Stripped Bare (10 page)

“Just give her a little time, okay?”

I didn't want to alarm Susan by telling her Milo might suspect Carly of the shooting. “Family is the best thing for Carly right now.” Oh God, I sounded like Louise.

“Look, it's really not up to you. Carly's been through enough shit. Back off.”

The thought of Carly's pain serrated my heart. What harm would it do to let her alone for tonight? Milo could go hang for another few hours. “Okay. Only for a little while.”

Susan's silence was the equivalent of a disdainful stare. She was still a teen and knew everything. I sighed. “Then tell her I love her. That we all love her.”

Susan sounded sad. “I already told her that. I'm not sure it helped.”

Carly might be in the best hands right now. At any rate, she'd chosen, and I'd give her peace. For one day. Then she'd either talk to me or I'd drive to Lincoln and haul her home myself.

I leaned on the kitchen counter, tired of the battering thoughts of Ted and Roxy. I forced my mind to Carly. When had Carly started acting strange? There was one night a few weeks ago.

Carly had whirled into the kitchen like a tornado as I sealed foil over the dinner plate I'd filled for Ted. He'd said he would be home later, because he had to finish some paperwork at the courthouse. I'd stopped myself from questioning why he had to work past eight o'clock.

Breathless, she stood in her gym shorts and hoodie. “Shit. I forgot. I have to bring six pictures of me, growing up, to school tomorrow.”

I imitated her, hoping to point out her constant cursing without nagging. “Shit. Okay.”

As I expected, she rolled her eyes. “It's for the graduation program. Ms. Parker jumped my ass today. They were supposed to be in last week.”

I guess hinting about cleaning up her vocabulary wasn't working. I slipped the plate into the fridge. “There's a box of your parents' stuff in the office closet. There's got to be pictures in that.”

We dug out a lidded cardboard orange crate from behind Ted's old shotgun and three years of tax records and plopped it on the living room floor. Carly yanked off the lid and sat back as if a snake might jump out.

Tentatively, she reached to the top and pulled out an envelope of snapshots. “This is so old-school.”

“We had a whole different way of doing things before smartphones. Even when we had digital cameras we still made prints.” I took out another envelope and flipped through the dozen or so prints. “Look! This is you with Susan and Ruth. I'm guessing you're about four years old.” The three little girls sat in the sandbox in back of Mom's house. There was a whole series of them in their matching pink-and-yellow bikinis, pouring sand on each other, racing in the green grass, holding Kool-Aid cups, and sporting red-stained grins.

Bittersweet memories brightened in my mind. “Ruthie was staying with Mom because Louise was in labor with Esther. Your mother brought you in to play, and you three girls ran like wild animals.”

Carly smiled. “Ruthie still gets crazy when her mom's not around.”

“I'd just turned eighteen, and Mom let me share the margaritas she'd made for her and Glenda.”

Carly stared at the photos as if transporting herself back to the sunny backyard. “That doesn't sound like the kind of day Louise would approve of.”

I laughed. “We paid for it. When Louise showed up the next morning and found the three of you snuggled into one bed, with grass clinging to your feet and the Kool-Aid mustaches still on your faces, she pitched a fit about irresponsible child care.”

Carly considered it. “I can see how she wouldn't take to three drunks minding her kid.”

I brushed that off. “We weren't drunk. And even if we had been, the twins were thirteen and plenty old enough to babysit.”

She set that packet aside and pulled out another. “This must be me and Dad.” She handed me a picture of Brian, asleep on the couch with a two month-old Carly snuggled on his chest, thumb in her mouth.

We shuffled through the stacks of photo envelopes. Carly sat on the floor, her back propped against the couch. I perched on a rocker. Carly probably didn't remember most of what she saw in the photos, but here was proof she'd had a mother and a father and they'd loved her. She didn't cry, but her face looked brittle.

I told her story after story about Glenda as a child. Fearless, rebellious Glenda, always organizing the Fox kids on one adventure after another. She had us building tree houses that fell from the branches, bike races that ended in blazing crashes, safaris involving a thermos of milk and peanut butter sandwiches eaten in the pasture behind our house. It's a wonder any of us survived childhood.

