Firefly Island (14 page)

“Don't stop.” I tipped my chin up and fluffed my hair with exaggerated grandiosity, imagining myself posing like Angelina Jolie, only shorter and blonder and more . . . clueless. The urge for tears vanished as quickly as it had come. When Daniel and I were close like this, everything vanished. Wasn't that the definition of love—a devotion that could eclipse everything? “I want it all.”

“And then there's the caulking . . . the way you lay it on there so smooth and even. I love a woman who can handle a gun.”

I felt a blush travel through my entire body, just the way it had the day Daniel and I met. The rush was as heady and as fresh as ever. Just as thrilling. If there hadn't been a three-year-old and a dog nearby . . . “Excuse me? How much time have you spent with gun-toting women, Daniel Webster Everson? And with
whom
, exactly, might I ask?”

“None . . . until this woman,” he answered smoothly. “But I like it.”

Skyrockets and butterflies. I was melting. Just melting. I wanted to call Jack West and say,
Listen, you can have him from eight to five, but at five-o-one, he's M-I-N-E, mine.

The noise of a truck rattling up the cow path disturbed the normal hum of boats in the distance, birds chirping, and trees swaying overhead. As always, the approach pulled the strings of tension tight, playing an unpleasant tune.
Please don't let it be Jack West. Please don't let it be Jack West.

Once Jack returned, these long evenings together would be gone. Daniel was never willing to point out to Jack that we needed family time. He was afraid to. He'd already observed that the slightest thing—a gate chained too loosely by one of the ranch hands, a windmill that hadn't been properly greased, ranch equipment poorly parked or left in less than optimal working condition—could set Jack off on a red-faced tirade of phone calls and threats.

Daniel stiffened and took a few steps away to get a better view of the vehicle approaching. “Oh, that's just one of the ranch hands.” The tension in his shoulders eased. “Tag, I think. Jack's horse trainer. I gathered that while watching Jack ream him out one day, not because anyone officially introduced us. I don't think he has a clue what I'm here for. None of them do. When we run across one of the guys, they still look at me like I just landed from another planet.”

Peeking around the corner, I observed the tan ranch truck, its paint job pitted and marred by dents, dings, and rows of short scratches along the hood. “You'd think Jack would explain it to them.” I couldn't keep the irritation from my voice. Daniel deserved so much better.

The driver rolled down his window, and I could see that there was a teenager and a little girl in the truck with him. After the introductions, I realized that the teenager, Chrissy, was actually the little girl's mother, and probably a little
older than I'd guessed. Maybe twenty-one or twenty-two. Tag couldn't have been past his early twenties, himself. I tried to imagine being their age, working here, raising a child.

Tossing a mop of curly red hair over her shoulder, Chrissy stretched across her daughter, McKenna, who was belted in a booster seat between them. “Hey, I'm sorry we haven't been by to meet y'all.” She gave her husband a sideways smirk. “Dingbat here told me y'all were Mr. West's relatives.”

Tag jerked a hand in the air, then let it fall to the steering wheel. “That's what Floyd said he thought, and he's the ranch manager. How am I supposed to know if Floyd don't know?”

Chrissy responded with a petulant eye roll, then pointed at Daniel but directed her comment to me. “Anyhow, your husband does look a lot like Mr. West's son, so it's not hard to figure how Floyd made that mistake, considerin' that your husband and Jack West are cooped up together all the time. I've never actually met Mason West, and far as I've ever heard, Mr. West and his son do
not
talk, period. But there's plenty of pictures in Mr. West's house up at the big ranch headquarters. Tag and me take care of the place anytime Mr. West's out of town. But anyway, just so you know, Tag and me and McKenna aren't normally this snotty. We just figured anybody who could stand to spend that much time near Jack West
had
to be related to him. We thought maybe him and his son were getting back together. Everyone's been all stirred up about what that might mean, by the way.”

Tag gave her a warning glance and tried to hide it by tugging on his hat brim. There was a whole paragraph in that look, and I didn't like what it said.

