Chapter Ten

Ray stood at the door, his gaze raking the blankness of night, waiting. Worry rattled him, and now he had two things to worry about.

He doubted Carrie was used to driving long distance at night on strange roads, and finding the ranch again might not be easy. He assured himself she had a GPS to get her most of the way, and a cell phone in case of trouble.

The worries about his son were a different matter. Jake wasn’t settling back to civilian life as easily as he had anticipated, and whether it was something here bothering him or something he carried with him from Iraq, Ray didn’t know. But he certainly yearned for his son to be out with it before long.

He had just started back inside when a solitary car passed the entrance, stopped and backed up, its two headlights like moons scoring the ground, drawing the car forward. It came down the turn to the main house and straight for him. He reached inside and flicked on the porch light, attracting a party of moths and other bugs before he let out a sigh of relief as Carrie pulled up in front of the house.

Stepping down, he released the door as she sat, hands still on the steering wheel, motionless, a waxen figure.

“Was it that bad?” he asked by way of greeting.

“Worse. Unimaginable.” She reached across at last for her handbag and struggled out, one leg at a time, hardly able to stand.

“I told you I’d come for you.” He reached out to stroke her damp face and got a weak smile in return.

“What? Just short of an hour and a half each way to Austin? Are you insane? You may be younger than me, but you’re not that much younger.”

“Well, I might say I know these roads a helluva damn sight better than you. Been drivin’ ’em most of my life.”

“Well, I’m here now.”

She slumped her head against his chest as he held her, rubbing her back, massaging her shoulders gently. The feel of having her once more in his arms lit a spark within him.

After a moment in which she might have fallen asleep on her feet, Carrie popped her head back and gazed at him, a sleepy smile on her face. “I’m warning you right now—”

“Uh-oh.”

“I’m going straight to sleep. And ‘sleep’ is the operative word here, buster. Got that? Sleep.”

Ray smiled, just happy to have her there, but that spark wasn’t going to stay a spark for long. A fire was slowly being lit.

“Well. Tomorrow is another day, as they say. And I…rise early.”

****

Paige placed the last stack of books into her bookcase and let out a satisfied sigh. She had rejected her mother’s offer to come back from Texas and help her move into an apartment knowing, as she did, her mother had had only three weeks there so far and sounded settled and happy.

Settled and happy was something Paige doubted she would feel for a while; the aloneness was just too marked. It was still August, and other students would not be back for another ten days or so, but she had decided to brave Philadelphia’s summer heat in order to get a head start on studying and getting back to the grind.

The furniture she got out of storage had ‘Steven’ written all over it—the antique desk his father had given him and insisted Paige keep, the sofa she and Steven had spent a rainy day choosing, and left an umbrella in one shop during a lull in the storm. There were the prints they had agreed were too expensive, but might be a good investment, hanging above the armchair, which in itself had caused repeated arguments.

And finally, there was the bed that had been shared, the bed that had been slept in, ate in, read in and made love in. The year in storage had eradicated Steven’s smell; Paige hugged a pillow to her nose, but there was only a slight odor of mildew and the extreme need for cleaning that greeted her.

Steven was gone, Steven was dead; only the memories clung to her, like barnacles, like ticks, like those sea urchins that had to be peed on to be lifted off. That was it—she would have to pee on Steven’s memory to destroy it, find the part of her he had made liquid waste and use it to eliminate him. Was that possible? She doubted it; she held no bad memories of him, no ‘buts’ about their relationship, nothing he had ever hurt or changed or destroyed. She held no weapons with which to fight the gnawing hunger for his being.

So instead, she considered her good fortune in finding this new apartment. How lucky she had been when friends who had graduated, as had all her friends at law school, heard the next tenants for their apartment on Sansom and 41st had withdrawn and the landlord was now anxious for another lessee. She recalled the conversation with the landlord very well: no, she wouldn’t go to Philly to inspect it; she knew the area near the Law School well.

And that was it; she was back. And she was alone.

