This comment only served to fan the combative flames. Pregnancy hormones may have been contributing a little, but I knew on some level that my own insecurity was also responsible; questions that I’d never asked him seemed to surge into my throat. I wasn’t sure how I expected him to respond, even as I realized I was not only being unreasonable, but also a bitch. I demanded, “How long? Why didn’t you come for lunch like always?”
Justin rocked back onto his heels, removing his hands from my legs and resting his forearms on his thighs. His dark eyes flashed with their own fire as he responded, “What are you implying?”
He had me there; I knew in my heart that nothing happened, or would have happened. At the same time, I craved a shouting match. I leaned forward. “Maybe you should have just fixed her goddamn car and been done with it. Why draw it out?”
“For one thing, I’m not planning to touch the car at all. Dad is taking care of it,” he said, still controlled, but his eyes were aflame. “You know I can’t help that she stopped at the station. I’m as surprised as you that she’s pulling this shit. It’s not even sincere, as you also well know! She’s jealous of you and she’s deliberately trying to upset you, and here you are, falling right into her trap.” He used one hand to gesture at me, before plunging both through his hair, clearly something he’d done multiple times today.
“Yes, I’m that stupid!” I raged. “And you still haven’t answered my question!”
“Jilly, goddammit! Because I’m not going to justify that with an answer! Because it implies that you think something was going on and frankly, that fucking hurts.” His eyes drilled into mine and my heart knotted up.
“Tell me you wouldn’t be angry if this was the other way around!” I cried, clinging to the shred of defense that I retained. I was way in the wrong, I knew.
“I would give you the benefit of the doubt,” he said, taking the lofty ground though anger was almost visibly steaming from him.
“Maybe because I would never give you a reason to be jealous!” I yelled, fresh tears streaking my face. “There’s nothing for you to be jealous of!”
“You have no reason to be jealous!” he yelled right back. “Which you know goddamn well!”
“Really?” I shrieked. “When she shows up multiple times to confront you and says those kinds of things to you!”
“I cannot help what she says,” he said again, no longer yelling, the frustration in his eyes leaping into mine.
“I want to be alone right now,” I whispered, retreating behind my hands. He heaved an aggravated sigh and pushed off against the swing as he stood, setting it into agitated motion.
“Fine,” he spit out. And then, as though to hammer home the point that he was getting the last word, he muttered, “Pregnancy.”
“Don’t you say that to me!”
Justin stood with hands on hips, staring down at me with lips compressed in an angry line, his black eyebrows drawn together, creating a groove between them. I studied his handsome, scarred face, the face I loved with my heart and soul. Why did he also possess the damnable power to rouse such anger in me? Heat leaped and crackled between us, one part anger, a hundred parts attraction. I knew with just a word from me (as in, an apology), we would be in our bedroom, wrapped together. But I would not give myself, or him, the satisfaction right now.
I turned my chin stubbornly away and Justin stormed off the porch without another word.
I was too wound up to continue sitting outside, plus I needed to go to the bathroom. Probably I should walk over to the cafe and collect my youngest, think about something for supper. Maybe we could just eat fried fish at the counter; even though I wasn’t particularly hungry at present, the idea appealed to me, as it didn’t require any cooking on my part. I’d left my keys in the car and bent to retrieve the one hidden in the planter, only to realize it wasn’t there.
Shit, I thought, digging through the dirt beneath the petunia blossoms. And then I froze. You dropped it the other night, remember?
The porch boards were bare, no key in sight. I chewed my lower lip, looking next to the pine trees on the edge of the lawn, where I’d imagined someone hiding. It had seemed so goddamn real—
Stop it, I thought next. No one was there. The last thing you need right now is more stress.
After grabbing the keys from my ignition, I unlocked the house, determined to chill out, pausing en route to the bathroom to lean over the kitchen table and inhale the white and yellow honeysuckle blossoms overflowing from the vase centered there; Justin had picked a huge bunch for me just the other day; he said the scent of them reminded him of me.
Justin, I thought, aching. I’m sorry I’m being such a bitch. But I’m so angry.