Chrissy would not be shushed, though. “Pfff! Don't try to hush me up, Tag Reese. I'll say what I want to about that
man. He isn't here to hear it. Thank-the-Lord-and-phone-the-saints for that.”

Daniel and I traded sideways glances the way customers might when the first person in line is harassing the checker at Walmart.

Chrissy turned back with a quick flash of eyelashes, like we were talking girl-to-girl now. “So, anyway, is he drivin' you crazy yet? Mr. West, I mean? It's hard when you're new around here. Tag and I've been here nearly a year, but the first six months was about as nice as havin' a picnic in a cow pie.” She paused for a breath, her gaze shifting between Daniel and me expectantly, like she was ready to get down to some good gossip.

“We're still learning our way around,” Daniel's reply was cautious. He squeezed my hand in a way that said,
Does this girl seem crazy to you?

“I've been busy with the house, mostly,” I hedged.

Red curls bounced pertly over Chrissy's cheek. “Whoa, you from New York or someplace?”

“DC.”

“It
sounds
like it.” Tucking the loose hair behind her ear, she leaned closer to the window. Compacted in the booster seat, her daughter squirmed and whined, “Mama!” She was a miniature of her mother—creamy skin that was a patchwork of freckles, big brown eyes, wisps of curly red hair, a pert little nose, and cupid's bow lips. Right now they were turned downward into a frown.

Chrissy responded with a quick, “Hush up!” Then she turned back to us. “So, we're headin' down to mess around at the beach across from Firefly Island for a while, since Jack's not here to have a hissy about it. Y'all wanna come? McKenna would love to play with your little boy. She's got kids at the day care during the day—I work in Gnadenfeld
at the City Drug. If you ever have a prescription, just call me and I can bring it by for you on my way home—but McKenna doesn't have anybody on the ranch to play with. One of the other guys is single. Floyd, the manager, has kids that're grown and off on their own, and the other three have kids that're in high school. We'd love to have your little boy over sometime.”

“Oh, well, I . . .” The flood of information clogged the synapses in my brain, waiting for processing. Chrissy's train of thought seemed to jump back and forth across several tracks.

“Sure, that sounds like fun.” Daniel gave me a pleased look, as if to say,
Hey, we wanted a friend for Nick, and here one is.
“Nick would like that. And I've been wondering how to get down to that beach across from the island, too. So far, I've only seen it from a distance.”

Chrissy pursed her lips in an expression that made her look more like Congressman Faber's persnickety old secretary than a girl just a few years out of high school. “Tag won't take me down there unless Jack West's out of town. He's afraid I'll swim over to Firefly Island and get us fired. I guess y'all probably already heard that
nobody's
allowed on Firefly Island. I figure that's where the b-o-d-i-e-s are buried.” She glanced at McKenna when she spelled out the word.

Tag sighed and rolled a look our way, as if to say,
Now you see what I deal with every day of my life.

In the center seat, McKenna pushed her mother out of the way and peered over the dashboard as Nick and Pecos started toward us. From the bed of the truck, a short-haired gray dog barked, wagging its stubby tail.

Tag wheeled a hand, an amiable grin forming beneath the blond mop of an old-fashioned handlebar moustache that was pretty respectable for someone so young. “Why don't y'all
just hop in back? Your truck's not four-wheel drive. Prob'ly won't make it where we're goin'.”

I glanced at Tag's vehicle, wondering what he meant by
in the back
. While some of the ranch trucks were of the four-door variety, this one was not. Surely, he didn't mean for us to ride in the open bed, with the dog . . .

But he did, of course, and I was quickly introduced to the concept of the cowboy convertible. After grabbing the swim stuff from our vehicle and doing a quick change behind the lab building, we rattled off, Nick up front because McKenna insisted on it, Daniel and me in the bed, balanced on the spare tire, and the dogs leaning against the tailgate, tails wagging with enthusiasm.

As we jounced across the hills, rolling over rocks, chuckholes, and small trees, the dogs nipped the air joyously, Nick giggled in the front seat with his new friend, and Daniel and I clung to a tire in the bed, laughing at the dogs. Suddenly I realized that in this lonely, desperate first month here, I'd been so focused on the life I'd left behind that for the most part, I'd been missing the fun of where I was.

