The Secret of Everything (6 page)

There were plenty of Anglos, too—ranchers and farmers alike, with outback and cowboy hats shading eyes that had squinted a long time into the sun, and women with leathered skin. There were well-tended matrons in expensive jeans and the odd purse dog poking a curious nose out of a bag; masters of the universe masquerading as the little people, their exquisitely expensive sunglasses and watches giving them away. Tessa shot them, too, discreetly.

She finally found the Green Gate Organic Farms booth at the far end of the market, taking up four lengths of tent. Here was a mix of nations, ages, colors, sexes. A young African American man with a big Afro weighed beans. Hippie twenty-somethings in blond and red dreadlocks kept an eye on the chile roaster. And, of course, there were the older ones, people who had probably been with the farm since it had been a commune, settled in the late sixties by a bunch of California hippies fleeing the scene on the coast. Including Sam, of course.

As Tessa walked slowly among the overflowing tables of tomatoes and chiles, corn and radishes, onions and potatoes and beans, she glanced at the people manning the stand. Aside from the young ones, no one here really looked particularly counterculture, although one man had long gray hair he’d tied back from his lean, handsome face, and a couple of women wore a lot of bracelets and long earrings.

But then, Tessa wore a lot of bracelets herself. Right this minute, she had a silver cuff she’d bought in Tasmania, at a market very like this one. The memory brought Glenn’s face to her, and she pushed it away. She had enough to think about without adding a big wallow over the Aussie who’d broken her heart. It had been almost two years, after all.

And yet she had to admit that a part of her still wished for
his company, wished he was here with her now, running his acerbic commentary on everything from the heartiness of beans to the tarot readers turning cards for patrons. She remembered reading once that a person had to grieve for half the length of the relationship itself. She’d lived with Glenn for nearly four years. Surely she must be close to finished by now.

Enough. Deliberately, she shifted her attention to the bounty in front of her, gathering another breath of chile-scented air. There, in the back of the booth, was the woman with long blond hair that she’d seen last night at Las Golindrinas, the hostile woman who still wore the same floaty purple skirt. And still hadn’t brushed her hair.

Tessa had expected more people like her. Instead, most of them had the look of the prosperous lazing around for the day, good haircuts and clean jaws and tidy jeans.

It was odd to imagine that some of them might have known her father. And her mother, whom she couldn’t remember except in the barest fragments. What would they say if she introduced herself, made conversation about her father living at the commune?

Weirdly, she found herself feeling a lot of anxiety over that thought. Was it possible she wanted to let sleeping dogs lie?

Maybe.

She wandered down the tables, smelling a cantaloupe, thumping a watermelon. A woman with her hair hidden beneath a big scarf said, “What can I tempt you with?”

A frisson of memory skated over Tessa’s nerves. Startling. The voice was familiar, she thought, though the face didn’t seem to trigger anything.

Or maybe—more likely—she was
expecting
to recognize someone here. “I’m not sure,” she said, peering into the woman’s face for a possible clue. She had no eyebrows, and
Tessa realized she must be a chemo patient. “I’m really only in town for a couple of days. Can’t cook anything.”

“Fresh food, then. Peaches? Cantaloupe?”

Tessa raised her blue arm, with the bag slung over her casted wrist. “Peaches were already irresistible. But, yes, cantaloupe should be easy enough.”

“And it’s very, very good for you. Lots of antioxidants.”

Tessa nodded. “Do you have any literature or background on the farm?”

“We ran out this morning, actually,” she said, “but if you come over to the farm during the week, we have a little cottage devoted to all that stuff.” She gave Tessa the enormous cantaloupe she’d picked out for her and picked up a card from the table. “It’s all right there. You can find us on the Web.”

“Thanks.” Tessa tucked the card away.

Now the aisles were growing very crowded. People attired in costly casual clothes and sleek coifs and the fragrance of big money joined the housewives and young families and teenagers huddling around the edges, trading giggles or gossip, depending. Tessa saw an LA type, a woman who had to be well over forty with hips no larger than the young teens nearby. It always startled her, that perfection. What did it take? A glass of chardonnay and a vitamin every day, hold the food? What kind of life could that possibly be?

Then again, she wasn’t married to a billionaire. Maybe it would be worth it.

Shaking her head, she stepped out of the flow nearby the retaining wall around the tree, pushing her sunglasses up so she could check some of the photos she’d captured thus far.

Something slammed into her legs, and Tessa staggered sideways. “Hey!”

A big white dog twirled in that particularly endearing circle
of happiness, head down, tail swirling with him, mouth and tongue smiling all the way to his black-tipped ears. He wiggled up to her legs, and Tessa realized that it was the dog who’d been hit by the truck yesterday.

“Oh, baby!” she cried, kneeling. She put her camera in the bag for safety and reached for the mutt. He danced, wiggling all over. “Hi, honey! I’m so glad to see you. How are you?” She rubbed her hands over his fluffy neck, his shoulders. He half-moaned, half-yelped in ecstasy and licked her face with no apology whatsoever. “Yes, thank you. I’m glad to see you, too. You look good.”

“That’s
our
dog, you know.”

The little girl was maybe seven or eight, a bit plump. Fine blond hair was barely captured in a ponytail high on the back of her head. Wisps and locks escaped all around her face. She wore blue glasses. “He’s beautiful,” Tessa said.

“He’s an Akita. They’re very smart.”

