8

“I’ve never been to Casa Grande,” Cassie said. “I thought it was just a town.” Shading her eyes, she examined the huge, hulking, two-story ruin. “That roof looks like a pagoda.”

“It was built to shelter the ruins, keep them from deteriorating,” Chan said. “I wish we could go inside.” He took her hand and led her around to another side and pointed. “See, the plaster is off the wall. You can see it’s built out of blocks of caliche.”

“Caliche. That sounds positively oriental. What is it?”

“It’s a mixture of sand, clay, and limestone. Kind of a natural-occurring concrete. Those walls must be three feet thick.”

Cassie felt the rough plaster. “What do you suppose this building was used for?”

“It says in the brochure that it was probably an observatory. The sides are lined up to the four points of the compass—”

Cassie interrupted: “That’s something that has always puzzled me. Who decided on north, south, east, and west? I mean, here you’ve got people who didn’t have any ties to Europe—who’s to say that their directions were the same as the other people’s?”

“Well, you have the sun traveling from east to west, which pretty much determines two of the points. I guess the other two just follow.” He pointed. “Let’s go over there.”

They wandered along a low adobe wall to where the remains of a smaller building stood.

“I didn’t know you had such an interest in archeology,” Cassie said teasingly.

“I’m interested in people who disappear.”

“Everybody disappears sooner or later,” Cassie observed.

“I mean civilizations. People with a capital P.”

“The people who built this—who were they?”

“Nobody knows. They disappeared. They were called Hohokam.”

“If nobody knows about them, who called them Hohokam?”

“The people who came upon this ruin. Native Americans who moved in after they left.”

“So this wasn’t built by the Pima?”

“No. And no one has been able to say why they suddenly disappeared.”

Cassie shivered. “That’s kind of eerie. I wonder if it was like the Book of Mormon, where there was a great battle and they killed each other off.”

“More probably there was a famine, and they left for greener pastures, although I can’t find that they’ve discovered a similar culture elsewhere. Maybe some disease killed them off.”

As they walked back to the car, Cassie looked around at the sparse and thorny vegetation, at the cloudless sky overhead, and at the late-afternoon sun beating down. “It’s not a very friendly place to be making it on your own.”

As they were driving away, Cassie suddenly said, “They didn’t disappear.”

“What do you mean?”

“They left that.” She pointed in the direction of Casa Grande. “If you disappear, you disappear. You don’t leave something behind.”

Chan stared very hard at her for a moment and then smiled. “That’s very deep. You’re right.”

Instead of turning back toward Scottsdale, Chan took a state highway that angled south and east, rising to rocky hills and scrubby cedars, where he turned off on a narrow secondary road that hair-pinned steeply for two more miles, leveling out on a saddle where the air was cooler and laden with the scent of pine. There, in a tiny rock and adobe hamlet, he took her to Felix’s, a Mexican restaurant where the owner and his wife served enchiladas made with homemade blue corn tortillas.

It was a magical day, full of strange and exotic places in her own backyard. When Cassie reached home she called Punky, eager to share her experiences. Frowning as the answering machine picked up, she complained, “Hey, Punky. You’re not home! I was just going to report in. I learned two more things today about Chan: He’s a scholar. He likes to learn about different things. He taught me all about the people who used to live here. And, he’s a gentleman. We were connected all day, you know, holding hands or . . . just connected. But even his goodnight kiss was just, you know, a connection. It was . . . it was . . . Oh, let’s face it. I’m in love.”

Smiling, Cassie hung up the phone and got ready for bed. After the lights were out she continued to relive the ride home: the top had been down and the night air grew warmer as they dropped down into the valley. The black velvet sky had been sequined with stars, and Chan drove with his left hand and held hers with his right. Impulsively, Cassie got up and opened the drapes so she could see the stars from her pillow. With streetlights nearby, they were sparse and dim, a shadow of what they had been only an hour before. Disappointed, she went back to bed and, finally, to sleep.

