Heartbeat of the Bitterroot

by Janice Mineer

  Chapter 29

  dc

  During the rest of the long drive back to Missoula, I had lots of time to think, to remember. I worried about Zee and her floundering about trying to find herself, worried she would go too far. Her struggles—beating her wings against the bars of her cage—took me back in time.

  It was a few days past my fourteenth birthday. I stood with my hands on my hips, my voice rising shrilly above the intermittent, sharp ring of my uncle’s hammer. “I don’t think it’s fair! You don’t have the right to ground me!”

  Martin stood bent over the workbench, pounding the silvery metal of a gate latch to resemble its once straight line. He pointed his hammer in my direction.

  “You know the rules. I think we explained pretty clearly when you are to be at home. And you should know by now if there is one thing your aunt will not tolerate, it’s your being untruthful.”

  He stepped over to the shelves that ran across one wall of the barn. He pulled a tin can down from the long row of neatly labeled cans and extracted a thick screw.

  “It’s not my fault. I can’t help it.” I sputtered.

  “And why is that?” He leaned back on the workbench and arched a thick eyebrow, his dark hazel eyes pinning me against the wall like a butterfly in a frame.

  I paused, swallowed hard, and struggled with the bitterness that rose in my throat. He waited. I could hear a horse thudding a hoof against his stall, the soft crush of hay as he fed.

  “I’m just like her,” I choked.

  Somehow, he understood. “Like your mother?”

  I looked away. Tears rose in my eyes, fracturing the afternoon sunlight that sifted through the window; its light glinted across the long rows of tin cans. I thought about my mother’s picture in the living room, one of the few we had. “I even look like her.”

  He examined the hammer in his hand for a moment and then looked up. “Jenna, do you see that window? The one with the broken pane?”

  “Yes. So?” I rubbed my sleeve across my eyes and clenched my jaw.

  “You see, none of the other windows are broken, just that one.” Now that he mentioned it, it did seem strange that the one window would be broken. My uncle kept his barn in excellent repair. Everything was always in order. In fact, he said the mark of a good work place was that you could lay your hand on a tool even in the dark.

  “Years ago, I was working here in the shop. I’d had a long day. Been kicked in the shins by someone’s horse I was doctoring. I was fighting some board that wouldn’t come loose, got fed up, and threw my hammer. Cracked that window right there. I never did fix it. Thought it would serve well to remind me to control my anger.”

  I crossed my arms defiantly, failing to see what a broken window had to do with me.

  He pulled off his hat, heaved a sigh and sat on the weathered sawhorse. He leaned toward me, putting a broad hand on his knee, his eyes sharp beneath his thick eyebrows. “This is the way I see it, Jenna. You come into this life and God gives you a set of tools. You can build with them or you can break with them. The choice is yours. You have characteristics from your mom, and you have traits handed down from generations past, people you never met in this life. And there are some things about you that seem to be just your very own. They are part of that toolbox you reach into as you go through life. Most of it’s neither bad nor good in and of itself. It’s what you decide to do with what you’ve been given that makes the difference in the long run.”

  He sat back and folded his arms, his voice softening. “Sure, you look a lot like your mom. I figure that’s a good thing. You have her eyes, the same nose and mouth. You’re a beautiful girl, Jenna. But, the fact is, who you become has more to do with what you choose than with what you’ve been given.” He gestured toward the window now afire with the setting sun. “We all have our personal flaws—mine is to lose my blasted temper.

  “Look around you for help and look up for strength,” he said. “You’ll figure it all out.”

  A

  It seemed a long time ago, a period of my life I’d rather forget. I hoped Zee would not struggle so much. I wished for her an easier road.

  Chapter 30

  dc

  The next day just after lunch, I hunched over my laptop surfing the Internet, flicking from screen to screen until my eyes started to cross. My search for “find a missing relative” brought up over ten pages and dozens of entries. Services were advertised. Find missing relatives, pay per search. Detective agency—that looked expensive. Genealogy—find dead relative … well, I certainly hoped my father was not dead.

