Chemistry Lessons (11 page)

“I can use mine.” Rosie reached into her pocket, only to find it wasn’t
there. “Except I left it in my purse, and my purse is in my car.”
Dang!
If she lost the car, she’d have to replace all her credit cards and driver’s
license. And fifteen dollars cash. Plus a box of beakers and graduated
cylinders.

“Why don’t I call?” Destry said. They watched the hatchback wobbling in
the press of water as Destry dialed 911 to report the problem. Rosie held her
hand up, trying to gauge whether her car was moving.

Destry explained the problem to the dispatcher.

After providing their location, he ended the call. “They’re trying to
evacuate the mobile home park on the other side of the river, so it might be a
while. Can you think of anyone else who could help get your car out?”

 Tanner came to mind, but he would still be on the other side of the
flood waters. “I can’t think of anyone over on this side with that kind of
equipment,” Rosie said, still measuring the placement of her car against Destry’s
dashboard. Her hands were shaking now, making it even harder to tell whether
the car had moved. “It isn’t even my car. It was my grandma’s. She and I were
in an accident last year. She was killed, and my car was totaled.”

“I’m sorry.” He took her hands in his. His fingers felt soft and warm
against her calloused skin. “Are you cold?”

She was dripping wet from her waist down, but her shivers had nothing
to do with the cold water. She pulled her hand back. “A little.” What would
Tanner think of Destry holding her hand?

He turned off the air conditioning. “We’re still a half hour early for
school. We might as well wait for the firemen. Why don’t you tell me how you
got Wile E?”

She sat on her hands, trying to warm them up, the seat upholstery rough
against her skin. “A couple years ago, around the end of March, one of our
neighbors killed a couple of coyotes that’d been carrying off his lambs. The
most humane practice when you kill a coyote in the spring is to go around and
find the den. Then you kill the pups before they starve to death. Well, this
man didn’t have the time for that. He assigned the task to his son, who
happened to be one of my students. When the boy found the den, there was only
one pup—Wile E—and the boy just couldn’t bring himself to kill it. He stuck it
in his coat pocket—fleas and all. The next morning, he brought it to my class.”

He shrugged out of his raincoat and placed it over her trembling
shoulders. “Let me guess. Principal Moore found out.”

“Nope. I swore all my students to secrecy. We put Wile E in a tissue
box under my desk and tried our best to keep her quiet. It was hard. She cried
from hunger, so we got some milk from the cafeteria, and the students fed her
from a dropper. The poor thing. She was only about a week old. Her eyes were still
closed. At lunchtime, Jade helped me pick off all the fleas.”

Rosie watched as the water rose above the Hatchback’s wheel wells. “It’s
getting deeper.”

“Tell me more about Wile E. What did you do with her when you got home?”

“I kept her in a basket beside my bed. It was like having a human baby.
I fed her when she cried. It was exhausting, but she’s become my friend for
life.” She held her hand up again to measure whether her car had moved. It hadn’t,
but she saw something else—a cat. She’d brought a stowaway without knowing it. “Clementine’s
in my car!”

He stared at her. “What?”

Rosie reached for her door handle in a panic. “My cat, Clementine! She
must have gotten in when I opened the hatch this morning.” The swift water
looked like it would come to her knees if she stood in it. It wasn’t safe to go
in, but she couldn’t stand here and watch her cat drown.

“Don’t even think about it.” Destry grasped her arm.

She yanked away from him. “I can’t just leave her there to die.”

Destry reached behind the front seat and rummaged around. “Okay, but we’re
going to do it the right way.”

“What do you mean
we
?”

He pulled out an extension cord. “I didn’t bring a rope, but this might
work. It’s seventy-five feet. Good thing I left it in here after I finished the
chicken coop.” He looped it a few times around his waist, attempting to tie a
knot. “The one time you
want
it to get tied up in knots, it won’t.” He forced
the cord into a bowline knot and opened his door. “You stay here.”

She got out on her side. “No way am I staying in the truck while you go
rescue my cat.”

He tied the extension cord to the hitch on his truck. “I am not going
to watch you die, trying to save a cat.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Then I’ll make sure the cord doesn’t
come loose from your hitch.”

 He winked. “Just don’t plug it into anything.” He wore sturdy work
boots with synthetic hiking pants and a button-up shirt. She’d never seen him
wear anything like that to school before. It was like he’d planned to rescue
someone. “How’s your cat with people?”

She wrapped the cord around her waist and retied the end to the hitch. “Not
good. And she’s worse with water. You might have trouble getting her to come
with you.” She tried to think of something they could use to entice the cat out
of the car. “My lunch is in there. It has bacon in it. And my purse is in the
front seat. I give you full permission to go through it.”

He laughed. “Full permission, huh? That’ll be a first for me.”

He stepped into the water, shuffling his feet so they stayed near the
bottom. She almost called out for him to come back, but she couldn’t leave the
poor cat in the car. What if it drowned? She couldn’t live with the guilt.

