Firefly Island (13 page)

Daniel had tucked me under his arm on the porch swing, his body warm against mine, his breath stirring my hair. I felt loved. I felt completed in a way I never had before.

It was a moment of glory, of earthly perfection like none I'd ever experienced. A shadow of what heaven must be like, when all the cares fall away and love is perfect.

Daniel and I had finally slipped off to bed together as a breeze kicked up, the clouds thickened, and a soft rain began to fall. We'd made love, fallen asleep curled in each other's arms, floated on our own little mountaintop, no one else in the whole wide world.

Now, here I was, tumbling off that mountain in the hardest way. Over the sight of a scorpion and a mouse. Worst of all, I felt such anger, such resentment, such a sense of loss. I was angry with Daniel for bringing us here, for being so devoted to this job, for
having
a job, always being gone when something went wrong in the house, for using me as a built-in baby-sitter for his son . . .

The last thought shocked, stabbed, wounded.
Our son.
Nick was
our
son. I loved him already. I wanted to be his mother. I treasured the simple, gentle moments when the two of us were together—chatting as he played in a bubble bath, or when we walked to the creek to watch the minnows, or strolled along the lakeshore hunting for arrowheads or the fossilized shells of ancient sea creatures. I loved those moments. I loved Nick's smile, his laugh, the way he adored me. I loved him.

What was
wrong
with me that I could be sitting here resenting him?

This place was making me come completely unhinged. Somehow, I had to get control—control of the house, control of my thoughts and my emotions. This had to stop.

The back door opened, and I heard Nick racing through the kitchen, leaving the door flapping behind.

More flies. He's letting in more flies.
The thought was quick and sharp. With horses and cattle living nearby, there was no end to the fly problem, either. They clung to porch roofs in the evenings in a giant black mass, hung on the door facings, slipped inside in droves each time Nick came and went. The flies crawled on the kitchen counters, on any food left out. On my face as I was waking in the mornings. Everywhere. The flies were everywhere.

“Nicholas!” My voice sliced through the house, and I was up from the bed, stalking toward the kitchen before I had time to think. “Close that door! How many times have I told you not to—”

I rounded the corner into the dining room, and there was Nick, at the other end of the ugly yellow carpet, frozen in place with a bouquet of tiny white wildflowers in his hand. He'd stopped two steps onto the rug, left behind a pair of wet, muddy little tracks, and a trail through the kitchen. His eyes were huge, his mouth dropping open, uncertain.

Everything in me melted. My tears welled again, but they were a different sort of tears. “Hey,” I breathed, crossing the room. “Hey, what've you got there?”

His eyes rounded upward, sparkled with life again. “It's all in da yard!” he cheered. “Flowers! Be-yoo-de-ful flowers! I gotted you a pres-it!”

“You did?” I whispered, scooping up Nick and the flowers all in one. He held them to my face, and I smelled the overwhelming sweetness, the intoxicating combination of nectar and sweaty boy child. Outside the window, the yard was filled with tiny white flowers on single stalks. They'd appeared overnight. A miracle. A thousand tiny miracles. Flowers where there had been no flowers. “They're beautiful. They're amazing. Oh, baby, how did you know I needed someone to bring me flowers this morning?” I hugged him close, rocking him back and forth as his sandy feet swung against my thighs.

His arms stretched around me, the fistful of flowers pressing against my shoulder, their sweetness encircling my senses. “I jus' knowed,” he whispered. “Somebody telled my mind.”

Closing my eyes, I reveled in the moment, felt the holiness of it.
Let me remember this. Let me remember this the next time I'm angry.

I didn't care if a hundred flies came into the house through that open door. I didn't.

Nick and I went outside and enjoyed the flowers. We picked tiny bouquets and put them in glasses all over the house, filling the rooms with fragrance. By the time we finally left for town to visit the feedstore and inquire about the magic scorpion eradication powder Dustin had mentioned last month, I had recaptured my sense of Zen. I'd spent some time with the caulking gun, sealing up cracks around the bedroom window sashes and baseboards, convincing myself that the scorpion
must have used one of those entry points, and that by now it was back outside. With the cracks sealed, it would not be able to get back in, surely.

When the man in the feedstore, which was in an old tin building that had the quaint look of a little country trading post, told me that scorpions hide in cool, dark places during the day, and come out at night, I did my very best to ignore him. I imagined the scorpion permanently entombed in a layer of rapidly drying caulk. I also did my best to disregard the feedstore man's warning that scorpions traveled in pairs.

