The Wilder Sisters (3 page)

Austin unlaced his fingers and stepped back. “You’ve been waiting for that for a long time, haven’t you, boy?”

The horse shook his head. His lower lip drooped, revealing long yellow teeth. The gelding rubbed his muzzle along the vet’s faded blue workshirt, nudging and pushing until the man had to take steps to catch himself or go right over. Rose watched Austin reach up and tenderly stroke the horse’s neck. Max’s ears flicked with pleasure, and he lipped an imaginary handful of oats from the vet’s open palm. In the background, now that somebody else was getting it, Winky squealed for attention.

At that moment Rose knew that here was exactly what she needed—someone to hold on to her like that, someone whose primary desire was to deliver relief she couldn’t seem to provide herself—and that the man she wanted to do it was Austin Donavan.
It’s never going to happen
, she scolded herself.
Leah ruined him forever. Everyone knows that. But can someone please explain to me why it is men can’t drive the damn speed limit, make a little sense when they talk to us, and
not drink?
Maybe we don’t grow old as gracefully as they do, and not all of us are blessed with physical beauty, but underneath, where things count, can’t they see that a woman’s heart stays as passionate as ever
?

Asking questions like that was like wondering if she should dye the growing streak of gray hair under her left ear black. Eternal, with no right answer, and certainly not intended for women like her sister, Lily, to whom she had not spoken in five long years. Sit any decent male down in a chair, and have Lily walk by. Even the most educated of men would be transformed into a Tex Avery cartoon wolf—eyes bugging out, tongue lolling on the floor, his entire vocabulary sud- denly reduced to a primal whistle. Well, at least Austin was safe. He loved only alcohol, and Lily had long since moved on to more lucrative pastures—Southern California, the land of frozen yogurt, drive-bys, big bucks and aerobic everything.

And it wasn’t as if Lily didn’t deserve Rose’s silence. The two sisters had spent a lifetime arguing, but what Lily’d done that had zipped Rose’s lips shut had happened at Second Chance’s high school graduation party. The Wilder clan—cowboys, ranchers, and rednecks from way back—was used to shenanigans and found the humor in almost every situation, but Rose’s mother’s side of the family did not. Mixed in with the white was a concentration of Spanish and Indian heritage, and in the State of New Mexico, the amount of blood one could claim set one’s station for life. The Martínez family were formal, as reserved as

they were religious, and descended from a wealth so quiet it was detectable only in their perfect manners. When Lily’s present—an exotic dancer hired to “entertain” the new graduate—called out Second Chance’s name in a well-oiled voice, every member of the Martínez family except for Mami had made polite excuses, left be- hind their cards and gifts, and gotten into their cars and driven home. Lily apologized, but the party Rose had planned for so long was spoiled.
I’m sorry
were just a couple of the overworked words her sister hauled out when they suited her purposes.

The vet latched the corral gate behind him and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a bandanna. A fine sheen of Max’s horsehair marked the butt of his Wranglers, which he wore cowboy tight. Be- fore Leah left, they were starched with a crease so sharp a person could cut herself on it. The right back pocket was the spot where most Floralee men’s jeans bore a circular imprint from their Copen- hagen cans, but Austin didn’t smoke or chew, never had. He ate oranges. In a single spiral reminiscent of DNA, the peels littered his dashboard, curling into a stiff, fragrant potpourri under the constant bake of the New Mexico sun. No matter how much he scrubbed, Austin’s fingers probably smelled of horses and oranges. The scent of his truck cab reminded Rose of childhood Christmases, when fruit in her stocking was a big deal. A wistful smile crossed her face. She wished she were ten again, snuggled up to her father on the bench seat of his old pickup truck as they rode fenceline looking for breaks to repair. She let the daydream carry her back to a place where she could almost feel the sun dappling her arm hanging out the passenger-side open window and the comforting clove-and-spice scent of her dad’s pipe smoke filling the cab of the truck.

Austin was staring at her. “The way you look right now I’m almost afraid to ask what you’re thinking. You planning on how best to murder the kids?”

“I’m afraid it’s more desperate than that.”

He fluttered his fingers in a let’s-hear-it gesture. “Spill.”

Rose scraped her bootheel against the fence rail. “Just taking a bath in memories, Austin. You turn forty, that’s allowed.”

