"We live in this little town?" Bron asked. He'd never lived in the country before.
"Actually, we don't live in town," Olivia said. "We live outside of it." Her voice sounded more normal now, and her color had returned. She glanced back over her shoulder, searching the road behind. No cars were following.
She drove through town, past a couple of rustic restaurants decorated in western motifs. The homes were eccentric. A sagging pioneer log cabin crouched next to a modern mansion, followed by a vacation home from the 1980s.
People had built whatever they wanted. Olivia passed a little pine-shaded park where a sign announced "Mortensen Reunion." Perhaps a hundred cars crowded around.
Olivia stopped at a restaurant next to a gaudy statue of a giant horse and purchased dinner. It came in a brown paper bag that smelled heavenly. Moments later they reached the entrance to the campground for Pine Valley Reservoir.
A ranger's hut squatted in the middle of the road; a tourist had stopped his car at the hut's window, and he was buying a permit to enter. Bron wondered if Olivia lived in the park—maybe in a ranger's cabin, or in a camping trailer?
But Olivia turned onto the very last driveway before the park. Cedar poles formed a gate on each side of the driveway, and a huge log overhead, split down the middle, served as the backdrop for a sign that read "Heaven's Gate Ranch."
"Great," Bron said, eying some black-and-white cattle grazing in the distance. "Am I going to have to milk those things?" For a moment, he almost longed to be slaving away for the Stillmans. At least they didn't have barns to clean and stinky cows to milk.
"Those are beef cattle," Olivia said. "No one milks them. Mike takes care of them—though he might need you to help chase one down if it breaks through a fence."
A ranch, huh? Bron wondered. Ranches were big pieces of land, and he wondered idly if maybe Olivia was richer than he'd thought.
Bron studied the herd, and couldn't help but feel that something was odd. "What's wrong with those cows?"
"They're called Oreo Cookie cattle," Olivia said. "They're black on each end and white in the middle." Now that she'd mentioned it, Bron could see that it was true. Each of the cattle had a band of white around the middle of its stomach, and was a dark-chocolate brown, almost black, on each end. He'd never seen anything like it.
Olivia continued, "Their real name is 'Belted Galloways.' They're a rare breed out of Scotland. Their fur is shaggy, so they take the snow in the winters here pretty well."
She was trying hard to talk about normal things, he decided, to avoid discussing the attack. Bron gave in.
"Snow? I thought we were in the desert?"
"Sure, down in Saint George, but we've climbed a couple thousand feet into the mountains here." She jerked her chin toward some homes off to the left. "Most of these houses are just summer cabins for families from Saint George. People come up here to get out of the heat, or maybe do a little sledding in winter. Once the snow flies, the locals all huddle in. The driving gets dangerous then—between the ice, and the deer and elk leaping across the roads."
Bron glanced at the neighbors' houses, and caught sight of a young woman in a red one-piece bathing suit. She had beautiful long blonde hair, and she was walking around with a hose, spraying down a deep-red Lexus LX that couldn't have cost less than $85,000.
"Nice scenery," Bron said without enthusiasm. A girl that gorgeous, he'd never even get up the nerve to talk to her, and girls that rich wouldn't bother talking to him.
Olivia honked the car horn as she neared her house, and a huge man came walking out from the barn dressed in blue jeans, boots, and a red-and-white checkered work shirt.
"That's Mike," Olivia said. A black Labrador retriever danced about, wagging its tail, at Mike's side.
To say that Mike was a massive man was an understatement. He was huge—probably six-eight, three feet across the shoulders, maybe three hundred and fifty pounds. His fists were so big that Bron imagined that they could drive fence posts into the ground.
Bron suspected that this was the custom for the Hernandez family—buying dinner on the run, honking the horn to let Mike know that it was time to eat.
Olivia drove down to a little single-story ranch house that looked as if it had been there for a hundred years, and pulled into the shade of a butterfly bush. Hummingbird feeders hung beside the window, and wind chimes made of stained glass tinkled by the backdoor. Bron got out and smelled the clean mountain air and listened. Not a human sound came to his ears—no racing engines, no police sirens, no honking of horns. The only noise came from cicadas in the fields, distant birds. The quiet settled over him like a dead weight.
So this is home.
Mike trudged close, and stood with a smile across his face. "Hi," he said. "You must be Bron?" The black lab raced up to Bron, wagging her tail and sniffing for danger.
Mike reached out to shake, and Bron's hand disappeared into his grasp.
Mike wasn't a Mexican, Bron decided. Mexicans just don't come that big. His face was as broad as a catcher's mitt, and more the bronze that Bron associated with Indians. Mike had blackish-brown eyes, dark-brown hair, a day's stubble. He smiled at Bron and tried to nod cordially enough, but his movements were uneasy.
"I'm sorry that I couldn't make it to the school to meet you," Mike said. "I have a breeder coming in from Australia tomorrow, and I had to spruce things up."
Bron studied Mike. He dwarfed Olivia, and she wasn't a petite woman. Bron had seen Mike's unhappy expression on other people before: disappointment. He was displeased that his wife had picked out a son who was practically grown; he probably felt jealous of the stranger in his house. In Bron's experience, every family had one person who felt that way. Mike might even be worrying about how much Bron would eat, or whether he'd steal the family silver.
Bron nodded. "Thank you for letting me stay, Mr. Hernandez. You've got a beautiful place here."
Mike grinned broadly at the compliment. He was that easy to please. He eyed the car. "What happened to the window?"
"Someone broke in while we were at the store," Olivia said. "Must have gotten scared off. They didn't take anything."
"We'd better move it into the barn until I can get that glass replaced," Mike said. He scratched his head thoughtfully, as if planning the job. "Well, Bron," he changed subject, "come on in and make yourself at home, I guess." Mike trundled into the house. Bron followed in the giant's shadow.
"How do you think you'll like the farm?" Olivia asked. "I mean, I know that you're new to the idea still...."
"Seems kind of lonely out here," Bron said. "I don't imagine that there are many kids to hang out with."
"It's not so lonely if you know where to look," Mike said. "One house down, big log mansion?" He jerked his chin toward the three-story log house, gleaming of lacquered white pine, with the blonde scrubbing the LX beside it. "That's the Mercer place. Their daughter, Galadriel, is cute."
"Please, Mike," Olivia cut in. "She's an idiot."
"When she's hosing down that car in her swimsuit," Mike laughed, "she sure looks brilliant to me."
Galadriel Mercer was hosing dust off the Lexus when Olivia's white Honda CRV rolled in. Galadriel almost waved as Olivia got out of the car. They weren't great friends, but Pine Valley was lonely. If you saw someone you knew, you were expected to watch out for them, and say hello.
A fat mosquito landed on Galadriel's arm. She brushed it off. Washing the car in a swimsuit kept her from getting her clothes wet, but it left her exposed to mosquitoes that sometimes drifted up from the marsh out in the back field.
She glanced up and saw a boy climb from Olivia's Honda, and Galadriel's heart began to pound.