  I entered Skip Morrison’s name and pulled up a strangely short list of people. A bowling champion from Des Moine, Iowa, who didn’t look a thing like the photo in my mother’s box. A guy on Facebook just a few years older than me.

  It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

  I pulled my hair in frustration until the doorbell rang. I peeked through the security hole in the door and saw a stranger standing on the porch wearing an FTD Floral hat and holding a big bouquet of red roses. Puzzled, I opened the door.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said with a smile. “Delivery for you. Please sign here.”

  “Who are they from?” I asked. A surge of hope rose inside me. Michael—so thoughtful—was it him?

  “A note right here, ma’am,” he said cheerfully.

  I signed his delivery pad and took the flowers inside. I tore open the envelope and my face fell. It was Derek’s name at the bottom of the note.

  “Hey, baby. Just thought you might want to rethink your answer. You and I have had a beautiful thing going. A future together could work for both of us.”

  I slowly crumpled the paper in my hand and put it on the table beside the stunning bouquet of flowers. I stood, arms folded, tapping my foot on the floor. I thought we had finished this. I thought I had been clear I was done, and yet here he was trying to resurrect the relationship. I sighed. It would be so easy just to keep it going, just to perpetuate the superficial pattern we had established. But it would be like limping into the future with a broken crutch. I shook my head and returned to my computer.

  After another half hour of flipping through pages on the screen, my cell phone rang. I had to search for it under a pile of papers.

  “Hello?” I bit my pencil between my teeth and typed into the search bar with one hand.

  “Jenna? You’ve gotta help me.” The words were barely audible. Cars honked and roared in the background. Gusts of wind blew into the mouthpiece on the other end of the call.

  “What? Who is this?”

  “It’s me! It’s Zee. It’s cold out here.”

  “Zee, where are you?” I said, my brow wrinkling in concern.

  “I’m outside the Town Pump over on Reserve. I have a little problem. I lost my keys.”

  A whine and crunch from the front yard made it hard to hear. I looked through the window. A yard crew was pruning bushes and feeding branches into a shredder. I plugged one ear and pressed the phone to the other.

  “You what?”

  “I lost my car keys.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “Well they’re not so much lost as flushed.”

  “Flushed?”

  “I was in the ladies’ room, and when I was flushing the toilet, my keys fell out of my sweatshirt pocket and just disappeared in a sloosh.”

  “A ‘sloosh’?”

  “Yea, a loud sloosh. Jenna, will you help me? Please?”

  “Well, I’m not going in after the keys.”

  “Mom and Dad are gonna kill me for being late again. I’m really late already. I was supposed to be home before noon.”

  “Did you call a locksmith?”

  “A what?”

  “You know, someone who would come and figure out how to get you a new key or something.” I realized that finding someone to do this on a Saturday might be a real trick. “Here, just hang on. I’ll try to call someone and get back to you. Can you go insi
de?”

  “Yeah, but everyone is staring at me.”

  “Just hang on a second. I’ll call you back.”

  I made several hasty calls and was greeted by message machines until I found one man with a deep bass voice and a slight accent who said he could get there in a couple of hours. Realizing my uncle probably had a second set of keys for the ten-year-old Mazda Zee drove, I made a different plan and called Zee back.

  “Zee? Stay where you are. I’m going to just come and get you.” I sighed, looking longingly at my computer and the stack of papers I had created for my research, my quest into my past. “I guess I’ll just drive you down to the ranch.”

  “Thanks, Jenna. You are my hero.”

  “And call your dad and let him know you’ll be late.”

  She groaned into the phone.

  I wasn’t feeling like much of a hero when regretfully I changed out of my sweats and cozy slippers, grabbed my coat, and slid behind the wheel of my cold car. I nearly backed over the wheelbarrow belonging to the lawn workers. They were still feeding maple tree branches into the mulching machine that whined plaintively. The men’s breath smoked into the fall air.

  When I pulled up to the gas station, Zee was standing with her nose pressed against the window, the bright fluorescent lighting washing the color out of her face. She recognized the car and ran out.

