by Anne Valente
She feels her lungs slacken, the tension in her chest beginning to ease.
It’s the altitude, Billie says again.
I don’t know if it is, Rhiannon hears herself wheeze.
Then what? God, Rhee, get ahold of yourself.
Billie, I’m aimless.
Curled into her body, her voice muffled. Loud enough for her sister to hear.
I’m so fucking aimless, she says again. I’m not racing. I’m not in a relationship anymore. I’m not anything at all.
Billie’s hand is on her back and for the quickest of moments it feels like her mother’s hand and Rhiannon wants to disappear. The sharpest hurt she’s felt since the funeral, watching her mother be taken in by the earth. The weight of expectation. Of failure. Of hanging up her helmet and selling textbooks and Billie recovering inside a prison cell, her busted eye healing and her heart hardening. How Rhiannon could have pushed herself back onto the road instead of giving up while Billie had nothing, so much privilege Rhiannon let swirl down a drain. She feels Billie’s fingers moving soft against her back. This land filled with her mother’s once-footsteps, her once-hands. How they chiseled bone. How they made things happen. Hands buried now below the earth.
You’re grieving, Billie is saying. It’s okay. It’s okay to feel lost.
I’ve been lost for six years. This has nothing to do with Mom.
But even as she says it and wipes the trail’s swirling dust from her face Rhiannon knows it has everything to do with their mother. If their mother were still here, Rhiannon could have gone on like this for years, for decades, for the rest of her life. She would have still been becoming. She would have still been a child. Her mother just down the street from her and Beth’s apartment until she wasn’t anymore and Rhiannon was back on Grove Street going through her closets and donating her coats and unearthing box after box of things that smelled only of something lost, a childhood of plastic model cars and painted soapboxes and one lone biography on Wendell Scott, the picture of him on her bedroom wall ripped down.
You’re not lost, Billie says. You have a job. You have a partner if you want her. You have a home. If anyone’s lost, it’s me. Look at me, Rhee.
Rhiannon imagines Billie in the library. Flames licking the walls all around her.
At least you acted, Rhiannon says. At least you knew to do something. At least you knew to do it fast. It’s been years since I’ve wanted anything.
You can do anything you want. Nothing’s stopping you.
Nothing’s stopping me but knowing in the first place what I want. Nothing stopped me the whole time you were in Decatur. Nothing’s stopping me now.
Our lives aren’t the same. Yours is yours. And you aren’t responsible for what happened before or after I went to prison.
But I wish I would’ve known. What Tim did.
Yeah, Billie whispers. I wish you would’ve let me know some things too.
Rhiannon watches the thin sky beyond the trail’s cliffs and tries not to think of what else hides in the boxes of her mother’s things in their childhood home: newspaper clippings. Every race Rhiannon won. What her mother saved. What Rhiannon found in one box tucked into the back of her old bedroom’s closet and promptly closed.
You have no idea, she says. You have no idea what it’s been like in that house, going through all her things. Every elementary school essay, every school project, every declaration of what I wanted to be. Do you know how many times they asked us in school what we wanted to be when we grew up?
I get to go through all that when I get back. A nice reminder right out of prison.
Rhiannon opens her eyes and looks at her sister. Despite everything, she laughs.
We’ll figure it out later. Billie laughs too and extends her hand. Come on.
Rhiannon lets herself be pulled up and despite her laughter tries not to notice the sadness in Billie’s face. Six years Rhiannon had that Billie didn’t. Each day a cubicle but rising nonetheless to an open road if she’d wanted it. An open road she chose not to take.
THE SKY CONTINUES to haze as the trail leads them up through tufts of juniper and piñon to a roped-off section of limestone cliffs marked by a sign. Billie stops ahead of Rhiannon and wipes the back of her neck beneath her shaved hair.
This has to be it, Billie calls.
Rhiannon catches up and squints at the cliffs. There’s nothing here.
