The brown slump-block houses of Pirtleville huddled with their rear walls to the constant wind-driven sand. Rae’s family’s ranch was on the outskirts of town, vulnerable to dust devils, scorpions, and rattlesnakes. Every year, they hacked back the tumbleweeds and scrub brush where the desert made incursions into their cattle pasturage. Locoweed grew everywhere no matter how they tried to eradicate it and drove the cattle mad. A locoweed-drunk bull will kill a grown man out of sheer cussedness.
As they approached Rae’s family’s ranch, Wulf phoned his staff and asked them to wait with the SUVs at the head of the dirt road. It wouldn’t do to arrive with a parade, he said, and Rae and Wulf switched seats at the trailhead so he could drop her off and drive away.
The car’s tires slipped on the gravel in the dirt driveway as Wulf stopped the car in front of the hunkered-down house.
To Rae’s consternation, her father was sitting on the top rail of the fence beside the house, holding a rifle in the crook of his arm and reading a paperback book.
Good thing that Dieter and the guys had waited up the road. They might not have reacted well to a gun-toting welcome.
She suppressed the urge to jump out of the car and hug her dad because that would have encouraged him to hassle Wulf.
Her father hopped off the fence and landed heavily on the hard-packed dirt because the poor guy had arthritis in his knees from years of hard work. He advanced on the car.
Rae thought about her backpack under the car’s hood, wondering if she really needed her toothbrush and stuff or whether she could grab it later so Wulf could get out of there.
Wulf set the handbrake between them. “I’ll pick you up at three for the funeral.”
“I can’t. I’ll ride with my family. You should meet us there.” Rae pushed open the door and tried to step out of the car before her father could say anything to Wulf but he was already standing right there and opening the door for her. She loved her father, but she knew how he felt about boys and his little girl.
“Hey there.” Her father leaned down to peer in the door as Rae turned back to Wulf, worried about how this might go. “Is this here that fellow Dominic that Hester’s been telling us about?”
Dominic? Oh, Rae had told Hester that “Dom” was Wulf’s name when she had freaked out over seeing those newspaper pictures.
She said, “Yes, this is my friend, Dominic. He’s just a friend. He just drove me down here because he didn’t want a delicate creature such as myself subjected to the open highway.” Good Lord, even accounting for sarcasm, her redneck accent had come right back. “Dominic, this is my father, Zachariah Stone.”
Her father leaned into the car and offered his hand to Wulf. “Right charitable of you to drive her down, Dominic. Is that a Catholic name?” Her father said it casually and with friendly tones, despite what Rae knew was under it.
Wulf leaned over the handbrake to shake her father’s hand in front of Rae’s nose. “Pleased to meet you. I was baptized Lutheran.”
“Well, there’s that, then,” her father said. “But you are a man of faith?”
“I would say so,” Wulf said, which surprised Rae.
“He’s coming to escort me to the Celebration of Life,” Rae told her father, looking him in the eye. “But then he’s going right back to town. He’s not staying.”
“How’re you getting back to that college?”
“I’ll ride up with Hester tomorrow.”
“Well, that’s all right, then.”
Rae stepped out of the car to end that ridiculous conversation, but her father dodged her and stuck his head farther into the car. He was spry for someone with that much arthritis. “Where’re you going until the Celebration of Life, Dominic?”
From inside the car, Rae could just hear Wulf’s deep voice say with his British accent, “I had planned to find lunch.”
“The Hungry Bear’s food isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Come on in the house for a spell. We’re just about to eat. Plenty for company. It’s just simple fare, of course.”
“I would appreciate it.”
Rae froze. Dear Lord. Her family was going to get out the flood lamps and truth serum and give Wulf the third degree. Or else they would get out the Bibles and drag him down to the creek to baptize him or hold him under until he agreed to a shotgun wedding.
It hadn’t rained lately. The creek would be a dry ravine. They’d have to use the horse trough.
She leaned into the car beside her dad. “Dominic, don’t you have people waiting for you?”
“I’ll phone them. It would be nice to have a home-cooked meal.”
Anything served in her family home would be an albino-pale imitation of the grandiose meals that were served at his house. Rae kept herself from cringing.
She loved her family, but Pirtleville was very different than how Wulf must have been brought up in Switzerland.
Dustier.
Less stuff.
Simpler food.
More real, she was sure.
“Reagan,” her father said. “You run on inside and help your mother with lunch.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rae had gotten used to living outside the shadow of her father’s proprietary attitude. Maybe Rae should establish her autism clinic, A Ray of Light, in Cochise, the next town over and three times the size of Pirtleville. Pirtleville didn’t have enough autistic kids for the size of clinic that she wanted to build, anyway.
Rae went into the house to change into one of her long skirts and white blouses, as befitted an unmarried woman.