Earth to Emily (19 page)

Luckily, the runway was clear and the temperature in the thirties the next morning. In the plane it was a nippy forty-five degrees, but as much as I hated the cold, I couldn’t have been happier. Jack put Snowflake’s kennel in the backseat, and when Ava suggested that she ride up front as a first-timer in a Skyhawk, he told her that he was putting me in shotgun so he could hold my hand. Which he did, off and on, for most of the three‑and‑a‑half‑hour flight. My arm actually got tired from holding it up to reach his, but I didn’t care. I wouldn’t have cared if I had to flap my arms to get us there. I was that happy.

White blanketed the landscape below us most of the way, but the sky was clear and a vivid blue, like the Caribbean Sea around Ava’s home island, St. Marcos. It matched my buoyant mood. As we began our descent over the Sierra Blancas toward the tiny strip on Wrong Turn Ranch, however, the clouds grew thicker. Soon we were cruising along above an endless blanket of gray cotton balls. Jack had to let go of my hand, and his face was intense, his eyes locked onto the instrument panel. My head started to ache.

The pitch of the engine changed and we started descending. In seconds, we’d bumped and bounced into the pit of gray cotton balls, and they clung to us, obscuring our vision. The ground could be coming up on us fast, or a mountain peak could be right in front of us. Despite the temperature in the plane, a cold sweat ran down my back. I snuck a look at Jack, and saw he was sweating, too. The gray cottony clouds seemed to go on forever, but finally we slipped out the bottom of them. Then I saw a mountaintop poking through another layer of gray cotton below. These were ominous, darker, more like mounds of ash. I put my head down and started whispering a prayer: “Dear God, if you could help us land safely, I promise to be nicer to my mother.”

Before I got to
amen
, a hand tapping my shoulder startled me. I whipped around. It was Ava. I leaned toward her as far as I could, as she leaned toward me. Her dark skin seemed to have a gray-green undertone. I couldn’t hear her, but I read her lips.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

I gave her a thumbs-up sign. Just then, everything around us went dark. The Skyhawk bounced as it hurtled across the sky and toward the earth. I turned back around and clutched the armrests. The turbulence shook us so hard that I lost my sensation of up and down and sideways, with the only light coming from the instrument panel inside the plane. I could barely see Jack, only enough to know he was keeping his eyes on the dashboard controls. Nausea came over me, and my mouth went dry. The plane bucked violently, and my seatbelt cut into my lap as we dropped straight down. I felt my mouth stretch open and my ears pop. If I was screaming, I couldn’t hear myself.

But as suddenly as we’d started shaking and dropping, we stopped falling and floated out of the clouds. The ground was below us, maybe five hundred feet, and I could see the orange windsock that marked the runway at the ranch ahead. I wiped sweat from my forehead and noticed my hands were shaking as hard as the Skyhawk had moments ago. I felt a nervous vibration in my throat.

I studied the ground and took deep, calming breaths. The snow here was only patchy, and it looked like someone had plowed the runway, because it was completely clear. Those were good things. Everything would be all right.

The plane’s wheels hit the dirt. Fifteen minutes later, we had loaded an unsteady Ava along with Snowflake and our bags into the Suburban—which took twice as long as usual since we’d brought presents for half of Tularosa—had fueled and hangared the plane and were on our way to the ranch house. I turned my phone on and it searched for a signal. When it found it, it made a series of burps and whistles I’d never heard before. Today. Today I was resetting all the dang tones into something recognizable. I read the screen. Three voice mails. Six text messages. Twelve emails. I viewed the list of numbers from which I had voice mails first. All three calls were from an unknown number. I didn’t play the unknown-number game. Telemarketers, probably. I put my phone down, then, worried about Betsy being snatched by Immigration, I picked it back up and pressed play anyway, then put it to my ear.

A man said, “Emily, Merry Christmas.”

I pressed my fist to my mouth, hard. A gravelly voice from the past. A voice I hadn’t heard in nearly a decade from a person I hadn’t seen in fifteen years. But I would recognize this voice until the day I died, even though it sounded older. It was a voice that turned me into a child who’d been left, again, in a split second. My father, Johnny Phelps.

His message kept playing. “I know you’re probably surprised to hear from me. I would really like to talk to you and explain what happened. I’ve missed you more than I can say, and I love you.”

The voice mail ended. Swallowing down bile, I pressed play for the next one.

“Uh, I forgot to tell you how to get hold of me. Please call me as soon as you can. There’s some things you need to know, not just for me, but because they’re important for you.” He recited a phone number.

