Her Mother's Shadow (20 page)

“I have twenty-two.”

“Do you like to ride?” He was trying to remember if there were any stables in the area. He hadn't ridden since the summer he'd spent on a Wyoming dude ranch, years ago. That week was a blur in his mind; he'd been wasted the entire time.

“I've never been on a horse,” she said.

“Never? Not even one of those rides where they lead you around?”

She shook her head.

“Well, maybe we can find a place to do that. Last time I spent a summer here, wild horses roamed the area around Kiss River. It was very cool. They've moved them up north and Lacey says there's a tour you can take to see them.” To hell with his water park idea. The tour would probably be four times as expensive, but it was a much better plan. “How about we do that today?” he asked. “You and me?”

“I have to stay here and unpack and fix up my room,” she said, reaching into the box again without looking at him. “I have to go to my grandmother's tonight, so this is the only chance I have.”

“It won't take us all day,” he said, “and I'd really like to see them. Please come with me.” He made it sound like she'd be doing him a favor. She rolled her eyes at his insistence.

“Okay,” she said, shoulders sagging. “You win.”

He wanted to argue the win/lose point, but decided to let her save face if that's what she needed to do.

“Let me ask Lacey where the place is, okay?” He got to his feet. “And you can continue unpacking.”

She went back to her horses, and he left the room, feeling pretty damn smug about his success with her.

Lacey was no longer in the kitchen and he called out her name.

“In here,” she said.

He followed the sound of her voice through the living room and dining room to a sunroom filled with light. Stained glass panels hung from a multitude of window panes, and Lacey sat at a broad worktable wearing green safety glasses and holding a cutting tool above a piece of amber glass. Bobby was awed by the sunlit space and instantly filled with envy.

“This is perfect!” he said. “Look at the natural light you have.”

“It's not great at Rick's, is it,” she said. It was a statement, not a question.

“The cottage is fine. The lighting is not. But I'm going to get a good lamp and—”

“Work here,” she said. She motioned to a second, smaller worktable. “Would that give you enough space?”

“It would be perfect,” he said. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Of course. I don't need both tables at once.”

“Well, I may take you up on it.” He sat down at the second table, liking that the chair swiveled. “Right now, though, I need to get directions from you to that all-terrain tour place you told me about. Mackenzie and I are going to go look at the horses.”

Her jaw dropped open, and when she spoke, she was nearly whispering. “She said she'd go with you?”

He nodded. “Not with any great enthusiasm, but yes, she said she would.”

“Well.” Lacey grimaced. “There's a problem, though. You need reservations in advance.” She reached into a wooden box beneath the table, pulled out a phone book and began leafing through it. “I doubt you can go today.”

“Hmm. I didn't think of that,” he said, disappointed. It was unlikely that he could get Mackenzie to agree to an alternate plan. “This place is crawling with tourists, isn't it?” he asked. “I thought it was crowded when I was seventeen, but when I drove up here and saw all the houses along the way, I—”

“I know, I know.” Lacey started dialing the phone. “That's why I've loved living in Kiss River. It feels like it used to out here.”

He turned the chair back and forth while Lacey pushed a couple of extra buttons on the receiver, obviously waiting to talk to a human being.

“Yes,” she said finally. “Hi. I was wondering how soon I could get a reservation for an ATV tour to see the horses?”

He watched her face light up as she heard the answer. She had some major dimples. The sight of them made him smile.

“Great,” she said. “Two people at two. That's perfect. Okay, I'll tell them.”

She hung up the phone. “You are a lucky man,” she said. “They had a cancellation at two o'clock today. But it's hugely expensive.” She wrinkled her nose. “It's forty-four dollars for you and half price for kids twelve and under.”

“And time with Mackenzie—priceless,” he said, and she laughed. “That's excellent, Lace,” he added. “Thanks.”

Upstairs, he told Mackenzie she was free to fix up her room until one o'clock. Then he carried his scrimshaw case from his bus into the sunroom. He opened it on the second worktable and watched Lacey's eyes widen at the sight of the engraved and incised pendants and pins, belt buckles and knife handles, all spread out on black velvet.

“I've never seen anything like this before,” she said, touching one of his favorite pieces, a pendant bearing a picture of a calico cat curled in a ball on a fireplace hearth. The
colors were vibrant, the design intricate, the cat realistic. She looked at him. “I thought you meant the kind of scrimshaw…you know, the usual kind…the ships on whales' teeth and that sort of thing.”

He laughed. “I started out that way and got bored very quickly.”

“Oh, my God, Bobby.” She lifted one of the pins and held it close to her eyes. “You're so talented. I just weld bits of glass together.”

“Don't put your own work down, Lacey,” he said. “It's exceptional.”

“Even if you just drew these designs on paper, they'd be beautiful,” she said. “But you've etched them into—”

“Engraved,” he corrected her. Everyone made that mistake.

“What's the material?”

He pointed to the pin she was holding. “That piece is ten-thousand-year-old wooly mammoth tusk,” he said.

She laughed. “You're kidding? Is that legal?”

“It's legal,” he said. “And expensive.”

He spent the next couple of hours telling her about scrimshaw, trying to keep his mind off the fact that Elise had not called. Twice during his conversation with Lacey, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket to check that it was on and the battery charged.

