Owen's Daughter (30 page)

“Well, thanks anyway. I appreciate your time,” she said. “You headed back to college, Brad?”

“School is pointless. I’m a screenwriter,” he said. “Just paying the bills until my script gets green-lighted.”

“Good luck with that,” Skye said. She hoofed it out the patio and turned right on Guadalupe toward the river. The day had started out nice, but now clouds were moving in to gray up the sky. Duncan would say
, meaning “the rain has not yet commenced, but would soon.”

She didn’t know where Peter was. Probably getting daytime drunk. Well, she couldn’t stop him. She hoped it wouldn’t take a wreck for him to see the light. Especially with his mom already stressed out, ill and everything. It was Cottonwoods that made her take the time to deliver Peter to an AA meeting—Step Twelve: Spreading the message—and now she’d lost hours out of her day when she could have been searching for Gracie.

Skye hadn’t planned to revisit the scene of the crime, the retaining wall she’d plowed into, but here it was. It looked as if nothing had ever happened to it. She walked down the street to the wall, put her hands on it, and pushed. It was solid, probably reinforced with rebar, which only made her more ashamed at how fast she’d been driving.

She crossed the street and leaned over the metal railing to see the stream of water that was the Santa Fe River. It smelled kind of rank. You had to feel sorry for the river, which had been shunted this way and that instead of being allowed to go the way it wanted. First it had been diverted for the archbishop’s garden, and then the swamp on Burro Alley was inconvenient, so the marsh had to be routed out as well. On the river’s bank, she saw a few homeless guys, one sleeping or maybe passed out, hard to tell. No Rocky, though. And no Gracie. She racked her brain to think of potential places he could be. The place that kept coming back to her was Truth or Consequences. Sometimes, when he was sober, Rocky spoke of getting a few acres there, growing chiles, and breeding horses. She needed the Mercedes running and reliable so she could drive down there. Maybe her dad would lend her the gas money. Maybe she could host a few of those trail rides for Mr. Vigil and ask the riders for tips. She wouldn’t ask Peter. He probably had enough money to help her out, but although he’d been too impaired to notice the five dollars here and ten dollars there she’d handed out from his wallet last night, he’d put two and two together sooner or later.

She walked back to Sanbusco Market Center on Montezuma Avenue to get her dad’s truck. World Market still had free parking. That overpriced shoe place was still in business. There was the insane towering standing sculpture that held a truck the same year as her dad’s.

Not that it would do any good, but she wanted to shout,
Rocky, where are you?

Dolores

The boy, Peter, had a cell phone buzzing with messages inside the pocket of his blue trousers. Like every man I’ve ever seen, he has trouble with snakebite. He lay facedown on the floor of the casita, right where there had once been a garden for growing the three sisters: corn, beans, and squash. As if he were rock and the plants could grow around him. The dog sat beside him. I sat next to her. Soon, she was asleep, too.

As much as I try to shut myself down, I can’t sleep. But I don’t miss it, not really. I see them sleep and try to remember what that felt like. The cell phone began to buzz, like a tiny box of bad news.

I wanted to see the messages, so I caused the window to rattle, which made Peter turn over, which in turn made the phone fall out of his pocket. I studied the messages. Many of them were invitations from someone named Big Fish. He wanted the boy to upload or upgrade or play, play, play. A warning kept appearing:
Battery low 10%. Dismiss?
There was one message from Bonnie. It had a paper clip, indicating an attachment. The message read:
Atty. papers att. We both want the same thing. Sign & return ASAP.
Beep! Here came another message from Bonnie.
You are a terrible person to make me wait like this. Karma will get you.

Living humans are so mean to one another. I wondered if I should wake him up, but then I saw his eyelids flutter. Behind them, his eyeballs were busy, dreaming. The best thing about being who I am, besides talking to Aspen, who was once so close to the realm that she can still hear me, is entering human dreams. This was Peter’s:

He was inside her apartment, waiting. That feeling. Anticipation. Didn’t he message her every night just to tell her how much he loved her? Didn’t he fly to Chicago every weekend?

Including the one weekend she told him not to.

Bonnie was away on a weekend retreat for the crew of
Native America Calling
. He’d surprise her, fly out, and be there with dinner all made when she arrived home Sunday.

Waiting in her living room. The door opened: Bonnie with an Indian guy who looked like Russell Means, one of Bonnie’s heroes. Their arms linked. Signing. Kissing. Heading to the bedroom. Peter stood up. The Russell Means man stepped back from Bonnie, which made her notice Peter. Her face, shocked, mouth raw from kissing, lips frozen into an O. The man with her signed,
Sorry
. Peter signed back,
She’s all yours
,
and walked out the door. Then he was in Revolution Brewery, a bar, drunk. His phone vibrating across the bar like a puck in an air hockey game. Bonnie messaging him. Then he was flying back to D.C. He started calling ear surgeons. Found one that would see him that week. The surgeon who ended up doing his implant wrote on a note pad,
I don’t understand why you waited so long
.

Peter answered him:
Never had a good reason to until now.