****

Carrie had found space in Ray’s closet, no doubt vacated some time ago by ‘the wife’ and never refilled. Well, what man goes out and buys clothes to fill a space the way a woman might? The bedroom was small and the bathroom impossible, an extension added on to the master bedroom in the fifties, Ray had said, but after all, the ranch house did date from the 1890s. Her cosmetics and toiletries littered the one shelf in the ‘outhouse,’ as she now called the master bathroom; they paraded along the side of the bath and sat on the top of the toilet.

If she wished to redecorate the house, she recognized the wisdom of keeping her mouth shut. And in a strange sort of way, there was a sense of relief it wasn’t expected of her, that the history and the manliness and the outmoded décor were left as a symbol of the differences between life with Ray and her life in New York, her previous other incarnations.

But getting into her stride, finding a routine took time. She didn’t like living with so many people in the house, people coming and going; it was proving difficult after so many years on her own, with Paige away at schools and rarely home. Ray had encouraged her to set up out in the enclosed sunroom where she had the view and quiet away from most of the goings on, while he worked in an office at the front of the house.

She dealt with Mabel’s resentment of making extra work; she made an uneasy entente cordiale with the housekeeper of not invading Mabel’s territory but always asking for anything she wanted from the kitchen, and Mabel asking before she cleaned the back sunroom area. No doubt the housekeeper begrudged the new arrangement, but it worked, and she accepted Carrie’s occasional request of ‘not right now’ in a semblance of good nature with a shrug of her shoulders and a feigned ignorance of the back sunroom’s mounting dirt for several days more.

But there was also the question of Jake—the feeling he was somehow not comfortable with her presence. He lurked, he skulked and apparently avoided her at times. With his bedroom down the hall from the one she shared with Ray, and no need to share the hall bathroom—converted years ago from a fourth bedroom—she and Jake did not have to see much of each other, except at the occasional meal taken together. She wasn’t sure whether he disliked her or was leaving her to get on with her work.

Carrie caught Mabel eyeing her through the glass doors from the main house as she sat considering all this. She felt she had done enough work to warrant a break and get some fresh air, so she closed the lid of her laptop, stepped through the doors to give the housekeeper the ‘Okay’ sign and headed down to look for Ray at the barns. But it wasn’t Ray she found.

Jake stood in the center of one of the corrals with a magnificent chestnut gelding on a lunge, trotting through his paces over carefully positioned poles. Off to the side, the three dogs watched as if they were learning something, too. Carrie leaned her crossed arms on the top bar of the corral fence and observed the training for a few minutes.

“That’s quite some animal you’ve got there,” she said at last.

He gave the lunge a small tug with a quiet, “Walk on,” before he briefly eyed her. “Yup. He’s a beauty.”

For several seconds, there was no sound except the beat of the horse’s hooves and the click of the poles as he tapped them. A stroke of discomfort hunched Carrie’s shoulders and she started to turn away, but instead, put out a hand to attract the dog Alamo. It was Crockett who rose and approached her, a gentle woof emitting as he rubbed against her leg.

“You can push him off you know.” Jake gave another gentle yank, bringing the gelding to a stop before he rolled in the lunge and unhooked it. He bent to rearrange the poles in the corral as the horse nickered but stood foursquare.

“It’s fine. I like the dogs. I’m not so precious as you seem to think, Jake.”

He stood and glanced back at her again, blinking. “I didn’t mean...I only thought—”

“Sorry.” Crockett licked her hand as she met the young man’s steady gaze. “Jake, do you mind my being here? I mean, is it causing you upset or a problem or something because—”

He shook his head. “No. Why would you think that, Carrie? I mean, it’s good to see Dad so happy. Fact is, I don’t remember him ever being this happy. Why do you ask?”

She had stepped back from a precipice. Yet his behavior didn’t seem to gel with his answer. “I just felt...I just wondered because you don’t join us much. You seem sort of distant.” She leaned once more on the fence, suddenly aware she might have over-stepped her mark. After all, she hardly knew Jake; maybe this was his personality, the way he was. Then she recalled how friendly he had been at the dance hall in Bandera. Could a few drinks have done that?

“Well.” He straightened and rehooked the lunge to the head collar. “You’re working quite a bit and, you know, I’m out working, or Dad wants to be alone with you. I’m not avoiding you if that’s what you think.”

