No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

—John Donne
(Left by Clay Hampton, in town for an overdue family reunion.)

Chapter 10

In my first month on the ranch, I developed an addiction to email, texting, and long-distance phone calls—three things I’d considered largely time wasters in the past, outside of doing office business. For years, I’d admonished my nieces not to clog my inbox with email jokes and cute photos of puppies wearing Halloween costumes. Who had time for such things? Why would you want to make time?

Now I knew the answer: Because you felt like if you didn’t talk to someone, the men in white coats would soon find you babbling unintelligibly, bubbling out mad laughter and gut-twisting sobs, all while finger painting your name on white walls with white caulking and tossing bits of steel wool in the air, just to watch them drift slowly downward in the window light.

I was, quite literally, losing my ever-lovin’ mind, and the mice knew it. They, and the roaches, and spiders the size of my fist, and finally the scorpion that was staring at me from the opposite pillow one morning—they sensed that they were close to winning the war. I was on the verge of cracking and abandoning the house, married life, Texas, and the whole frontier adventure thing, in general.

My sisters had almost laughed me off the planet when I’d mentioned the long-distance Binding Through Books idea. They were too busy for something like that.

Little by little, even Trudy, my favorite sister of all, was trying to gently abandon me. “I love you, but you’re filling up my email inbox, and I can’t be checking my phone and clearing out texts all day long, Mal. Come on, a few months ago you would have told me the same thing.”

“No, I wouldn’t have,” I whined, sitting at the dining room table with my feet curled into the chair after my scorpion wake-up call. The worst thing was that in my panic to get out of the bed, I’d flipped the invader off the sheets, and I had no idea where it was now. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Trudy.”

“Oh, puh-lease.” Trudy was in a mood today. Hormones again. “How many times in the past couple years did I call you about doctor’s appointments, and you were like, ‘Hey, Trude, I’m in the middle of something, can I call you back?’ And then you’d never call back?”

“Yes, I did. I called back.” But Trudy was right. I’d been a lousy comforter and counselor when people needed me. I was used to being the focus of family attention, the baby girl who could do no wrong. I’d never had to focus my attention on other people.

“You know what you need?” Trudy asked, and I sensed another lame brush-off coming. “You need a journal. You should write all this stuff in a journal. Maybe you’ll turn it into a book someday—like Swiss Family Robinson, only you’re marooned on a lakeshore in Texas. Just think how funny that scene of you putting on the rubber gloves and the medical mask or dragging the stuffed deer head and the bobcat to the garage would be. Or that business about thinking you had ghosts and finding out it was squirrels in the attic. Now, that was a riot. If you wrote it down, you could keep it all in one place.”

“I don’t want to write a book.” A prickly lump, much like the ones that had stuck to our socks when Nick and I walked to the creek the day before, rose in my throat. A cocklebur of emotion. My moods were all over the place. I barely recognized myself anymore. “I just want to talk to somebody. It’s so . . . lonely out here. Daniel works all the time. Jack treats him like he’s some sort of personal assistant—or slave. Slave is more like it. Like Daniel is his minion, 24/7. Jack goes off on these bizarre tangents about weird new inventions, but he doesn’t ever show Daniel anything. It’s like he’s paranoid that Daniel will steal his technology. The longer we’re here, the more I’m sure the man is nuts, and not in a good way. Honestly, it scares me. On top of that, there’s the birdbath statue out back. I’m telling you, Trudy. It’s like it’s watching me when I go out there. And there are yellow butterflies sitting on it every time I look, and then I’ve had, like, five dreams about the blond lady.”

I paused to take a sip of my coffee, trying to clear my head. Trudy didn’t interject. She was only halfway listening, but she hadn’t hung up on me yet, so I went on. “The only good news is that Jack left town this morning, for his offices in Houston. It sounds like he’ll be gone for a while. Maybe we’ll finally have some time to try to figure things out. It’s like there’s not really any job here for Daniel. Even the ranch hands avoid us. There’s this weird sense that everyone is . . . waiting for something to happen—the ranch hands, the people in town. Everyone. Daniel’s starting to worry that these bio-crop patents Jack hired him to work on are just a fantasy. I mean, when they’re together Jack blathers on about powering cities with giant replicas of this tide wheel thing he built on the lakeshore. And then there are his theories on cattle genetics, and the whole Firefly Island thing. Did I tell you about Firefly Island? The other night when Nick and I drove out to the pasture to look at the moon, I swear I saw lights moving around down there on Firefly Island. And then when I went to bed, I dreamed that the blond lady was out there. She was trying to get me to swim across to the shore, but my legs were like lead. Daniel woke me up, just as I was sinking underwater. He said I was talking in my sleep, saying all kinds of strange things. He said I didn’t even sound like myself.”