“I’ve heard that.” The dog leaned hard against Tessa and she couldn’t help giving him a hug. “Is he—”

Another girl, maybe a little younger, as tidy as her sister was unkempt, approached, “He isn’t a
purebred
Akita, Natalie,” she said with superiority. “He’s only half. We don’t know what the rest is.” To Tessa, she said, “He gets in a lot of trouble.”

“He’s still
our
dog,” said Natalie.

“I was just petting him,” Tessa said, chuckling. “I would never steal him or anything.”

“Girls!” a tall, sturdy-looking woman called. She held a blond moppet in her arms, all big eyes and soft red mouth. “Get the damned dog and come on, will you? I’ve gotta get you home and go to work.”

“Grandma! You swore!” the first girl said, but she grabbed the dog’s leash and yanked. He got up willingly enough and
trotted after her, looking over his shoulder as if to wink at Tessa. She grinned.

“Goodbye,” said the second little girl.

“Bye. Thanks for letting me pet your dog.”

Natalie had a quarter in her pocket. She could actually feel it against her thigh, a round hot spot she needed to get rid of. When Grandma wanted to stop at the grocery story on the way home, Natalie was so relieved she almost cried. They left Pedro in the car with his head sticking out, and all trooped into the Safeway Jade danced ahead, as usual, and grabbed the shopping cart. “I’ll push it,” she said with a sidelong look at Natalie.

It was Natalie’s turn and Jade knew it, but that coin was burning her, so Natalie let it go. They went to the produce section first, where the apples were coming in now in giant piles. On the Food Network, a chef said to look for all different kinds of apples and try something new, like a Pink Lady, and Natalie thought it sounded so enchanting, like an apple in a fairy tale, that she was dying to try one.

Not
really
dying, like Snow White and her poisoned apple, but, anyway …

Carefully, she read the names of the apples. Delicious and Fuji, green Granny Smiths, and Braeburn. A pile of small yellow and pink apples caught her eye. “Pink Ladies!” she cried, pointing. “Grandma, can I have one?”

“No, not today.” She briskly piled onions in a bag.

“Please? Just one. It’s a Pink Lady. I heard about Pink—”

“I said no, Natalie.”

“I have a—”

“No.”

Crushed, Natalie turned away. The apples, softly streaked with palest green and threads of yellow, as round as cherries, seemed almost to be laughing. Not at her, of course, but just laughing, happy. Bright and pretty, like a Pink Lady.

“I have a quarter,” she said. “I’m going to the tattoos.”

“No candy,” Grandma said. “You’ve had plenty to eat this morning.”

“A
tattoo
.”

“That’s fine. I’m just going to get a few things to take to your daddy, so stay right there and don’t go wandering all over the store.”

“I can find you,” Natalie said with a scowl. There were only seven aisles in the whole store, for heaven’s sake. Not like Denver, where they used to live. Before. The stores there had so many aisles a person really could get lost.

“I said stay by the machines, Nat. Or come with us now.”

Jade, swinging her body back and forth on one foot so that her hair swirled out around her like a shiny cape, smirked. Natalie resisted the urge to pinch her and headed for the machines.

She took her time deciding. There were two rows of machines up against the wall next to the machine horse. Gumballs and jawbreakers and the fruit-shaped sweets Nat loved, cherry hearts and yellow bananas and tiny green limes with hard candy outsides and melting sugar insides. Who would know? She glanced over her shoulder, but Grandma was long gone. She could eat them before anybody got back.

The quarter burned her fingers even at the thought. No. Bad enough that she’d stolen the coin right out of her grandmother’s wallet, from the little envelope that held nickels and dimes and plenty of quarters. She never took one if it might be noticed.

Next to the fruit candies were the tattoos. Before she could add the sin of lying to stealing and the list of other bad things she would have to ask forgiveness for in her prayers tonight, she plunked the quarter in the slot and turned it. A plastic ball fell into the mouth and Nat took it out, pulling the container apart to see which tattoo she had.

MOM
, it said, in little sparkly letters with hearts and flowers, and Nat felt so guilty she dropped the stupid tattoo right on the floor and ran through the store, feeling the breath of her mother’s censure rushing up her neck.

When she got home, she would go right to the altar in her bedroom and say as many Hail Marys as she could count, and she would never, ever, ever steal anything again.

This time, she really meant it.

   V
ita Solano had three passions. The first was for food and, by extension, the café she had opened thirty years ago, a café that had become an icon in the mountain town of Los Ladrones.

The second was for running, which had saved her life after a man tried to steal it away from her.

The third was for extending the possibility of hope to women who had, usually because of a man, ended up in prison. In her café, she taught them to cook, and sometimes in the cooking, in the sweetness of tending those small things, they learned how to live.

After the restaurant closed for lunch this afternoon, she finally had time to work a little more with the new parolee in her kitchen, Annie Veracruz. The woman was a waif, too thin, hands too big at the end of skinny wrists. There were scars on her face and arms, some burned, some cut, probably self-inflicted. There were others, not self-inflicted at all. A long-healed scar through the eyebrow, the crookedness of a broken nose. Tattoos circled her wrists, decorated her back, her ankles. But she was only in her mid-thirties or so. Plenty of time to make a fresh start.

Right this minute, she was so nervous that she looked like she might nibble right through her mouth. She stepped forward with an expression of extreme concentration and took the pancake turner from Vita’s outstretched hand.