She was up early the next day, arriving at the office before anyone else to answer emails and cover necessary bases, putting off what she could until the next week. Chan picked her up at midday and they drove out to Tonto National Monument.

“More ruins?” Cassie asked.

“They let you go inside these.”

Understanding now how her mother must have been drawn into her father’s research, she said no more, simply enjoying the scenery as they drove along the winding, narrow Apache Trail through the lush Sonora Desert landscape with towering saguaros, spiky ocotilla, and lacy palo verde trees.

After visiting the site, Chan stopped at a down-at-the-heels marina on Apache Lake and rented a boat. Producing a small soft-covered cooler out of the trunk, he rowed out to the middle and let the boat drift while they ate kippers and crackers and drank icy root beer. They lingered until evening, exploring narrow, winding lagoons, and after another starry ride home, Cassie called Punky to report.

“He can row a boat straight as a string. You may not think that’s very good, but I was a counselor at Camp Yawana, and I know how hard that is to do. I wonder what I’ll learn tomorrow.”

The next day when he picked her up, Chan handed Cassie an address and a city map and said, “You’re the navigator.”

“Where are we going?”

“To see Mrs. Mefflin.”

“Who’s she?”

“She’s a widow lady. She’s just become wheelchair bound and needs a ramp built. The materials are there. We’re going to build it.”

“We? I wouldn’t know one end of a hammer from the other.”

“Stick with me, Baby,” Chan said out of the side of his mouth. “You got lots ta loin.”

Mrs. Mefflin turned out to be seventy-eight years old. She lived in a tiny cinderblock house in an older section of town. Small and bony with knobby protrusions on her knuckles, she sat in the doorway and kept up a steady stream of anecdotes as Chan fashioned a ramp from the threshold to the sidewalk, making sure the slope was gradual enough that she could navigate it easily.

Cassie’s report to Punky that night was full of warmth: “He’s such a caring person,” she said. “As my mother used to say, Mrs. Mefflin would talk your ear off and whisper in the hole. But he listened and responded so sweetly. And all the while he was doing such a good job of building.”

“Where’d he learn to be a carpenter?”

“I don’t know. He said he’s done some building. That’s all.”

“Where’d he get the tools?”

“The people who sent him out—the Opportunity Council—supplied him with tools.”

“So, what’re you doing tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. He said dress casual.”

“Well, whatever you’re doing, it needs to be something you can do with a two-year-old.”

“What do you mean?”

“I promised Ben I’d keep Ricky for him tomorrow. His mom is sick. But so is my boss, and I’ve got to manage a banquet for her. You get Ricky.”

“Oh, Punky! You can’t do this to me!”

“What do you mean? This is your chance to see how Chan does with kids.”

“What if he’s planned something you can’t . . . oh, well. I know we need to support Ben. That’s fine. We’ll manage.”

Ben arrived the next morning with Ricky and a car seat. Dressed in a pair of crisply creased gray slacks and his brother’s hand-me-down jacket, he looked professionally handsome. Setting the seat down, he said, “Thanks, Cassie. I appreciate this.”

“No problem. Um, diapers?”

“He’s potty trained,” Ben said, smiling proudly. “Just ask periodically if he needs to make bubbles. And, if you don’t mind, after he manages it, you need to cheer and do jumping jacks.”

“Bubbles?”

Ben looked at his watch. “I’ve left extra clothes and training pants. They’re there in the car seat. I gotta go. You have my cell phone number in case of emergency?”

“Yes. I know it by heart.”

“All right then. I’ll be by to pick him up at six.”

As Ben was leaving Chan drove in. The two men saluted each other as their cars passed, and Cassie wandered down the sidewalk to greet Chan as he parked. “We’ve got an appendage today.”

“An appendage?”

“Ricky Torres. We need to help Ben out.” Cassie waited anxiously for Chan’s reaction.