I stood there and let the sweetness of the flowers drift around me. The kitchen was peaceful in the late-afternoon light, comfortably messy with the trappings of our daily existence; Clint’s baseball t-shirt and glove hung from the back of his chair, Rae’s stuffed elephant slumped over beside a banana peel on the table. A pile of dirty laundry waited patiently near the door to our mud room, where the washer and dryer hunkered side by side. I straightened up and it was then that I noticed something out of place, even among the clutter.
What in the hell? I wondered, moving to the counter. My forehead furrowed as I regarded my panties, a sheer black pair I hadn’t worn in a few months, which had been buried in my underwear drawer only this morning, now arranged on the counter as though for display in a department store; a single rock, round and gray, something perhaps plucked from the shoreline of Flickertail, was positioned directly over the crotch.
My vision blurred as my stomach seemed to bottom out. I had been the last person in the house today, I was certain, Rae and I the last to leave, and these panties were absolutely not here when we headed to Shore Leave. Shaking, I swept them from the counter with a vicious movement, the rock clattering with a dull thud against the wooden floor.
Didn’t I lock the door? How could he have gotten in here? A window maybe…
Oh Jesus Christ, he has the fucking key!
The thought seized me by the throat and I whirled around, at once certain that he was going to be standing right behind me, smiling with his silvery snake eyes gleaming.
But there was absolutely nothing.
Anger swelled, swift and hot, filling me to bursting, displacing my fear. I found my shoes and marched over to the cafe with every intention of calling the police and demanding that they arrest Zack Dixon for…
For what? I floundered in my fury. There was no proof, nothing concrete, with which to accuse him. Did he look at me in a way that I found noxious and inappropriate? Yes. Did he make discomfort slither over my skin? Yes. But could I prove that he had somehow entered my house this very afternoon, leaving me a message in this fashion? I could not, and I knew it.
Justin has to know, I thought immediately. You have to tell him about this.
Mom and Aunt Ellen were on the porch rolling silverware when I came hustling (as much as I was able, anyway) out of the woods. Sweat trickled over my temples and I breathed with some difficulty as I mounted the steps. Mom lifted an eyebrow. She asked, “Honey, what’s wrong?”
Aunt Ellen said, “Justin was here just a bit ago. He brought Rae over to Dodge’s for supper, said you needed a little break right now. What is going on, Jillian?”
“I just…” I faltered, studying my aunt’s familiar face, currently full of concern. Tears spouted from my eyes yet again, aggravating me to no end. I swiped at them, so frustrated, and even though I should have told them what I’d just found, I felt absurdly embarrassed to do so. Instead, I muttered lamely, “I’m just so upset with him right now.”
“Well, then, you cool off and let them have supper somewhere else this evening,” Mom said, though I didn’t miss the look that passed between her and Ellen, the kind of sisterly look that I knew well, that I’d exchanged with Joelle more times than I could count. Mom leaned and smoothed a hand over my hair. “Why don’t you g
o and sit on the dock for a little while, sweetie? It’s been so hot today. I’ll make you a sherbet tonic.”
For a moment I was almost tempted to smile. It was Mom’s old-time concoction, delicious and refreshing, orange sherbet with bubbly tonic water poured over top, served in a stemmed ice cream glass. She whipped up one for me and then I took their advice and made my way to the glider at the end of our dock, settling with a small sigh, determined to make sense of this afternoon. I calculated just what I could do about the possibility that Zack Dixon had actually ventured inside my house today and rifled through my underwear drawer.
Are you going crazy?
Even if he is creepy as hell, he wouldn’t risk coming into your house.
But who else would do such a thing?
Aubrey…
No, God no, she’s mean and nasty, but not crazy…
And she wouldn’t have had the time today, anyway.
Could it have been Rae, messing around?
I’d sat on the dock for a good twenty minutes or so, sipping the sherbet tonic and reaching no satisfying conclusions, before my sister called down from the porch, “Hey, you wanna join me for supper?”