“ . . . or a blog,” Trudy answered, as if she hadn’t heard a word I’d said. She was working as we were talking, her fingernails clicking on the keyboard. “You should write all of this in a blog—well, not the personal stuff about Daniel’s boss, maybe, but the stuff about the mouse wars and your walks with Nick. Then we could all read it and send you comments and stuff. And then Mom would stop calling me, asking what I’ve heard from you. She’s trying to go by her Non-interference Newlywed Rule, but that just means she calls me constantly for information. I don’t have time to do the binding book . . . book binding—whatever that’s called—sisters book club thing, but I’d read a blog. You could get information to all of us at once.”

“I don’t want a blog. . . .” I spit out the last word. Blogs were for people who liked to write. That wasn’t me. “Now you sound like Kaylyn. She and Josh made me this goofy-looking cyber-page with some of the pictures I sent them. They put my head on this cartoon body that looks like Annie Oakley and called me The Frontier Woman. It’s funny, but . . . ummm . . . no way.”

“At this point, I think it’s either a blog or professional therapy, and where are you going to find a shrink in Moses Lake?” Trudy’s store phone rang in the background.

“I don’t want a shrink. And I don’t even do Facebook, for heaven’s sake. I’m not a techno nerd.” Even Trudy, my favorite sister, didn’t love me anymore. The world really was coming to an end.

“But you just said your friends will help you. Your little Gymies. They would rather read your frontier stories all in one place instead of getting nine million texts and emails all day long. It’ll be like Green Acres meets Wild Kingdom.”

“It’s just not me,” I muttered, uncoiling my legs. Sooner or later I’d have to go tear the bedroom apart, find that creature that was loose in there, and dispatch it. Fortunately, Nick was outside, as usual, happily playing in the dirt underneath a tree with Pecos the dog. “I hate it here.” The words gurgled out in a partial sob. I was having that urge again, hearing the voice that said, Just get in the car and go. Just leave before you’re in any deeper.

Outside the window, the sunlight stroked Nick’s hair, painting it a soft spun gold. How long would it take for him to forget me, for even the memory of me, of us, to no longer exist?

“Hang in there.” Trudy’s voice was warmer, the words not just an effort to put me off. “Everyone goes through adjustment problems in the first months of marriage. And you’ve got more than the normal stuff to handle, and you’ve had a whole life of your own before now. Plus you’re dealing with parenthood, a move, and job problems. It’s normal to feel a little lost.”

It’s not normal, I thought. It’s not. I’ve lost me. I’m losing my mind.

But I didn’t say it. I couldn’t confess, even to Trudy, that I’d had the urge to run away. I couldn’t confess that to anyone. I was ashamed of it.

This marriage thing, this forming of a new life, was so much harder than I’d ever thought it would be. It was like walking into the lake in my dream. The water was filled with bands of hot and cold current, the bottom under my feet invisible, littered with obstacles, hiding crevices I couldn’t see until I got there. Love skimmed over the surface like a sailboat, grabbing me up and carrying me along one minute, the speed dizzying, the view passing by so quickly I couldn’t take it in. The next minute, my little love boat was swamped in a storm, overturned, the sail pointing toward the murky depths, everything upside down. I was trying to swim with legs of lead. I’d never thought of love this way—as something that moved with the ebb and flow of currents. Push and pull. Joy and pain. Fear and trust. Falling, and trying to balance, and falling again.

Conflicts crowded my mind as I said good-bye to Trudy, then ransacked the bedroom, searching for the terrifying, whip-tailed invader now lurking somewhere in our house. I couldn’t find it, of course. I imagined it hiding in my shoes, Nick’s pajamas, my clothing—which was still hanging in wardrobe boxes because I refused to put anything in the closets until I’d solved the mouse and bug problems. As far as I could tell, I’d made only a small dent in it with all my steel wool stuffing, caulking of cracks, and the little box-like mousetraps Dustin had sold me at the hardware store. I used them to capture the mice and then take the tiny doe-eyed creatures far from the house, where they could be released into the wild. The place where mice were supposed to live.

