then he muttered, “What’s the good of having three planes?”
“Your dad owns three airplanes?”
“Yeah. He was a fighter pilot in the navy.” The boy sat up straighter, obviously proud of his father. Emily had assumed that Clay had always been a rancher.
“He fought the Taliban,” Cody said.
“Wow. I bet you’re glad to have him back.”
“He quit when my grandpa died. Then we moved here.”
“From?” Emily was beyond curious.
“San Diego. We lived near the beach. But when we came here my dad bought the Cirrus SR22. He already had the Piper Cub and the Maule.”
Emily laughed. “Cody, you may as well be talking a foreign language.”
“They’re planes. The Cirrus has a parachute built into it so it can’t crash. It’s the safest plane in the world,” he said, checking his phone again.
Emily wondered where he stored these planes. As far as she knew there wasn’t even an airport in Nugget. Maybe the kid had a rich imagination. “Your dad flies around in these planes all the time?”
“He mostly uses the Cub and the Maule to check the cattle. We only fly the Cirrus on trips.”
&
nbsp; Although the boy kept up a steady stream of conversation, he kept compulsively scanning his phone. At least he wasn’t surly like his brother. But he definitely wasn’t sick. He hadn’t mentioned the stomachache once since they’d left camp.
“So why didn’t he take the Cirrus to . . . Dinuba? . . . I think that’s where he said he was.” Emily had never been to Dinuba.
Cody shrugged, checked his watch, and stared out the window as she turned up McCreedy Road.
“Where’s Justin?” Emily asked, driving past the stable to the barn, where she parked the van in a small turnout.
“His camp went to Yosemite for four days.” His voice had turned a little forsaken, making Emily wonder if he missed his brother.
She motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen, where she took her laminated croissant dough out of the refrigerator and poured him a glass of ginger ale. “For that stomachache of yours. You hungry?”
“I could eat something.” Cody gulped down the soda, grabbed a seat at the end of the breakfast bar, and watched her roll out the pastry.
“How ’bout a warm croissant?” Hopefully the fourth try would be better than the last three. “I can put some ham and cheese on it.”
“Okay,” he said, intently observing her gently stretching the dough with a wooden rolling pin. “Is this what your job is?”
She looked around the kitchen at the mess she had made and said, “Pretty much.”
“My mom ran her design business out of here.” He lifted his face to the rafters, then scrutinized the great room as if trying to determine whether Emily had changed anything. “She died in a car accident.”
“I’m really sorry, Cody.” A car accident. How awful.
She cut the pastry into triangles and rolled each one into a half moon, before neatly spacing them on a cookie sheet. In one swift motion she popped them into the oven and turned on the timer. Resting against the counter, she gave him the opportunity to talk about it if he wanted to.
With Hope, she’d shunned the grief counselors and the bereavement groups. To do anything else would’ve felt like she had given up and accepted that her daughter was gone forever. And that was something she could never do.