The voice mail ended. I put my phone in my lap and breathed in and out a few times. I wanted to get the last one over with, so I looked down, and fat teardrops rained on the iPhone screen. I had to wipe them away with my sweater before I could play the last voice mail. I felt Jack’s eyes on me, and he reached out and took my left hand.

“Emily, one more thing. If you could please talk to Jack, tell him it wasn’t me that took that stuff, I would appreciate it. I’ve made my mistakes, but I don’t take another fellow’s things. Thank you, Sweet Pea. I love you.”

Sweet Pea? He had the nerve to call me Sweet Pea when I hadn’t heard from him in years? And what was this about Jack? My Jack?

I jerked my hand away from My Jack and pressed play again. Listened again. Pressed play again. Listened again. There was no denying what I’d heard. My father knew Jack. Jack knew Dad.

Well, Merry frickin’ Christmas to me.

I dropped the phone in my lap then my face in my hands and sobbed.

Jack stood on the other side of the door to my bathroom. “I’m sorry. Your dad made me promise to let him tell you. I shouldn’t have waited this long.”

I was mad enough to kill him, possibly madder than I’d ever been at anyone in my whole life. I sunk into the bubble bath up to my eyeballs, wanting to tune him out, but wanting even more to hear what he had to say. I would have to wait and kill him when he was done.

I eased my ears and mouth out of the water and hollered. “You should have told me the first second you knew!”

Jack’s voice grew frustrated. “Looking at a picture of you and your dad in a family album while sitting in the living room with your mother, you want me to say, ‘Hey, isn’t that Johnny Phelps? I put him in the slammer’?”

“I didn’t even know he was alive, much less that he was in prison!”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“You found out soon enough. You could have told me then.”

“I needed to figure some things out first.”

“What?”

“Things.”

He kept talking, but I sunk beneath the water again where I didn’t have to hear him. He could have all the good reasons in the world but the fact remained that I deserved to know my father was alive. I deserved to know where he was. Jack could have found a way to tell me, but he didn’t. I came back up for air.

Jack said, “Are you even listening?”

“I’m not sure. What did you say?”

There was a thrump against the door, and when he spoke his voice sounded different, farther away. I pictured him, leaning against the door, arms probably crossed, eyes on the ground twelve inches in front of his boots. My heart tugged a little, and I smacked it away without mercy.

“I said I’ve been trying to tell you for a week. Things kept getting in the way.”

“A week? Seven twenty-four-hour days? And you couldn’t find any time in them?”

“It’s not like you tell me everything, like who that guy was you were talking to at church last night.”

I submerged again. The things I ran out of time to tell him and the things he couldn’t find time to tell me were so different they weren’t even events in the same rodeo. They were different like bull riding from ballet. The silence of the water thrummed in my ears. I felt my long hair floating, touching my arms. I came up for a breath.

“So tell me now.”

“This would be easier if you’d let me in.”

“I’m in the bathtub.”

“I won’t look. I can’t talk to you through a closed door.”

“In a minute.”

“Okay.” Something started scratching against the door. “Snowflake, no,” he said in an alpha voice. The scratching stopped. “I met your father ten years ago. In Alamogordo. After he was arrested for murder.”

“Murder? My dad is a murderer?” I jumped to my feet, and water sloshed over the sides. I didn’t care.

“He’s a good guy that got caught up in a bad situation.”

“What kind of bad situation?” I sank slowly back into the tub. More water sloshed out.

“He should be the one to tell you.” Jack paused, waiting for me to let him off the hook, I assumed, but I didn’t. “He got injured and couldn’t rodeo, had money trouble, picked up odd jobs. Got crossways with someone he worked with.”

Oh no. I squeezed my hands into fists.

“They got in a fight. He killed the guy with a broken beer bottle. Your dad said it was self-defense, but it didn’t look good.”

I became aware that I was rocking back and forth in the water, arms wrapped around myself, keening softly.

Jack whispered, his voice sounding agonized, too. “Are you okay?”

I made myself stop the noise. I hated that he heard me. I hated being this weak, this vulnerable. I snapped, “Just finish.”

Again, I heard a noise like he turned, and then his voice was louder. “I was the prosecutor. He had a shit court-appointed attorney, but no priors, so I took a plea for involuntary manslaughter. He got out in November.”

“So where’s he been since he got out?”

“Here.”

“Here where?”

“Wrong Turn Ranch.”