Each time I went through the process, standing in one of the pastures where the tumbledown remnants of an old homestead dotted the top of a barren hill, I gazed at the view in all directions—the lake glittering below, its watersheds and inlets hidden in thick folds of green, the mountains of Chinquapin Peaks melting skyward in the distance. Around me, spiny prairie grass waved softly, dotted with wildflowers, prickly pear cactus, and sword-like yuccas with tall stalks rising from the centers, last spring’s flowers now only dried bell-shaped remnants. I took it all in, all this strangeness, all this foreignness, while Nick investigated blue-tailed lizards, lines of red ants walking along the ground, or wild turkeys foraging in the ravines. And I thought, Is this me? Could this ever be me?

I felt like I was watching a movie sometimes, superimposing my face onto a character’s body. Occasionally, I wondered about the people who had come here first, who’d built the tiny, square house, the outhouse in back, the barn that now leaned against a mesquite tree, the old windmill and the stone tanks that held the water it pumped. What were they thinking when they arrived? Why did they come? Who was the woman, the sturdy pioneer wife who kept this house, who probably raised an entire family in such a small space? Was she ever lonely? Did she spend long days with only the mice and the scorpions for company? Did she struggle with it?

Did she ever think of leaving? Did it ever cross her mind to break the ties, to run away?

A mouse dashed across the bedroom, and I hardly even noticed. I imagined it and the scorpion having a facedown like gunfighters in a miniature OK Corral. I took note of the spot beneath the ancient closet wallpaper where the mouse had disappeared. I went after the steel wool. I stuffed and packed. Fifty years of dust and mildew puffed out in little clouds each time I disturbed the old cheesecloth backing.

I thought about my apartment in DC. That clean, orderly, and cheesecloth-free apartment. No stowaways. No men and boys dropping trails of shoes and laundry as they passed through the house . . . laundry that would have to be picked up with two fingers, carried to the bathroom, and shaken vigorously over the bathtub, because who knew what might take up residence in a shirt left lying on the floor?

I hadn’t put on a pair of shoes without first checking inside them for a month.

I looked across the room at the wardrobe box with my suits and pumps still nicely packed inside, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, gasping out great, wrenching sobs. The emotion, the despair welled up and was overwhelming, a tsunami of grief that was frightening in both its intensity and its very existence. Just last night, I’d decided I was over all this. Daniel and I had sat on the back porch, listened to coyotes singing a chorus in the distance, and watched as a massive full moon outlined thready clouds in glistening silver. Inside the house, I’d heard Nick talking to his toys in his little race car bed as he drifted off to sleep. It was the most perfect of perfect nights, the heavens a blanket of stars, the waters of the lake casting off a cool, moist breeze.

Daniel had tucked me under his arm on the porch swing, his body warm against mine, his breath stirring my hair. I felt loved. I felt completed in a way I never had before.

It was a moment of glory, of earthly perfection like none I’d ever experienced. A shadow of what heaven must be like, when all the cares fall away and love is perfect.

Daniel and I had finally slipped off to bed together as a breeze kicked up, the clouds thickened, and a soft rain began to fall. We’d made love, fallen asleep curled in each other’s arms, floated on our own little mountaintop, no one else in the whole wide world.

Now, here I was, tumbling off that mountain in the hardest way. Over the sight of a scorpion and a mouse. Worst of all, I felt such anger, such resentment, such a sense of loss. I was angry with Daniel for bringing us here, for being so devoted to this job, for having a job, always being gone when something went wrong in the house, for using me as a built-in baby-sitter for his son . . .

The last thought shocked, stabbed, wounded. Our son. Nick was our son. I loved him already. I wanted to be his mother. I treasured the simple, gentle moments when the two of us were together—chatting as he played in a bubble bath, or when we walked to the creek to watch the minnows, or strolled along the lakeshore hunting for arrowheads or the fossilized shells of ancient sea creatures. I loved those moments. I loved Nick’s smile, his laugh, the way he adored me. I loved him.

What was wrong with me that I could be sitting here resenting him?

This place was making me come completely unhinged. Somehow, I had to get control—control of the house, control of my thoughts and my emotions. This had to stop.

The back door opened, and I heard Nick racing through the kitchen, leaving the door flapping behind.

More flies. He’s letting in more flies. The thought was quick and sharp. With horses and cattle living nearby, there was no end to the fly problem, either. They clung to porch roofs in the evenings in a giant black mass, hung on the door facings, slipped inside in droves each time Nick came and went. The flies crawled on the kitchen counters, on any food left out. On my face as I was waking in the mornings. Everywhere. The flies were everywhere.

