Читать книгу Crossing Nevada - Jeannie Watt - Страница 11

CHAPTER FOUR

THE ENCOUNTER WITH the trespassing girls had left Tess feeling edgy and unsettled. She tried to go back to her internet search, but eventually gave up and sketched, which she usually enjoyed more than being reminded of how hard it was going to be to earn a living. But today not so much. Her eye was off, the designs lackluster. She finally tossed the pad aside and told the dogs it was time for a walk. She needed to move.

Who was she kidding? Moving wouldn’t solve anything. What she needed was someone to talk to, someone to pour out her mishmash of fears and concerns to. Someone to ask for advice.

But she had no one, so physical activity would have to suffice. A car on the county road slowed as she approached her field and Tess automatically froze in place, even though she recognized the car as the one driven by the dark-haired woman who lived at the ranch across the road. The wife of the cowboy who’d wanted to lease the pasture, no doubt. The rather fine-looking cowboy.

Tess touched her injured cheek, then lowered her hand, closed her fingers. There’d be no men in her immediate future—fine-looking or otherwise—and not because her face was ugly. Tess would be alone because her life was ugly.

As soon as the car turned into the driveway opposite her own, Tess climbed through the fence. Her path was always the same—across the field on the other side of her driveway, the one the cowboy had wanted to lease, and toward the mountains that flanked the west side of the valley. Once in the field, she was far enough away from the roads to feel safe, so she allowed the dogs to run. Heaven knew they spent enough time cooped up in the house with her. They needed the opportunity to stretch their legs, run and do dog stuff.

Tess walked through the knee-deep grass, the breeze at her back. The sun was starting to sink behind the mountains, casting long rays across the valley and enveloping her in golden light. A couple of months ago she might have closed her eyes and raised her face to enjoy the warmth of the rays on her skin. Let her cares go. Of course, a couple months ago she also walked fearlessly wherever she wanted, within reason. Being raised as she’d been, in a tough neighborhood where one learned to watch their back, Tess had felt as if she could handle anything.

Well, she’d been wrong. She hadn’t been able to handle a surprise attack in the parking area of her apartment building.

Tess continued across her field until she came to the boundary fence. The dogs were already hunting in the field on the other side, so she lifted the top barbwire strand and eased through the fence.

The sun sank lower, deepening the gold cast of the light. Deep purple shadows stretched toward her from the base of the mountain. It would be dark soon, but Tess continued to walk until she came to the very center of the field of tall grass and there she stood, the wind ruffling her hair, and watched the last sliver of the sun disappear behind the mountains.

Was this the way her life would continue? Standing alone in the middle of nowhere? A study in solitude?

Until Eddie screwed up and went back to prison, yes.

Tess grabbed a handful of grass and yanked, twisting the blades around her hand before she turned into the wind and called the dogs to start for home. Detective Hiller didn’t know Eddie like she did. Yeah, he might be working at the car wash and showing up for his meetings, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have someone looking for her. She’d never known Eddie to give up, but she had known him to do some sadistic things. One guy had tried to encroach on his territory shortly before she’d run away and Eddie had not only beat the crap out of him—he’d arranged to have the guy’s trailer house torched while he was doing it.

Because of all the chemicals inside, the house had practically vaporized and the newspaper account had mentioned how fortunate it was that the owner hadn’t been home. Tess’s mouth twisted at the thought. Eddie had gotten such a kick out of that. He’d torn the article out and taped it to the fridge.

The clouds hung low and dark on the southeastern horizon, flat-bottomed and threatening as Tess headed across the field to the safety of her house. Walking toward the sunny mountains, she hadn’t realized how quickly the storm had been moving in. When she reached the fence to her property she climbed through, then called the dogs again. Blossom shot past her, scooting under the wire before she stopped to grin at her, tongue lolling out the side of her mouth. Tess looked back and saw Mac hot on the trail of some small animal.

“Mac! Get over here! Hier!”

The dog reversed course and headed toward Tess at a dead run. Halfway to the fence he gave a startled yelp as he disappeared into the tall grass. Less than a second later he reappeared, bounding up, and continued racing toward her.

