The Wilder Sisters (22 page)
“I guess the phones were all out of service at the hotel.”
Mami reached over and tweaked Lily’s nose. “You know, I’m glad to see you even if you insist on giving your
ama
the third degree.” She waved hello to Shep. “Come inside, Lily. We’ll have a cold drink and get caught up.”
“What do you want me to do with these dogs?” Pop asked. “Stand here posing in case a photographer comes by?”
Mami took the leashes from his hands. She kissed Pop’s cheek and he smiled. Behind him, Rose’s mare ran wide circles at the lope, her nostrils flaring pink with the effort. The elegant hounds followed Poppy toward the house. “Coming, Pop?” Lily asked.
He gestured to the arena. “I’ll be in later when I’ve made a dent in this work.”
“I’ll remember that,” she said under her breath.
Despite their reputation for being high strung, the greyhounds weren’t nervous at all, not even with the ranch dogs’ greetings, which included Buddy’s incessant barking behind the screen door. Lily told him to pipe down, then shut him outside while Mami folded blankets into makeshift beds and placed them in the room’s sunniest corners. She poured water into dishes, set them on the floor, then switched the television on to a talk show. “I hope you don’t mind background noise. These dogs are straight off the track. They’ll need constant chatter for a couple of days in order to settle down.”
Lily sat down near the blue dog, which was taller than the others. It laid a paw on her and looked up with soulful, doe-brown eyes. She stroked its neck and studied the numbered tattoo inside its left ear. “So that’s why Pop had his knickers in a knot. You kicked him off the plane for pooches.”
“There’s a weight safety limit for the plane. I couldn’t let these dogs down, not with all they’ve been through.”
Lily didn’t care to hear the details, which always broke her heart. “I’ll take your word for it. Do they really have homes?”
“Not just yet. There’s a woman in California who has the most wonderful setup, though. I’m betting she’ll keep them until they’re adopted. I’ll call her, and in a few days fly them over. You could come along if you like. I’d love to spend some time with you.”
Lily petted the blue dog. “This one’s not leaving.”
Mami kicked off her flats and sat down on the couch. “Now what makes you say a thing like that?”
She looked into her mother’s face, where the truth lay as obvious as her cheekbones. “Gut feeling.”
Mami laughed. “I thought Rose would be the one to inherit my second sense. Please don’t tell your father just yet,” she said. “Let me break it to him.”
Lily rolled up her sleeves and tied the tails of the workshirt at her waist. “He already knows.”
Poppy Wilder put her feet up on the coffee table. She pressed her lips together and looked up at the O’Keeffe on the wall in front of them. Several minutes passed, during which time Lily petted the blue greyhound and watched the black-and-white one nose around, investigating the house. Compared to the stocky blue heelers and border collies around the ranch, these two looked like malnourished aliens. Lily understood how they felt, not certain they could trust this sudden luck. “What is it about greyhounds?” she asked.
Her mother shook her head. “
No sé
. I only know that I look at them and this desire to shut down all the tracks overwhelms me. If every litter born from this moment on was allowed to simply be loved and appreciated as dogs, not to have to run for their lives, that would make me happy. I’m sorry I can’t explain it better than that.” “That’s passion,” Lily said. “You don’t have to explain it any better
than you did.”
“I must,” her mother said. “Otherwise the tracks will never shut down.”
“Maybe that commercial will help. By the way, who was the dir- ector? Looked like you two were old friends.”
“His name is Robert Turney, and we are friends, to
greyhounds
.
Are you home for a visit, or have you made a life change?” Lily bristled. “That’s a strange thing to say.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. For some time now I’ve felt you
descontenta
out there in California. I prayed to the Virgin to make you happy, and she told me to be patient, that you were coming home. I didn’t think it would be before Christmas, but here you are.”
First Rose, now Mami. All that God talk drove Lily nuts. “You can tell your Virgin that the only reason I’m here is I needed a vaca- tion. That’s all.”
“Lily, I don’t presume to tell the Mother of God anything. I listen to what she has to say.”
Either faith was a whole lot simpler than it was made it out to be or it provided the most convenient excuse in the world. “I’m curi- ous,” Lily said. “What does the Virgin say about Rose and this vet?” Poppy stroked the black-and-white greyhound, who had come over to the couch for reassurance and laid its muzzle on her thigh.
