Ty, I’ll be by the bronze cowboy Monday noon.
If you don’t show up, I’ll understand. Love, A.
After such an absence she worried that she might not remember the way out to the ranch and lose herself in the labyrinth of gravel roads but even in the fading light it all came back to her. She passed a truck coming the other way with McGuigan Gas & Oil written on its side and the name clicked the well-worn connection in her head to the image of the man’s son dying on his knees with the blazing house behind him. And as she drove on through the clarifying cloud of dust the truck had stirred, she wondered how she could ever have come to such a sorry state of mind and damaged so many lives.
When she stopped at the end of the Hawkinses’ driveway a flash of white caught her eye, and peering up to her left through the twilight she saw a small herd of deer, mothers and fawns, below a stand of aspen, watching her. She thought they would run into the trees but they didn’t, just stared as she walked to the mailbox. She stopped there and stood awhile, tapping the sealed envelope with her fingers and staring back at the deer. And whether it was something in their gaze that dared her or merely the encroachment of another lonely night, she didn’t know, but instead of leaving the note she took it back to the car and steered around and headed up toward the house.
As she knew they would, the dogs came running and hollering. And even before she had parked, there was a face at the kitchen window and the outside light went on. When she opened the car door the dogs at once seemed to remember her and stopped their barking and started to bounce at her and she got out and squatted and stroked them and let them squirm and lick her face. There were footsteps on the porch now and she looked up to see Ty heading out toward her across the gravel.
“Hi there, can I help you?”
Abbie stood up before him and saw the shock on his face as he recognized her. He stopped in his tracks.
“My God,” he said quietly.
“I’m sorry. If you want me to, I’ll go.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“I didn’t know where else . . . Listen, I’ll go.”
But he was walking toward her now and she just stood there unable to move and watched him. Without a word he put his arms around her and she started to quake and would probably have fallen had he not been there to hold her. He stroked her hair and let her cry and all she could say was his name and that she was sorry, so sorry, again and again, until he gently hushed her and walked her slowly toward the house. His mother was waiting on the porch but Abbie’s eyes were too blurred and the light too dim for her to know if she was welcome here or reviled. Then Martha stepped forward and took her from Ty and embraced her as if Abbie were her own, patting and soothing her.
“You poor child,” she murmured. “You poor, poor child.”
It was almost more than Abbie could take. To have her first hot bath in years, the feel of fresh towels, the smells and sounds of supper cooking, all these mundane things, familiar yet forgotten, opened the cell in which she had locked all memory of home and family. Martha found her fresh clothes and piled on her plate more food than Abbie was used to seeing in a week. And only when she could eat no more and the table was cleared and the three of them sat staring at each other with a fond yet wary disbelief did they begin to speak of what had happened and what might happen now.
Abbie had already noticed Ray’s empty chair in front of the TV and Ty now told her that it was almost two years since his father had died and that his passing was a mercy for them all. After the stroke he had never uttered another word. Abbie said how sorry she was and that she wished she had known him better. Then she took a deep breath and began to tell them about that night three years ago in Denver. And she tried to tell it plainly, without self-pity or the embellishment of any justifying motive, told them simply what had been intended and how events had gone so tragically awry.
And Ty and his mother listened to her with just an occasional question and listened too to the censored account of her subsequent life that Abbie said seemed like a fog in a valley from which she had only now managed to climb. And though she spared them the worst of the darkness and spoke of Rolf as if he were but a phantom of that fog, she said she had come to understand what madness was and could live with it no more.
Then Martha got up from the table and went to the sideboard and came back with what looked like some sort of scrapbook.
“Mom,” Ty said. “Please, not now.”
“I think Abbie needs to see this.”
She placed it on the table in front of her and Abbie opened it and saw at once what it was. Page after page of pasted clippings from newspapers and magazines, telling of Ty’s arrest and imprisonment, police pictures of him looking pale and haunted, name and number hung around his neck. And Abbie’s ubiquitous graduation face beaming alongside. The headlines screamed his guilt: Denver terror murder arrest, Sheridan man is terror girl Abbie’s lover, Terrorist Tyler held for murder. There were pictures too of Ray and Martha, smeared by association. Even the later stories about Ty’s release—much smaller and tucked away inside, for naturally the news was less exciting—somehow still managed to point a lingering finger of guilt.
Abbie closed the book and looked up. They were both staring at her. She couldn’t find her voice.
“I needed you to see what you did to us,” Martha said.
Abbie nodded.
“I don’t know what to say.”
Martha nodded and gave her a sad smile and reached across the table and took her hand. Ty was biting his lip. He reached out and took Abbie’s other hand and for a while the three of them sat conjoined in separate reflection while the old wall clock ticked away the sorrowful silence.
“I feel so ashamed,” Abbie said at last.
“I know you do, child. Ty must speak for himself, but I forgive you. All that matters now is what you’re going to do about it.”
“Did Ray ever know about all this?”
She meant, of course, Ty’s arrest and whether it had contributed to his father’s death, but she couldn’t bring herself to spell it out.
“I don’t think so,” Ty said quietly.
Martha stood and gathered up the scrapbook.