Billie runs a pointer finger across the sign and Rhiannon scans the roped area. No sign of fossils or a full skeleton. Not even evidence of chisels or pickaxes. Only the pocked surface of rock, the same as everywhere else along the path.
This says the skeleton is at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, Billie says.
Then why didn’t Mom send us there? We were headed that way.
This is where she found it. The museum’s probably full of people, the skeleton off-limits. Mom was actually here.
Rhiannon stoops and touches the rock just beyond the rope. The pamphlet said 1992, she says. God, Billie, we were just kids. What does the sign say?
That the skeleton was found completely intact. The skull, the tail, the plates. That its completeness settled long-debated issues about the tail spikes and plates.
Rhiannon feels her face flush with heat: long-debated issues. Controversy over the plates’ function, their mother’s life work.
That’s why she wanted us here, Billie says. There’s your answer right there.
The limestone is cool beneath Rhiannon’s palm. What her mother chipped away with a rock pick hammer, what she dusted off with brushes to find the plates intact.
Maybe this was a start, Billie says. The beginning of a lifelong mission to determine what the plates were for. And to prove everyone else wrong.
Rhiannon pushes her hand against the rock. The start of her mother’s entire career, a heat Rhiannon wants to feel pulsing through the limestone.
Billie pulls the GPS from her bag. These are the coordinates. Exactly. Do you think there’s a box here?
Rhiannon stands. The one in Kansas wasn’t far from the information placard. She looks at Billie. I can’t believe we’re already talking like this. Are we really looking for plastic boxes buried in the middle of nowhere?
Billie ignores her. If there’s something here, it shouldn’t be hard to find. We’re the only people out here.
She leans down and checks the base of the sign and Rhiannon kicks through the thin grass and roots of clustered sagebrush. The heat bears down on her shoulders, splitting through the sky’s wisped clouds. She bends down to pull the water bottle from Billie’s bag and sees it tucked beneath the underbrush of a juniper: a gray box, small and plastic, barely visible in the weeds.
Billie, she says.
Billie crouches beside her and pulls the tiny box from the undergrowth. Do these have locks? she says.
No. They’re hidden well so they won’t need them. It should pop right open.
Billie pushes a small latch and the box unfolds. Inside is another slip of paper with the matching coordinates and a rough sketch of a stegosaurus, exactly what their mother drew in the journal. Beneath the paper, what Billie pulls out: a tiny fragment of rock that to Rhiannon looks like the tail of a miniature whale.
Billie holds the rock up to the weak sun. What is it?
Some kind of fossil, Rhiannon says. Honestly, I have no idea.
The heat is all at once monstrous. Heavy as the leaden x-ray blankets of the Champaign dental office Rhiannon and Billie visited as children, where their mother once acquired picks in bulk for digs.
Rhiannon wipes her brow and sighs. You know who’d know what that is?
THE VISITOR CENTER looks even smaller through the growing haze when they make their way back, the woman still inside at her desk.
You ladies find what you were looking for?
Rhiannon places the fossil on the desk. Any idea what this is?
The woman picks up the rock and eyes Rhiannon. Did you take this from the site?
Billie approaches the desk. We didn’t take anything. Our mother left it for us.
What do you mean your mother left it for you?
Geocaching, Billie says as if she’s familiar with the term. She’s left us items all across the country. We found this one right by the dig site.
You drive or fly? I wouldn’t want to be flying right now.
Rhiannon avoids the question. We’re going where she wanted us to go.
It makes sense your mother wanted you here. This was her place. Her discovery. One of the main reasons the entire Garden Park Fossil Area exists.
Rhiannon points to the fossil their mother left for them that this woman now holds. Can you just tell us what this is?
My name’s Lucy, by the way. Yours?
Rhiannon sighs and tells her each of their names.
Nice to meet you both, Lucy says. At any rate, this is a tail spike. One of the smallest found on the stegosaurus.
Our mother studied plates, Billie says. Any idea why she left us a tail bone?