“It’s just—” A screech like a cat yowling stopped her in her tracks. “What the heck was that?”

Jake laughed. “Surely you’ve heard that before? It’s the kennel door. Admittedly, it’s not always that bad. Mabel must’ve gone in to wash it down as she does sometimes. I’ll see if I can’t remember to give it some WD40 or something.” He let out the lunge, gave it a shake and stood with his eyes back on the Arab.

“Why do you kennel the dogs anyway? Don’t you like them inside at night?”

He opened his mouth, then hesitated before going on. “Well, it was my mom who didn’t like them inside. She didn’t like them licking her in the night and all. You know, they’re real smart. They can open the bedroom doors if they’ve a mind to. Not the kennel door, luckily, but the bedroom doors they find real easy. And if we’da put locks on the doors, they’d have scratched and woke her anyway.”

Carrie hesitated then plunged, “Where’s your mother now? Do you see her?”

“Oh, yeah. She’s over in Austin, not too far away, but I think she’s set on movin’ now. Somewhere north I believe. Wyoming or Montana.”

He appeared relaxed about discussing her, so Carrie figured the divorce must be long over. Ray never mentioned the woman, that was certain.

She let Crockett lick her hand for several moments before she slipped it away and studied Jake. He seemed intent on the rhythm of the horse, its balance, but perhaps his mind was on other things.

“Do you hear them barking at night sometimes?” he asked at last.

“No. Do they? I’m a heavy sleeper when my brain isn’t going, and Ray’s never mentioned any noise. Are there prowlers?” She tried to keep concern from her voice. Who knew what was out here in the middle of nowhere?

He snorted. “No, no prowlers. Or at least none we’re aware of. Dad had a bit of trouble a few years back with poachers, but they caught them in the end. And then some years back, we found someone’d been planting pot over in a far corner of the ranch. Dad went ballistic, could’ve meant losing the ranch had the sheriff’s office not been told. Anyway, it’s only been deer recently. Deer and other animals set off the dogs sometimes. Nothing to worry about. Well.” He tugged on the lunge once more and brought the horse to a halt. “Dad should be back shortly. There was some problem down at the lodge, a leak or something I think.”

Carrie stood there, a low sunset trickling color behind the barns. She could see Ray in Jake, his concentration, his care for the animals, the land. “I remember the owner of the stables where I kept my horse doing this lunge work,” she said half to herself. “I used to enjoy watching her down in the manege.”

Jake barked a laugh as he started to roll up the lunge, and flicked a glance at her over his shoulder. “‘Manege.’ Wow, that’s some fancy word for a corral.”

“Well. I guess. But that’s what she called it. That or the school. Sorry.”

The sound of Ray’s truck was accompanied by a trail of dust appearing down the lane. As it ground to a halt and the door swung open, the dogs went as one to greet him. Ray tipped his hat back on his head, a huge smile mirroring her own.

“Hey, y’all.” There was a note of relief in his voice as he sauntered over to Carrie, his gaze going from Jake to her and back again. “Turned out to be just an overflow from a toilet that was running. I jiggled the handle and fixed it. I’m a genius.” He leaned over and kissed her behind the ear, then smiled at his son. “You know you got genius in you?”

Jake’s gaze skidded from Carrie to Ray. “I don’t know about ‘genius,’ Dad. I got ‘weird’ in me is what I got.” And he turned back to his gelding, leaving the two of them giggling.

****

Jake waited for Ty to seek his revenge, but the days passed and nothing happened. He figured the wrangler had made empty threats, got someone else to do his dirty work, a partner perhaps, that person he had said would take over from Jake, and he must have figured seeking revenge on him was no longer a high priority, no longer worth the risk.

He finally got through to Lucinda one afternoon and, after tip-toeing around the subject with news, congratulations on her marriage and catching up the last few years, he got up the courage to ask her if her husband was aware of her past with Robbie. He felt immense relief at her somewhat short but slightly puzzled reply that the couple had absolutely no secrets.