I peered over my shoulder to see Jo leaning against the railing. I felt a small splash of gladness and called, “Yes, I’ll be right there!”
Inside the cafe it smelled of fried fish and onion rings, battered mushrooms and draft beer. I inhaled these comforting, familiar scents, moving to join Jo at the counter. It had been such a long and terrible day, I almost requested a beer from Tish, who appeared as though by magic to ask what I wanted. She and Ruthie were managing the dinner crowd, along with Sue Kratz, who helped out during the summer season. Tish’s dark hair was twisted into a knot high on her head, curls escaping to drift down her neck, two green pencils sticking out from the bun at cockeyed angles. She wore raspberry-tinted lip gloss, two pairs of gold hoop earrings, and chewed gum a little too boisterously; she could have been Jo from our high school days.
“Honey, bring me an O’Douls.” At least it was non-alcoholic.
Tish cracked her gum. “You got it, Aunt Jills. Mom, what do you want?”
“Just water for now, sweetheart,” Jo said, and then bumped her shoulder against mine. She nagged, “So what gives? What the hell is bothering you so much, Jilly Bean?”
“Where’s Matthew?” I asked, unwilling to spill my own problems at the moment.
“Christy’s home with him,” Jo said, reminding me that Blythe’s mom was in town for a few nights, from Oklahoma; she had arrived this afternoon. “And it works out perfectly, since we’ve got the show at Eddie’s tonight, remember?”
“What show?”
“Oh my God,” Jo groaned, exasperated with me. She flicked my ear-lobe. “You know, the one you were all excited about a couple of weeks ago? Jim Olson’s nephew…his band played at your wedding reception, remember? He’s playing at Eddie’s tonight.”
“Right,” I said, recalling now. Shit, that was tonight. In the spirit of the Fourth of July holiday, the festivities continued in Landon through this weekend.
“Eddie thought standing room only.” Jo dragged a couple of fries through the ketchup on her plate.
“I have to ask Justin,” I said. “We…had a fight this afternoon…”
“About what? Aubrey? You’re letting this upset you way too much.”
“Easy for you to say,” I snapped, and Jo sighed.
“Here’s your drink,” Tish said, reappearing. “You want a mug?”
“No, thanks,” I told her and she darted away. I watched my nieces move expertly around the cafe, covertly scanning the place for any sign of Zack Dixon. If I saw that fucker I was going to confront him, doubts or no. He owed me an explanation. And with the thought of those particular words, Aubrey was right back in my head.
“Let’s go out and have some fun,” Jo said. “C’mon, Jilly. You look like you could use an evening away. Mom can watch Rae and we’ll head over to Eddie’s around nine or so.”
And I grudgingly agreed.
Chapter Ten
“THE SPOKE,” MATHIAS READ FROM THE SIGN BENEATH the flashing bulbs of an arrow. He grinned at me and decided, “It looks classy.”
“It looks like a place with good fried food,” I said. “You want to chance it?”
“Sure, let’s try it,” he said, swinging our joined hands. We had walked the quarter mile from our campground under a sky tinted bright pink with the sunset, a slim band of gleaming aquamarine along the eastern horizon. To the west, a group of sterling-silver clouds were jumbled atop one another like kids making a monkey pile. I pointed to the turquoise band. “Have you ever seen the sky that color?”
“Not back home, unless it’s from the aurora,” he said. “But I remember being out here when I was little and thinking that the sky had some really strange colors.”
This morning, while still at Makoshika, I’d told Mathias all about my dream of Cora.
“Malcolm wasn’t searching for gold or anything like that,” I explained, as he’d made coffee and eggs on a cast-iron grill set over the fire. The sun crept from behind the rock formations in the east, casting soft light over us as he worked the fire. I insisted, “He was searching for her, for this girl. For Cora.” It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him how, in the clutches of the dream, I’d believed that I was Cora—that in never finding her, Malcolm had also never found me. But the words wouldn’t form; it seemed like a betrayal, and I would never betray Malcolm. I loved him, not only because he was part of Mathias.