“Super! We’re going to the zoo. You can’t enjoy a zoo without a kid, anyway. I was thinking about renting one.”

Cassie watched as Chan expertly put the car seat in the back and buckled Ricky in. On the way he stopped to get sunblock and a hat for the little boy and rented a stroller at the gate. He even took the toddler to make bubbles and reported that he had done the obligatory jumping jacks in the restroom. Cassie’s heart was singing.

At noon they got lunch from a vendor with a pushcart and sat in the shade outside the elephant pen to eat. When Ricky dozed off, clutching the last vestige of his hotdog, Chan caught Cassie’s eye and nodded toward him. Smiling, she disengaged the wiener stub from his grasp and threw it away with the rest of the lunch mess.

“Want to stroll?” Chan invited. “There’s an arboretum attached. Should be shady and cool there.”

“Yes. Let’s.”

Cassie pushed the stroller and Chan walked beside her, the tips of his fingers gently touching the small of her back. Meandering slowly, they wandered through the green foliage, reading the cards posted by each plant. A bougainvillea vine formed a flaming scarlet bower over a bench, and they sat under it with the sleeping boy. “I saw a snack bar near the entrance,” Chan said. “Want something cool to drink?”

“Lemonade? That would be nice.”

Chan was gone only a moment and returned with two lemonades and two boxes of Cracker Jack popcorn. “You can’t do the zoo without having Cracker Jacks,” he said, handing her one.

“I haven’t had Cracker Jacks in years,” Cassie laughed. “I remember my first box. I was at the movies. It was the Muppet Movie, and the prize I got was one of those little clicker things in the shape of a frog. The prizes aren’t nearly as good anymore. I think that’s why I stopped eating them.”

Chan sat beside her, shaking his box and then turning it upside down. “I like to get my prize first,” he said, peeling away the wrapper.

“Is that the way you get it first? By shaking it? What did you get?” Cassie leaned against him with her cheek on his shoulder, watching as he opened the box and pulled out a small, flat packet.

Chan tore it open. “Oh, boy! Tattoos! A skull and crossbones and a snake.”

Cassie giggled and began shaking her box. “I’m glad you got those and not me. Let’s see what I got.”

“I guess that means you won’t want to trade.”

Intent on loosening a corner of the wrapper, Cassie didn’t answer. Finally successful, she ripped it away. Tearing off the top of the box, she saw the tip of an envelope sticking out of the popcorn. “Got it! Here, hold this.” Thrusting the box into Chan’s hands, she slit open the packet with her thumbnail. “It seems to be a ring,” she said. “I didn’t know they—”

Cassie frowned as she held a large emerald-cut diamond ring between her thumb and index finger. She looked quizzically at Chan. “I don’t think . . . did you . . . ?”

Chan set the Cracker Jack box aside, took the diamond from her, and placed it on the ring finger of her left hand. Smiling tenderly at her confusion, he said, “I love you, Cassie. Will you marry me? Soon?”

Cassie’s eyes grew wide. “You can’t . . . I don’t . . .”

“Don’t what? Don’t you love me?”

Cassie shook her head. “It’s not that. I’ve often thought . . . but this is so sudden.”

He took her left hand and kissed her fingertips. “When something is right, you go for it. Why hang back when all that joy is there for the taking? Do it, Cassie! Say you’ll marry me.”

Cassie’s head was trying to stay afloat in a flood of delicious sensations and heightened emotions. Something at the back of her mind whispered, wait, but she loved Chan. She had already admitted that to herself. What, indeed, was there to wait for?

“Oh, Chan!” she breathed. Throwing both arms around his neck, she kissed his cheek and then his ear. “I love you, too.”

Unmindful of passers by, Chan kissed her, a long, lingering promise that was interrupted by Ricky’s scream. The little boy, unwatched by the adults, had awakened, picked up one of the icy glasses of lemonade, and spilled it down his front.

