While she waited for Georgia to return to the line, Trudy spotted a boarded-up fireworks stand to her left. Flicking on her turn signal, she changed lanes, and veered off the highway onto an unmarked dirt road.
The minivan bumped along the rutted lane past a shaggy grove of cottonwood trees shimmering in spun gold. Before the road came to a dead end, Trudy stopped in front of a cluster of abandoned casitas on her right and shifted to park, letting the engine idle.
Straining forward in her seat, she peered through the windshield toward the tracks and thought about the newspaper clipping she’d read earlier that morning.
One thought whistled through her mind: Was Dub conscious when the locomotive plowed into him?
The last time she’d ventured down this road, Clay was driving his mother’s Fort LTD with Trudy nestled beside him. It was fall semester, their junior year in high school. They’d been going steady a few weeks when Clay pulled onto the dirt road at dusk and gestured toward the tracks. “This where that dude died a year ago?”
Trudy had acted indifferent. “Yeah, a little farther down the tracks. What a dumbass, huh?”
With the sun flaring on the western horizon, they’d held hands and scaled the berm and walked alongside the tracks. Even at sixteen, Clay played the part of the investigator, asking lots of questions. “How was he related to you? When did you last see him? Why did he live like a pauper if his dad was one of the richest men in town?” Trudy had kept her voice even and told him how days after the mishap, townsfolk would drive out and gawk up and down the tracks like turkey vultures looking for carrion.
“You calling me a turkey vulture?” Clay had teased, and soon they were back in his mother’s car making out under the cover of darkness. A porch light from one of the casitas winked on and off every time Clay started the engine to run the heater.
Georgia’s voice broke the silence. “Sorry ’bout that. Listen, sis, I’ve been thinking a lot about that night. My one consolation: At least he didn’t rape me.”
Something broke inside Trudy. “Jesus, Georgia, he could’ve killed you. Snapped your neck in half.”
“But you put up a fight. You saved my life.”
Teeth chattering, Trudy began to shake as she shoved the gearshift into drive, did a K-turn, and headed back to the main road. She was looking forward to a hot shower, pouring a glass of cabernet, and savoring the aroma of Jewel’s homemade soup simmering on the stove.
“But somewhere out there is a lady in a Lexus,” Trudy reminded her sister. “And she knows something we don’t.”
Georgia sighed. “I know. Makes you wonder.”
Trudy turned left onto the highway and headed toward the house.
“We were both sobbing hysterically that night,” Georgia continued. “But I remember how Aunt Star trilled her tongue and clapped her hands to silence us. ‘Hush,’ she said, ‘He’s just knocked out. Probably seeing the Fourth of July behind his eyeballs.’ Then she placed her palms on her knees and pushed herself up from the chair and said, ‘When he comes to, he’ll mosey on back to his place and never mess with us again. Some fresh air will do him good. One of you girls run get me a sheet. We’re going to roll him on top of it and drag him out the door.’”
Jewel’s house came into view. Trudy spotted her mother gazing out the living room’s picture frame window. Trudy wondered how long her mother had been standing there waiting for her to return. She pulled off the highway into the long driveway and tooted the minivan’s horn. Momma waved then disappeared from the window. She was probably headed to help Trudy unload groceries.
As Trudy parked under the carport and cut the engine, she said to her sister, “I just remembered something. After we hauled him outside and drank hot toddies and ate breakfast for dinner, didn’t Aunt Star leave the house bundled up in a parka?”
“I don’t remember,” Georgia said. “I think I was drunk and passed out by then.”
CHAPTER 12
Stranger to the Ground
Near Dallas Love Field
BREAK RIGHT!
His voice snatched her out of her funk. Gripping the steering wheel, Trudy jerked it hard right and slammed on the brakes.
Nine o’clock! came his second command.
Straining against the shoulder strap of her seatbelt, she swiftly glanced left.