No more, I promised myself. From here on out, I was going to stay focused on the here and now. The present. The gift of limestone hills, live oak trees, and rides in a cowboy convertible with the lake breezes ruffling my hair. If I couldn't control the circumstances, at least I could control my attitude toward them.

After a white-knuckle ride across the pasture on what looked more like a mountain goat trail than a road, I finally saw the lake below. It appeared and disappeared as we bobbed over several small hills. The breeze was cool and sweet, the scent implying open water and endless sky. The tires churned madly on the way up the final boulder-strewn slope. Grabbing the side rail, I stared straight down into a canyon and briefly
reevaluated the wisdom of riding in the back of the truck. And then all of a sudden the vehicle lurched over the hill, the kids squealed, and Chrissy tapped the back window, pointing toward the view splashed before us like an artist's rendering.

My heart quickened with a primal sense of discovery, of having found something I wouldn't have believed could really exist. I'd never seen a place like this—the meeting of water, land, and sky intertwined in such an untouched and perfect way. I breathed it in as we rolled down the incline and drifted to a stop on a rocky slope by the lakeshore.

Daniel hopped out of the truck and made an agile landing on the gravel, then stopped and reached for me. “Here,” he said, smiling. “Careful.” He held my hand as I exited less than gracefully. Tag and McKenna opened the tailgate of the truck, and the dogs jumped out, then cavorted around the vehicle, sniffing patches of milkweed and rooting in nests of last year's leaves.

“Come on, Mallory,” Chrissy beckoned, turning and walking backward. “You can get a good look at Firefly Island from downshore by the causeway.”

I hesitated, feeling a little guilty. Daniel, Nick, and I had so little time together as it was. I wanted to watch as Nick explored the new stretch of territory and tried out the fishing worms he'd been keeping in his pocket.

“Go ahead,” Daniel urged. “We'll be here.”

Chrissy gave Tag a petulant look. “See how
nice
he is?”

Tag scowled, and I tried to politely pretend I didn't notice.

“He's such a poo,” Chrissy complained as we walked toward the island, where a man-made causeway and a private road connected Firefly to the rest of the world. Up close, the earthen-and-stone causeway was impressive.

“Wow, that thing is massive,” I commented. At some time in the past, a great deal of effort had gone into making sure the
island was accessible. Now an iron fence, a locked gate, and a plethora of No Trespassing signs prevented any public entry.

“Yeah, no kidding.” Chrissy agreed. “I'd so love to see what he's hiding out there. Floyd's been working on the ranch forever, and he says that Jack's second wife, the one who
disappeared
”—she punctuated the word with finger quotes—“along with Jack's little stepson used to spend a lot of time on Firefly. It was, like, her favorite place on the ranch. There's a cabin on the island, and she'd go there a few days at a time. Probably whenever she wanted to get away from Jack West, I bet. Anyhow, after she and her son
vanished
”—finger quotes again—“off the face of the earth, Jack put up the gate across the causeway and all the No Trespassing signs. Tag doesn't like me to say it, but I think he hid somethin' there—somethin' really bad.”

A chill danced over me as we stopped walking and stood looking across a short expanse of water at the shores of Firefly Island.

Chrissy pointed. “You can see the roof of the cabin through the trees a little bit, if you look . . . right there, see?” She glanced over her shoulder toward the men, as if to make sure they were still nearby. “Lights move around on the island at night, too. Tag says I'm making it up, but I'm not. One night, Tag and me were out lookin' for a lost colt in that pasture just across from your house. I was right there on the hill where the old homestead is, and I looked across toward the lake, and I saw a light moving around on the island. I don't believe in ghosts, strictly speakin'. My mama raised me in church, but it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up like hen scruff, I'll tell you.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, too. I stared into the tree shadows of Firefly Island and wondered what might be concealed in the thick growth of elms and pin oaks.
I wasn't sure I wanted to know. It was surreal, being here looking at that place I'd had so many strange dreams about. In the dreams, I was standing right where I was now—on the shore near the causeway.