“Best thing's to get you a black light and hammer,” he advised. “Put you on some good shoes, grab the hammer, and just carry that black light around your house when it's good'n dark. Scorps glow in the dark. You see 'em, you smash 'em good and dead. Don't try to drown 'em down the sink. They just come back up your drains. Flush 'em live, and they can come back up the commode, and you don't want that.”

The feedstore man and I locked eyes and shook our heads in unison. I imagined scorpions hiding underneath the toilet seats, lying in wait. Dark places. They liked dark places, like the undersides of toilet seats . . .

I glanced over my shoulder at Nick, who was having fun with a bucket of multicolored plastic worms nearby.

“Careful how you pick 'em up, even after you use the hammer,” the man added. “That tail can still sting after you smash the guts out.” He curled his finger into an arc and made a quick striking motion. “Like rattlesnakes, y'know? You don't go picking 'em up by hand, even once you think you got 'em dead. That rattlesnake head'll still get ya. But with scorps, it's the tail.” He slapped a hand on the counter, and I jumped a foot in the air. “I'll have them insect granules in for ya, day after tomorrow. Just sprinkle it 'round your house and near your doors, then water it in good with the hose and keep the
little guy off of it until it's dry. Oh, and indoors, don't let the beds touch the wall or the blankets touch the floor, and wrap all your bed legs with duct tape, sticky side out. That'll keep them scorps off at night.”

“Ohhh . . . kay. Thanks,” I murmured, vaguely conscious of several men walking in from a warehouse where large stacks of Purina livestock chow were stored. “On second thought, give me two bags of the scorpion-killer. I may just dig a moat around the house and fill it with the stuff . . . after I surround all the beds with duct tape.”

The man behind the counter laughed, then wagged a finger at me. “That's funny. I like a woman who's got a sense of humor about her varmint huntin'.”

“Listen, I'm a varmint-killing machine,” I joked, feeling as if I were hanging out in the halls of Congress, bantering with other staff members about legislators and stacks of paperwork. Lately, it seemed like I had at least three different personalities, and any one could come out at any given time. I liked this particular one. She could handle things. Occasionally, I wondered if Daniel was avoiding coming home not because he was busy with Jack, but because he had no idea which
me
would be waiting there.

“Got problems in the ranch house?” I turned to find Al Beckenbauer approaching the counter, her lanky, confident stride making me feel a little less like Xena the Warrior Queen of Varmint Hunting. Today Al was wearing jeans and a tank top with an old denim shirt loose over it, the sleeves torn out, her arms bare and brown.

She probably kills scorpions with her bare hands,
I thought, and then the idea seemed inexplicably hilarious.

“There was a scorpion in bed with me this morning,” I told her.

“Been there.” She offered a one-sided grin, her wind-chapped
lips curling into dimples at the corners, revealing straight white teeth that seemed out of place against the ruddy backdrop. “Hate it when that happens.”

Al Beckenbauer shuddered. Actually shuddered.

I marveled at the thought and I decided I really liked her. We had something in common. We both hated scorpions in the bed. Just two rancher chicks, trying to survive in the wild country.

Al tapped the pad where the feedstore man was writing up my ticket. “Scratch that and order her some diatomaceous earth. Fifty-pound sack. And an applicator. Put it on that worthless old so-and-so's bill.” Hooking an elbow on the countertop, she angled her head and squinted at me. “Spread it around your yard, especially by the house, and in the attic, and in the cabinets under your sinks, too. It'll work, and you don't have to worry about it with your pets or the boy. Wear a mask when you put it out. Don't breathe the dust, but after it settles overnight, it's fine. It's organic. Good for the dog, if you have one. It'll take care of fleas in your yard, too. If the old so-and-so who owns that place gives you any trouble, you tell him Al Beckenbauer said to leave it in the yard a few weeks and see if you can find a flea out there. He'll like that.” Her lips pursed, and she glanced sideways at the feedstore man, who sucked in a breath and shook his head.

“You're gonna get this poor girl in trouble, Al.” Clucking apologetically, he focused on me. “Those two aren't good neighbors, in case you hadn't noticed yet.”

“I've hardly been out of the house,” I admitted, because that was the most benign thing I could come up with. It was clear enough that everyone gave Jack West a wide berth. With the exception of Keren Zimmer timidly stopping over with cookies the day after I flattened the U-Haul tire, no one had
come by, and no one in town seemed willing to explain the hands-off reception we'd been getting. West Ranch did a lot of business in the area, and I had a feeling that people didn't want to alienate Jack's significant cash reserves by revealing the skeletons in his closet.