“If you really want to know, I’ll tell you.” “I do.”
Her mother touched the elaborate silver crucifix she wore on a chain around her slender neck. One of her artist protégés had de- signed it for her, and she rarely took it off. “That in another lifetime she and Austin were lovers. There’s no escaping what’s going on with those two. Nothing for us to do but sit back and watch and eventually pick out some wedding china.”
“Really, Mami?” Lily sighed. “Just once I wish you’d offer a motherly perspective instead of hiding behind the Virgin. I can’t speak for Rose, but I’d kill to know what you alone think, to hear that kind of advice.”
Color came into her mother’s cheeks. She opened her mouth to laugh but seemed too stunned to do that. “
Enamorada
, what is hap- pening to your sister is already in progress. There’s nothing you or I can do about it, not really. Just like I know you are here for good. Whether you admit it to yourself or not, it’s something that is and cannot be altered.”
There was no use arguing. Her mother was like that New Age philosophy, coming from basic logic, inseparable from religion, sprinkled liberally with star barf and frosted with a complex Spanish credo. “There’s nothing good to eat in the house,” Lily said. “How come you can throw a party at a moment’s notice but you never have any decent food?”
Both greyhounds had come to her mother and stood before her. She nuzzled their fine-boned faces. She was going to have a hard time letting either dog go. What was two more dogs in the pack, anyway?
“How about you make a shopping list and I can go to the market for you?”
“That’s a wonderful idea,” Mami said.
Which was the first normal mother thing to come out of her mouth so far. Lily said, “Okay. Let me get some paper and a pencil.”
She had to drive out of town to find a real supermarket, but the good news was the larger the market, the more likely the possibility of her beloved California Krisprolls and pesto. Lily parked the Lexus in the lot of the Taos Smith’s Food King and walked in through the automatic doors. She studied the community bulletin boards with their perpetual ads for rental properties and used farm equipment. Four hundred dollars a month for a guest house on an estate near Angel Fire, provided you’d agree to feed and water horses. In Cali- fornia you couldn’t rent storage space for that. She could live on her savings for a long while with rent that low. Not that she was plan- ning to run right out and call, but Lily did jot the number down on the back of her list.
It doesn’t hurt to pipe dream
, she told herself.
“Excuse me,” she said to the girl at the deli counter. “Do you know where the pesto is?”
“Try aisle three,” a male voice behind her said. “That’s where they keep the spaghetti sauce.”
Lily turned to say thanks and was looking into the baby browns of Tres Quintero, who in addition to hardware stores, apparently also frequented markets. “Are you stalking me?”
“Today I am.”
He appeared to be alone. “Where’s your supermodel?”
He gave her a puzzled look. “What are you talking about?” “You know,
Leah
. As in, ‘Hi, I’m Leah and I have fabulous clothes.’
That Leah.”
He smiled. “My stepdaughter is back at Stanford.”
“She didn’t look like a stepdaughter. Actually, I think she was pretty old for a stepdaughter.”
He held up his hands. “Trust me, Leah’s the one good thing I got out of the divorce. Stanford’s term begins later than anywhere else.”
“Stanford? For real?”
“Yep, I’m so proud of her I tell everyone I know. You got any kids, Lily?”
Lily had to grab hold of the deli case and lean over the cheeses to stay on an even keel.
No child except the one I aborted, the one who never leaves me, yours. We’re standing here by the cold case, and you’re grinning over an eighteen-year-old who isn’t even your blood. Pesto in aisle three. Tres Quintero, my first lover, unencumbered by females (step- daughters or otherwise), and you
followed
me here. We’re alone in a su- permarket with only a shopping cart separating us. Jeez Louise, I completely forget how to talk
. “No, I don’t have any kids.”
Tres fingered the change in his left pocket. Lily listened to the jingle, a sound so utterly male it made her shiver. He was a left- handed bad boy and he was looking straight at her. “Come on,” he said. “I drove all the way from Floralee behind your car. Let’s not fight. Did you know I was planning on cutting you off if you headed toward the airport?”
“No.”