Slowly, tentatively, he began to relax, began to get back into his old skin. He went out to mix and didn’t worry about bumping into Ty. He even enjoyed seeing his father basking in Carrie’s love and adoration, which it was. Jake smirked as the couple came in late from eating out in one of the local haunts, giggling like teenagers who’d done something mischievous. He stood by as his father and Carrie headed out to get some groceries, good-naturedly arguing over who was going to drive the old pickup. There was laughter from their bedroom and there were exchanged glances over breakfast and smiles that stretched, literally, from ear to ear. To his eye, Carrie adored his father, made him happy, and enjoyed being here. And that was all right with him.

Contented, he decided to give Paige a call late one night, even later in Philly, when the muffled sounds from his father’s bedroom had silenced into the scratchings of the crickets and cicadas. He lay back on his pillow waiting for her to answer, which she did almost immediately.

“No, you haven’t woken me, and yes I am alone.”

“How did you know I would ask that, Paige?” He could feel the dent between his brows harden into a crevice.

“Because you’re so predictable, Jake. Really. I hope you’re not calling about another drug run?” Her voice was slightly annoyed at this prospect.

“Nope. I took legal advice—yours. I’m a new man.” He picked up a pen on his nightstand and twirled it with an air of satisfaction.

“Glad to hear it, cowboy.”

Jake guffawed.

“So, is the happy home of three still happy?”

“You know your mother makes the same sigh of ecstasy and relief you do when she comes. They think I can’t hear them, but sometimes I do if they’re loud enough. It’s weird. Them old people making love like that. Don’t you think?”

“Jake, really! That is more information than I wish to have about my mother.” She sniffed. “Or myself for that matter.” There was the scrunch of a pillow being fluffed. “Aside from getting off listening to my mother’s orgasm, how are you?”

“Good. I’m good. What’s it like being back at school?”

Paige hesitated. “Difficult.” She stopped at that.

He wondered how hard it was for her to be there. But then her voice came brighter, more positive.

“Somehow it seems everyone’s an idiot. Maybe you were right—they seem so much younger than I am. Even though, in actual fact, at law school, they’re really not. But I’ll survive. It just takes a bit of getting used to, you know? I’m used to coming back from class to Steven, and he ‘ain’t’ here. It’s not good. It’s difficult.”

“Paige, you’ll be okay. I know you will.”

“Gee, thanks, pal.” She put on a cheerleader voice. “Gee whiz! If you say so!”

“Okay—look, I know you don’t think much of me, don’t value my opinion and all. But I know you’ll be fine. For what it’s worth.” Suddenly, he wondered why he’d bothered…but then he knew. He wanted her, he missed her. Carrie was a constant reminder of her, and he wished Paige was here, too.

There was a deep breath let out into the mouthpiece of the phone. “I value your opinion, Jake. I just don’t listen to it. Well,” she added, “I don’t listen to anyone but my gut. I know I’ll be all right. I’ll graduate top of my class as I was meant to do—my new class that is—and I’ll kick butt left, right and center. What about you?”

He considered his answer carefully, now the threat of Ty seemed to have passed. “I’ll be happy working on the ranch with my dad. That’s the way it is out here—that’s the way it’s always been. And I’m happy with that. I don’t see a need for a piece of paper saying I studied what I learned by living here on this ranch all my life. You see the need for that?”

“No, Jake, I don’t. You go on and lead the life you want, the life your family knows. It’s a good life, I’m sure. And call me again from time to time. I like knowing about my mother’s love-making. Really.”

****

In the dim bedside light, Carrie lay with her head nesting on Ray’s chest, her hand absently playing with the curlicues of hair on his stomach and moving up the dent from his navel. The quiet was almost intimidating, frightening in a way, after life in New York, absent of car horns or ambulances, fire engines or police car sirens heralding accident and emergency in the night.

Her mind wandered from her current book to Ray to the screenplay she’d been re-working to Paige. She worried about her daughter, and then decided she mustn’t worry about her, and then fretted some more. In the back of her mind, somewhere deep inside, was that moment when she had seen the pills by her daughter’s bedside. But then, Paige had said…what had she said? She wasn’t the suicidal type. What type, exactly, was that? Still, it was best to check on her regularly, let her know that just because she was with Ray, she hadn’t stopped thinking about her. But now it was far too late to phone; even Paige would be asleep with the time difference.