Laughing, Cassie disengaged herself and tended to Ricky’s distress. As she lifted him out of the stroller, Chan asked again, “Well? Will you?”

“Of course I will. When is soon?”

“I leave tonight, and I have to be gone a week. I get back late Sunday night . . .”

“So, I suppose you’re talking about Monday morning,” she teased as she began pulling off Ricky’s shirt.

“How about the Friday following?”

Cassie stopped in mid-sleeve and stared. “You’re kidding!”

Ricky’s protestations brought her back to her task, and she pulled his chubby little arm the rest of the way out. “How am I going to get ready for a wedding that quickly? Besides, that week is murder for me. I have wall-to-wall meetings at St. Alphonse Monday through Thursday afternoons, and the mornings will all be prep time.” Looking around, Cassie said, “Hand me that shirt.”

“Not to worry. Leave everything to me.”

Cassie took the shirt from him and cast a skeptical look from under her lashes. “‘Not to worry,’ he says. It’s only my wedding.”

Chan threw back his head and laughed. “No, trust me! Don’t you think I can plan a wedding?”

Cassie regarded the sparkling ring on her finger. “Well, maybe. The engagement was pretty clever, though if some little kid had got the wrong box of Cracker Jacks . . .”

“I took care that that didn’t happen. What do you say? A week from this coming Friday?”

“I say . . . mmmmm . . . yes!”

Chan leaned over Ricky to kiss Cassie again, but the little boy yelled, “Bubbles!”

Grinning, Cassie handed him over, saying, “You’d better take him quickly. We don’t have another change of clothes.”

When Chan came back they finished the rounds at the zoo. He held her hand as they sat on the bank and watched Ricky throw bread to the ducks swimming in the pond. As Cassie pushed the stroller through the reptile house, Chan had his arm around her waist, and in the nocturnal house, as she stood in the dark holding Ricky, Chan’s arms encircled her and his cheek pressed against her hair.

Later, Cassie’s report to Punky was breathless and almost inarticulate. Her friend had stopped by on her way home from work and curled up, wide-eyed, at the end of the couch to listen as Cassie described her day and showed off her ring.

“He’s so . . . so . . . oh, I can’t describe it! He said he would plan this wedding, and I can plan the next one—when we’re sealed in the temple. And he was so good with Ricky. And I just love him!”

“You hide it so well,” Punky said dryly. “What did Ben say?”

Cassie was suddenly quiet. “I didn’t tell him,” she said, intent on smoothing the nap on the couch beside her. “He didn’t stay. Just picked up Ricky and left. I don’t think he noticed the ring. Besides,” she said defensively, “he said he was stepping aside. He’s going to find someone who’ll be crazy about him and Ricky.”

“The ring is kind of hard not to notice,” Punky said. “It’s awfully big.”

Cassie held her hand out and wiggled her ring finger to make it sparkle in the lamplight. “Isn’t it beautiful?” She smiled dreamily.

Punky stood. “I’m leaving. You’re obviously twitterpated, and it’s a scientific fact that twitterpated people are terrible company.”

“Oh, Punky! I’m sorry! And I didn’t even ask how your banquet went.”

“No, it’s not that, really. Everything went fine, but I’m not used to so much responsibility, and I’m dead on my feet. Congratulations, dear Cassie. I hope you’re able to manage until Chan gets back.”

“I will. I have a new client. St. Alphonse, over in Mesa. Isn’t that great? I won’t have to leave town for several months. But, I’m really scrambling because we have a deadline to make. I’ll be working twelve-hour days.”

“I probably won’t see much of you, then. Between work and rehearsals, I’m going to be busy, too.”

Cassie saw Punky to the door and then spent some time planning her next two weeks to make sure she could accomplish all she needed to before that Friday. “I can manage if I work Sundays,” she said to herself, but as she lay in bed that night she had the guilty feeling that she was using work as an excuse to keep from facing Ben Torres in church the next day.