“Well, I was. You feel like grabbing a bite to eat or having a drink? Let’s catch up on the last ten years, Lily. I want to sit next to you. You’ve been on my mind ever since I saw you in the hardware store. Before that, actually. I had to promise your mother I’d adopt a greyhound to get her to tell me where you were headed.”
Lily’s best smile trembled at its edges. She wanted the reins back in her fist so bad she could taste leather. She’d say anything to put them back on level ground, to give herself an edge. “The thing is, Tres, I’m just not ever very hungry.”
He laughed softly. “Nobody said there had to be food involved. It was just an idea. Tell me what you have in mind, Lily Wilder. Odds are it’s pretty close to what I’m thinking.”
She took Tres by the wrist, pulling his hand out of his pocket to check the ring finger, to be doubly sure. It was blessedly devoid of jewelry, no pale streak recently uncovered, either, just the naturally dark skin of the digit that lived next door to what used to be her fa- vorite finger in the Western hemisphere. “Cappuccino.”
“Looks like a nice day for a drive to the mountains.” “I guess that wouldn’t kill me. But it might maim me.”
“I’ve got coffee at my cabin. We could have a picnic of sorts.”
Lily laughed. “You and me after all this time ought to be a real picnic. Let’s just aim for Folgers in a very public place.”
They abandoned the shopping cart there next to the roaster chickens and potato salad that looked past its expiration date and walked toward the exit. “Let me make something perfectly clear,” Lily said. “I came here looking for groceries, not trouble.”
Tres pulled his keys from his pocket. “To be fair, I believe I was the one looking for trouble.”
“Do you think you found it?”
Tres touched the tip of his left middle finger to her lips. “That re- mains to be seen. Do we really need to take both cars?”
“You better believe it,” Lily said, grabbing her keys so tightly that a small bruise appeared on her palm.
hen Austin appeared in her office doorway that Monday, Rose looked up from the computer and felt her heart betray her in
one single, irregular beat. Thank God its rhythm wasn’t audible, and that he couldn’t read her mind, because instead of checking in- ventory she had been mulling over a dream she’d had at the ranch. There in her old bedroom, beneath the shelves of childhood mysteries and teen novels that made a nurse’s career sound romantic, Rose had dreamed she and Austin were riding double on Max. They sat bareback, Rose in front, her arms loosely embracing the horse’s neck. Max wore no bridle, there were no reins to grab on to, but she trusted that he knew the way. Austin, seated behind, held on to Rose, his hands inside her shirt, fingers slowly moving up the ladder of her ribs. The dream had endowed the old gelding with the slow and easy canter he lacked in this life. She and Austin moved as one at the comfortable gait, but not without distraction. Alongside them loped a single rider: Leah Donavan. Austin dug his heels into Max’s side in order to keep pace with his ex-wife. In the dreamscape, where the impossible was little more than a challenge, Rose had leaned back in her seat, arching her neck to whisper in Austin’s ear,
Say no
, and this time he had. His fingers grazing her skin felt so real that the phantom touch caused her to call out his name:
Austin
? And her own voice awakened her. Blame it on
carne adobada
, Rose had told herself while she drove her horse home and took a five-minute shower, but the dream continued to pester her.
“Something I can do for you, Austin?” she asked, amused by the
irony of her own words. Oh, given the chance, she knew exactly what she’d like to do for him, and it would take the better part of a week.
“Give me a ride downtown? I asked Paloma, but she got all pissed off and told me to walk.”
Rose reached for her purse. “Take the Bronco, but make sure that you let it warm up first. Otherwise, sometimes when you pull out into traffic it stalls.”
He waved his hand for her to stop. “You don’t understand, Rose.
I can’t drive myself.” “Why not?”
He smiled sheepishly. “I got into a little trouble last night.”
She wondered what he’d done, what he’d said to make Paloma angry. “What happened?”
“Nothing, really, except that Billy Ortega stopped me not half a mile from here, and I’d had a few drinks, so he decided to take away my truck.”
Billy Ortega had been a year ahead of Rose in high school, a quarterback on the Floralee High football team. He was a cop now, and every time Rose saw him in his dark suit and tall boots, she couldn’t help but think that here was a man born to wear uni- forms—he did them that much justice. A second DUI was serious business. “Did he arrest you?”