The Home Place: A Novel Read online

  Ray meets them at the front door and takes Brittany back to the conference room with the television. Brittany ignores the remote and heads straight to the small couch against the back wall to curl up. Alma takes off her own coat and spreads it over Brittany before following Ray to the break room.

  “How’s she doing?” he asks.

  “A little better, I think,” Alma says. “She started talking again, out at the home place.”

  Ray nods. “That’s a good place for her. And you?”

  Alma has only the hint of a smile to reassure him. “I’ll manage,” she says. Ray himself is showing a few small signs of strain, she notices. His face is shiny and there’s a faint coffee stain low on his pressed shirt. He pours coffee for both of them, and they walk to his office without preliminaries. He gestures her into the chair opposite him. Alma sits.

  Ray drums the fingers of one hand and pushes aside his coffee before clearing his throat. “Well, provisionally it looks like exposure, but that’s just preliminary until the tox screens come back. She took a hard fall on the ice, for sure, but that may just have been an accident, and it didn’t kill her. She stopped breathing, and she had a few fibers from some kind of wool garment in her nose and mouth, even down into her bronchial passages, like she’d breathed them in hard, but no wool scarf or anything on her or back at the house, and no sign of the blood from her nose on her sweater. The coroner says there’s not enough evidence of suffocation to make it the official cause of death, but he thought it was important enough to mention.”

  Alma focuses every functioning synapse on not spilling her coffee. Exposure, unless it was drugs or suffocation? What kind of bullshit homicide investigation is this?

  Ray continues without looking at her. “That’s not to say that she might not have died of exposure anyway. It’s hard to say whether she would have been capable of getting up after the fall in her condition, but there was nothing about the fall itself that should have been fatal. And then all evidence indicates that she laid there until someone found her in the morning. No sign that she was moved.”

  “Okay.” Alma manages to settle the coffee mug on the narrow right arm of her chair, held loosely by one hand. “So now you’re looking for something made of wool with Vicky’s blood on it, right? You’re searching?”

  “Yes. We will follow through on all avenues of investigation. That’s still the official position. There’s a possibility that it was just a terrible accident, but personally, it doesn’t sit well with me. She was young and healthy. There was no physical reason she should’ve just laid there and died, and no good explanation for the wool fibers. The department’s not going to want to put much more into this unless something more turns up, but I have some latitude to investigate further.”

  Alma plants her feet on the ground and her left hand on the chair arm with the firm intention of standing, but standing is somehow harder than expected.

  “I’m sorry. I’m very sorry,” Ray repeats. “Would you like me to call somebody, give you some time alone, anything—”

  “I’m fine,” Alma cuts him off. “Brittany and I need to get going. It’s a long drive home.”

  Ray rises as if to see her back to the front doors, then drops back into his chair. “There’s something I forgot. Before you go, there’s something else the autopsy turned up.”

  “What’s that?” Alma is glad she took off her coat. The office is too warm. The high collar of her sweater is strangling her.

  “Your sister was fourteen weeks pregnant.” Ray’s knuckles press against the desk. Alma feels her own fingers curl around the chair arm, tighter and tighter.

  “I see.” She longs for this conversation to be a phone call, on a heavy old phone, where she could now set down the receiver, not hard, just rest it in the cradle, a subtle click. It’s all she can do to keep sitting, eyes ahead, breathing in and out. Everything that’s normally automatic has become an extra burden on her decompiling brain. What is she supposed to do with this unwelcome information?

  Her mind seeks practicalities. The details of the death will come out in the paper—she hasn’t looked, they’re probably there already—but surely not the pregnancy. Does anyone know? Does she tell anyone? Does she keep the secret locked up in her soul like the proverbial worm in the apple? That would be the family way all right: keep it hidden, let the time bomb tick. Alma feels as if Ray has pulled the pin on a live grenade and handed it to her. She is holding it now, its malevolence like searing heat in her chest. Either she throws it away and hurts other people, or she clutches it to herself and takes all the shrapnel when it goes off.