  “Hi. Thanks a million for doing this. I owe you, big time,” she said, sliding into the passenger side.

  “Yes, you do. Trust me, I’ll think of something you can do to repay me. Have you had lunch?”

  “I had some fries and a Coke this morning.”

  I cringed, imagining what that “food” was doing to her dainty, albeit young and resilient, body.

  “Let’s stop at my house and pick up a couple of granola bars and apples to eat on the way.”

  “But I’m already so late!” A look of panic crossed her face.

  I held up a hand. “I’m starving and a crisis on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine,” I said, trying to look severe. “It will just take a couple of extra minutes and it’s kind of on the way anyway,” I added, stretching the facts a bit.

  She frowned, then sighed in submission.

  When we reached my house, I said, “Come on in, it’s too cold to wait out here.”

  She followed me inside and was immediately arrested by the bouquet of roses on my table.

  “Oh, these are so beautiful! Who gave them to you? They smell so amazing.”

  “Derek.” I said with chagrin.

  “Oh, he is so cool. I wish I had a boyfriend like that.” Then her face darkened. “Josh would never do anything like this.”

  I shook my head and sighed. Wouldn’t it be great if life were that simple? Where a bouquet of flowers would fix everything.

  I looked at her glum expression. “How’s that going anyway? With Josh? Did you guys get back together?” I asked lightly, afraid to open up a sore subject.

  “No. We are so done. He and Lisa are together now. He’s such a jerk.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “Well, his loss, I say,” I added, trying to lift her mood.

  I went to the kitchen for food and came back with my arms full of fruit and granola bars.

  “A little nutrition for you to face life’s problems.” I pressed an apple into her hand and we headed to the car.

  As we drove down the valley, Zee talked on and on about Allison’s boyfriend, Katie’s boyfriend, Libby’s fight with Jennifer, Jennifer’s fight with Allison’s boyfriend, what Ashley said about Jennifer’s fight with Allison’s boyfriend until it all became a blur in my head.

  “So, how’s school?” I finally asked her.

  “School?” It was as if she were trying to remember what that was. “Oh, it’s OK, I guess.”

  “Teachers?”

  “OK, I guess.”

  “Favorite subject still art?”

  “Sort of. Mostly history now, because Mr. Olson just lets us talk.”

  We arrived at the house and much to Zee’s dismay, there was my Uncle Martin waiting by the front window.

  “Uh, oh.” She bit her lip. “Dad’s home.”

  I looked at his fierce expression through the window. It made me wonder if there was something else.

  “Zee, is the problem here that you are very late … or could it be that you weren’t supposed to be in Missoula in the first place?”

  She gave me a grim look.

  I sighed. “Well, good luck.”

  “Jenna, would you …”

  “Nope.”

  She looked deflated. “Well, thanks for the ride. See ya later. If I’m still alive,” she said dismally.

  I was backing away from the house when I saw a red pick up at the end of the long driveway. Rear fender smashed, black front-end light bars. I drove halfway down the lane, then stopped. It couldn’t be. Was that the same truck Zee and I saw down at the river the other day? I squinted my eyes and could just see the outline of the man’s face and the unkempt beard.

  The truck started up and slowly drove down the road out of sight. I felt a chill run down my spine. Could it be a coincidence or was he actually following me?

  I pulled out onto the road. He was nowhere in sight, but all the way home I checked my rearview mirror. No red truck. I convinced myself I was just nervous. The break in at my house must have me spooked, I thought. Jeremy Hunsaker is locked away in Warm Springs, I reminded myself. I gripped the wheel and tried to shake off my worries.

  When I got home, I stood in the living room and pulled off my gloves. I stared at the bouquet of red roses on the table. Derek had meant a lot to me, but somewhere along the line, the life just drained out of what we had together. My perceptions had been shifting, slowly spinning, changing course. Like the needle on a compass, I changed directions somewhere. And then I met Michael and it was if lights started going on in my head. I thought of all the things I admired about him, his steadiness, his intelligence, his kindness, and the way he made me feel every time we were together. I tried to think of Derek’s positive qualities, but they paled in comparison to Michael’s. I realized then I had turned a corner. I was never going back.

