The Road to You (40 page)

Santa Fe, New Mexico ~ Monday, June 26

D
RESSED IN
clothes that were as understated as possible, Donovan and I caught the first bus heading northeast to Santa Fe.

He was wearing a plain white t-shirt, blue jeans and a dark-colored baseball cap. I was in a pale-yellow t-shirt with khaki shorts, but that hadn’t been my first choice.

“Isn’t that shirt, maybe, too…pink?” Donovan asked me when he saw my original outfit.

In spite of everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, I burst out laughing. “Are you kidding me? You’re telling me what I’m wearing is—oh, how should I put it—too
conspicuous
?”

He shot me a sheepish grin, acknowledging the irony, but he only said, “Just change it. It’s nice and all, but a little, um, bright.”

I snorted, but I put on the pale-yellow one anyway.

The bus ride took just over an hour with stops, but everyone onboard seemed like fairly normal people. A collection of melting-pot Americans. Lots of grandma-looking types with woven handbags, moms with little kids on their laps, working men of various skin tones and ages—reading their newspapers or their paperback novels or catching a light doze before their stop. Though Donovan and I both lacked the deeply tanned skin of many of the passengers, I felt we blended in with the group reasonably well.

When we got to downtown Santa Fe, we nimbly hopped off the bus and embarked on a city exploration adventure that lasted several hours. Gideon’s journal hadn’t given us much to go on. He only mentioned that he’d been in Santa Fe and Albuquerque on the same date—August tenth—which had been a Tuesday two years ago.

I vowed to keep an eye open for any street that might be called “Traveling St.” or, maybe, a roadway that had something to do with travel. Planes? Cars? Buses? Trains? Something that might explain Gideon’s “RIP” clue.

But nothing we encountered rang any bells and, from what I could tell, the only thing I was sure about when it came to Santa Fe was that this was a city of ninety percent artists.

There were sculptures and paintings and pottery and handcrafted jewelry in just about every store. More vibrant reds, oranges and golds than a string of summer sunsets. More splashes of turquoise, indigo and silver than the falling dusk on the night of a full moon.

“Hey, can I see your ring?” Donovan asked suddenly, after we’d walked by probably our twenty-seventh jewelry shop.

I handed him the gold-colored Cracker-Jack-like band he’d given me to wear during motel check-ins and check-outs. We’d been so preoccupied lately, though, that I’d forgotten to take it off for several days. When I pulled it off my left ring finger, it left a greenish residue on my skin. I tried to rub it away.

He saw my finger and said, “Sorry. You shouldn’t be wearing this junk. I didn’t think you’d have to have it on for this long.”

I succeeded in getting some of the green ickiness off, but I could still see a line. I felt almost marked by it. “That’s okay. It’ll go away when I wash my hands next.” I hoped this was true.

He pointed to a Burger King, nestled in a cluster of eateries, farther down the block. “They’ve got bathrooms there,” he said. “Hungry? Wanna grab a couple of burgers?”

“Sure.”

We walked most of the way together, but Donovan wanted to duck into an art shop that specialized in framed posters of classic cars. He told me to go ahead. That he’d meet me there in a few minutes.

“Take your time,” I said. “I’ll get the burgers for us.” And when he moved to pull out his wallet, I took several steps away from him. “No, Donovan. You’ve covered most of our meals on the trip already. Let me buy this one.” I scurried away, not waiting for him to give his consent.

I almost regretted telling him to take as long as he needed because our meal was starting to get cold by the time he got there. I’d already washed my hands twice and ordered Whoppers, French fries and Cokes for both of us (I was starving), and I’d been waiting impatiently for about ten minutes more before he finally walked in the door. But he was smiling, and it was nice to see that for a change.

Sometime after I’d finished my burger but before I’d eaten all of my fries, he pulled a little white box out of his pocket and set it on one of the paper napkins in front of me.

“Take a look,” he said, grinning.

I lifted the lid. There was a gold ring inside with a small but lovely round-cut ruby on top. My birthstone. “What did you…” I stopped speaking. I was at a loss for words.

“Do you like it?”

“
Yes
. Yes, it—it’s beautiful.”