“I’ll be going to my bed now. You two will no doubt want to be doing some talking.”
She kissed her on the forehead and left them.
Abbie needed air. The two of them walked out across the yard and past the stables and along the dirt road that ran above the meadows. The sky had clouded and a breeze was funneling up the valley. It felt cool against her face and carried the first faint scent of the coming fall. Every now and then, far away above the mountains, the clouds flickered blue with muted lightning. Ty put his arm around her shoulders and for a long while they simply walked and neither of them spoke. They stopped by a gate and leaned side by side on the rail, staring down the slope where the shapes of horses stood dark and still against the sun-bleached grass of the meadow.
In a low voice and not trusting herself to look at him, Abbie said she wished she could undo all the harm she had brought him and that there was some way she might make amends. She said she knew his mother wanted her to turn herself in and that she wanted to and would, but that right now she felt like a child high on a rock above the ocean, wanting with all her heart to jump but too afraid.
“You know, it’s probably still not safe for you to be here,” Ty said, still staring out into the darkness. “How much they bother with us these days, I don’t know, but I doubt they’ll have forgotten. I think they still listen to our phones.”
“I’ll go in the morning.”
“No.”
“Ty, there’s something else I have to tell you.”
He looked at her.
“I’m pregnant.”
He looked at her for a long time and she saw the pain in his eyes and some new emotion forming that she couldn’t yet decipher. He stepped closer and held her by the shoulders.
“There hasn’t been a day in three
years that I haven’t thought about you. Even through all that happened I never once stopped loving you. And whatever happens, I’ll always be there for you. It’s right that you give yourself up. And for the child’s sake you have to. But give me a few days first. Please, Abbie.”
“Oh Ty, how can we—”
“Just a few, just the two of us. We can figure out what you’re going to do, then do it the right way. I know somewhere we can go.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Boulder was every bit as cool as Freddie had said it was. In fact, for Josh’s taste, it was way too cool. Everybody was so damn beautiful, he felt like the ugly duckling. All the guys were tall and blond and pumped and tanned and the girls all had perfect smiles and diamonds in their navels and looked like they’d just stepped off the catwalk. It was like a starter colony for some alien super-race. Or maybe it was just Freddie’s crowd. What the hell, Josh thought. He was here and the weather was beautiful and Nikki—God alone knew why—still seemed to be interested, so he was just going to go with the flow and enjoy himself.
Flying all the way to Colorado for Freddie’s twenty-first hadn’t been that easy a deal to swing. He’d had a major dustup with his mom about it. On reflection, he hadn’t been too smart. He should have asked her rather than just announced that he was going out for the whole week. It wasn’t worth going all that way for anything less, he told her, and he could easily borrow notes on all the classes he was going to miss. He regularly missed most of them anyway, but felt it better not to mention that. Anyhow, she went ballistic and for the last week of the summer vacation they hardly spoke. Eventually they reached a compromise. Josh would fly out on the Thursday and be back at NYU the following Tuesday.
Freddie shared a house just off Spruce Street with three other guys, all of them as chilled and rich and good-looking as he was. The place had become famous and was known as the Temple of Doom because of all the incense they burned to camouflage the smell of grass and the Oriental drapes and statues and the fact that there didn’t seem to be a single chair in the whole house, just cushions and mattresses around the walls.
It was Saturday night, the night of the party, though in fact the party had already been going on ever since Freddie and Summer and Nikki picked him up at Denver airport two days ago. The house was packed. For reasons best known to himself Freddie had hired some Japanese caterers and waitresses dressed as geishas were walking around bowing to everyone and handing out sushi and little tots of warm sake, of which Josh had already drunk too many. The effect wasn’t unpleasant, though, on top of the beer and the joints that kept coming around, it had the potential to go that way. It seemed not so much alcoholic as paralytic. He couldn’t feel certain parts of his body anymore and when he turned his head, his face seemed to stay where it was for a moment then swing into place. He was lying on a heap of cushions with Nikki and a few others who were all talking and laughing and clearly having a great time. But the music seemed to be turning a little sour and he was breaking out in a cold sweat.
“Are you okay?”
Nikki was frowning at him.
“Kind of.”
“You’re white as a sheet. Come on, let’s get you some air.”
She helped him to his feet and led him by the hand through the crowd and out into the hallway which was just as crowded but not so hot.
“Listen, I don’t want to be a pain,” he said. “I’ll just go outside for a while.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, really. Thanks. I’ll be okay. I’ll just walk around the block.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I’ll come back and find you.”
He found his jacket where he had left it with his bag, stuffed under the bed in Freddie’s room, then made his way to the front door and down the steps to the street. The mountain air felt cool and good and he filled and refilled his lungs with it half a dozen times as he walked along the sidewalk, trying to negotiate as straight a line as he could. By the time he reached the mall on Pearl Street he was starting to feel better and he walked the whole length of it, looking at the store windows already full of colorful winter clothes and snowboarding stuff, then walked back along the other side doing the same.