Your mother found one of the only full skeletons intact, which includes the tail spikes. The orientation of the spikes proved the tail’s limited range of motion.
What does that matter? Rhiannon says. What does it have to do with the plates?
Another paleontologist by the name of Bakker argued that the stegosaurus could stand on its hind legs to grab food, using the tail as support. Your mother’s skeleton proved that couldn’t be the case. The tail was too rigid. And the reason the tail was too rigid? Directly due to the positioning of the plates.
How were they positioned? Billie asks.
Upright, right along the spine. In alternating nodes. They anchored the tail. A tail that provided a clear, irrefutable picture of how the plates were oriented.
Billie looks at Rhiannon. So this could’ve been the start of everything she studied.
Rhiannon envisions their mother here, these same paths. Her hands stumbling upon pocked rock, finding a full skeleton she must have known would change her life.
She looks at Lucy. Did the skeleton prove anything else? Besides offering information about the plates and the tail?
That’s about it, Lucy says. Though the Small Quarry did reveal evidence of the late Jurassic climate. What might have caused the stegosaurus’s extinction. Evidence of a mass drought. The bones showed that the stegosaurus could have died by lightning.
Rhiannon zeroes in on Lucy’s words. Climate. What her mother knew about the planet by examining its past. How in the last months of her life she’d warned Rhiannon against flying for work, advice she assumed came from her mother’s dig-site flights and not from decades of studying ancient climate patterns.
Have you heard anything more about those flights? Rhiannon asks.
Which one? the woman says. The one that went down in Arizona?
We’ve been in and out of radio range, Rhiannon says softly. I wondered if you’d heard anything about all those planes.
The last I heard, some airports are staying closed, but others might be opening back up to keep making money. Why?
Rhiannon doesn’t answer. Thanks again for your time. We appreciate it.
You hitting the road? Anything else I can do to help you ladies?
Rhiannon holds her tongue. You’ve been a tremendous help.
Billie takes the fossil and places it in her pocket where Rhiannon knows the locket still hides. Any place I can fill up my water bottle here before we hit the road?
Restroom around the corner. Lucy smiles. I guess I can let you keep that fossil.
Rhiannon grins back to hide the quick anger that flashes through her brain.
You know where to find me, Lucy says. If you have any more questions about your mother and her work.
Lucy shakes their hands. Rhiannon waits outside while Billie fills her water bottle and tries to imagine her mother here before they leave. The woman who pushed them from her body. Showed them peonies, the flight of honeybees, the thin wings of bats in their backyard. The woman whose passion for the way things worked led one daughter to a racetrack and the other to birds, and so many years later led both of them here.
RHIANNON KEEPS HEADING west on Highway 50 outside of Cañon City until they find a roadside bar and grill. Tammy’s Café, just beyond the outskirts of a town called Texas Creek. POPULATION: 47, according to the flashing highway sign for slowed speed, beside signs for ATV tours and rafting outposts along the Arkansas River.
We’re really doing it, Billie says across a vinyl booth after ordering a burger with onion rings and a strawberry milkshake. We’re really out here. Two Hurst ladies.
Jesus, I thought she’d never stop saying that.
What’s wrong with being a lady? Don’t you consider yourself a lady? I like being a lady way out here. Just two ladies.
Rhiannon glances out the restaurant’s bay windows, the growing fog a thick weight upon the mountains. The Rockies surround the highway and block direct sun. Cars whiz past the café windows, the weak afternoon light glinting off their metal roofs. The server slides Billie’s milkshake onto the table along with a frosted-aluminum cup that holds extra ice cream and hands Rhiannon a glass of water.
At least she gave us good information, Billie says. She wasn’t all bad.
I just don’t want to hear it right now, Rhiannon says. How well someone else knew Mom. I already feel like I don’t know her at all.
Why? Billie says. She did all this for us.
Maybe. But why didn’t she just tell us about all this when she was still here?