Carrie shifted slightly, and Ray’s voice came in its low notes of semi-conscious rasp, “A penny for them?”

“Lots of thoughts,” said Carrie sitting up. “Paige, work…”

His hand gently played down her back before she moved off the bed and grabbed a nightdress, letting it slide down her body like a curtain coming down before her head stretched out of it and her arms found their way.

Ray was watching. “You know, I think that’s the first time you’ve actually got out of bed and dressed right in front of me.”

“Is it?” She tilted her head considering this, a small uncertainty rattling her, before she headed for the bathroom. “I must be getting used to you,” she called over her shoulder.

“You still frettin’ over your body?” His words met her closing the bathroom door.

For a moment, she stayed silent while she washed and got ready for sleep. Then she stepped out. “I shall always fret over my body. You’ll be disgusted by it soon. You’ll see. Who wants to make love to a withered old hag?”

Ray inhaled, obviously frustrated with having to deal with this again. “You know,” he drawled out, “there’s two of us aging here. You don’t hear me worrying ’bout my old broken down body appearing in front of you with all its flabby bits. I’m not in love with your body, Carrie. I’m in love with you, you dang fool.” He reached out a hand and drew her over. “Find something else to worry about, will you?”

He was right; she knew she didn’t give a damn what the hell he looked like. To her, he was the best looking damn man on earth. Worry about something else? “I have,” she finally answered him. “I should have phoned Paige again today. She sounded too crisp and business-like to me on the phone yesterday.” It was going to be a long night. Her mind was turning over too much.

Ray stole a glance at the bedside clock. “She’ll be fine,” he assured her. “First thing tomorrow, you can call, but I’m sure she’ll be fine.” He lay back on the pillow. “Anyway, I didn’t know Paige had anything but ‘crisp and business-like’ when speaking. Seems that’s the way a lawyer should be…even with her mother,” he added quickly. He patted the bed beside him.

Carrie curled herself in again as Ray switched off the low bedside light.

“You think again about how long you can stay? Not that I want you to go—I want to make that clear.”

“Oh.” She gave a quiet giggle. “I guess maybe as long as Mabel lets me.” Lying against him, the quake of his laughter quivered against her skin. “Seriously, I don’t know. It sort of depends on various things, the book, the screenplay, lots.”

“You miss New York? Your friends?”

“Yes. But then, if I were there, I’d be missing you, so which is worse?” She craned her neck to meet his gaze. A sudden feeling of contentment washed over her, and she curled up again, resting her head against him.

For a while, she listened to the broken record song of the cicadas and frogs until that was joined by the soft whistle of Ray’s even breathing. But such satisfaction did not send her to sleep; it was a night when her mind would not rest and the restlessness won.

Carrie slipped one leg down and then the other to stand and quietly make her way out the door, drawing it shut behind her. The hallway was pitch black, a night in which clouds blanketed the moon, and, like a criminal, she stole her way to the sunroom. Feeling for the switch, she inundated the room in the white light of the ceiling fan bulb and flipped the computer open, jabbing in her password and sitting, waiting for the home page to appear.

And then the dogs started barking.

Slipping back from the table, she rose to see if she could spot a deer that might have set them off as Jake had mentioned. The void of blackness was menacing, a complete emptiness of life as if she were the last person left on the planet. The glare of the light bulb and her own reflection forced her to lean right up to the cold glass, but nothing greeted her, a vacancy was all there was.

She decided it was nothing more making them bark than a passing animal she couldn’t see, and she started to sit down when she became aware of something. Dogs were still barking, but it sounded like there were only two of them barking now, which puzzled her. They were barking more frantically, too, with a sort of whining cry emitted, a terrible yowling of desperation.

And then came the screech of the kennel door.

Hurriedly rising from her chair again, her heart pounding as if it wanted to escape her chest, Carrie rushed to the glass of the sunroom windows, desperately searching the emptiness for a sign of movement. The room’s reflections in the glass sketched specters outside, unnerving doppelgangers in an alternate world. Her hand instinctively went to her chest as she searched the void franticly.

And then, two staring, disembodied eyes came floating through this ghostly setting and, catching the light from the room for a second, a knife held out, red stains of blood just dulling its sheen.