Tess crouched down as the dog approached, ruffling the fur on either side of his neck when he obediently sat in front of her. His side was covered with moist dirt, which she brushed off. He must have fallen into a ditch or a hole hidden by the grass. Unseen danger. Exactly what she was trying to avoid.

“Let’s go home,” she said, and the dogs trotted ahead of her. Mac limped slightly. He kept up with Blossom, but his head bobbed up and down as he moved, making Tess wonder just how badly he’d hurt himself. The next time she walked, she’d keep the dogs closer and stay out of that part of the field.

A lightning bolt danced along the distant mountains as Tess mounted her porch steps. Another thunderstorm. Just what she needed to add to her unsettled mood.

The low rumble of thunder was followed by a gust of warm wind that lifted her hair as she unlocked the door. Once upon a time she’d loved thunderstorms.

Not so much anymore.

* * *

“COME ON, ELIZABETH. You’re not afraid of thunder.” Zach snapped on the light in his daughter’s tiny second-story bedroom as he walked inside. It was the third time she’d called him in the past hour. The first time she’d said the thunder bothered her, but he wasn’t buying it since she usually had her nose pressed to the window, watching the lightning. The second time she’d asked him to lower the blinds.

So was this an attention-getting device? Did she just want some company? Whichever it was, Zach’s patience was growing thin. He was tired.

“It’s not the thunder,” Lizzie admitted in a small voice. A low rumble punctuated her words.

“Then what is it?” he asked softly.

“Trespassing.”

“Trespassing? What about it?” He’d made it clear that his daughters were never to cross the neighbor’s property again, despite Darcy’s heated protests about the land not being posted.

Lizzie twisted the edge of the blanket between her fingers. “What happens to you if you trespass?”

Zach knelt down next to the bed so they could be eye to eye. “The sheriff will warn you not to do it again.”

Lizzie’s forehead wrinkled. “But...her face.”

“Those scars did not come from trespassing, Lizzie.” He didn’t know how on earth they could and he was pissed that Tess would have told his girls that.

“Then why did she say it?” Lizzie’s eyes were huge.

Good question. Why scare a six-year-old? “My best guess is that she was trying to make a point. Her face didn’t get hurt because she trespassed,” he repeated firmly. “Your face will not get hurt if you trespass.” He could only imagine what scenarios Lizzie had been conjuring up in her young mind. “Even though you shouldn’t trespass,” he added for the sake of consistency.

Lizzie sniffed. “How do you know?”

“Because that’s not what happened to the lady. Her scars look like they came from a car accident, honey.”

Lizzie twisted the edge of her blanket between her small hands. “She was lying?”

“In a big way.” Zach reached down to smooth a few pale reddish-gold strands of hair off her forehead. In Lizzie’s limited experience, adults didn’t lie. She had so much to learn. “Now go to sleep, kiddo. There is absolutely nothing to worry about.”

“Can Benny sleep with me?”

“Benny stinks to high heaven right now. Trust me, you don’t want him in your bed or you’ll smell like a ranch dog. You don’t want that, do you?” A wavering smile touched his daughter’s lips and she shook her head. “Benny’s keeping guard on the porch,” Zach said, pulling Lizzie’s blankets up a little closer to her chin. “He’ll bark if there’s anything to worry about.” Damn, he hoped the dog didn’t bark. He needed some sleep.

Lizzie’s smile faded away. She wrapped her arms around Zach’s neck, pulling herself against him. He put a hand on her back and held her for a moment, smelling the strawberry bubble bath Emma had given her for her birthday. Then he got back to his feet and Lizzie snuggled deeper into the covers, looking so small.

“Liz, you know I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. Right?”

She nodded silently and Zach smiled. “Good. Now get some sleep. Tia will drive you to school tomorrow.”

Darcy’s door was open and the light was on when he walked past her room a few seconds later. He paused in the doorway and she looked up from where she was reading in bed.

“If Liz yells again, I’ll go,” she offered.

“I think she’ll be okay,” Zach said. “I should just let Benny sleep with her.”

“Ewww. Have you smelled him?”

“You guys going to wash him this weekend?”

Darcy let out a heavy sigh. “I guess.”