  Ray takes the teetering coffee mug out of her right hand. She never saw him move, but there he is.

  “Thanks,” she acknowledges. Then, in a monotone, she delivers the information she’s gathered since this morning’s interview: Rick Burlington’s visit, what Brittany said about him, the encounter Jack Hill described between Vicky and Murray. Ray is back in his chair, taking notes, asking questions until she’s told everything she can remember.

  “This is all very helpful,” he praises her when she’s done. “Please don’t talk to anyone about anything we’ve discussed here. We’re still interviewing persons of interest, and it’s easier for us to start with a blank slate. We’ll have the ME run a fetal paternity test in case we need to compare suspects’ DNA later. And please keep in touch if you hear anything more I ought to know. I may need to talk to you again.”

  Alma nods with the barest movement of her chin as she stands.

  Ray tilts his head toward her. “I really am sorry, Alma. If there’s anything I can do, maybe somebody I can call to come take you home—I know this is all a terrible shock.”

  “You’re very kind.” Alma’s face contracts in a flinch she hadn’t intended to show him. “I’ll just go sit with Brittany for a minute before I go, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure. I’ll make sure you have some privacy.” Ray tucks her hand into the crook of his arm, just as he did with Maddie, to walk her to the conference room.

  CHAPTER 11

  TUESDAY, 7 A.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME

  It doesn’t matter how early the next morning comes. Alma hasn’t slept. Chance is in the horse barn polishing a saddle when she spots him, after leaving Brittany with Jayne to get bundled up properly. As she waves at him, something fluttering beyond the barn catches her eye. She walks around to the back of the barn, facing the crenellated butte. This entire back wall, hidden from the farmyard and the road, is an elongated fishbowl view of Eighteenth and Castro in San Francisco, looking toward the Castro Theatre as if through a peephole. A rainbow flag waves in the foreground and the street is filled with people. The flag is real, hung from the barn on a long loop of rebar. Smaller flags populate the ground in front of the mural, dancing out of the painted scene to dissipate onto Montana prairie, getting smaller, randomly appearing to the fence line and beyond. They’re faded and tattered now. Soon they’ll be gone.

  “Damn,” Alma mutters. She backs up to take in the whole of the mural: the scope, the detail, the movement, the difficult perspective made convincing. “This is amazing.” Morning light illuminates the colors, inhabits them. Alma can see the delicacy of the brushstrokes, the fine shading and textures. She moves forward to put her fingers on the rough surface.

  “Beautiful,” she whispers. These old places can be mirages one day, oases the next, and always they hide secrets. Beyond her line of sight, quick, light footsteps run across the yard. Alma moves to see. Outside the horse barn is a small child in a red snowsuit. “Daddy!” she cries when Chance steps to the door.

  Chance lifts her to his chest with one arm. “Good morning, sunshine. Did Grandma give you breakfast already?”

  Mae nods and twists her head around to look at Alma walking toward them.

  “Is this your friend, Daddy?”

  Chance’s eyes follow Mae’s and Alma wonders how he’ll respond.

  “This is my old friend Alma,” he tells Mae. “Say
hello, sweetheart.” He sets Mae down and she marches up to Alma. Her skin glows café au lait and dark curls escape from her knit cap. She is breathtakingly like Chance.

  “Hi. My name is Mae. I’m three.” She holds up fingers but her mittens conceal them.

  Alma squats to eye level with the little girl. “Hello, Mae. Are you coming riding with us?”

  The girl opens a big, baby-tooth smile and nods. “I’m gonna ride with Daddy,” she says, looking back at him with adoration.

  “I’d better take her back across before she gets into the corral.” Chance gathers up Mae from behind and heads across the snowy yard, starting to jog a little as he gets closer to the house. Alma stands in the aperture of the barn door, watching. She’s able to turn away only when the door of the ranch house slams behind him.

  When Chance returns she’s working at Jayne’s saddle, lengthening the stirrups. She’s dying to ask about the mural, but something about him is so stiff, so distant, that she keeps quiet. He starts setting out tack—blankets, bridles—and digging in bins for heavy clothes. He piles an old down coat, gloves, and scarf next to her. “What, you don’t like the cashmere coat?” she teases.