A white soccer ball bounced into the street and rolled past the Camaro’s front bumper. A tall athletic blonde, with a single braid swatting the air, chased after the ball. She wore pale blue gym shorts and a sweatshirt, her coltish legs pink from the cold. A white sweatband on her forehead accentuated her high cheekbones and Nordic features.
“Jesus!” Trudy yelped, expelling a lungful of air. She’d missed hitting the teen by seconds. Her hand jittery, Trudy fumbled for the power button and slid her window down. “You okay?”
Blushing, the girl picked up the ball and nodded sheepishly in Trudy’s direction. Her piercing blue eyes flashed both shock and relief. This time, she looked both ways before she jogged across the narrow lane.
Shaken, Trudy couldn’t move. “What in God’s name were you thinking?” she wanted to lash out at the girl. She was old enough to know not to chase after a ball in front of an oncoming car. She had that moneyed look, and given the neighborhood Trudy had cut through on her way to the storage unit, she assumed the girl attended Highland Park High, Hockaday, or Ursuline Academy.
From the corner of her eye, Trudy spotted a middle-aged man in an argyle sweater and brown loafers, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his trousers. Standing in front of a Mediterranean Villa with a manicured lawn set back off the winding lane, the man shook his head at the girl, most likely his daughter. An elaborate flowerbed skirted the house and overflowed with a cornucopia of colorful pumpkins and exotic gourds in all shapes and sizes. That’s one thing Trudy could always count on when driving through the swanky neighborhoods of Dallas in the autumn, the rich spared no expense at decorating.
The man’s gaze shifted toward the Camaro. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed, his expression one of a parent who’d been terrified one second and embarrassed the next.
I almost killed your daughter, Trudy had the urge to yell. Instead, she offered a half wave, took a deep breath, and rolled up her window.
Straightening the wheel, she settled back against her bodyhugging seat and checked her instruments. It was eight o’clock on a Monday morning, October twenty-fourth. Fifteen minutes earlier, she’d checked out of the hotel and was headed to the storage unit near the airport when she took a detour at the last second.
She’d been in a trance ever since.
After she’d veered off Lemmon Avenue to Lovers Lane, she hooked a left at Inwood Road and cruised along until she passed the big contemporary house she’d once shared with Preston. Behind the gated iron fence, a red Lamborghini sat in the circular driveway. At the top of a short flight of stone steps, art deco doors of stained glass led into a gray structure that felt more like an art gallery than a home. Wasn’t that just like the good doctor to park his flashy sports car out front for show? His version of yard art, along with the large metal sculpture that resembled a scalpel pointing skyward from the garden next to the entrance. A ten-foot-tall Frankenstein decked out in black and purple stood erect next to the doors.
“Halloween in the hood?” Trudy had chided when he bragged about the huge sum of money he’d paid an artist to create the monster. “Where I come from, most people carve pumpkins and make scarecrows out of rags and straw.”
“You’re from Podunk, New Mexico,” he’d responded in a tone that sliced through her heart like the blade of his scalpel.
Dry mouthed, Trudy had sped past the mansion and whipped a U-turn and slowed down as she glanced over one last time. A round window on the upper level — right above the entry — beckoned her to look up: the designer nursery that never got used. Something inside of her clenched as her eyes drifted back to the steps, those artistically uneven steps. Her gaze shifted to a two-story jungle gym with
a winding tube slide peeking from the side yard that led around back to a Roman pool where Preston tried to train her to “swim nude like a seal.”
Before Trudy had looked away, she spotted two dark-haired little girls running around the yard, both dressed in matching pink coats. A young woman with long jet-black hair stood nearby, her almond-shaped eyes trained on the girls.
Was the young woman their mother or nanny? Trudy had heard rumors that Preston had remarried a model and they had twin girls.
“She’s not getting any younger you know. She’ll be forty-one this fall,” Trudy had overheard Preston confide to a male visitor who’d dropped by the house the same day she’d come home from the hospital, empty-handed, her heart aching with a new kind of grief. A grief her mother knew all too well after losing a child. “Nine months and nothing to show for it but bags under her eyes, a loose belly, and about sixty extra pounds. Maybe she’ll give up this mommy notion and pursue a real career.”