  Still, the flowers bent their heads gracefully, seeming to sneer at me like the roses Alice saw in the story Through the Looking-Glass. “You’ll never find what you are looking for, you foolish girl,” they taunted. “Only in your dreams can you believe that someone like you can carve out a life of substance—a love that lasts.”

  The blood rose to my cheeks. I set my jaw and grabbed the bunch of flowers around their scrawny little necks. I marched to the door and strode out into the yard dripping water all the way.

  The men working in the yard were putting their last piles of branches into the leaf mulcher. “Excuse me,” I said to the man in the thick plaid jacket by the machine. “May I?”

  He looked confused and then shocked as I tossed the bouquet of flowers into the mulcher. I stood back, pleased with the rain of pink and red confetti that blew away in the wind.

  Elizabeth called that evening and I told her about the ill-fated flowers. She tried but failed to mask her glee. “Well, that’s that, I guess. Good for you.”

  Chapter 31

  dc

  My shift began early and the day was hectic. A stream of travelers thronged the airport, heading to Las Vegas for a NASCAR race—the NASCAR race of the century, apparently. I punched the clock on my way out and heaved a sigh of relief, but my tired feet seemed to pick up speed as I thought about what was next: a birthday party with ten hyper four-year-olds and one very handsome father.

  It was unseasonably warm, and the sun glinted off my windshield as I drove downtown. I parked the car beside Michael’s office building. I grabbed my camera bag and a brightly wrapped birthday gift for Emma from the back seat. Despite the cool day, the sun’s heat pooled between the red brick building and the sidewalk.

  I double checked the address and climbed a narrow set of stairs. I tapp
ed on the heavy oak door at the top, admiring the intricate patterns cut deep into the dark wood. A set of stained glass windows sparkled with rich color as light shone from inside the room. Through the cut glass, I could see Michael, a blurred form bent over his desk. He looked up when he heard me knock and rose quickly to open the door.

  “Hello. Hey, how are you?” he asked, taking my hand and drawing me into the foyer onto a red, oriental rug. He smiled, revealing his perfect white teeth. He kissed me and murmured, “It’s good to see you.”

  I sank into the warmth of his arms and then looked around the office when he released me. “Nice place,” I observed.

  “Thanks. I’m almost ready. Can I get you a soda? There’s some in the break room fridge.”

  “I’m OK.”

  “Well, I won’t be long. There are some magazines to read. Architect’s Digest, etc. Engrossing material,” he said with a wry smile.

  I wandered around the office, examining tiny wooden replicas of houses and commercial structures enclosed in glass cases. Design boards with bold sketches of furniture and samples of carpet leaned against a table. Five framed posters of conceptual design drawings, mostly for large homes and one or two for commercial buildings, hung along one wall. They were beautiful. Great stone walls vaulted against contemporary lines and angles softened by water-colored green trees beneath blue skies.

  I nearly tripped on a stack of rolled blue prints as I strolled into a conference room just off of the waiting area. A massive window at the other end of the room opened to a panoramic view of the mountains, thrown up against a background of blue sky to the north. Shadows of dark pines stood in sharp contrast against a skiff of white snow.

  In the reception area, I made myself comfortable in a burgundy leather chair beside a vase of fresh chrysanthemums. I leafed through a National Geographic, but mostly watched Michael at his desk. He looked completely absorbed as he sat among his books and papers.

  He stood and walked to the window and lifted a sheaf of papers from a shelf, but halted, his hand in midair, as something caught his eye through the window.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. It was as if he didn’t hear. I quietly walked around behind him and followed his gaze. Through the window, I saw a little girl, barely able to walk, tottering after a bright red-and-yellow kite that danced on the end of a string held by her mother. She shrieked with delight, reaching her tiny hands in the air as the kite dipped and sailed above her. Her father scooped her up, spun her in circles, and fell playfully on the grass.