The Mirror (5 page)

Then Shay was crushed in the arms of Brandy's father. "Sorry about the mirror. We'll send it up. You work at being a good wife now, little one, and put to rest all these rumors about McCabe's daughter having a tile loose." He kissed her cheek, his breath strong with tobacco. Turning his back, he drew a handkerchief from a pocket under his coattail. "Take her away, Strock."

Brandy's brother lifted Shay to a hard wooden seat beside Corbin. "Good-bye, Bran. I'll be up to see you when I can."

Corbin slapped long reins down on the horses' rumps. The wagon moved forward.

In a state of shock, Shay looked back at Sophie crying on her husband's shoulder, at Elton standing forlornly by the ditch of running water ... at the mirror without its crack sitting on the porch.

Elton raised his hand in a halfhearted wave.

6

Shay watched the Gingerbread House grow smaller. The sad grouping of Brandy's family still had not moved from the street.

Finally she turned to face Boulder, Colorado--most of which wasn't there.

Locked in Brandy's body, she felt horribly afloat now, away from the house and the mirror.

The wide brim of Corbin Strock's hat hid the upper portion of his face. But the set of his jaw below was grim.

"This doesn't make much sense you know," she heard herself say in a small voice. "My mother's maiden name wasn't Strock." Her uncles, Remy and Dan, weren't named Strock either. Shay peered under Corbin's hat brim. "And you aren't the man in the wedding picture in the hall."

"That's because Mrs. McCabe's name was Euler before she married, and we didn't take a wedding picture." He turned the horses to start down the hill. Corbin had the same lazy but careful way of speaking as the McCabes. It wasn't a Southern drawl, nor was it the speech affected by TV cowboys. It was just unhurried, the vowels drawn out, the consonants distinct.

He
thinks Brandy's crazy too.
Whatever Shay said would be chalked up to that. And there was no place to run. The occupants of the Gingerbread House would refuse to take her back--for her own good.

Over rooftops and low trees she could see the hill on which sat two or three buildings of the University of Colorado, out on barren prairie, alone and aloof. It bore little resemblance to the campus, crowded with buildings and trees, surrounded by city, that she'd attended until a few weeks ago.

This slip in time couldn't last. Shay would go back to Marek and to school. It had been a freak thing.

Small wooden houses, many unpainted and on large lots. Outhouses and orchards. An occasional cow, horses, chickens. A rangy dog at every lot to run into the street, bark at the horses, chase wagon wheels. The horses plodded on, paying no attention, their tails lashing flies. Corbin turned the buckboard onto Pearl Street, which was no longer blocked by an elegant downtown shopping mall.

Whenever a carriage or wagon passed too close, flies rose from piles of horse dung that dotted the dirt street.

"People are staring at us." Women with small waists and big hips, long hot skirts. Men in loose clothing with smirks to match. Everyone wearing hats. Not a bare arm to be seen in the summer's heat.

"Don't stare back," Corbin ordered and stopped the buckboard in front of a brick building where Shay'd clerked the summer before. Painted on the brick above the second story now were the words H
ARDWARE
& S
TOVES.

Corbin tied the reins to a metal ring in a miniature stone obelisk and* disappeared into the store.

Shay wanted to slouch in the heat but the corset wouldn't permit it. Removing the short suit jacket, she wished she could take off the long-sleeved blouse under it, wondered if she dared remove the hat and decided against it.

If I had somewhere to go, now would be the time for a getaway.

Smells of horse and dust instead of exhaust, and tar that oozed in the sun between great slabs of flagstone sidewalk. A vicious dogfight in the middle of the street. Overhead, a forest of power and telephone wires hanging on coarse tree-trunk poles stripped of bark and branches. A little boy in knee britches staring with round, frightened eyes.

Shay made a face and he ran off. She found an ironed, folded handkerchief smelling of lavender in the beaded bag and wiped moisture from Brandy's forehead.

A man with a broom swept dirt from metal rails in the streets.

Boisterous laughter across the street and three men emerged from a doorway. The sign above read, W
ERELY'S
S
ALOON.
They stopped when they saw her. "Looks like Strock made it to the wedding after all, gentlemen. Pay up," one of them said.

Shay turned away in embarrassment to find the little boy peering around the corner of the hardware store and the man with the broom grinning up at her.

What's the matter, never seen a crazy woman before?
What if she had to remain Brandy McCabe Strock?

A trolley car approached on the metal tracks as Corbin appeared carrying a wooden box. Two men came behind him with a larger one that resembled a coffin. The wagon creaked and jerked as they loaded it and then her "husband" was beside her, urging the horses around the corner.

J
ACOB
F
AUS,
G
ENERAL
B
LACKSMITHING--
where there should have been a bank.

Panic, curiosity, fear, despair, excitement . . . Shay ran the gamut. Brandy's body tightened in response.

A series of railroad tracks instead of a boulevard. They turned toward the mountains. W
ATER
S
T.--
a sign nailed to a telephone pole.

Where the public library had spanned Boulder Creek stood a square brick house surrounded by a picket fence.

Corbin pulled the wagon to a stop. Shay swallowed a lump. A small sign in the window, M
EN
T
AKEN IN AND
D
ONE FOR.

"Is this where you live?"

Corbin's face grayed. "I don't find your jokes funny, Brandy." He reached into the smaller of the two boxes, removed a package tied with thick twine and jumped to the ground.

A woman rose from a wicker chair in the shade of the porch and moved gracefully toward the gate to meet him. Here was someone who looked comfortable, her sleeves mere ruffles at the shoulder, her dress of thin flowered material.
If she's wearing a corset, I'll eat it.