She watched him go farther and farther into the flood. He held to the
cord, leaning his body into the current. Halfway there, he paused.

“What’s wrong?” she shouted.

“Do rattlesnakes swim?” He moved his head, watching something pass him
in the water.

“Yes,” she shouted.

He took another step. “Never mind. It’s gone now.” The poor man was
risking his life to save her cat.

“Destry,” she shouted. “I changed my mind. Come back.”

The water was up to his thighs now. She bit her knuckle as she watched
him struggle to stay upright. If he fell, that would be it. The current would
carry him straight down to the river. His death would be on her hands.

“Come back,” she shouted. “It’s too dangerous.”

He either didn’t hear her, or he chose not to listen.

He had almost reached the car when the cord slipped suddenly through
her hands, and all she could see was his head, drifting toward the river. “Destry!”
She gripped the wet cord and pulled with all her might, straining backward
against the pull of his weight.

He stood again, and she took up the slack, but after only a second, the
cord pulled against her grip. He was down again. She held on with all her
strength, watching as he struggled in the water. He lunged for her hatchback,
gripping the edge of the front door that still hung open. He pulled himself
into the front seat. She wouldn’t feel relief, though, until he was back with
her in the truck.

He found the purse on the passenger seat and held it up for her to see,
pointing to it and grinning. She tried to remember what exactly was in it. Was
there anything that could embarrass her? Before she could think of anything, he
held up a strip of bacon from her lunch.

She gave him a thumbs up. “Perfect,” she shouted.

She watched as Destry fished for the cat with the bacon, drawing
Clementine closer and closer to himself. Finally, Clementine was in his arms. Rosie
could tell from the grimace on Destry’s face that Clementine was not happy. She
was probably digging her claws into his chest by now. Rosie could imagine the “Raowr”
that came from her mouth.

The car rocked in the current and drifted toward the river. “Hurry!”
Rosie yelled. “Hurry!” But he didn’t seem to be in one. He fiddled around with
her purse some more. Then he took his time climbing over into the back.

When he finally did emerge, Rosie saw no sign of Clementine. Then she
noticed he held her extra-large canvas grocery bag, and it was wiggling. In his
other arm, he carried her purse. Rosie tugged at the extension cord, keeping a
tight hold on him. He leaned into the current, taking slow steps—almost as if
he were moving through cement—and struggling to balance.

She pulled harder on the cord, grunting with the effort. Finally, he
reached knee-deep water, and she heard the screech of her cat, struggling to
get out of her bag. She kept towing him in until the water was up to his ankles.
Then she couldn’t keep herself from running to meet him. “Thank you so much.”
She threw his arms around him and hugged him.

He handed her the bag of cat. “Sorry I had to put her in here. I was
afraid she’d jump into the water.”

The bag wriggled and swung back and forth, so she had to hold it with
both hands. So many emotions crowded together inside her—relief that Destry
hadn’t died, admiration for his quick-thinking, and guilt that she’d let him do
it in the first place.

He untied the extension cord from his waist. “Why don’t you and the cat
get in the truck? I’ll just wind this up.”

Climbing in, Rosie set the squirming bag on the floor at her feet. “Everything’s
going to be okay, Clementine.”

Destry burst into the driver’s side at about the same time, dripping
muddy water, his shirt wet all the way up to his collar. He tossed the
extension cord into the space behind his seat and grinned. “Should we let the
cat out of the bag?”

Rosie giggled at his joke. “We’re in for it when we do.”

Destry set Rosie’s purse on the seat between them. “I forgot and left
the bacon in your car, but there’s something in my lunch she’ll like.”
Unzipping his lunchbox, he pulled out a pouch of tuna fish and handed it to
Rosie. “I’ve had this in here for months, trying to get up my courage to eat
it.”

“Thanks,” Rosie said, “for everything.” She couldn’t help but notice
the other contents of Destry’s lunch: pistachios, baby carrots, beef jerky, Greek
yogurt, and a peach. He was more of a health nut than she’d realized. She held
a spoonful of tuna out for the cat, who came over to sniff it.

Destry grabbed a napkin from his lunch bag and wiped the water from his
face. “So what’s Clementine’s history?”

Rosie watched as the cat tasted the tuna. “She showed up at the gas
station a few years ago, hanging out in some bushes behind the dumpster. The
station owners put food and water out there for her. In the winter, when her
water bowl started to freeze over, I brought her home to live in the barn with
all the rest of my cats. Grandma kind of adopted her, though, and made her a
house cat.”

Clementine licked the rest of the tuna off the spoon.

“How many cats do you have?” Destry asked.

“Two in the house.”

Destry stifled a smile. “And I suppose the ones in the barn don’t
count.”

She looked up at the ceiling of the truck. “Okay, call me a crazy cat
lady. I have twelve in the barn. All of them are spayed or neutered, and I go
through a bag of cat food a week.”