“But he didn’t find her?” Mathias asked, our eyes holding. “Jesus, that’s so fucking horrible.”
“She wants us to find her. But I don’t know how. I have no idea what to do. Oh, Thias,” I said, agonized anew. “She seemed so real. I saw her eyes for a second, and they were really strange. Two different colors.”
“Where can we start?”
“Maybe…those letters in Bozeman. Maybe there will be something in those.”
“We’ll be there by tomorrow,” Mathias said. “Or do you want to get there sooner? Should we forget camping out in Jalesville tonight?”
I shook my head, grateful that the sunshine and Mathias’s good humor had restored a sense of normalcy. “No. I like being out here with you. It feels like we’re the only people on the planet, and I don’t mind that.”
Mathias grinned, leaning to kiss me, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. He whispered, “Thank you for last night. For every night, actually. For allowing me the gift of you.”
I giggled at his formal wording, pulling his lips back to mine. “Well, it’s a tough job…” And then a devil perched on my shoulder and made herself very comfortable. I murmured, “Taking your incredibly huge, hard cock into me…but someone has to do it…”
We had explored all over Makoshika this morning, before heading southwest, aiming for Miles City. We ate lunch there and then continued toward our evening destination, a little town called Jalesville; this place possessed a small campground that the Carters always favored on their journeys west, once upon a time run by an old friend of Bull’s. Now, hours later and both of us hungry as hell, we made our way across the parking lot of the little bar and grill called The Spoke. On the walk from our campsite we’d passed a green sign welcoming us to Jalesville, population 823. Mathias held the door for me; already I could smell hot grease and my stomach rumbled in anticipation. I’d changed from hiking clothes into my favorite sundress, my hair loose and soft over my shoulders, and when Mathias looked at me I felt the love in his eyes the same way I would feel the sun breaking through a gray cloud-quilt, the heat and intensity and joy of it.
“Hi, folks,” said the woman at the host stand. She was petite and pretty, with dark hair in two braids and scarlet cowgirl boots embroidered with fancy gold stitching, and bore enough resemblance to the woman tending bar that I thought, Sisters. The Spoke reminded me immediately of Shore Leave, but with a distinctly western theme; the jukebox in the corner
was belting out a Tanya Tucker song, the barstools were fitted with saddles, the wooden walls decked in all manner of bridles, tack, spurs, fringed buckskin shirts, and a variety of ancient-looking rifles; a moose head the size of Rhode Island dominated the bar, its antlers strung with bare-bulb lights.
“Two, please,” Mathias said, and she led us to a small round table, a lighted candle lantern centered on its surface.
“Oh wow, look at that,” I breathed, indicating the table, which was constructed from a glass-topped wagon wheel.
“I want one for the cabin,” he said at once. We checked out all the tables then; each was constructed from a different wheel. It was after eight and the crowd had certainly thinned from the dinner rush, allowing us the chance to inspect the variety.
“Duh, ‘The Spoke,’ ” I giggled, back at our own table.
“Do you think these are legit? I mean, like actually from covered wagons? Ours looks about like it would fit on one,” Mathias observed, opening his menu and indicating the table with it. “Imagine this rolling over the prairie a hundred years ago. That’s a cool thought.”
I stole a second to simply admire him, loving his natural enthusiasm and little peculiarities. How he lined his left index finger over his top lip whenever he read something, thumb hooked under his chin, the way his black eyebrows drew together in concentration, the effortless grace of the way he dropped his right shoulder in a half-slouch, comfortable in his chair. He looked up from the menu to meet my gaze and I smiled, certain he could see the stars in my eyes.
“What?” he asked softly.
“I just love you so much.”
He reached and appropriated my right hand, bringing it to his lips and kissing my knuckles, and at that moment someone cleared her throat. We both looked up at the server, who regarded us with wry amusement crooking her lips; we were so apt to get wrapped up in our own little world.
“Newlyweds?” she inquired, in a teasing tone that reminded me of Aunt Jilly.
“Soon to be,” Mathias said. “Our wedding is this October.”
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