Billie shrugs, her mouth to the straw, the milkshake diminishing inside the glass.
Rhiannon watches her across the table. Why do you think she gave you the journal? Why you and not me?
What, you think you’re more responsible? That it should’ve gone to you?
That’s not what I’m saying. But why do you think she chose you? Why choose anyone? Why not just tell both of us about these plans?
Billie glances out the window and avoids Rhiannon’s eyes.
What? Just tell me. What did she tell you?
She didn’t tell me anything. Nothing at all. But come on. You can guess.
What can I guess? Rhiannon asks as their food arrives.
Mom was proud of you. Billie knifes ketchup onto the open face of her burger bun. It’s clear she was prouder of you than me. But I think she knew I’d be more willing to deviate from a path.
What, getting out here? Come on, Billie. I’ve deviated just as much as you from any path she thought I might take.
But you’ve always been focused. In your career, and in everything else. Maybe Mom knew you’d say no. Maybe she knew you’d just want to get out here and get back.
Rhiannon looks at the BLT in her hands so Billie won’t see the unexpected burn of tears in her eyes. That their mother could think less of her, in any way at all. That their mother knew her well enough to know the same determination that once kept her on a racetrack would keep her on a highway straight out to Utah, narrowed to the road and nothing else.
She was just as determined as I was, Rhiannon says.
Yeah, she was. She had a plan. She pursued a single track her entire life. But determination isn’t the same as being able to stop and look around. I think she did that. She was curious. I can’t imagine she kept that curiosity focused on dinosaurs alone.
Rhiannon thinks of their mother’s backyard garden. A bat box fastened to their oak tree. A cluster of cork to draw bees. A jungle of peonies, the bulbs of alliums. Flower heads cottoned like small planets, full of voices her mother once told her lived on the surface of plants. An entire world in there, her mother whispered and Rhiannon believed her, that flowers contained neighborhoods. An imagination so crucial, Rhiannon realizes now, to reenvision a prehistoric era. Her mother’s desk filled with bone fragments and crinoids and anatomical sketches of a dinosaur she’d never seen. And her world beyond work, Rhiannon recalls: movie nights. Twilight walks. Weekly flamenco lessons at the YMCA
. The same as Billie’s red-tailed hawks and biology books.
You’re just as curious, Billie is saying. You just don’t let yourself explore it.
Rhiannon looks at her sister across the table. Right now I feel aimless. I don’t feel curious about anything at all. I don’t think that’s what Mom wanted either of us to feel.
I’m more aimless than anyone, Billie says. I think Mom knew it. She knew I’d just be getting out, that I’d have a vested interest in wandering and enjoying. Billie holds her sandwich up. Like this burger. This fucking burger. It’s still hard to believe. There was nothing like this in Decatur. Nothing like those fucking mountains out there either.
Billie motions her burger toward the window. Mountains and more mountains beyond them, peaks rising behind the gentler slopes that dot the highway. Mountains Rhiannon once passed along the interstates of America like they were nothing.
She glances at Billie. Are you doing okay?
Why wouldn’t I be?
That bruise. He grabbed you harder than you said.
Billie rubs a hand across her left arm, covering the blue-green mark and the pocks of her scars. I’m fine, Rhee.
Would you tell me if you weren’t?
Probably not. Billie smiles. But I’ve seen worse than that asshole at the bar.
That’s what worries me. That you wouldn’t say if anything was bothering you.
Billie ignores her. She picks up an onion ring and dips it into a small pool of ketchup on her plate. Why’d you ask about the planes?
When?
In the visitor center. Why’d you ask Lucy about the news?
I like to be informed.
Bullshit. There’s a reason.
Rhiannon sets down her BLT. Mom knew I was scared to fly. I thought that’s why she organized the trip like this, all road and no planes. But Lucy mentioned the Jurassic climate. Drought and lightning. What might have caused an extinction.
So?
So Mom studied climate change her entire life.