“He was here at Wrong Turn Ranch?”

“Up until two weeks ago, yes. Working for Mickey for a month.”

Mickey knew, too. And Laura. Half of Otero County probably knew. My head pounded, boom, boom, boom, like a mallet against a drum. My father, who I hadn’t seen in fifteen years, had been working for Mickey. But that meant he worked for Jack, since it was Jack’s family that owned Wrong Turn Ranch.
My father worked for Jack
.
Until two weeks ago
. And now Dad was calling me, wanting me to make peace between Jack and him.

My lips felt numb when I spoke. “Jack, why did he leave?”

The water had grown cold in the tub. I twisted the left spigot. As hot water poured in, I heard Ava’s voice. I moved to the end of the tub nearest the door, careful to avoid scalding myself, but trying to catch what she said. She didn’t whisper, so it wasn’t too hard.

“Good evening, Jack. Emily okay?” Again, her island accent seemed so strange to me, first in Texas, then in New Mexico.

“She’s upset with me. She’ll be out soon.”

“I put dinner on, all right? Take your time. You two taking care of me, let me do something for you.”

“We have a big group tonight. It’s too much.”

“How many?” Ava’s voice said.

“Nine.”

I added up names in my head. Jack, Ava, Emily, Mickey and Laura, Greg, Farrah, Judith, and me. That was eight.

“Who’s number nine?” I blurted.

“Uh, Collin.”

I shouted, unable to contain myself, and turned off the water at the same time. “What? Collin is coming to dinner? All the way from Taos, on Christmas? I thought you hated Collin?”

“I got over it. I asked him for help on this smuggling thing.”

“Oh. My. God.”

“He had to be down to Las Cruces Monday anyway. He’s stopping by.”

I heard Ava’s voice again. “Collin? My girl Katie’s brother Collin live in New Mexico. That Collin?”

“The same.”

“Nine people then. Can I cook anything I find in your kitchen?”

“Uh, yeah, and there’s several very well-stocked freezers in the garage.”

“I on it.”

This was perfect. Collin, who had messed up my life last time I saw him, coming tonight, when my life had gotten back on track only to tank again. The competing scents of bath products—vanilla soap, coconut shampoo, cinnamon-apple bubble bath, freesia conditioner—suddenly made me feel nauseous. I lifted the tub drain and dried myself off in fast, rough strokes. I donned a robe from a hook on the back of the door. I wrapped the tie around my waist and knotted it. I pulled open the door, and Jack fell into me, pulling my robe open a few inches as he caught himself. Snowflake jumped in the air and put her front paws on my shin.

“Jack!” I jerked it closed.

“Sorry.”

“I’m getting dressed now. I’ll talk to you later.”

He looked at the ground and his posture was so hangdog it was almost comical, except that this wasn’t funny, and I wasn’t laughing. He turned and left, with a dejected Snowflake behind him.

***

The downside of throwing Jack out of my room, I discovered later, was that he went straight to the kitchen to cook with Ava. Her lilt and flirty laugh rang through the house. I pictured her displaying her assets to their greatest advantage for him, and it raised my hackles. It wasn’t like me to be so insecure and jealous, and I hated it in myself, but there it was, green-eyed, shrewlike, and on the rampage, even though Ava was only being kind and thoughtful. Well, I could do penance later. Right now I
hated
that I’d gotten my hair wet and that I had to waste the time drying it when Jack had her fun-loving nature and sexy smile as a contrast to my anger and harsh words. Which didn’t change the fact that I was mad at him—very, very mad—and that I wasn’t sure if I could ever trust him. He had a disturbing habit of withholding important information, and this time it wasn’t his secrets he kept from me, but mine. I jerked a wide-toothed comb through my tangles. It hurt.
Good.

I went into the bedroom and pulled warm clothes out of my suitcase. More voices had joined Jack and Ava. Young voices. Greg and Farrah? I tried to muster up a smile, but my mouth wouldn’t do it yet. Still, it would be great to see them. I slipped into Levi’s and a purple mock turtleneck, then shoved my feet into fur-lined Crocs my mother had given me for Christmas. I’d never owned—or wanted—anything like them. But they were mine now, so I was going to give them a try. I grabbed my phone and headed back into the bathroom. I flipped my hair upside down and aimed the blow-dryer at it with one hand and scrolled through my missed texts and emails with the other.

The first few were from a 575 area-code number I didn’t recognize.