  “I don’t want you to hurt my mother’s horse when you freeze to death and fall off her,” he answers in his most laconic tone.

  “When did you turn into such a tough guy?” Alma asks, laughing.

  “When did you cut your hair?” Chance counters.

  She thinks for a minute. “Sophomore year. I started rowing, and it was always in the way. It’s grown some since then, but nothing like all that hair I used to have.” Rowing was transformative in its elitism, an outlet for too much light and heat. She was unrecognizable in the long boats, wrapped in bright Lycra, unlocking silent flight with each click of the oars, a fleeting classical figure in early mists. The home demons would never find her there.

  “Goes with the power suits, I bet,” Chance says.

  Alma isn’t sure that this is a compliment. She stiffens and says, “Thank you.”

  There’s a moment of silence, which Chance breaks. “So is the funeral still on for tomorrow?”

  “Yes, as long as the coroner releases the body in time. They did an autopsy.”

  “And?”

  Alma grips the latigo in both hands and wills herself to tell him. “Exposure is the preliminary finding, but they’re still investigating. It was . . . suspicious.”

  “And?” he prompts, cocking his head to get a better look at her face, to read her like he always did. Alma looks away, unwilling.

  Chance shrugs and whistles. “I can’t get over how much things changed with her. I should have done something.”

  “You? Why would you be responsible? I’m the one who blew it.”

  “You think you should have given up your own life to stay here and babysit Vicky?”

  “Isn’t that what you think? You stayed. You’re taking care of the family.”

  “I didn’t stay. I came back.” Chance moves away from her, picks up the tack, steps outside. She follows. “There’s a difference, you know that. There are the ones who never leave, and the ones who leave for good, and the ones who choose to come back. I have an electrical engineering degree from Stanford, Alma. I understand the leavers better than I understand the stayers. But I’m needed here like I’ll never be needed anywhere else. Sometimes I think it’s duty and destiny and all that, and some days I think it’s just my own brand of quiet desperation. But if I don’t honor something that important, what kind of man am I?”

  “More important than your wife?” It’s a harsh thing to say, and Alma immediately wishes she could take it back. The ties of his home place, the deep roots, the land itself, are inexorable to a man like Chance. She can no more blame him for that than she can blame herself for putting her career in jeopardy to take the first flight to Montana when Curtis called. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. It’s not like I’ve been holding up my end around here.”

  Chance doesn’t look offended. He tilts his head away from the sun and the shadow of his brim falls on his face. “No, you’re right. When it came down to it, I couldn’t leave for her. I guess the hard truth is, this ranch and I are a package deal. She knew that when we got married. And I was too weak a man to do what it took to keep my family together.” The last words are low and bitter as they step into the corral and the remuda ambles toward them.

  “That’s not weakness, Chance,” Alma says in a voice meant for the horses, soothing. “It’s who you are. The Little m is who you are. I always knew that.”

  “Well, you did, but it’s damn difficult to explain to an outsider.”

  A flicker of the old connection passes between them as they stand at their horses’ heads, rubbing manes, slipping on halters with gentle fingers. Alma inhales warm, grassy horse breath and wonders if love doesn’t die of time and distance, but of little daily slights and brutalities, the sort of thing that has never passed between her and Chance. What existed between them is preserved under glass. It would have to breathe and live again, here and now, between their adult selves, for her to know if it was ever real.

  Chance’s hands are steady and his voice is low as he brushes out the horses’ heavy winter coats, cleans their hooves, lays blankets and saddles across their broad backs. He never stops speaking to the horses, answering their contented nickers. Alma knows men out here who never speak to another human except out of necessity but regularly carry on extended conversations with their horses. Yet here Chance is, talking to her about the past, about duty and pain, like few men she knows can. “How long do you stay?” he asks from the far side of Jayne’s mare.