“Nicholas!” My voice sliced through the house, and I was up from the bed, stalking toward the kitchen before I had time to think. “Close that door! How many times have I told you not to—”

I rounded the corner into the dining room, and there was Nick, at the other end of the ugly yellow carpet, frozen in place with a bouquet of tiny white wildflowers in his hand. He’d stopped two steps onto the rug, left behind a pair of wet, muddy little tracks, and a trail through the kitchen. His eyes were huge, his mouth dropping open, uncertain.

Everything in me melted. My tears welled again, but they were a different sort of tears. “Hey,” I breathed, crossing the room. “Hey, what’ve you got there?”

His eyes rounded upward, sparkled with life again. “It’s all in da yard!” he cheered. “Flowers! Be-yoo-de-ful flowers! I gotted you a pres-it!”

“You did?” I whispered, scooping up Nick and the flowers all in one. He held them to my face, and I smelled the overwhelming sweetness, the intoxicating combination of nectar and sweaty boy child. Outside the window, the yard was filled with tiny white flowers on single stalks. They’d appeared overnight. A miracle. A thousand tiny miracles. Flowers where there had been no flowers. “They’re beautiful. They’re amazing. Oh, baby, how did you know I needed someone to bring me flowers this morning?” I hugged him close, rocking him back and forth as his sandy feet swung against my thighs.

His arms stretched around me, the fistful of flowers pressing against my shoulder, their sweetness encircling my senses. “I jus’ knowed,” he whispered. “Somebody telled my mind.”

Closing my eyes, I reveled in the moment, felt the holiness of it. Let me remember this. Let me remember this the next time I’m angry.

I didn’t care if a hundred flies came into the house through that open door. I didn’t.

Nick and I went outside and enjoyed the flowers. We picked tiny bouquets and put them in glasses all over the house, filling the rooms with fragrance. By the time we finally left for town to visit the feedstore and inquire about the magic scorpion eradication powder Dustin had mentioned last month, I had recaptured my sense of Zen. I’d spent some time with the caulking gun, sealing up cracks around the bedroom window sashes and baseboards, convincing myself that the scorpion must have used one of those entry points, and that by now it was back outside. With the cracks sealed, it would not be able to get back in, surely.

When the man in the feedstore, which was in an old tin building that had the quaint look of a little country trading post, told me that scorpions hide in cool, dark places during the day, and come out at night, I did my very best to ignore him. I imagined the scorpion permanently entombed in a layer of rapidly drying caulk. I also did my best to disregard the feedstore man’s warning that scorpions traveled in pairs.

“Best thing’s to get you a black light and hammer,” he advised. “Put you on some good shoes, grab the hammer, and just carry that black light around your house when it’s good’n dark. Scorps glow in the dark. You see ’em, you smash ’em good and dead. Don’t try to drown ’em down the sink. They just come back up your drains. Flush ’em live, and they can come back up the commode, and you don’t want that.”

The feedstore man and I locked eyes and shook our heads in unison. I imagined scorpions hiding underneath the toilet seats, lying in wait. Dark places. They liked dark places, like the undersides of toilet seats . . .

I glanced over my shoulder at Nick, who was having fun with a bucket of multicolored plastic worms nearby.

“Careful how you pick ’em up, even after you use the hammer,” the man added. “That tail can still sting after you smash the guts out.” He curled his finger into an arc and made a quick striking motion. “Like rattlesnakes, y’know? You don’t go picking ’em up by hand, even once you think you got ’em dead. That rattlesnake head’ll still get ya. But with scorps, it’s the tail.” He slapped a hand on the counter, and I jumped a foot in the air. “I’ll have them insect granules in for ya, day after tomorrow. Just sprinkle it ’round your house and near your doors, then water it in good with the hose and keep the little guy off of it until it’s dry. Oh, and indoors, don’t let the beds touch the wall or the blankets touch the floor, and wrap all your bed legs with duct tape, sticky side out. That’ll keep them scorps off at night.”

“Ohhh . . . kay. Thanks,” I murmured, vaguely conscious of several men walking in from a warehouse where large stacks of Purina livestock chow were stored. “On second thought, give me two bags of the scorpion-killer. I may just dig a moat around the house and fill it with the stuff . . . after I surround all the beds with duct tape.”

The man behind the counter laughed, then wagged a finger at me. “That’s funny. I like a woman who’s got a sense of humor about her varmint huntin’.”

