The Chevy slowed and pulled alongside her, and again she heard the country-tinged beat and the sweet whiskey smoke of the vocals. The lyrics soared into a chorus about a ring of fire, and then Renee identified the singer. Johnny Cash. She hadn’t known much about him, but had seen a television special on his career shortly after his death. “The Man in Black,” the narrator had called him.
Renee didn’t wait for the Chevy’s engine to die. She got out and rounded the front of the car, knowing she was vulnerable, almost daring the car to leap forward. She glared straight at where the driver would be sitting. She would get her answers now, with no more secrets or games. She was about to pound on the tinted driver’s-side window when the door opened.
A plume of gray smoke issued from the vehicle’s interior, accompanied by Johnny Cash’s repetitive ring of fire fade-out. Then the Chevy’s engine gave a couple of thunderous, dying coughs and fell silent. Renee heard the wind in the trees and a metallic squeak from the driver’s seat. Her muscles tensed, half of her coiling to pounce while the other half wanted to flee across the field.
Come on, Joshua. You can’t be any worse than I’ve imagined.
A woman stepped out of the car, tall and dark-skinned, pretty, but hard around the eyes. She looked Hispanic, with thick, black eyelashes and flat raven hair. Her yellow cotton blouse was tied in a knot beneath her breasts, her brown stomach flat with a tiny dark cave at her navel. She wore cut-off blue jean shorts and a cheap pair of pink flip-flops. She tapped her cigarette and smirked.
“You’re not him,” Renee said.
“Neither are you,” the woman said, her accent a blend of tobacco-road Southern and back-alley Spanish, a little rolling of the r with the vowels drawn out.
“Why were you chasing me?”
“We need to talk.” The woman leaned against the Chevy.
“Why couldn’t you use the phone like anybody else?”
“Because I had to be sure,” she said. “And I didn’t want Jacob to know.”
“Who are you?”
“Carlita. A friend of your husband.”
“Jacob never mentioned you.”
Carlita laughed then coughed. She tossed her cigarette into the ditch. “No wonder.”
“What about my husband?” Renee wished she had her cell phone. A car whizzed down the road and past before she could make up her mind to flag it down.
“Jacob’s been a very bad boy. He gets a little loco.” Carlita cocked her hip and tilted her head, letting her black hair spill across her shoulders. Her mouth twisted into a wry curve. “It’s not my fault. But you know how he is, si?”
“Hold on,” Renee said. “First you’re trying to run me off the road, and now you’re talking like we’re old friends.”
“We’re nearly sisters,” Carlita said. “And Joshua’s told me so much about you.”
“But I’ve never met Joshua. Jacob won’t talk about him. They had a falling out years ago, before I even met Jacob.”
“Jacob’s got his—how you say?—his delusion. He thinks Joshua tricked their father to get the house and land. He thinks Joshua’s after his money now. But Joshua just wants to make up, to bring the family together.”
Renee shook her head. “Jacob hates that house. He said it’s full of bad memories.”
“Do you trust your husband?”
“Of course I do. I mean, we’ve had some tough times lately—”
“The children. A terrible thing.”
Renee’s heart stuttered then lurched inside her chest. She could scarcely recognize her own voice when she spoke. “How did you know?”
“Like sisters, remember? Sisters keep secrets from the rest of the world, not each other.”
“I’m not your sister, and if you don’t start making sense, I’ll—” She looked at the ground for something to throw. A pile of oak stakes, used for curing tobacco, lay beside the gate. The tips were sharp enough to skewer a vampire. Her hands trembled and her vision blurred from anger and tears.
“Don’t go like that,” Carlita said, her voice flat, as if she had been threatened so often it now aroused only weariness. “I’m trying to help.”
“By chasing me down and then dumping all this on my head?”
“I’m doing it for Joshua, because I love him, and I want him to be happy.”
“So you make him happy by making me miserable?”
“I’m worried what Jacob might do to him.”
“Jacob wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s the kindest man I’ve ever known.”
“But you see what he’s like when someone stands in his way. Big trouble.”
“Not my Jacob.”
“You don’t know him.”
“I know him plenty.”
“Then you know he’s in love with me.”
The woman’s accent made the word even more foreign. “Love?”
“We’ve been lovers for many years.”
Renee had always wondered about the expression “seeing red.” She thought it was figurative, based on an emotional connotation. Now she knew it was real, because the red madness squeezed from the backs of her eyelids and the hidden crevices inside her skull. A sick and strange energy flowed through her, cruel electricity sparked by demonic lightning.
“Bitch.” Renee launched herself at the woman, knowing she was out of shape and undersized, no match for her sinewy opponent.
But the red tidal wave of rage flooded her, used her body like a puppet, flung her flesh against Carlita. Her hands curled into fists and raised to smash that dark, somber face, to punch out those bottomless brown eyes, to tear away the lips that had uttered such an obscene claim.
The momentum of Renee’s assault carried them both across the Chevy’s warm hood. The sheet metal dented as Renee rolled atop Carlita, one hand gripping the woman’s hair. Carlita grunted, breath tinged with tobacco and beer. Renee slapped her and scrambled astride her waist as Carlita twisted and tried to kick off her attacker. One foot bounced off Renee’s shin but she barely felt it. Carlita’s forearm shoved into Renee’s stomach, taking her breath as the pain rippled out from the point of contact.
Renee bent her head forward and realized with horror that she was about to sink her teeth into the woman’s cheek. She froze, then went limp and slid down Carlita’s body, aware of the woman’s unrestrained breasts beneath the thin shirt. Aware of the woman’s heat, her soft but powerful thighs, her robust Hispanic lips, everything that was feminine and dangerous and attractive to men.
Any man. Even a man like a Jacob.
She pushed away and slid down the bumper to the ground, her legs weak. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the idea. Jacob didn’t even glance at sun-bathing college girls and he didn’t ogle stars on television shows.
She trusted him.
Didn’t she?
Despite his fugues and his forgetful lapses and his occasional, inexplicable anger.
Carlita sat on the hood, her legs crossed under her as if she were folding into a yoga position. She fished a cellophane-wrapped pack from her pocket, tapped it, and offered the brown tip of a cigarette to Renee. “Give it time,” she said.
Renee shook her head, refusing both the cigarette and the advice.
Carlita lit one and rubbed her cheek. “You fight like you mean it.”
“What about you and Jacob?”
“I didn’t want to tell it this way. A man should be honest about his heart. But men, they never are.”
A pickup drove down the road toward them, slowing, the driver waving before speeding up again. A country boy checking to make sure everything was all right. As if anything would ever be all right again. Renee thought about flagging him down and sending for the police, but she didn’t want any more attention drawn to the Wells family.
Now that the anger had faded, Renee felt deflated. She could barely muster a whisper. “Tell me. Please.”
“I lived on the Wells farm when I was young. My father and brother worked the Christmas trees, and I helped in the vegetable garden, picking tomatoes and green beans. Migrant workers, up on temporary permits. Mi padre said it was the only way out of Mexico. That’s when I met Joshua.”