A real career... Preston had been hounding her for years to quit flying and go to college so she could get a real job.
Still in her robe and slippers, Trudy had shuffled into Preston’s study and glared in his direction. Seven years her senior, the plastic surgeon with a shaved head and celebrity grin plastered on billboards all over Dallas, sat in his leather chair, sipping a cocktail. He refused to look at her. Here they’d lost a child together, but all he seemed to care about were appearances.
At least the visiting art dealer had the decency to rise from his chair and offer his condolences. “I’m truly sorry for your loss.”
After Trudy thanked him, she leaned against a tall bookcase and pressed one hand to her belly. Gazing out the window that overlooked a late summer garden, she caught her breath at another wave of postpartum contractions and gritted her teeth. “I see you’re in top form, Dr. Vanderwell. Isn’t it encouraging knowing when you’re not cutting on people, you’re entertaining them?”
The art dealer stared at his polished shoes, twiddling his thumbs. Before Preston buzzed the housekeeper to help Trudy back to bed, he sipped his drink and blinked at his guest. “Don’t mind my wife. It’s the painkillers talking.”
Like a sucker punch to her womb, that long-ago conversation shot out of nowhere. Her right hand slipped from the steering wheel to massage her belly. A belly she’d worked hard to tone and showed no signs she’d ever given birth; a belly that occasionally cramped for no reason except to remind her of afterpains…
Seeing the property and the woman hadn’t hurt as much as seeing the young children living in the spaces Trudy once occupied. The spaces meant for her and her daughter. Had Trudy remained, she’d be trapped inside a menagerie of art and Preston’s ego. Or most likely he’d have cast her aside by now like an artwork he no longer admired.
Why had she stayed married to him after he turned on her? His behavior toward her only grew worse after she lost the baby. To this day, she couldn’t be sure if Preston was a callous cad or if his cruelty served as a defense mechanism. Even at the graveside service attended by a few of her colleagues and a chaplain assigned to the mortuary, Preston stood off to the side, drawing in measured breaths. Trudy couldn’t tell if he was bored, or trying to hold back guilt by practicing breathing exercises like the ones she’d learned in childbirth classes.
That’s the question she was asking herself when she broke out in a cold sweat and veered off Inwood and cut through a quiet residential street to head back toward the storage unit. The answer rested deep in her being, along with other dark secrets she’d been afraid to examine until now.
If she hadn’t heard her father’s command across the airwaves of time, that beautiful blonde girl in her rearview mirror would be road kill by now. Instead, the soccer player kicked the ball toward the man in the argyle sweater and scampered across the leaf-strewn lawn to live another day.
The look in the girl’s eyes haunted Trudy all the way to the storage unit.
Had Sarah Jewel lived, she would be eighteen. Probably the same age as the girl Trudy almost ran over.
A slow mist began to fall as Trudy pulled in front of the storage unit and parked. Before getting out, she scanned the area for bandits. Even though the site was secured with controlled access and surveillance cameras mounted at various locations, a woman could never be too careful. After driving by her former home moments ago, she let it sink in that some bandits were easier to spot than others.
Key fob in hand, she went to unlock the garage-style door. The roar of a Southwest 737 taking off from Love Field echoed off the soupy clouds. Out of habit, she looked up, but the jet had disappeared into the gray.
Grabbing the wet handle, she slid the metal door up, flicked on the overhead light, and stepped out of the cold damp air. Dust hadn’t even settled in the space she’d rented weeks ago after she sold her condo, a renovated loft in an old building that flirted on the edges of Dallas’s toniest neighborhoods.
Crossing her arms, she looked around. Forty years after moving to Dallas, her household belongings now fit in a space half the size of a single car garage. By the time the movers had come to collect her things from the condo, all that was left were her clothes and airline uniforms, her king-sized sleigh bed and custom-designed bookcase and desk, her favorite reading chair and lamp, boxes of treasured books, and a few pieces of art and sculpture she’d collected after the divorce, mostly flea market finds Preston would find appalling. Most of her furniture went to needy families, her high-end washer and dryer to a nearby women’s shelter, her refrigerator to a community center in Oak Cliff.