“I’ll bet you have a lot fewer mice in your barn than I do.”

“You’re welcome to take a few cats off my hands.”

“I might just do that.” He turned his head to gaze out the side window.
“My brother would say I should get strays from the shelter.”

“And your brother would be right.” She assumed he was talking about his
brother who’d died. She had no business delving into personal subjects with
Destry, but she understood his pain too well. “He sounds like a great guy.”

Destry nodded. “He was. You would have liked him.”

She held out another spoonful of tuna for the cat.

“I wish I’d bought the ranch before Cody died,” Destry said. “It was
something he’d always wanted to do.”

Those two sentences held more information about Destry than Rosie had
ever gathered from the town gossips. “So moving here was your brother’s idea?”
She had always thought he’d come here because land was cheap. The cat crawled
into her lap, and she petted her soft orange fur.

“I guess you could say that. As kids we’d always dreamed of living in
the country. I got distracted with my business, but I always meant to come out
here with him. Our plan was to turn our ranch into a resort for troubled kids.
After Cody died, I changed the plan a bit.” Both their phones buzzed at the
same time, and Destry paused to read a text. “Looks like school is cancelled
after all.”

Rosie groaned. “Now they tell us.”

She looked at him, sitting there in his mud-covered clothes. He
grinned, still breathing hard from the exertion. She half-expected him to grab
his cowboy hat, only he didn’t have one. He wasn’t a cowboy, but in that
moment, he seemed like one—the type of cowboy her grandpa had been—the messy,
risk-taking, hard worker that dove into rescue mode before he had time to think
it through.

From their conversation about Cody, Rosie guessed that the life of a
rancher wasn’t the kind of life Destry would have chosen for himself. Still, if
Rosie looked past his fashionable clothes and salon haircut, she could see his
inner grit, a stubborn resolve to fight against the elements, even if it meant
losing his dignity . . . or his life. Maybe that was what her grandpa meant on
that first night when he said Destry had what it took to run his ranch.

But that wasn’t Destry’s real purpose here. He had come because of
guilt—a payback to his dead brother. “Was it Cody’s idea to help people on your
ranch?” she asked.

“Yes. He wanted to help troubled kids from the city. You know, kind of
a summer camp thing.”

“And you changed the plan to make it for troubled adults.” She couldn’t
help the nervous squeak that came into her voice. She wished she could discuss
the subject as easily as they discussed her animals.

“That’s right.”

Rosie picked at a fleck of dirt under her thumbnail, trying to find
some excuse for her objection—anything but a rehash of the scene she still
relived in her nightmares. “It just seems like our town has enough trouble as
it is.” Tanner would probably say she’d presented an illogical argument, but
she went on. “I mean, you’ve seen how it is for Alan. This isn’t the place to
come if you want to escape from the world.”

Destry stretched his arm along the back of the seat and turned his body
to face her. “I’ll admit I thought things would be simpler here. I should have
realized people have problems no matter where they live.” He had gotten her
point, but it wasn’t the point she needed to make.

Without thinking, she dug the spoon into the tuna pouch and lifted it
to her mouth.

Destry reached his hand out to stop her. “Umm, the cat licked that.”

She set the spoon back down again, feeling a blush creep up her cheeks.
Had she really tried to eat the cat’s food? She tended to stuff her face when
she got nervous, but she had never stooped to eating after the cat. “I’m afraid
of drunk drivers.” She had opened the gate, and all she held captive escaped
into the open. “I mean impaired drivers. My grandmother was killed by one last
year. It was just an ordinary day. Seven o’clock at night. I was taking Grandma
to buy a tube of denture cream. Denture cream of all things.” Her words spewed
forth at the speed of thought, almost as if she weren’t speaking them. “I
admire you for what you’re trying to do. The people you’re trying to help—they
need a chance to recover. But in my experience, most of them don’t recover.
They stay the same year after year.”

She was about to tell him about Janessa when he interrupted. “Why didn’t
you tell me about your grandmother before?” His words were soft and full of
sympathy. Like cool water running over sunburned skin, they defused her
anxiety. He understood. A rush of warmth filled her as she realized he’d
gotten
her with hardly any effort. “I’m going to help the ones who
want
to
change,” he said.

Rosie let his words seep into her thoughts.
I’m going to help the
ones who want to change.

She remembered that feeling of wanting to be something better. In the
years since her childhood, Rosie had rebuilt herself by working hard on the
ranch and at school. She couldn’t have done it if she hadn’t moved in with her
grandparents, where she felt safe. Who was she to deny another person the
opportunity to come to Lone Spur?

These people weren’t like her, though. They had dangerous habits—habits
that led to death from overdoses, death from traffic accidents, and death from
domestic violence. Lone Spur already had enough danger as it was. Sometimes she
couldn’t even bring herself to walk out the door at night. If these people
lived next door, she didn’t know how she could live with her fear.