“Well, soak until you prune up, lady, but remember I need the payroll taxes figured before I incur penalties. And I have other pa- tients to

see. Mind if I duck inside, use the facilities on my way out?”

He always asked, and she never refused. “There is one small matter,” she said, pausing to frame the request in less obsequious terms. “If you have two seconds.”

Austin had been making notes on Max’s chart, but now he tucked the pen behind his ear. “Not Chachi’s anal sacs again. Rose, dammit, I—”

“Please. He’s dragging his bottom all over the yard. It’s painful to watch. He needs them expressed.”

The vet swore softly and threw his papers into the truck. “Paloma can do this. Even you can.”

“Chachi snaps at everyone but you. The last thing I need is a lawsuit. Plus, if he bites my right hand again I can’t type, and you know what that means for the payroll taxes.”

“That’s blackmail, woman.”

“Call it logic and you’ll feel better.”

Dr. Donavan set his handsome jaw as he snapped on a pair of surgical gloves. “Forget worrying about lawsuits,” he said in neatly clipped syllables. “People around here don’t sue. Your kids’ll hit bottom, and when they do, they’ll straighten out whether you love them according to the books or otherwise. The only problem I can see that’s unfixable in your life is that damn designer dog.”

She fetched the Jack Russell from his favorite napping place, a rut that stretched beneath the porch steps, where the red earth was al- ways cool. Chachi, generally chock-full of attitude, growled at her until he saw the vet. Then he began to shake and try to make things up to her. “Relax,” Rose told him. “This will be over in two seconds.”

“About two seconds longer than I’d like,” Austin grumbled. “Oh, stop it,” Rose said. “I owe you, all right?”

“Come to think of it, a casserole might even the scales.” He worked his magic, and there was minimal growling. Set free, Chachi flew across the yard, barking indignantly. Austin went up the steps into the house, and Rose unpinned the rest of the dry things from the clothesline and folded them into a neat pile.

A few moments later, she carried the laundry basket into the house. She watched Austin’s back strain against his shirt as he fin- ished rolling up his sleeves and bent to wash his hands at the kitchen sink, which she suddenly remembered was full of her few good bras and lacy panties, soaking in sudsy Woolite. From where the vet stood, it

probably looked like leftover dishwater. Men weren’t picky. To them water was water, soap was soap. Austin’s hands were always a wreck, cut up from slipped scalpels, bitten by his patients, the nails on those thick, short fingers of his chewed to the quick. “Austin—” she said, but he’d already thrust them into the water and brought them right back out full of wet lingerie.

“Well,” he said, holding on for just a moment before dropping the slippery garments back into the sink. “I expected you were soaking a pot or something. Hope I didn’t wreck anything.”

The expression on his face was such a mixture of befuddlement and longing that Rose wanted to cry. Nasty underthings were Lily’s department. She favored French imports. Rose was practical. Strictly Jockey for every day, but every once in awhile she’d drive down to Albuquerque, hit Nordstrom’s, and stand in front of the dressing- room mirror assessing her untouched body, lightly running her hands over imported lacy bra cups. Was that a crime?

Austin faked a halfhearted glance at his watch. “Running late again. Adios, Rose. Don’t forget my taxes.”

It only took a few days’ sobriety for the man to come springing back to life. Then it seemed as if he couldn’t wait to take off running from it.

2

Chasing Sheep

ome 846 miles away in her dollhouse-size condominium, Lily Wilder bent to blow out the aromatherapy candle on her bedside table. The scents of sage and cedar lingered in the corners of her bedroom. In the dark the smell reminded her of late fall in Floralee, the only time of year she didn’t feel like running away. Nights got cold enough that Pop lit a mesquite fire in the patio
chimenea
, and the trees all turned the colors of really great eye shadow. One of the stable pups would roll over at her feet and show her his precious milk-fat belly. She’d rub it, sing to him in the little Spanish she knew, and believe that under this gaping blue sky, her one true love was

just around the corner.