"Well, Corbin?" Her hair frizzed around her face, her voice low.

"Marie." He handed her the package and they talked so quietly Shay couldn't hear. But Marie's eyes laughed at her over Corbin's shoulder.

The flash of another bare arm in the shadows of the porch ... a woman's face in an open upstairs window.

A row of lopsided shanties along the creek to either side of the house. A more imposing building across the street--the sign here reading B
OARDINGHOUSE FOR
F
ANCY
L
ADIES.
Shay sat up, taking a new interest in similar houses and shanties lining the creek.
This is the red-light district and that's a whorehouse and Marie is a
. . .

Shay laughed aloud and drew a look of surprise from Marie and one of consternation from Corbin. He rejoined her, touched his hat to Marie and slapped down the reins.

Shay turned to wave good-bye to the woman standing at the gate. Marie hesitated, then waved back.

Corbin hissed and forced the horses into a trot. "I don't know if you are really silly or just acting, Mrs. Strock, but whichever, it looks as Thora K. has her work cut out for her."

"Who's Thora K.?" Something familiar about that name.

"Your mother-in-law, as I told you last Sunday. And I'm warning you now, don't try none of your foolishness on Thora K." "You drive a bride of one hour up to a whorehouse to deliver a present to a prostitute and then have the nerve to look at me as if I were dirt."

"And you wave at her friendly-like."

"Well,
you
obviously slept with her last night. You didn't even introduce us . . . as if I didn't exist. You're blushing." She'd never seen a full-grown man do that.
He's human, Shay, be careful. He's not just a dummy in a museum.

"Ladies don't talk of these things," he said with a finality worthy of John McCabe.

They'd angled northwest and were back on Pearl Street heading toward the mouth of Boulder Canyon. Pulling to the side of the road, Corbin took a coil of rope from under the seat and began tying the boxes and her grandmother's trunk to the wagon, his movements brisk and sure, powerful hands jerking knots so tightly the rope made snapping sounds. Shay winced. Somehow she had to get this man on her side until she could escape this body. And she'd better do something before tonight.

A whistle, the sounds of hoof and harness, and four horses came up from behind, pulling an open wagon. T
ALMAGE
& L
ILLY
S
TAGE
written along its side, six men on three rows of seats within--holding onto their hats and the side bars that held up a canvas top. They disappeared into the canyon, leaving Shay and Corbin to choke on dust.

Corbin slapped his hat against his leg, removed his coat and handed it to her. They started after the stage.

"Do you live in the mountains?" With the present level of conveniences, that sounded bleak.

"I live in Nederland, as you well know."

"Nederland . . ." She'd been there with Marek just last Sunday. They'd picnicked by the reservoir, talked of the wedding, planned their honeymoon in Aspen. Marek seemed a million years away.

A railroad across the creek that hadn't been there last Sunday. Boulder Creek, twice as big and ferocious as she'd ever seen it. A narrow dusty trail that couldn't possibly accommodate two horses and a wagon.

"Put your skirts down, Brandy!" His voice was husky with shock.

"It's hot in here," she pleaded, but slid the skirt back till it reached her shoes. It was like a tent, under the sun, trapping the hot air against her legs. How had women survived these little cruelties?
If I stay here, I will be crazy.

Occasional spray from the creek was cool at least. The horses moved so slowly. How

different from Marek's sleek Porsche, which propelled them to Nederland on smooth

wide pavement in less than an hour. "It must take all day to get there at this rate."

"It'll likely be dusk."

Heaps of rock piled to forever. Giant boulders that the road merely skirted. Boulder Canyon simply did not resemble itself. And rough log bridges, the road crossing and recrossing the creek to avoid the least obstacle.

Shay held onto the seat with both hands, closed her eyes in tortuous places, grew stiff and hot and hungry. The openness of the wagon and the narrow insignificance of the road made looming canyon walls appear more gigantic than she'd known them.

The railroad veered off up another canyon and the road to Nederland worsened, whole stretches of it supported by rocks piled against the bank below, a series of logs laid across mud in damp places. No springs in the buckboard. The horses sweated and strained in their harnesses, carrying Shay farther from the Gingerbread House . . . and the wedding mirror.

The man beside her seemed unconcerned with the tedium and discomfort of the trip.
I really rattled his cage by waving at old wise-eyed Marie, but he seems to have recovered.
Perhaps he was more easygoing than she'd judged him. Shay knew she'd misjudged the others, probably because of their strangeness. In their ways, all three members of Brandy's family loved her. She saw again the desolate trio in front of the Gingerbread House.

Any man the size and age of Corbin Strock who could blush had to have feelings, had to be reachable. The problem was how to go about it.

Shay took as deep a breath as the sticky corset would allow. "Corbin, I have something to tell you. I've got to tell someone, to straighten this thing out."

His body went rigid, his hands drew in on the reins and his foot jammed the primitive brake on the side of the wagon. "God, woman, you're not with child?"

"With chi. . . oh, you mean pregnant. No, it's not... I mean, I don't think so."

His face turned white, then red.

"Now, don't get all torqued up. For all I know, Brandy's as virginal as they come. What I want to tell you is . . . and this will sound freaky, but . . . I'm not crazy, Corbin, and I'm not Brandy." His interruption had flustered her. She had a drowning feeling but went on quickly before she lost her nerve. "I think I'm her granddaughter or rather she's my ... let me start again. And you must listen because this is true and I need help."