The first:
Mickey and Laura got us smartphones for Christmas!
I wasn’t sure if it came from Greg or Farrah, but the text included a selfie of the two of them in front of the Wrong Turn Ranch sign out by the highway. IF YOU’RE HERE, YOU’VE MADE A WRONG TURN. HIGHWAY 70 IS BEHIND YOU. I loved that sign. I loved those kids.

And a second text from an unfamiliar 575 number:
Laura said she can teach me how to be a jockey.
Ah, Farrah. So the other number had to be Greg. I had another from Farrah, too:
A colt was born in a manger this morning so we named it Jesus. But pronounced in Spanish, so it’s not sacrilegious: Hay-SEUSS
. I couldn’t help but smile at that. My mother would be appalled.

I typed one-handed, very slowly. I texted back to Greg:
Looking good. Merry Christmas. C U soon!
To Farrah, I sent:
Amazing, she’s great. Cool re colt!
Unfortunately, I knew it was doubtful that Farrah would spend enough time at Wrong Turn Ranch to make the jockey dream happen, but maybe if the seed was planted, she could pursue it somehow, wherever she ended up. It made my heart ache to think about it. I’d never imagined adoption before Betsy, and I’d never considered older kids even since then. These two needed a home, though. I could continue to give Farrah access to this life, and to Laura. I felt disloyal to Betsy even thinking it, but I knew in my heart of hearts that getting her was a long shot. Even if I did, it didn’t mean I couldn’t adopt other kids, too. It was a lot to take on by myself, though. I chewed on a hangnail and scrolled.

The other four texts were in a group string with Wallace and Nadine. The topic was Betsy. I chomped harder and lower on the hangnail.

Boss won’t let me take the day to go to the consulate ‘for a wild goose chase.’ SHIT.
Wallace.

Let me see if I can get time off.
Nadine.

DOUBLE SHIT
.
Polo Club short staffed because of holidays. They won’t let me go.
Nadine again.

And a new text, in the last half hour:
Emily, could you go? I can’t promise they’ll work with you, but I could get a notarized power of attorney for you to act on my behalf. Or something. Ask Jack what he thinks.
Wallace.

I turned off the blow-dryer and set it on the corner of the countertop, flipping my head and hair into an upright posture as I doused it with hairspray, the first of my usual two applications—one at half-dry, one at full-dry. I typed fast, and my iPhone autocorrected me into nonsense. I erased the nonsense and tried again, slower, breathing deeply to calm myself:
I’ll be back from NM on Sunday and can go to the consulate, no problem. Hate this! Are we absolutely sure they won’t come for her sooner?

I stared at the phone, willing a response from Wallace. Nothing from him, but another from Nadine:
Another one of our dancers is being hassled by some cops.

That made three: the woman who disappeared last summer, Ivanka, and now this woman. I texted back:
Oh no! Did she say who they are?

Nadine:
I heard it’s that Asian cop Wu and some redheaded guy.

Some redheaded guy. Burrows. My hands shook, and I clasped them in my lap and stared into my own eyes in the mirror.
Get a grip. Do
something,
something constructive, something distracting, something positive
. But what? Betsy’s face flashed in my mind, as it so often did. I wanted so badly to make it better for her. I couldn’t stop the Immigration Customs and Enforcement folks, but I was here in New Mexico, and I could look for her backpack. I had all day tomorrow, and Saturday, too, so that was what I was going to do. That, and ask Jack about my dad’s last voice mail, which somehow I had forgotten about in our last conversation. Two sharp raps at my door tore my attention away from the phone and my thoughts.

Expecting Jack, I was terse. “I’ll be down when I’m ready.”

Farrah’s voice answered me, meek and chastened, and I regretted my harpy tone immediately. “Okay, I just wanted to say hi.”

“Wait!” I trotted to the door and threw it open.

The girl before me in a green Christmas sweater looked like the midnight version of Cathy Rigby as Peter Pan. She smiled and I opened my arms for a hug. She stepped into them, barely enough to fill them up. The waif couldn’t weigh more than ninety pounds. I released her but held on to her upper arms as Snowflake whirled in happy circles at her feet.

“How have things been?”

She lit up like a sparkler. “Awesome.”

“I knew they would be.” I let go of her and pointed at my hair. “I’m almost done. Tell everyone I’ll be down in five?”

“Okay.”

I closed the door and went back to the bathroom. The first thing I did was check my phone. Still no answer from Wallace about Immigration. Ugh. I flipped my hair over. I turned the dryer on and tried to turn my brain off.