“Listen, I’m a varmint-killing machine,” I joked, feeling as if I were hanging out in the halls of Congress, bantering with other staff members about legislators and stacks of paperwork. Lately, it seemed like I had at least three different personalities, and any one could come out at any given time. I liked this particular one. She could handle things. Occasionally, I wondered if Daniel was avoiding coming home not because he was busy with Jack, but because he had no idea which me would be waiting there.

“Got problems in the ranch house?” I turned to find Al Beckenbauer approaching the counter, her lanky, confident stride making me feel a little less like Xena the Warrior Queen of Varmint Hunting. Today Al was wearing jeans and a tank top with an old denim shirt loose over it, the sleeves torn out, her arms bare and brown.

She probably kills scorpions with her bare hands, I thought, and then the idea seemed inexplicably hilarious.

“There was a scorpion in bed with me this morning,” I told her.

“Been there.” She offered a one-sided grin, her wind-chapped lips curling into dimples at the corners, revealing straight white teeth that seemed out of place against the ruddy backdrop. “Hate it when that happens.”

Al Beckenbauer shuddered. Actually shuddered.

I marveled at the thought and I decided I really liked her. We had something in common. We both hated scorpions in the bed. Just two rancher chicks, trying to survive in the wild country.

Al tapped the pad where the feedstore man was writing up my ticket. “Scratch that and order her some diatomaceous earth. Fifty-pound sack. And an applicator. Put it on that worthless old so-and-so’s bill.” Hooking an elbow on the countertop, she angled her head and squinted at me. “Spread it around your yard, especially by the house, and in the attic, and in the cabinets under your sinks, too. It’ll work, and you don’t have to worry about it with your pets or the boy. Wear a mask when you put it out. Don’t breathe the dust, but after it settles overnight, it’s fine. It’s organic. Good for the dog, if you have one. It’ll take care of fleas in your yard, too. If the old so-and-so who owns that place gives you any trouble, you tell him Al Beckenbauer said to leave it in the yard a few weeks and see if you can find a flea out there. He’ll like that.” Her lips pursed, and she glanced sideways at the feedstore man, who sucked in a breath and shook his head.

“You’re gonna get this poor girl in trouble, Al.” Clucking apologetically, he focused on me. “Those two aren’t good neighbors, in case you hadn’t noticed yet.”

“I’ve hardly been out of the house,” I admitted, because that was the most benign thing I could come up with. It was clear enough that everyone gave Jack West a wide berth. With the exception of Keren Zimmer timidly stopping over with cookies the day after I flattened the U-Haul tire, no one had come by, and no one in town seemed willing to explain the hands-off reception we’d been getting. West Ranch did a lot of business in the area, and I had a feeling that people didn’t want to alienate Jack’s significant cash reserves by revealing the skeletons in his closet.

“Pfff!” Al blew a tight puff of air. “Anything organic, that man won’t use it. Just spray poison all over everything. Dump a little more pesticide in the water supply. It’s his world. We’re all just livin’ in it.”

I snapped my lips shut on an answer. I so wanted to spill the whole story of our month-long odyssey at West Ranch and ask the obvious question: Is Jack West as crazy as he seems? Did he really kill his wife and stepson? And what’s with this Firefly Island business? Why all the secrecy there? Has anyone else seen lights moving around out there at night? Why is the causeway that goes to the island protected by a locked gate? Why has he pointed out repeatedly that Firefly is off-limits to everyone? Does anybody know?

Instead, I said, “I’d much rather go with the organic stuff. I mean, there’s Nick to think about, for one thing. He plays in the yard all the time. I don’t want to use anything that’s not good for him. Mr. West is out of town for a while, so he won’t know what I put out. Honestly, if I see one more mouse, bug, or creature with an exoskeleton running across my floor, I’m going to commit hari-kari. At some point, I really want to be able to put my clothes in a closet without having something nest in them.”

Both Al and the feedstore man chuckled, but Al seemed to understand. She took a pencil from behind her ear, signed a ticket for the clerk, and then pointed the pencil at me. “I like you. I’m headed to New Mexico for a week or so to see a man about a sheepdog, but you give me a call after I get back. I’m in the book. A. C. Beckenbauer.”

“Oh . . . okay.” I had the sense that I’d made my first friend in Moses Lake.

Nick came over and stretched upward to set a handful of squirmy rubber worms on the counter.

“Oh no, honey, we don’t need those,” I told him gently. “We have enough of the real kind at our house.”

Al turned away from the counter and headed for the door. “Sack up those fishin’ worms for the boy, Stan. Put it on my account. If he’s gonna live in Moses Lake, he’s gonna need to be a fisherman.”