“Just how scary was this lady?” Zach asked. The girls had poured the story out shortly after he got home but it had been jumbled, told from three different points of view. At the time Zach had brushed aside the details and got to the meat of the matter—his girls shouldn’t have been on Tess O’Neil’s land and they weren’t to go back again. He didn’t want his daughters to have anything to do with her.

“I wasn’t scared.” Darcy’s lips twisted a little. “But I was kind of shocked. It took me a minute to realize she was being serious.”

“She’s serious,” Zach said. And a whole lot less than friendly. Why did people like that move to small communities? “I take it you guys aren’t going to use the creek path to get to school anymore? You’re going to stay off her property?”

“We won’t take Lizzie on the creek path. That’s for sure.”

“None of you will take the creek path.”

“Dad, it’s so much shorter...”

“And it’s so her property.”

“It’s stupid.”

“Stay away from that woman and off her land. Got it?”

Darcy let out a loud sigh—the kind he’d recently discovered only adolescents seemed to be able to make. “Fine. Got it.”

“Thank you.”

Zach walked down the hall to Emma’s room. The door was shut, but he cracked it open and looked inside. His middle daughter was sound asleep, despite the thunder and the Lizzie drama. He smiled, wishing he had that ability. Sleepless nights were more of the norm for him and because of the uncooperative hospital accounting department, he predicted more of the same.

He opened his bedroom door and flicked on the light. For a long while after her death, he’d kept Karen’s belongings out where he could see them, although Beth Ann had boxed her clothing and sent it to charity. But as time went on, he’d divided up Karen’s personal treasures between his daughters. The small collection of jewelry he’d stored for later. All that remained was a photo on the nightstand and a lot of good memories.

And a lot of bad ones. Not of Karen, but of the grim months following the diagnosis. The trauma of the treatments. Meeting the needs of three little girls who were about to lose their mother. Grieving for his wife long before he’d lost her.

Zach sat on the bed and eased his boots off. The first one fell with a heavy clunk. What would Karen have done tonight after discovering what was bothering her baby? He smiled wearily. Probably marched straight over to Tess O’Neil’s place and ripped into her. Karen had been sweet and peaceful, until something endangered those she loved. Beth Ann was the same way.

So was he. It was important to get along with the neighbors, but when a neighbor threatened your kids, things changed. Granted, they’d had no right to cross her land, but they were little girls, not hoodlums, following a path they’d taken for years. What the hell was she thinking trying to scare them?

Leave it. Just leave it.

Easier said than done when he was brought out of bed two hours later by a crying child. He shrugged into his flannel robe, his last gift from Karen, and he jogged upstairs to find Darcy hugging her little sister.

“It’s not the lady. Honest,” Lizzie said.

Like hell.

“It’s okay, Dad,” Darcy said. “Liz is coming to bed with me.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. But only for one night.” Darcy emphasized the last words.

“One night,” Lizzie agreed, making a beeline into Darcy’s room.

Zach waited until the girls were in Darcy’s bed, then turned off the light. Across the field, Tess O’Neil’s place glowed like a beacon, every light on, even though it was almost three o’clock in the morning.

Darcy leaned out of bed and craned her neck to see what Zach was staring at out of her window. Then she shrugged.

“It’s like that every night, Dad. She never shuts off her lights.”

* * *

THE NIGHT BECAME still after the storm had passed, almost too still, and Tess couldn’t bring herself to go upstairs to sleep. She remained in the chair, dozing fitfully and waking the next morning stiff from having finally fallen asleep in an uncomfortable position. When she pushed the blanket off her lap and got up out of the chair, Blossom shot to her feet, but Mac was slower to rise. When he finally did get to his feet, he held his injured foot a good three or four inches off the floor.

“Let’s see that leg,” Tess said, crouching in front of the dog. She reached out to gently touch it and Mac yelped, drawing it back, but not before Tess felt how hot it was. This was a problem.

Ten minutes later, after a short internet search, Tess called a vet in Wesley, the larger town an hour’s drive to the south. As she’d feared, since Dr. Hyatt was the only vet within sixty miles, no appointments were available until the following week, but the vet tech promised to let her know if something opened up.