“Pfff!” Al blew a tight puff of air. “Anything organic, that man won't use it. Just spray poison all over everything. Dump a little more pesticide in the water supply. It's his world. We're all just livin' in it.”

I snapped my lips shut on an answer. I so wanted to spill the whole story of our month-long odyssey at West Ranch and ask the obvious question: Is Jack West as crazy as he seems? Did he really kill his wife and stepson? And what's with this Firefly Island business? Why all the secrecy there? Has anyone else seen lights moving around out there at night? Why is the causeway that goes to the island protected by a locked gate? Why has he pointed out repeatedly that Firefly is off-limits to everyone? Does anybody know?

Instead, I said, “I'd much rather go with the organic stuff. I mean, there's Nick to think about, for one thing. He plays in the yard all the time. I don't want to use anything that's not good for him. Mr. West is out of town for a while, so he won't know what I put out. Honestly, if I see one more mouse, bug, or creature with an exoskeleton running across my floor, I'm going to commit hari-kari. At some point, I really want to be able to put my clothes in a closet without having something nest in them.”

Both Al and the feedstore man chuckled, but Al seemed to understand. She took a pencil from behind her ear, signed a ticket for the clerk, and then pointed the pencil at me. “I like you. I'm headed to New Mexico for a week or so to see a man about a sheepdog, but you give me a call after I get back. I'm in the book. A. C. Beckenbauer.”

“Oh . . . okay.” I had the sense that I'd made my first friend in Moses Lake.

Nick came over and stretched upward to set a handful of squirmy rubber worms on the counter.

“Oh no, honey, we don't need those,” I told him gently. “We have enough of the real kind at our house.”

Al turned away from the counter and headed for the door. “Sack up those fishin' worms for the boy, Stan. Put it on my account. If he's gonna live in Moses Lake, he's gonna need to be a fisherman.”

The journey between what you once were and who you are now becoming is where the dance of life really takes place.

—Barbara DeAngelis
(Left by Grandma Bette, changing lives through Scouting for forty-three years)

W
ith Jack still gone to his offices in Houston, life took on a more relaxed pace. Daniel drove Nick and me around the ranch in the old pickup truck that was for his work use. The sheer size of the place awed me. We could literally travel for miles, bumping along rutted truck trails, white dust billowing behind us, rising and falling and always landing on property that belonged to Jack West. All part of his strange empire. All under his control.

I'd seen wealth and excess in DC, but never anything like this. It was still hard to comprehend. Everything his, as far as the eye could see—pastures filled with horses and cattle, plots of wheat growing in thick, silty black soil left behind by floods along the river before the lake was built, test fields of corn and various grain crops planted in all sorts of locations, from rocky hillsides to marshy valleys.

I marveled at starts of corn seeming to take hold on a hillside that looked like a gravel parking lot. “It's not perfect yet,” Daniel remarked. “According to Jack it'll grow, but it
won't yield. He's hoping I can solve the problem, and then we'll apply for the patents. Of course, that would require him to actually let me into the lab rooms, show me the data files, and leave me alone there long enough to work.”

“He still hasn't even
shown
you the research?” Unease inchwormed over me. I rubbed goose bumps away, felt a string of caulking on my skin, and began scratching it off. When Daniel had stopped by the house to pick us up, I was crouched in a closet, up to my elbows in home improvement goop. I'd felt someone touch me on the shoulder, and I'd screamed like a banshee, shooting out caulking like silly string.

Daniel shrugged. “A little. Sort of. He left me with a key to the lab, so that's progress at least, but there are several doors that the key doesn't open. I can't really do anything except water the control group samples in the contained environments and dust the furniture.”

I scratched off caulking, watched Nick play in the dirt nearby, and tried to decide what to say. We were having such a nice afternoon, I didn't want to spoil it. I wanted to pretend that Jack didn't exist, that Daniel and I were on a vacation getaway. Just a young family, happily passing time in a beautiful place where ancient trees shaded pastures and little bouquets of Mountain Pinks grew on hillsides near cedar-shaded shores and high limestone bluffs. The water was rife with boats today—skiers and fishermen, families enjoying pedal boats, kayakers spending a beautiful summer afternoon under a wide cloudless sky.

