The first thought punched its way through.
I wondered whether Jack would chase down his monsters. Get rid of them for both of us. The picture of the Hobbit and the Giant had disappeared with him.
The second thought: I should read Mama’s letter.
I slid out of bed, shivering in my T-shirt and underwear, and wrapped the Peter Rabbit comforter tighter around me before heading down the stairs.
The kitchen was spotless. The three coffee cups from the other night were washed and draining on a dishtowel. An old mayonnaise jar filled with fresh yellow daisies and purple dianthus from Mama’s garden sat in the center of the table-cheery flowers victorious against the wicked heat, not a cloying refrigerated arrangement left over from the funeral.
Sadie’s work. A little purple Post-it in her artistic scrawl stuck to the side of the jar said: I ♥ you. Call me if you ever get up.
I pushed aside congealing casseroles to find a lone Dr Pepper, then ventured to the laundry room and opened the middle drawer in Mama’s desk. The letter was faceup, exactly the way I’d left it before taking Sadie home.
I stuck the envelope under my nose, hoping for a whiff of her perfume, or the garlic she planted every year or the wax she used like a religion on her grand piano. It smelled… anonymous. I ran my finger under the seal, pulled out a single page:
Dear Tommie,
Already, I can feel my mind slipping away. You were here today, sitting across from me drinking a glass of tea. It would have been the time to tell you everything, but I couldn’t do it. I’m ashamed to say I am not that brave even now. But you are the bravest girl I know. Whatever you discover about me, about your father, about yourself, I hope that the only answer you need is that we loved you.
Be happy.
Love, Mama
It figured. She wasn’t going to tie things up in a pretty little bow.
I stuck the letter back in the drawer and walked over to my cell phone, both plugged in and charging. Sweet of Hudson to do that.
Five messages on my phone.
I was a little leery of reconnecting to the world, but what the hell. Maybe Rosalina Marchetti had another fake body part for me.
W.A. wanted to know when Sadie and I could meet to talk over more details of the will.
Donna had a dermatologist appointment at 2 p.m. tomorrow. I’d been getting Donna’s messages for two years even though I wasn’t Donna.
Wade, pushing his agenda, asked if I’d like to take some horses out to the wind farm this week for a ride.
Halo Ranch wanted to know whether I’d picked a moving company to haul my stuff home. I’d resigned by phone the day before Mama’s funeral for three good reasons: Sadie. Maddie. The weight of our inheritance.
Charla Polaski sounded the most desperate I’d heard her, with voices and clanking noises in the background almost drowning her squeak.
“I hate to leave this on a voicemail,” she said, “but, word is, your Daddy is planning to kill himself.”
CHAPTER 31
My pickup spun down Highway 377, a hot wind blowing through the open windows like God had turned on his giant blow-dryer.
It had been four days since I ignored the last phone call from Charla, ten days since Mama had died, one month since I opened the letter that said I was someone else.
Hudson was sleeping with me every night at the ranch. The pony sheets often ended up tangled and sweaty on the floor. One of Hudson’s war buddies remained a constant at Sadie’s trailer, but something more than a professional relationship was developing there, too.
I didn’t like driving alone. Being alone.
Nothing about my life was resolved since Jack walked out the door.
I took a fast glance at the map on the seat beside me and turned left onto the next county road, stirring up a flock of grackles, a species of black birds invented by the devil. Not a thing to recommend them, Granny would say. They devoured crops, dropped bombs of poop, and were too damn noisy. Nature’s reality TV stars.
The birds flew higher, black dots guiding my eye to a neat row of wind turbines stuck into the earth like white toothpicks. At this distance, the turbines were tiny, almost invisible against the clouds, but I knew that was just a trick of the eye, that they towered forty stories into the sky and weighed hundreds of tons.
Texas leads the way on wind farms, but we’ve been wrong about a lot of things. I don’t yet know what is best for my pieces of the earth, I’m only certain that Wade is about to tell me.
I urged the pickup forward and finally up a dusty hill, three enormous white blades rising up abruptly in front of me, a rotating sculpture against the blue sky. In seconds, the full turbine emerged only yards ahead, and I braked at the top of the rise, absorbing the scene. Seventy-four more turbines spread out into the fields beyond, spinning hypnotically, peacefully, a modern-day Stonehenge. They made a low hum, like a small jet flying overhead.
A herd of cows chewed grass obliviously in the field across the road. A long black horse-trailer was parked on the right side of the road in front of me. Wade. Our meeting spot on the land where Daddy, an oil and gas tycoon, agreed to try to harness the wind.
I pulled in behind the trailer and steeled myself for Wade’s hour-and-a-half lecture about grasping the future. As I stepped out of the truck, Maddie burst from behind the cab, rushing me with the force of an eighty-pound linebacker.
“Surprise! We got Mel!”
Wade appeared from inside the back of the trailer, leading a gray horse.
Mel. Or, formally on paper, Unchained Melody. A gift from Daddy on my thirtieth birthday. Mel arrived at Halo Ranch two years ago with a big red bow, like a Lexus.
I was stunned. Thrilled. If this was a bribe, I was happy to take it.
“We road-tripped to get her,” Maddie said. “Me and Wade.”
I threw one arm around Maddie and buried my face in Mel’s mane before lifting my head to speak. Wade gave me a curt nod.
“Thank you,” I told him. “I didn’t want to hire someone for that long ride. They cram them into those trailers. Mel goes crazy if she can’t ride backward.”
“She let me know that pretty fast,” he said. “Happy to do it.”
“I fed her carrots and apples on the way,” Maddie said. “And I patted her a lot.”
“Lucky horse,” I said. “It sounds like a pretty cushy limo ride.”
Her face lit up with a grin. “Wade said I could ride with y’all today. I brought my helmet.”
The fact that she said this so earnestly broke my heart a little. At her age, I rode bareback, bareheaded, hair flying behind me like crepe-paper streamers, the kind of freedom everybody should feel at least once as a child.
Most sensible parents don’t let their kids do that anymore and certainly not Sadie. Maddie’s helmet was custom-made, reinforced, to cushion her brain and its small tumor in case of a fall. It was the invention of a medical equipment manufacturer and a professional hockey goalie with a brain-injured son. Still, it was heavy and hot. A precaution, doctors said. If she wanted to ride, she had to wear it.
She strapped it on, in all its pink and purple glittery glory, and for fifteen minutes, we worked to get the other two horses out of the trailer and saddled up.
“We need to ride on ahead several miles to a turbine that isn’t behind a cattle gate,” Wade said, as he tightened the last strap on Maddie’s saddle. “I want you to get a look inside at the computer that runs them.”
Fair enough. He delivered my horse. I could look at a computer.
We trotted a mile down the road, barbed-wire fences and wild cactus stretching into the horizon, until we reached a long, low picket gate. Wade rolled off his horse, jiggled a key in the padlock, and swung the gate open for Maddie and me to ride on through.