I listened as Carly took her turn describing the world Glenda had created for her on the ranch. The same sort of fun, only safer and more controlled. “Dad was really different when he was around Mom. Sort of relaxed and easy.”

None of the Foxes saw what Glenda did—general opinion of the clan being that Brian lacked brains and confidence and needed someone to tell him what to do. Before Glenda, I suppose it had been Eldon directing Brian's life. Even if I saw them as ill-suited, Glenda and Brian seemed devoted to each other. I chalked it up to a mystical match only they understood. After Glenda died, Brian became edgy. Marrying Roxy only added to the scent of desperation that clung to him, as if he had to work every moment to live up to her expectations.

Way past when Carly and I both should have been in bed, I said, “You want something to drink?”

She nodded and dug back into the box. I headed into the kitchen, hoping to find something without caffeine.

Why wasn't Ted home? I hadn't expected he'd be out this long. He probably stopped at the Long Branch after he finished the paperwork, and got sidetracked. Unlike me and Carly, he didn't have to be up at dawn.

I heated milk in the microwave. As far as I knew, Carly and I were the only people on the planet who actually liked warm milk. I thought we could both use the comfort.

I started into the living room with the mugs. Carly studied the contents of a dark-blue file folder. When she heard me, she slammed the file closed and looked up, a strained smile on her face.

I handed her a cup. “What was that?”

She didn't look at me. “Dunno. What do you think of these?” She laid out a half dozen photos, ranging from her as a newborn to her in early grade school. All of the shots showed Carly with either Glenda or Brian or both.

“Those should work.” I plopped onto the couch beside her and traced my fingers along the top of her head, messing her blonde ponytail.

She dropped her head forward and encouraged me to keep massaging. We sipped our milk in silence. After a while she set her mug on the carpet. “Did Ted hang out much with Dad?”

I thought a minute. “Brian was a little older than Ted. They knew each other, but I don't think they were close friends. Brian went to Kilner, so he didn't really have the same friendships he'd have had if he'd gone to high school here.” Brian always acted as if he was a cut above the folks around here, and I assumed he felt more educated and worldly for his time at the military school. At any rate, he kept in touch with some of his old classmates and liked to drop details about their wealth and accomplishments into his conversations.

Carly pushed away from me and stretched her legs out. “So weird that Granddad would send Dad to a private high school. He's such a cheapskate.”

I'd wondered that, too. “You ought to ask him about it.”

She frowned at the box. “I did. Granddad said he'd gone there, and his dad too. So it was a legacy thing.” She let that sit a moment. “Ted was sheriff when Dad died, wasn't he?”

“Yep.”

She bent over her legs to stretch her back. “Did he investigate the accident?”

Carly watched too much TV, with all the cop shows. “It wasn't the kind of accident that needed investigating. Your father flew into the hill.” On a beautiful spring morning with no wind, in a Cessna 182 that he'd been flying for four years.

Her eyes strayed to the folder. “They said he probably got distracted or confused and made a mistake, but did they check the plane to make sure it hadn't malfunctioned or something?”

I didn't want to think about the pile of twisted metal and charred plastic, the mangled body. “I doubt they could tell much from what was left. As I recall, he'd just had the plane in for its annual, so somebody must have checked that, at least.”

“Yeah.” Her eyes lost their sharp focus. Did she relive that afternoon often? Thankfully, she hadn't seen the plane go down, but she'd arrived in time to see Harold Graham and Eunice Fleenor load the gurney into the back of the ambulance. She'd missed Brian's face, of course. They'd zipped the black body bag before she arrived.

My eyes drooped, but I didn't want to leave her alone with all the memories and loss.

Finally she stirred and pushed herself up. “See you tomorrow.”

I staggered to my room and she made her way upstairs. The creaking of the ceiling, from Carly's restlessness, drew me out of sleep from time to time. Late in the night, I heard her talking to Ted. Content that he was home, I drifted off.