Playing beneath a tree not far away, Nick pointed at a skier who caught an edge and tumbled end over end before slapping the water in a belly flop. “Whoa! Woo-eee!” he cheered. Daniel had promised Nick that they would take the new fishing worms down to the lake and do some fishing this evening. We'd tucked swimsuits, towels, and newly purchased fishing
poles into the back of Daniel's ranch vehicle. We both knew that he'd better make good on the fishing promise before Jack showed up and turned our lives upside-down again.

On the way back to the house, we crossed through a three-hundred acre high-fenced area where Jack kept exotic animals of all sorts—everything from Thomson's gazelles to antelope, beautiful fallow deer with massive antlers to mountain sheep with giant, curled horns. All just waiting for Jack West to find himself in the mood to shoot something. The containment area was an exotic animal business on paper, but according to what little Daniel had learned, few animals raised here were ever sold.

Nick pointed at the animals and called out, “Wook at dat one! Wook at dat one! He's a big one!” as we drove along through Jack's private safari. At the far end of the containment area, Daniel stopped to make sure the laboratory complex was locked up for the day. Comprised of several long, low stone buildings that had been poultry barns decades before, the complex looked innocuous from a distance, but up close, I could hear the hum of equipment. Our reflections shimmered in a massive metallic sign that hung on the front of one of the buildings.
West Research
it proclaimed, the chrome letters looking like they belonged on a steel-and-glass office building somewhere.
Don't let it fool you,
Daniel had said the first time he'd driven me by the lab buildings.
This place is state of the art.
He'd gone on to tell me about the greenhouse-style growth environments, where temperature, moisture, hours of sunlight, and soil conditions were controlled to perfectly duplicate various climates. A wind and solar power generation system provided electricity, and water was supplied partially by windmills and partially by a device Jack was developing to collect moisture from vapor in the air.

Jack West was as brilliant as he was strange, and as mysterious as ever.

Nick, Pecos, and I waited outside with the vehicle while Daniel checked everything. Daniel had taken us into the lab the day after Jack left town, but the surveillance cameras inside gave me an uneasy feeling. I felt like we were being watched, and if we were, I didn't want Jack West thinking that Nick and I had been snooping around. The man still gave me the willies.

I tried to put Jack out of my mind as Nick and Pecos wandered off to some nearby equipment to play. Pecos stood by faithfully while Nick crawled onto a green tractor and pretended to drive, as he'd seen the ranch hands do. When the men passed by our house occasionally, Nick always stopped what he was doing and waved wildly at them, hoping they would pause to let him ogle whatever machinery they were using, but so far, the ranch hands had continued to steer clear of us. I felt like a pariah most of the time.

“Looks like Nick found a redneck jungle gym there,” Daniel observed as he came out of the lab building. He paused to punch in the security code before crossing the distance between us. His hand slid warm and solid through the curtain of my hair and rested on my shoulder, his fingers rubbing softly there.

I leaned into him, enjoying the moment. Around us, the golden light of afternoon faded into softer hues, the hills casting veils of shadow and sun. Nick was talking up a storm, giving instructions to Pecos, pretending to be doing some very important job with the tractor, but I couldn't quite hear the words. “Thank goodness for that dog.” In our weeks at the ranch, Pecos and Nick had become inseparable, and if anyone remembered that the dog was actually Jack's, no one said so.

“As soon as we get a little time to breathe, we need to
do something about that.” Daniel pointed at Nick, and his fingers paused against my skin.

I sighed, reluctant to discuss future plans, or what we should do once we had a little breathing room. I was breathing right now, and it seemed like enough for the moment. The longer we stayed at West Ranch, the more I was sure we needed to leave. That wasn't what Daniel wanted to hear. But there was something just not right about this whole situation. It was becoming more and more clear that Jack West didn't care what happened to our family, as long as he got whatever it was that he wanted from Daniel.

I couldn't help wondering: What would happen the minute he didn't?

“Okay . . . do something about what?” I asked hesitantly. Nick and Pecos had moved to the next piece of equipment, an odd-looking apparatus sitting in the weeds, gathering rust. It looked like a narrow gangway that might be used on a ship, but with a single set of wheels in the middle, so that it could be moved around like a trailer. Alone, Nick could walk along it without tipping it end to end, but he had just discovered that the presence of Pecos added enough weight to cause the entire structure to tilt back and forth, bouncing lightly on the ground when it hit. With their combined mass, Nick and Pecos had created a giant teeter-totter and they were enjoying it, the dog wagging his stubby tail and Nick laughing and talking.