Lacey studied every piece he'd made, looking at many of them under a magnifying glass to see the delicate stippling, shaking her head in awe, asking him questions about technique. She was fascinated. If he stuck around Kiss River long enough, he thought, he was quite certain he'd be giving her lessons.

At one o'clock he and Mackenzie were sitting in the bus, pulling onto the gravel lane leading away from the keeper's
house. Her small overnight bag was in the back seat and her grumpy mood had accompanied her into the front, where she'd insisted it was not safe for her to ride until he informed her that the bus had no airbag. It did, however, have seat belts, which he'd installed himself years ago. She'd been annoyed to discover the bus was not air-conditioned, and although he'd opened every window that was capable of opening, the interior of the vehicle was undeniably steamy.

“I hope no one sees me in this tin can,” she said as they jostled over the ruts in the gravel road.

“A lot of people think it's pretty cool,” he said.

“Like who?”

“Your mother did, although that was a long time ago.”

“My mother wouldn't be caught dead in a car like this.”

She turned her head away from him quickly, and he knew her words had jolted her. He didn't know what to say to ease her pain.

After an awkward moment, she turned to look at him again. “You are, like, totally bald,” she said.

“You're kidding.” He looked in the rearview mirror, feigning alarm. “When did that happen?”

She rolled her eyes.

“I'm a little sensitive about it,” he admitted.

“I didn't say it was
bad,
” she said. “Just a fact.” It seemed as close to an apology as he was likely to get from her. He longed for a change of subject.

“You really love animals, don't you?” he asked.

She shrugged. “They're okay.”

“Did you have any pets in Arizona?”

“My mother was allergic.”

“Oh,” he said. “I'm sorry to hear that.” He turned on the radio. “Have you found any stations here that you like?”

She reached toward the console. “Where's the scan button?”

He laughed. “I'm afraid it's a
manual
scan,” he said. “You have to use the dial.”

She turned the dial until she found a song he'd never heard before, sung by a boy who sounded as though his voice had not yet changed.

They listened to music all the way to the tour location, and he was relieved for the distraction. At some point he knew he should have a serious talk with her, but it didn't need to happen now.

The tour was not half-bad. They piled into a Chevy Suburban with six other people, a couple of them close to Mackenzie's age, and bounced along the beach. The female guide, dressed in safari gear, described the ecosystem of the maritime forest, which clearly bored the kids. Once the horses appeared, though, Mackenzie came to life.

“Can we get out and pet them?” she asked the guide, who shook her head.

“They're wild,” the young woman said. “They look gentle, but looks are deceiving.”

The horses appeared to be healthy. Fat and happy and safe from traffic, and he supposed moving them up here to noman's-land had been the only solution.

Once they'd returned to the overheated air of his bus, Mackenzie immediately pulled her cell phone from the waistband of her shorts and flipped it open.

“Mackenzie,” he said, “could you not talk on the phone right now?” He doubted the signal would be strong enough for her to use her phone this far north, anyway. His was not. He had checked his phone several times in the past hour.

Mackenzie looked at him, then let out her breath in exasperation, lowering the phone to her knees. She turned her head toward the window again. “I haven't talked to my friends all day,” she said under her breath.

“Well,
I
want to talk to you,” he said.

“Everyone wants to talk to me,” she said. “Aren't I lucky.”

He ignored the comment, although he was starting to understand Lacey's annoyance with the girl. “I keep trying to imagine what it's like to go through all that you have,” he said. “How it feels. But I
can't
imagine it. I just can't. I wish you'd tell me what it's like.”

For a long time, she didn't speak. Finally, she turned to look at him. “Was my mother a slut?” she asked.

Yikes.
The question was not what he'd expected. “Why do you ask that?” he asked.

She turned her head away again without responding.

“No, your mother wasn't a slut, or anything close to it,” he said. “When you're young, you sometimes make mistakes. That's part of growing up.” He knew instantly that he'd chosen the wrong words.

“I was her biggest mistake,” she said.

“I bet that she never thought that for even a minute,” he said.

She didn't answer.

“Did she ever act like you were a mistake?” he asked.

She shook her head, and he noticed tears on her cheek. Shit.

“I just want my mom back,” she said.

He didn't know what to say. He thought he should pull off the road, but then what? Hugging her seemed inappropriate and, he was sure, would not be welcomed by her. He kept his foot steady on the accelerator.

“It's hard,” he said. “It's unfair. She was too young to die, and you're too young to be without her. I'm sorry.”

She didn't answer, but her crying turned to sniffling and after another minute, she reached for the power button of the radio and turned it on.

It was a long drive to Kitty Hawk, and once they reached the outskirts, he struggled to remember which street Jessica's old house was on. Everything looked different to him. More houses, many more stores. He slowed as he neared the intersection of a street he thought might be the right one, steeling himself to see Nola Dillard for the first time in twelve years. He'd been in Jessica's house plenty of times. Nola had always been working and her bed had been big.

“Where are you going?” Mackenzie asked as he started to make the turn.

“Taking you to your grandmother's,” he said.

“She lives in
Nag's Head,
” Mackenzie said.

“Oh.” Nola had moved. He hadn't even considered that possibility. He made a quick U-turn and was back on Croatan Highway.

Mackenzie directed him to the house. It was bigger and newer than Jessica's old house, and it was on a lagoon in the middle of a development of similar homes. He walked Mackenzie to the door, feeling profoundly uncomfortable.