Carly took the photos to school the next day and, as expected, left the rest of the box's contents strewn around the living room floor. I put it all away. Curious about the blue file folder, I saved it out to read. But before I even opened it, one of my sisters called, and then it was time to check cows and get dinner going.

*   *   *

I pushed back from the counter. It seemed like I'd grabbed the folder with a pile of bookwork and had shoved it into the file cabinet, in a section marked “After Calving.” My filing system might not be the most advanced, but I hated clutter. I had learned to keep my life as simple as possible during the weeks of calving. Stashing paperwork out of sight helped my psyche. Now, though, I'd take a cluttered office over a missing niece and cheating, bullet-riddled husband.

My house felt like a vacuum. No wind to buffet against the walls and windows, no one to turn on the TV or music, no conversation. I usually relished this kind of silence, but I wouldn't mind a little Carly bedlam about now. I headed to the office. The drawer where I kept the After Calving material was half open, and papers struggled out the top as if someone had yanked something out of the folders. I rifled through it. No blue file.

Up the steep attic steps, I snapped on the light. Carly's room took up one half of the attic, with storage on the other side. As always, I drew in a breath to steady myself. With Ted's approval, and even his help, Carly had painted the plaster walls a startling chartreuse, outlining the windows in tangerine and lime. It was like being trapped in a Skittles bag. Clothes, books, makeup, shoes—the life of a teenager littered the floor, and a muffled odor of ripe workout clothes hung over it all.

I stood amid the wreckage and let my eyes travel over every surface. No blue file. I didn't expect to make a dent in the mess, but without much thought I grabbed a few jeans and shirts from the floor and dropped them on an overstuffed chair Carly had insisted on bringing from the Bar J. Not that I'd know if anything were missing, but I didn't see Birdy Bird anywhere. Seemed odd that a seventeen-year-old would take a stuffed animal with her for an overnight, or even two nights. Guess she was feeling pretty bad. I sighed. If she'd brought the file up here, it could be buried under … What was that? A plate of mummified Christmas cookies?

I backed down the stairs. I'd ask her about the file later. As soon as I had her home, we'd discuss how cleanliness might not be next to godliness but could go a far piece in preventing disease or insect infestation.

I checked the cows once more, set my alarm for two hours, and climbed under the comforter. In my bed. All alone. When I wondered if Ted would ever share my bed again, I finally broke apart and bawled into the emptiness. But not as long as I'd have thought, before I dropped down to sleep.

The alarm jangled me awake twice in the night to check the cows. I'd expected to stay awake fretting both times, but some self-preservation instinct allowed me to crash again. Good thing, because my phone started ringing before five a.m. and that was it for me.

 

9

With a gasp, I fumbled for the phone on the table next to the bed. The cat shriek had to go before I keeled over with a heart attack. In the time it took to punch on and bring it to my ear, I'd already run through the disaster possibilities. Ted had taken a bad turn. Carly in any manner of trouble. And that didn't count the random accidents my eight brothers or sisters and their families might be in.

“What?” I nearly shouted into the phone.

“Uh, sorry.” Douglas's calm voice cooled my panic. The gentlest of the Fox kids, Douglas seeped unnoticed among the others, usually on hand to lend gentle support. Unlike his twin, Michael, who always popped and sizzled with energy.

I brought my own voice down to his kind level. “What's up?”

A cow's moo floated to me. Douglas managed the university research ranch at the far northeastern corner of Grand County. Sounded as if he was already at work. “Didn't mean to wake you up. We heard about Eldon and Ted and I wondered if you knew anything.”

I plopped back on my pillow and closed my eyes. I gave him the scant information I knew about Ted's condition, the dull throb in my gut flaring when I avoided telling him about Roxy. I'd let Ted recover before one of my brothers killed him. The good citizens of Grand County had done an amazing job of keeping news of Ted's affair from the sibs. If any of them had known, Ted wouldn't have survived long enough to let an outsider shoot him.

Douglas projected away from the phone in a commanding voice. “Her. I need blood and fecal samples.” He came back on the line. “What about who shot them? I hear Milo is investigating, and they say the state patrol sent an officer. But I figured you'd know more than any of them.”