But this wasn’t a New Mexico fall, it was summer in Southern California. Financially, ecologically, and spiritually the state was a wreck. Thanks to air conditioning they had pickled the smog into some nearly breathable concoction. It was past midnight, but Lily wasn’t sleepy. She pinched the burned candlewick down with her fingernails and sloughed the ash into a saucer. Her bedroom suite came from the Santa Fe collection at Sears.
Phony-wannabe-lodgepole
, she thought every time she pulled the covers up. Despite its practical origins, it reminded her of her mother and the unique style Poppy Martínez Wilder left in her wake wherever she flung down her causes and gallery openings long enough to decorate. Mami had whitewashed pine with a ratty old paintbrush long before that kind of thing became fashionable. She’d draped brightly striped Guatemalan fabrics over threadbare chairs, and nowadays you couldn’t walk into a hotel with-

out seeing that style utterly done to death. If Mami got bored or sad, all it took was one of her wistful smiles, Pop made a few calls, and in less than an hour, the courtyard filled up with artists, horsemen, the smell of barbecue, and the sound of music. Jeez, how long since Lily had been to a halfway decent party?

A Veloy Vigil print of a white coyote stared out at her from the oystershell walls. In its place her mother would have hung her O’Keeffe. Lily’s mother was a beguiling blend of Navajo, Hispan- ic—
European
Spanish roots—and enough white mixed in that she felt comfortable in all three worlds. She knew Maria Benitez and R.

C. Gorman well enough to get invited to their Christmas parties. She’d had a fling with that National Book Award writer who taught literature at UNM. She rescued greyhounds and had her private pilot’s license and her own plane. In the high cheekbones Lily and her mother resembled each other, but Lily’s skin tone was more like her father’s. Lily had tried her hardest to step into her mother’s high heels, but on nights like this? Screw the career, the accomplishments, all her cultivated wildness. She worried that she had only ended up looking like a well-dressed slut. For sure her sister Rose’s assessment would go something along those lines. Rose, who lived in T-shirts and denim and comfortable, ugly shoes, had probably sloughed off her tits five years ago, saying,
What good are breasts unless you’re nursing a baby
? The few traits Lily’d mastered of her mother’s were a longing for fine things, impatience about their absolute unavailab- ility, and being a deadeye at spotting imitation. Her desire for solid men pretty much went without saying, but there were times Lily wondered if Mami had maybe roped the world’s last best male in Chance Wilder. Men like Lily’s father seemed like affordable hous- ing—relics of a distant, simpler era.

In the Ralph Lauren sheets on her bed a few feet away slept Southern California’s handsomest and most spoiled cabinetmaker. At first Lily found it cute that Blaise refused to eat anything green, even though that left out pesto on Krisprolls, which were Lily’s dietary staples. Then, as the relationship progressed, she discovered that he also shunned food from cans, which meant she actually had to
look
in the aisles when she race-shopped for those ecologically backward manufacturers who packed in glass or plastic. But food wasn’t all there was to a person, and on the plus side Blaise was a fairly good dancer. He

didn’t hate horses, even if he didn’t ride all that well or care to im- prove, and that counted for a lot because Lily loved horses. Six months earlier, at the start of things, Blaise had proved to be a major stud pup: He could go three times a night when he was in the mood.
At last
, Lily thought,
I’ve found a man who can keep up with me
. She relaxed enough to take her photo album down from the shelf, and to point out Shep Hallford, her father’s ranch wrangler, a man she loved as much as she did her pop. When Blaise put a finger to the darker faces interspersed among the paler ones and asked,
Who are these people? Do they work for your father
? Lily, sure of Blaise’s reaction, explained her family’s complicated bloodlines and history.
But you look white
, he’d said, and at the time Lily remembered forcing a laugh and saying,
Yeah, well, things are hardly ever what they seem
, and hadn’t that turned out to be a prophetic thing to say? She did look white, whatever “white” meant. With a surname like Wilder and enough makeup and tailored clothing, she looked as generic and rootless as anybody else in California, an exterior that had propelled her far in the business world.
An awkward moment
, she’d told herself.
It doesn’t matter
. But lately Blaise ran out of pocket money, and she had to pay for their dates. He’d rather stay home and watch
Seinfeld
reruns than take her dancing. Just being in the vicinity of horses, he said, made him itchy. To Lily he was starting to sound maybe a little bit selfish.
Oh, face up
, she scolded herself.
More than a little
. That little problem Blaise had with eating had evolved to include nibbling on Lily, which was more than a little annoying. She practically had to perform backward handsprings across the carpet for any attention. On the horns of this dilemma the double standard held as true as ever. Kneel and purse your lips, and the man became hard in a nano- second—truly engaged for as long as it took to make himself happy. Then he sort of conveniently forgot about Lily and fell asleep.