  “My flight’s midday Friday. There’s a lot going on at the office. It sounds like I’ll be well and truly aced out of the deal I’m working on by the time I get back.”

  Chance stops arranging tack and walks up to wrap the scarf more snugly around her neck, matter-of-factly, as if she were Mae and had forgotten to zip up her coat. “Somebody’s doing that to you when your sister just died?”

  Alma nods.

  “Nice bunch of people,” Chance remarks. He sets down a blanket to snap the outer closures on Alma’s coat where she’s missed them. She reaches to pull his earflaps down where they’ve slipped and exposed bare skin. They used to do this so naturally, these intimate gestures. It takes conscious effort to stop. Her hands pause in an awkward pose between them and she crosses her arms.

  Alma stretches her left foot up to the stirrup Chance brings near her. She waits as he checks the girth on this unfamiliar old saddle. Chance speaks a few words to the horse and smiles up at Alma. “This is Lulabel, Mom’s horse,” he tells her. “She likes to run.”

  Alma grins and guides Lulabel a few feet away to give Chance room to open the gate, lead out his horse and another, and mount up. Chance is on a big sorrel quarter horse that dances sideways away from the gate and eyes Alma and Lulabel with open curiosity. “Oscar, meet Alma. Let’s see if the girls are ready,” Chance says, wheeling back toward the main house. Alma follows.

  When the horses approach the house, Jayne emerges with the heavily bundled toddler, and Brittany in more of Jayne’s cold-weather gear. “This will do them good. Everyone’s been so cooped up,” Jayne says, then spots the third horse and beams. “Oh, that’s perfect. El Dorado is just right for Brittany.” She locks eyes with Alma as she hands up Mae to Chance, then leads Brittany to El Dorado and links her fingers to help her step into the stirrup.

  “El Dorado?” Alma raises an eyebrow at Chance. The horse he’s leading couldn’t be mistaken for golden.

  “’Cause he steers like a Cadillac,” Chance explains. “Takes him five minutes to turn around. Bombproof, though. Good for kids.”

  Mae settles in behind the saddle horn, holding it with both mittened hands.

  “When is Mama gonna come?” Mae chirps. Chance’s eyes meet Alma’s over his daughter’s head.

  “We’ll go see Mama in California in a few weeks, baby,” Chance answers
, settling Mae into the crook of his left arm as he draws the reins across Oscar’s neck and nudges him forward.

  As Jayne steps back inside and the horses begin to move, Alma prompts, “Tell me about her.”

  Chance looks over, examining Alma to see if she can be serious. She nods to encourage him. The thought of Chance with another woman has been with her for fifteen years, ghost pain from a lost limb. Better to hear this from him than from everyone else who will want to tell her.

  “Okay.” He leans over to unlatch the rear gate out of the yard. “Hilary is a painter from San Francisco. I met her while I was working in Silicon Valley after college. She does street murals and installation work, incredible stuff. I was blown away because she knew Banksy.” Chance’s eyes are on the clean line of light breaking across the buttes, but he glances over to see if Alma is following him. She nods.

  “When did she do the mural?”

  Chance turns back to take in the fading mural as Alma relatches the gate. “First month she was here. She’d come out and sit in front of it, for hours, in all weather. I knew then that she was going to leave me.”

  El Dorado and Brittany are walking out ahead of them, taking eagerly to the trail. Alma shakes her head and stares at Chance as they turn to follow. “I don’t mean to pry, but how on earth did this person”—she gestures at the mural—“get here?”

  Chance shrugs. “What can I say? I have a gift for falling for women who can’t accept what I have to offer.” He glances at Alma, then says, “But yeah, there were at least a few months where I didn’t think we were making a huge mistake. I was a fine arts minor at Stanford—there’s something else you didn’t know. It was like a graduate seminar, hanging out with her. She introduced me to people, other artists—every color, but all out of the same rural experience, all trying to say something that can hardly be said in modern urban America. When we tell the truth about the present, everyone thinks we’re talking about the past. Or they want to pretty it up into something out of the movies. They have no context for us.”