Chapter 11

Here is the thing about being the mother, Margaret reminded herself bitterly as she scrutinized her refrigerator’s shelves that evening: No matter how heinous a day you’ve lived through, whether you’re feeling up to it or not, you still have to make dinner. You have to get up, get dressed, look in the fridge, and pull something together out of nothing. If it’s just you, you can eat Brussels sprouts sautéed in a slab of butter, with leftover breakfast bacon crumbled on top. Or half a loaf of bread, slice by slice of cinnamon toast. But when you have a child, even a grown one, you have to at least make pancakes, or the world order collapses. However, you can’t make pancakes for dinner twice in one week. You can’t make a soufflé without going next door to borrow eggs from your neighbor, who is likely having a much worse day than you. When you’re this tired, you can’t risk your neighbor asking you to babysit, when you’re not even up to chatting. Margaret stood at the stove while the gluten-free pasta boiled—a whole box, so there would be leftovers. I can’t cook like this every day, she thought.
It makes me too tired. Maybe she should make double batches of everything and freeze half for the days when she didn’t feel up to cooking. She had opened a jar of green chile and was grating carrots, zucchini, and Dubliner sharp cheddar, all of which would end up in a nice, filling casserole her son would inhale. Skye had borrowed Owen’s truck to drive out to Las Vegas—New Mexico, not Nevada—way out past Pecos and Ilfeld, to look for friends who might possibly know Rocky’s whereabouts. Owen had borrowed Margaret’s Land Cruiser to trailer his horses from Arroyo Seco, north of Taos. He might not be back for dinner, he said, so go ahead and eat if he wasn’t back by seven. Margaret couldn’t wait for the moment he returned, when they could retreat to her bedroom, shut the door, and act out scenes from all the Robyn Carr romance novels she’d read in the last decade.

Margaret melted some Irish butter into a saucepan, sprinkling in oat flour to make a roux. As soon as it began to brown, she added almond milk and watched it thicken. When it was consistent, she’d dump in the cheese and whisk it to perfection. She looked in two drawers for her favorite whisk but couldn’t find it.
That’s what happens when you have to share your space with someone. Everything gets put away wonky.
She tried a fork. The real effort was making sure the mixture turned glossy and smooth as you beat in the cheese, a sauce instead of lumps. Her arm was already tired. It would have been so much easier with the darn whisk.

She ladled the lumpy cheese sauce over the vegetables and pasta and put it in the oven to brown the crust. She was counting off the minutes when she heard the back door open. There stood Peter, looking as if he’d slept in his clothes, which he probably had. She could smell the alcohol on him before she turned around. “I made dinner,” she said, unable to stop signing just yet but catching herself when she did. “We need to talk, Peter. Not just about Owen, but about your drinking.”

He sighed and started to speak, but Margaret interrupted him. “Go wash your hands and I’ll dish this up. We’ll eat first.”

Echo was under the kitchen table, her usual spot when Margaret ate. Margaret watched Peter shuffle down the hall. He looked exhausted. She felt just as exhausted. Why did life pull these pranks with such exquisitely poor timing? Here’s your long-lost lover. Tonight’s entrée, MS, comes with a side order of grown-up son with a drinking problem. And for dessert? A new MS symptom: always feeling as if she needed to pee. Or was it a bladder infection? Sex that many times in one day had a price. She listened to the bathroom water running and waited for Peter to be done so she could use it.

They ate salad and pasta without talking. Peter got up and filled his water glass twice. When he finished his plate, she got up and took some chocolate mousse out of the fridge. It wasn’t homemade, but she just hadn’t had the energy. She squirted Reddi-wip on top and set it in front of Peter.

“I don’t think I can eat that,” he said.

“Oh, you’ll eat it. It might be from a box, but I still made it for you,” she said. “And while you’re eating, I have a few things to say.”

He stirred the whipped cream into the mousse, waiting.

“If you’re staying here, even in the guesthouse, there will be no more getting drunk. Apparently you made quite a shameful scene at La Choza last night.”

“So what?” he said. “Lots of people drink a little too much now and then. What’s the big deal?”

Margaret looked up. “Seriously? I live in this town. I go to La Choza. People talk. This morning you went out to an AA meeting, which must have helped tremendously, because you’ve been drinking all day. You didn’t use to drink like this, so why are you doing it now? Is it something new? Do you really think your work won’t be affected?”

He scowled. “Bonnie’s pregnant.”

Margaret put her hand to her heart. “Is the baby yours?”

“I don’t know whose it is, but it’s not mine.”

“So you didn’t tell me the whole truth about the divorce. Why not?”

“Guess I just didn’t want to admit the baby was real.”

Margaret put down her spoon. “Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

Peter wouldn’t meet her eyes. He picked up his spoon and began to shovel the mousse down his throat as if it were medicine. She sighed. “Whatever it is, I hope you’ll tell me in time. You can do the dishes. I’m going to take a bath. And stay out of my wine. If you want a drink, ask.”

Later that night, Margaret looked up at the vigas above her in the bedroom ceiling. Parts of the house went back two hundred years, and she suspected the vigas, hand-peeled log beams that came from standing dead spruce, were probably that old or older. Between the beams, white plaster arced from log to log. How difficult it must have been to create. The wind rattled her window as if it were storming outside.

“I could replace those windows with double panes,” Owen said. He was propped up against the pillows, Margaret in his arms. His husky voice was a creaky sound that made her think of the groaning of wooden ships.

She asked the question that preyed on her mind. “Why didn’t you write to me?”

After a minute, he answered, “Truthfully? I figured a clean break would free you up for a decent man, one who deserved you, could properly take care of you.”

“Owen. Listen to me. I can take care of myself. There is no man on earth who could take your place in my heart. What we had, what we
have
, is something special. Or didn’t you see things that way?”

“’Course I did. I still do.” He stroked her hand.

“Thank goodness for that.” She wondered what he thought of her fifty-year-old skin, which had become softer and looser in the decade since they’d parted. She’d cut her long hair, too, and there was a lot of gray in it now. Well, he was older, too, and there wasn’t time to lose. “Will you move in with me?”