“His leg is hot,” Tess said after receiving the bad news. “I’m afraid of infection.”

“It’s probably just inflammation,” the tech said, “but to play it safe, I’ll phone Ann at the mercantile about some medications you can give him until the doctor can see him.”

“Really? The mercantile here?”

“Yeah. The merc is kind of our branch pharmacy.”

“I had no idea. Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Tess had shopped at the mercantile three times so far, and each time she’d been the only person in the store except for the tough-looking elderly woman behind the counter who’d gruffly introduced herself as Ann. Tess had not made a friend when she’d refused to offer her name in return.

When Tess parked in front of the store a half hour after talking to the vet, she was in luck again. Not a single car in the small lot. List in hand, she crossed the old wooden porch and pulled the door open, only to stop abruptly on the threshold, facing five sets of curious eyes.

Tess automatically dropped her chin, hiding her face as she quickly walked past the women who stood in a tight group near the checkout counter, and grabbed a basket off the stack at the end of the first aisle.

“Well, hello,” one of the women called after her, “are you the new tenant of the Anderson place?”

“Hi,” Tess replied, not answering the question and not looking back as she escaped down the aisle closest to her.

She stopped at the end of the aisle, out of sight of the group, and faced the cooler as she gathered her composure, convinced herself that this was not a big deal...just unexpected.

The mercantile was roughly the size of a large convenience store, stacked to the ceiling with a wild variety of merchandise, much of which Tess didn’t recognize. Good cover until the ladies left. But the ladies started talking again and Tess soon realized that they had no intention of leaving.

Deciding she couldn’t hide forever, she opened the cooler door and pulled out butter, milk and eggs before moving on to the rather sad-looking produce. If she hadn’t felt cornered she might have worked at choosing the best fruit and vegetables, but as it was, she dumped carrots, oranges and apples into her basket, put three loaves of bread on top—one to eat, two to freeze. Then she peeked around the corner of a display.

The women were still there, clustered in the exact spot Tess wanted to be. Well, she couldn’t hide out here forever and when Ann, the proprietress, caught sight of her and frowned, Tess sucked up her courage and headed for the checkout counter.

She was instantly surrounded by women—or so it felt.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” one of the ladies said. Tess didn’t know which one because she didn’t look at them. “Do you quilt?”

“No.” Tess set the basket on the counter where Ann stood with a hand poised over the keys of the cash register, waiting for Tess to unload her basket. “Has Dr. Hyatt phoned in an order for me?” Tess asked her as she pulled the bread out of the basket.

“If you’re Tess O’Neil he has,” the woman said in a tone that told Tess she hadn’t forgotten her refusal to state her name on her first visit.

“I am,” Tess said in a low voice.

Ann pulled a stapled paper bag from under the counter and started ringing up the items in Tess’s basket. And then the women started closing in again from behind.

“We’re always looking for new members for our club,” another woman, who for some reason was not taking a very blatant hint, declared from close to Tess’s right shoulder. “And quilting is very easy to learn.”

“Thank you very much, but I’m not interested.” Tess sensed an exchange of glances as she pulled three twenties out of her very plain purse and handed them across the counter. The drawer of the old-fashioned cash register popped open as Tess quickly loaded her purchases into the recyclable tote she’d brought. A couple bucks’ worth of change and she was good to go.

Except that she had to walk past the group of women and the shortest one was now studying her face with a thoroughness that unnerved her—to the point that Tess half expected her to say, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Maybe her disguise wasn’t as good as she’d hoped. Maybe she should have gone with a wig or something. Or never left the house.

“Excuse me,” she said, refusing to make eye contact as she squeezed past the women and opened the door. Okay. She was coming off as cold and rude. Tough. These ladies needed to understand that she didn’t want to join their quilting bees or whatever.

“Such a nice young woman,” she heard one of the women say sarcastically.

“I swear...I know her from somewhere.”

The last words came just as the door swung shut, making Tess’s blood freeze. She rushed to the car and got inside, slamming the door harder than necessary and then dumping the grocery tote on the seat beside her as the dogs nuzzled her hair. What if they figured out who she was?