His head was clearer now and his hands felt cold and as he stuffed them deeper into his jacket pockets he felt the old prepaid cell phone that, loyally or stupidly, he still carried wherever he went. He hadn’t checked it since leaving New York and didn’t really know why he bothered with it at all anymore. Abbie hadn’t been in touch since that Christmas two years ago when she’d cried and said she wanted to kill herself. For all he knew, she might have done so but that was something he tried not to think about. He took the phone out of his pocket and switched it on and a few seconds later, to his great surprise, there was a beep and up came the little sign that showed he had voice mail.
But it was so long since he’d had to use it that he’d forgotten the damn code. And the piece of paper that spelled it all out was back in New York, slipped between the pages of an old dictionary. As Abbie spelled out the two words a second time, he started to panic. The first word told him the number and the second when to call it. But, goddamn it, that was all he could remember. He kept pressing repeat and listening to it over and over again but it didn’t help at all. Then he heard a prompt saying that there was a second message. It was Abbie again. She said she had been waiting for him to call but maybe he didn’t check this phone anymore or maybe he’d forgotten the code. She gave him a number and asked him to call it at six on Sunday evening. Her voice sounded little and hesitant. But somehow more normal. Not strident or bossy or hysterical like before.
“I hope you get this,” she said. “If I don’t hear from you, I guess I’ll have to find another way of reaching you. Please try to call. It’s kind of important. Don’t tell Mom and Dad yet. I love you, Joshie.”
On his way back to the house he listened to it four more times until he knew the whole message by heart. What could be so important? She probably just wanted more money. Well, at least she was alive. The thing that puzzled him most was the I love you at the end. He couldn’t remember her ever saying that to him, at least, not since he was a little kid. Back at the house the party was chilling out a little. The geishas had gone. He looked around and found Nikki. She seemed to be with some other guy, one of the blond gods. She asked Josh how he was feeling and he told her he was fine. Someone handed him a joint and he passed it on without taking a puff. And for the rest of the night, so his head would be clear tomorrow for the call, all he drank was water.
Each morning when she opened the cabin door and walked along the creek and beyond the trees to where the land fell sharply away and you could look east down the valley and west to mountains, she always expected something to have changed. But the signs that marked the passage of these precious days were all but imperceptible. The yellow shimmer of the aspens perhaps a shade more vibrant, their white stems starker in the mellowing sun, more snow on the mountains, the sky a deeper blue. Each day the world a fraction more exquisite.
The last few hundred yards of the trail that zigzagged up to the cabin were too steep and rocky to drive, so they parked Ty’s truck in among the trees below. The cabin was one room, twelve feet square, with a potbellied stove and two small windows. It was basic but cozy, just a bed, a small table, and two chairs. There was no power and they got their water from the creek. Outside, along one of the side walls, was an open lean-to where they chopped and stacked the firewood and hung the saddles and bridles. And behind, beyond the outhouse, was a small corral where they kept the horses.
They rode mostly in the early morning and again in the late afternoon when the sun flooded the land with an amber glow. Sometimes they took a tent and food and rode the whole day, high into the wilderness, where the canyons echoed eerily to the bugling of elk. In the chill of the evening they would light a fire and cook then sit huddled and blanketed, her head against his chest, and stare at the flames and the spiraling of s
parks into the vast and sequined sky.
The rediscovery of tenderness, not just in him but in herself, sometimes almost overwhelmed her. He would hold her shoulders when she got sick in the mornings and cradle her in his arms each night when she slept. She knew that people treasured most what soon they would not have. And perhaps it was only the concrescence of another life within her that made the slow decay of these stolen golden days and the looming of winter endurable.
The cabin was on several thousand acres of land bought some years earlier by an aging TV talk-show host. He had built himself a fancy ranch house down the valley and flew in for two weeks every summer with a different wife or girlfriend. The place was locally nicknamed the Ponderosa because he’d decorated it like a set for a Western and, just in case anyone thought he was a phony, decorated the land with a little herd of buffalo and a few fine horses, all of whom needed looking after. That was why he had built the cabin, tucked out of sight, up a snaking, rocky trail a mile more into the mountains, and had hired Ty’s friend Jesse Wheeler to live there.
Abbie remembered him from that last summer at The Divide but only faintly. Ty said he was a quiet soul who liked the solitude up here on the Front, but not fifty weeks of it at a stretch, so he was always looking for someone to stand in for him and give him a break. When Abbie had shown up in Sheridan and Ty had called him, Jesse couldn’t believe his luck. During the summer he’d finally found himself a girlfriend. If he could spend a couple of weeks courting her, he said, he might just be able to talk her into marrying him. Ty told him to take three. Jesse left the cabin key under a designated rock and was gone before they got there.
They had driven from Sheridan separately, Ty in his truck and Abbie following in Rolf’s car which now stood concealed in one of the barns down at the ranch. She felt bad about taking it and worse still when Ty, checking the trunk, found Rolf’s laptop wrapped in a towel inside the spare wheel. Abbie thought they should find some way of returning it but Ty wouldn’t hear of it. He said there was sure to be evidence on it that would help her defense when she turned herself in. They took it up to the cabin and switched it on but it asked for a password. Ty put it in a plastic sack and hid it in the outhouse.