“Involved?”
“Romantically. I need to know.”
“You might remember, I was married.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
He tips his hat down again, and I can see his southern side, see that he is probably younger than I think. “Rachel . . . she didn’t think much of me, and that held a certain attraction. I like it when people share my opinions, ’specially on the things that matter.”
I nod, satisfied that he is being honest. I hand him the piece of paper. “It’s a list.”
His lips furrow. “Where did you find this?”
“Don’t worry about that.”
He reads aloud, “‘Rachel Bard. Tasia LeCruce. Florence Wipler. Clementine Atwater.’” He looks deflated; I wonder if he wishes his name were on your list.
“I know Rachel,” I say. “And Clementine. And Florence—she was the subject of Rachel’s first podcast.”
Episode 1: On the Murder Line. One blue-skied summer day, four teenage girls in tank tops and cutoff jeans hopped on the eleven thirty bus from Happy Camp, headed north. One was never seen again.
That is an addition I don’t know what to do with. If this was a list of people to contact if you disappeared, why would you write down the name of a girl who had disappeared? Why would you write down your own name? In the episode, you named Florence, but you never named the other three girls that took that ride on the Murder Line, the wilderness bus route for criminals and drifters, for people who wanted to disappear. You never said that you were one of them. Maybe it’s a clue, or maybe I just want it to be one. “I don’t know who Tasia is. I was hoping you might?”
He crinkles his brow. “I wonder if that’s Happy Camp Tas.”
“Who?”
“Girl who works at the coffee shop.”
“I’ve met her,” I say, slightly thrilled, like I have been putting things together all along. “Were she and Rachel friends?”
“Not that I knew.” His lips curl in that verboten smile. “Like I told you, Rachel didn’t really have friends.”
“Well, we need to talk to her.”
His eyes drift down me in a way that makes my bones feel loose. I think it’s the inclusion of “we.” A horse screams far off in the fields below, but it bounces back so it sounds like the horse is just behind us, ready to charge. I don’t want to do this alone.
“Well, I’ll be working all week, same as you.”
“Then we need to go today.”
“They close at five on Sundays.”
“Then we need to go now.”
His lips purse. His eyes move back and forth, fast. “What are you thinking, you and I just drive off together, right in front of Addy?” It’s strange how we both think she wouldn’t approve. It’s strange how we both fear her disapproval. We work for her. We live in her houses, on her land. In isolation, it’s strange how quickly the rest of the world fades away.
“What about the fire trail? By the creek?”
He considers. “We could walk down through the creek, but it’s another few miles from there.”
“Don’t you have an ATV?” I say, but I know that’s stupid. We can’t drive an ATV on the highway.
He bites his lip. “I have a bike. A motorcycle. We could roll it down the hill.”
I nod; this could work. “We better hurry.”
He scoops up his gun, and I follow him along the upper perimeter trail. We are quiet all the way to his house, knowing how sound can catch and throw and distort. I wait in silence as he takes his bike, rolls it down the trail toward the creek.
Ever since your mother warned me not to go to the creek, it feels imbued with evil, thick with the closed smell of your empty house. Even the bright greenness feels false, like it’s hiding something, the persistence of the shadows, how they wind with the wind and the vines. I watch Jed’s hips rock as he walks down the trail, and I shiver. I think about you on this path, coming and going, your own little place away from the ranch.
“Did you ever come visit Rachel down here?”
“Why would I come down here to see Rachel?”
“I just assumed you hung out together.”
He stops. “No, I mean, Rachel didn’t live here.”
“What? But this is her house.”
He looks down the trail. “No one lives there. They can’t. There’s no electricity. And no water hookup. And getting one all the way down here would be an endeavor.”
“Why would they build a house without water and electricity?”
Jed makes a face. “I don’t know if you noticed, but these people don’t exactly think things through. They like the appearance of things, but if you look closely, just about everything here is falling apart or being swallowed up by blackberries.”
He’s not wrong. “They really are everywhere.”
“Addy has it in her head that she can make a poison to kill them. She carts it around in her ATV. She’s been working on it since last year. Rachel used to joke that she’d kill us all. She thinks she can solve everything, that woman, like she created life and death itself.”
“Is that what the bottles are, in the greenhouse?”
“There are bottles for that and just about everything else you can imagine. She calls them her ‘cures.’ If the cure for one problem is a bigger problem, I reckon she might be onto something. Grace used to hate that stuff. Said it was witchcraft.” His face softens when he mentions his ex-wife’s name, like it carries its own kind of magic. “I would stay away from that place and anything she tries to give you. The most dangerous people in the world are the ones who think they know something.” I like Jed. I can’t help it. There is a smoky poetry to everything he says.
“If Rachel didn’t live in the creek house, where did she live?”
“With her parents.”
“But—I thought . . .” You took pictures, wrote captions about your house, your perfect house. You lied to me. But I won’t believe it. Jed must be mistaken. Or maybe he’s lying. “I thought it was Rachel’s house, like your house is Homer’s. Didn’t they build it for her?”
“Probably they just built it to torture her with, like they do. Probably they built it so no one could have it.” He sets his teeth, seeming happy with that answer, with any answer that paints your mother as a villain.
“Did Rachel work on the ranch?”