She nodded and then looked down at the weeping Jennifer, who still clung to her mother's waist. "I've got to go, Jennifer," Marsha said, trying to disengage herself. "Can you stay here with Mr. Beaumont?"
Jennifer shook her head and held on even more desperately. "Don't leave me, Mother. Please don't leave me. Can't I come too? Please?"
Marsha's answer was firm. "No, Jen. I have to go be with Daddy. You have to wait here."
One clutching finger at a time, Marsha pried loose Jennifer's grasping hands. There was no anger in the gesture, but nothing very motherly either, no caring, warmth, or comfort, just a practiced indifference. I caught myself wondering if maybe Jennifer was right. For whatever reason, maybe Marsha really had liked Joey Rothman best.
Sobbing and bereft, Jennifer allowed herself to be handed over to me while Marsha paused only long enough to straighten her skirt and give her hair a superficial and unnecessary pat before walking away. As she left, Marsha Rothman didn't favor Jennifer with so much as a backward glance.
I picked up the weeping child and held her, letting her bury her head against my shoulder while I rocked back and forth. I held her for some time, listening to her cry, watching the pelting rain falling outside the windows, and wondering how the hell to ease the hurt she was feeling. Suddenly, I caught sight of Shorty Rojas. Slouched under a huge yellow slicker, he rode past the ranch house on an ancient plodding gray horse. Behind him he led a wet string of bridled but unsaddled horses. It was a heaven-sent but guaranteed diversion.
"Look at all the horses," I said, pointing out the window with one hand while boosting Jennifer off my shoulder with the other. "Would you like to go outside and see them?"
It worked like a charm. Little girls and horses are like that. Jennifer's sobbing stopped instantly. "Could we? Really? Maybe I could even ride one." Then, just as suddenly, her face fell again. She ducked her chin to hide the disappointment. "It's raining outside. These are my school clothes. Mother doesn't like for me to get them wet."
Screw Mother, I thought savagely. For a moment I was stymied, but then I remembered seeing Dolores Rojas leave the ranch's kitchen to walk back to her mobile home, a stately mountain of a woman moving slowly under the shelter of an immense black umbrella.
"Hold on," I said. "I have an idea."
Carrying the child into the kitchen, I found Dolores Rojas elbow-deep in sudsy dishwater. "Could we borrow your umbrella for a little while, Dolores? This is Joey Rothman's sister. She'd like to go outside with Shorty to see the horses."
A quick look of sympathy and understanding flashed across Dolores' broad, brown face. "Sure," she answered. "It's right over there by the door."
I retrieved her umbrella from the metal milk can that served as an umbrella stand. We were about to step outside into the rain when Dolores stopped us.
"Wait," she said, drying her hands on a towel. "I may have a few old carrots around here somewhere."
Of course there was nothing wrong with the handful of carrots she pressed into Jennifer's eager hands. Dolores Rojas was another soft touch. It takes one to know one.
We caught up with Shorty just as he closed a barbed wire gate behind the last of the unsaddled horses and was remounting the gray. When I told him who Jennifer was, Shorty clicked his tongue sympathetically and then asked if she would like to help him bring the rest of the horses up from the stables to the higher pasture. In response to her delighted affirmative, he swept her out of my arms and set her in front of him on the gray's high horned saddle, wrapping her snugly in the folds of the slicker.
"I'll bring her back to the ranch house when we finish," Shorty promised. "They're going to be awhile."
I was sure Marsha Rothman wouldn't approve of the wet horsy odor that was going to permeate Jennifer's private-school pinafore, but that was just too damn bad. Helping Shorty move horses would be a whole lot better for Jennifer Rothman than sitting abandoned in the ranch house while grown-ups finished sorting out the ugly aftermath of her brother's death.
By the time I returned Dolores' umbrella to the milk can, it was time to go into afternoon Group. People were already filtering into the various meeting rooms, and I hurried to mine.
I'm not sure what was originally scheduled to happen in Group that afternoon, but it turned out to be a serious and subdued discussion of life and death. If nothing else, Joey Rothman's death had reminded all of us of our own mortality and underscored the importance of making the most of whatever time each of us had left.
Burton Joe's private meeting with Karen and the kids seemed to have had a salutary effect on both Karen and Kelly. I don't know what he told my daughter. Maybe he spilled the beans about Michelle Owens' condition. At any rate, I was back in their good graces for the time being. As we left the room for mid-afternoon break, Kelly caught up with me by the door and gave me a quick hug, one I returned gratefully.
It was still raining outside. Sunny goddamned Arizona.
We hurried to the dining room for coffee and iced tea. With a mixture of sadness and relief I noticed that Jennifer Rothman wasn't back on the couch beside the fireplace. With any kind of luck, her parents had taken her home.
Bringing my coffee with me, I went out on the front patio to watch the falling rain. While standing there, I glanced curiously down the trail toward my darkened cabin, trying to ascertain whether or not the Yavapai County Sheriff's department had completed its search. There was nothing to see one way or the other, no sign of life or investigative activity. The lights in the cabin were off, and no vehicles of any kind were visible in front of or behind it.
Before we could reconvene in our various groups, Calvin Crenshaw rang the dinner bell and summoned everyone back to the dining room. Once more in a time of crisis Louise Crenshaw was not in evidence, and once more Calvin was thrust into the limelight.
"We've just had a call from Yavapai County Flood Control," he said quickly, once the group was silent. "The river's expected to crest at one and a half feet over flood. We need volunteers to help sandbag the Rojases' mobile home. Otherwise it could be washed off its footings."
Which is how, in the last few hours of daylight on the day Joey Rothman died, I found myself, along with several other able-bodied volunteers from Ironwood Ranch's collection of misfits, slogging knee-deep through icy water and mud, filling sandbags with shovels full of wet sand, and heaving the bags in a stack along the base of Shorty and Dolores Rojas' double-wide mobile home.
It was cold, backbreaking, hard labor, but it was also exhilarating to be out in the open again, to be exerting physical effort, to be using muscles I'd forgotten I owned for a change instead of sitting around endlessly talking. When we finished the job, it was almost time for dinner. There was just enough time to grab a quick shower before rushing off to dinner and the in-town AA and Al-Anon meetings that make up Ironwood Ranch's unvaried Tuesday night and Thursday night agenda.
Hurrying back to the cabin, I paused on the porch long enough to strip off my wet shoes and make sure there was no crime scene tape that would still keep me from entering. Seeing none, I slipped inside, shedding dripping shirt and jacket as I went.
The cabin, the last one in the row, was farthest away from the main ranch house. It was also a long way from the hot water heater. Consequently, it usually took some time to coax a reluctant stream of hot water out of the shower head.
Bearing this in mind, I stepped into the bathroom long enough to turn on the faucet and begin warming the water before I went back out to empty my pockets at the dresser. I did all this without bothering to turn on a light. With my pockets empty, I stripped off my sodden pants and tossed them on the floor somewhere in the general direction of the outside door.