“I’m learning to travel light again,” she explained when one of the movers commented that a lady of her means usually had acquired more by now. “Oh, I’ve had plenty,” she assured him. “But I’m letting go of a few things.”
“I think she’s one of those million dollar babies I heard about in the news,” he whispered to his helper as they hauled her bookcase out the door.
“Say again?” the other guy shot back.
“You know, those workers at Southwest who’ve been with the company forever…story goes they didn’t get paid much back in the day, but they did get company stock. Now it’s worth a lot.”
Trudy had followed both men out the door, playing dumb to their gossip. After they’d deposited her items at the storage unit, she gave them generous tips and asked about their families. She never forgot her early years with the airline when she lived paycheck to paycheck, struggling to make ends meet. Between her own investments and a generous settlement from Preston — she considered it hush money — she could go anywhere and do anything. While money could keep the bill collectors at bay, she learned a long time ago that it couldn’t buy happiness.
The head mover asked if she had grown children or grandchildren and she caught her breath, tongue-tied at his question. It took her a moment to answer. “Nope, just me.” Looking around at her things that day, he scratched his head and asked where she was headed.
“West,” she grinned, offering no other explanation.
Another plane took off and thundered overhead. She moved toward the firebox where she kept her important papers. The sound of the jet filled her mind with visions of the house on Seven Mile Road. As the temperature dropped and the mist grew thicker, cherished voices from the past swirled around her.
“How come they call it Seven Mile Road?” Bogey asked the first time they pulled off the highway onto the narrow lane leading up to the house with the giant “For Sale” sign that read
“Hacienda with Acreage and Barn.”
“’Cuz it’s seven miles from town to the base,” Daddy explained, glancing over his shoulders before they clambered out of the station wagon and raced toward the house. Momma said, “Looks just like the ‘Palace of the Governors’ in Santa Fe…if you chopped it in half.”
Georgia beat a path to the front door where she commenced to tap dancing up and down the length of the long covered porch. Bogey skipped over to a large plant and poked his finger
on the spiked tips of the bladelike leaves shooting out in all directions. “This is a yucca,” he yelled. “The state flower of New Mexico. I looked it up in the encyclopedia.”
“If your momma swoons over the rest of this place, we’ll be living smack dab in the middle of paradise,” Daddy winked as he waited patiently for Trudy to stop dragging her heels and get out of the car. “We’ll have the best of both worlds.”
“I liked that brick house in town next to the country club,” she’d pouted up at him.
“Country Club?” Daddy thumbed her on the nose. “You kids get to swim at the Officers Club pool. That’s a privilege and don’t you forget it.”
“Only one problem,” her mother said a few minutes later as they walked out back where Daddy was already making plans for a sunroom and patio extension. “This hacienda is too darn close to the tracks.”
“Nothing a chain link fence won’t fix,” he countered in that way of his that always won Momma over.
Two days after they moved in, Aunt Star showed up with a pan of red chile enchiladas and disturbing news that the family menace had moved into a vacant casita half a mile away.
Crouching in front of the firebox, Trudy inserted the key and lifted the lid. While she rifled through the folders searching for her voter ID, another memory punched through the fog: Aunt Star plopped down in a kitchen chair and mopped her brow with a dishtowel. Her arms were thick as any man’s from lifting patients in and out of hospital beds, her knees in white support hose, exposed and splayed apart. Dub lay face down on the terra-cotta tile, a huge lump swelling on the crown of his head.
“Can we call the police?” Georgia sniffled as she ran into Aunt Star’s arms.
Aunt Star swallowed and shook her head. “Certain menfolk in town won’t appreciate our dilemma. They’ll try to blame it on us. They always do. It’s a man’s world, loveys,” she sighed, breathing hard as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her. “Sometimes we womenfolk have to take matters into our own hands.”
The Flying Cutterbucks Page 10