“He's over there
talking
to a
dog
,” Daniel observed. “He needs some real friends. Other kids.”

“He and Pecos have some good conversations.” I'd never had a dog, but Pecos was growing on me. Most of the time, he kept the wandering peafowl, chickens, and guinea hens out of the yard, and he was extremely protective of Nick. I felt certain that, were anything dangerous to sneak in, like the
rattlesnakes I'd been warned about but had not seen
so far
, Pecos would chase them away. He didn't allow anything near Nick, including Jack West. You had to wonder what kind of a man is considered a threat by his own dog.

“I'm serious.” Daniel stretched his neck side to side, the bones crackling. The tension in him was palpable, flowing into me even as I tried to resist it. I didn't turn to look at him. I knew what I would see. Exhaustion, a new network of furrows and worry lines around his eyes. This job, and all the ways it wasn't working out, nipped at him constantly, even with the boss far away. Jack West's eventual return was the King Kong–sized monkey on our backs, even during quiet moments like this.

A question hovered unspoken. It teased the surface more and more now, when Daniel and I were alone. He wondered if I blamed him for this. If I was disappointed. If I was sorry I'd said yes the night he looked across the map and proposed. If I regretted this marriage. He hadn't asked outright, and I didn't want him to, for fear that no matter what I said, he would see how completely out of place and unhappy I was here. He would know that at least a half-dozen times a day I held my head in my hands and thought,
I can't do this. I can't.

I wanted to be strong, and bold, and fearless. But instead, I was afraid and tired and lonely and worried.

Daniel's observation about Nick brought up another issue that had been niggling me. I'd watched Nick's eyes light up whenever we happened to see the summer enrichment kids in Moses Lake enjoying a picnic in the park behind the church, or sitting outside the convenience store eating ice cream, or helping to plant gardens in a courtyard between an antique mall and a little Books and Java store.

I knew Nick was lonely, that he was left to his own devices, forced to make a playmate out of a dog for hours on end
while I worked on the house. I wondered what my mother would say about Nick and Pecos walking back and forth on the makeshift carnival ride, Nick chattering up a storm. Was it healthy for a kid to spend so much time talking to a dog?

Keren Zimmer had invited Nick and me to the summer program twice now, but I hadn't taken him. The truth, if I let myself give it a voice, was that I
needed
Nick. I dreaded the idea of him moving onward into friendships, activities, playdates, and preschool. I was scared to death of being left all alone here.

“One thing at a time, okay?” I rubbed Daniel's arm, intertwined my fingers with his where they curved gently around my rib cage, cupping the two of us together. “I just . . . feel like we're so . . . unsettled right now.”

“Okay.” Daniel's chin scratched against my hair. “Thanks for looking after Nick. I know I haven't been much help.”

My emotions did a strange loop-de-loop, and words came before I even knew what was happening. “Of course I'm looking after him. What else would I be doing?” There was a sharp edge, a tinge of resentment I didn't want to feel. Daniel had a new job, odd though it was. Research lay in his future, hopefully. Discoveries. Achievements. Meanwhile, I was stuffing steel wool in gaps and talking about
Veggie Tales
and
Thomas the Tank Engine.
I was looking around town and realizing that my career in politics was done.

Daniel angled away, dark brows painting concern over brooding eyes. “I didn't mean anything by that. Just that I feel like I've been AWOL a lot, that's all.”

“Sorry.” To my horror, tears crowded my vision. Looking down at my hands, I pretended to be busy picking off little flecks of caulking. “I know what you meant. I'm all over the place lately. I don't know what's the matter with me. It'll get better.” Would it? What if it didn't?

Daniel took one of my hands and brought it to his lips, caulking and all. His kiss touched just beside the modest diamond ring that symbolized the commitment made on a rainy evening in a little white church. “You're amazing, Mallory. I get wrapped up in everything, and I don't say it enough.” He inspected my white-speckled fingers, kissed them again. “Who knew you had all these hidden talents?”

“Pppfff!” He was buttering me up now. And it was working, of course. I was putty in his hands when he looked at me like that. After weeks of filling cracks in closets, I knew all about putty. I was on intimate terms with it.

“All that steel wool packing and closet fixing . . . the way you stuck that wallpaper back in place, the catch-and-release mouse program . . .” Daniel trailed off as if to indicate that the list could go on and on.