I hope your parents will go to Ashland to resupply, but I know Jed might be here, and I don’t know how I will get around him. How can I look for you when there is always someone watching?
There is a scream sewn backward inside my lips. My hands are aching, desperate to do something. The air is hot. My neck glistens with it, but you are cold and getting colder. And I need to do something. Yesterday, today, now.
At night I listen to your podcast, every episode a clue, a hint, leading me toward Murder, Missing, Conspiracy. Every morning my head feels thick; my chest feels tight. Every day I am angry with myself for not getting closer, for not working hard enough, for not finding you.
* * *
—
On Wednesday, your mother comes into the tack room and tells me they won’t be going to Ashland this weekend—they have enough supplies from the last trip. Isn’t that lucky? And I need to do something. I need to start asking questions, so I do.
“Why doesn’t Jed ride? Isn’t he the head wrangler?” I am cleaning the silver rings of a saddle with a toothbrush. I keep my head down, working diligently.
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing on a horse,” your mother snips. According to Jed, she’s never even seen him ride one.
“It would be nice to have another person.” I pause, careful. “The horses are better when they’re together.”
“They’ll go out together enough in the summer.”
“But isn’t that what we’re practicing for now?”
The thought has begun to climb on me, that this feels like the beginning of an abusive relationship. You have told me many times about how they progress, the relationships that end in Murder, Missing, Conspiracy. They often start the same way. They often start with this: He isolated her. Your mother tells me not to go to town. She makes me work alone. She buys me food so I won’t have to shop. Food and clothes and toilet paper so I won’t have to leave. I remember what you said about growing up here: It was the middle of nowhere, and I couldn’t escape.
I need to break out. I need to find you. I can’t always please your mother. I can’t always please everyone. So I push.
“I don’t know the guest trails. And you told me it wasn’t safe to go past the perimeter. I need someone to show me.” Jed told me he had spent months clearing the trails, even though he wasn’t allowed to ride them. “I need someone to come with me so I won’t be alone.”
Your mother cocks her chin. I know she doesn’t want to go with me herself. She doesn’t like to leave the ranch. But she knows I am right. If I am going to lead the trails, I need to know where they are.
“Fine. I’ll talk to Emmett, see if he can let Jed go for one or two mornings. To show you the trail.” She bounces on her heels. “Heck, it’s not like Jed is any use to him either.”
* * *
—
You never said a word about Jed, which surprises me because he’s the kind of man women gush about: toned and tailored, with a habit of licking his lips, glaring moodily at shadows. He is attractive, and he is angry at the world, which makes him even more attractive, in my book. The next morning, as we tack up Angel Two and Jewel, Jed watches the morning mist like it stole something from him.
I ask him easy questions first. This is what you taught me.
“How long have you been riding?”
“Forever. Since I was a baby.” He grew up in a small town. He worked on a ranch from the age of seven. I can tell he knows his way around a horse. I wonder aloud why Addy suggested otherwise.
“She’s punishing me.”
“Punishing you?”
“It’s what she does.” He gently tightens the cinch and tucks the leather.
It’s a crazy notion, but haven’t I noticed a sadistic streak? The way she laughed when she drove too fast on that first day? The glint in her eye when she asked me to climb up a fifteen-foot ladder unsupported to clean the lodge windows?
I walk my horse to the mounting block; Jed swings on from the ground.
“I’m supposed to take you down to the beach today; it’s across the highway.” He reins his horse around. I follow him down the main thoroughfare, past the lodge. The phone is ringing again.
“That phone is always ringing,” I say.
“That’s the reservation line,” Jed says. “Far as I can tell, they’re pretty lacksydaisical about taking bookings. I wouldn’t be surprised if the summer comes and we’re still the only ones here.” I smile because I’ve never heard anyone use the word “lackadaisical” in real life, even if he did pronounce it wrong.
We are both quiet as we pass your parents’ house. Jed’s shoulders stiffen and he watches it uneasily. Then we head down the drive, toward the highway. A wide semitruck blasts around the bend in the road, and Jed pulls Jewel up.
“They always show up right when you’re about to cross,” he mutters. Jewel prances as we wait for the truck to pass, and then we cross the road together.
On the other side, we head down a steep trail. I glimpse the river through the trees: heavy, brown, propulsive.
“This is the trail,” he says. “Apparently it’s a ‘showstopper.’”
It is beautiful, but so is everything out here, and I don’t care. We are off the property. It’s like I’ve been holding it in. I can’t contain it anymore. I can’t hold on to you. “Did you know Rachel?”
“Rachel?” His horse slips. It slides down the trail, and he leaps into action to rebalance it, twisting his back and angling his seat until the horse comes right underneath him. He peers back at me, up the steep hill. “How do y’know who Rachel is?”
“Addy told me.”
“What did she tell you?” His eyes bore into me, searching for you.
“She told me what happened to her.”
He pauses, works the words through his mouth like a crank. “What did she say happened to her?”
“About the gang. Addy thinks she was murdered.”
He goes quiet then, stiff through his spine like he’s been run through with a rod. His body sways with the horse as we reach the bottom of the incline. Before us the land crawls out, awash with sand. It’s a deserted beach, like the island in The Black Stallion, wide and pale with scribbles of brush.
“Wow,” I say appreciatively. And then, “Is that what happened?”
He flips the long strands of his reins to the other side. “I don’t know what happened to Rachel.” I can’t tell if he’s choosing his words carefully or if it just sounds like he is because he talks slowly.