I lifted it out of the box. It reminded me of Gideon’s graduation ring, but it was tinier, more delicate. I hadn’t ordered a graduation ring myself but, if I had, I probably would have chosen something similar to this. What did it mean that Donovan had gotten this for me?

“Try it on.”

I slipped it on my finger, and it was a perfect fit. “How did you know—”

His smile broadened. He produced the Cracker-Jack prize ring from his pocket and dropped it into the white box. “You’d sized it for me by wearing this old one. You should have a ring that doesn’t turn your finger green,” he said. “This new one’s 14-carat gold.”

“Donovan, you shouldn’t have gotten me this. It’s too expensive, and I don’t need—”

“It wasn’t very expensive,” he insisted, “and, anyway, your birthday’s this weekend, right? Happy eighteenth, Aurora.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I somehow managed to mumble, “Thank you. This is such a surprise. I really didn’t expect...anything.”

“You’re welcome. You deserve something nice. Something that’ll last.” His voice was smooth and confident when he spoke, like that of a family elder. But, when our gazes met, he seemed to get a little boyish and fidgety. He abruptly got up, tossed the used wrappers and table garbage in the trash and excused himself to use the bathroom.

I slowly finished my fries, glancing every other second at the new ring adorning my left hand and wondering if there was anything significant about this gift from his point of view. Anything more to it than simply being an incredibly pretty and very thoughtful birthday present.

E
VENTUALLY, WE
had to admit that all we were doing in Santa Fe was wandering aimlessly around town, shopping and eating. Nothing we’d seen had jumped out at us as far as being relevant to our brothers, so we hopped on the bus again and headed back to Albuquerque.

It was a pleasant return drive. Donovan and I, though not uneasy with each other, rode back to the motor lodge in silence. He was sitting on the aisle, studying the facial features of our fellow passengers. I, in the window seat, did that for a few minutes, too, before turning my attention to the New Mexico scenery.

We passed a handful of family restaurants, a Chrysler dealership, a church named St. Christopher’s, a bunch of roadside fruit-and-vegetable stands and a sprawling K-mart.

Beyond the evidence of capitalism, commerce and community, however, were the mountains on one side and the stark but stunning desert on the other…the burnt edges of which rose up to meet the horizon. How odd to technically be in my native country and, yet, to feel as though I were traveling in a foreign land. It was at once both unsettling and invigorating.

It wasn’t until we were getting ready for bed late that night that something we’d seen during the day registered on the canvas of my consciousness.

“Remember how Amy Lynn told us that Treak had a medallion of a saint?” I asked Donovan. “It was the patron saint of travelers, right?”

He nodded. “Yep. St. Christopher. Why?”

“Because Gideon wrote on his Albuquerque/Santa Fe page ‘RIP in Traveling St.’ and I thought it was Traveling
Street
. But what if it was his abbreviation for Traveling
Saint?
We passed by a St. Christopher’s Church on the way home. Could Gideon have maybe taken Jeremy’s body there?” Then, as gently as I could, I added, “It had a small cemetery.”

The light in his eyes dimmed visibly at my words, but he took them in and nodded. “Yeah. That’d probably make sense. He would’ve had to have done something with the body.” He glanced vacantly at the window. “I guess we could go back to it tomorrow. Check it out.”

That night, Donovan didn’t get wasted on whiskey, take a shower at two a.m. or cry soundlessly over the death of his kid brother—but neither did he sleep well. He tossed and twisted and breathed unevenly. At one point, he started sweating again, but this time he just gulped a cup of water, took his shirt off, threw it across the room and attempted to quietly get comfortable in bed. He never did manage that.

In the darkness, with him turned away from me, I studied the silhouette of his body—admiring the contours of his muscles, the thickness of his wavy hair, the
otherness
of his form.

A part of me felt guilty for taking mental energy away from the danger we were in and letting myself daydream about Donovan and me…together. My attraction to him was a luxury I knew I couldn’t afford. Not with a killer still on the loose and a thousand unanswered questions remaining.

But I justified it by telling myself that my fantasy of kissing him again—when we were both completely sober and wide awake—was a harmless stress release, not unlike my fleeting but vivid daydreams about Roger Moore in “The Spy Who Loved Me” or Warren Beatty in just about anything.

I glanced at my new ruby ring, still finding it hard to believe Donovan had thought to buy it for me, and my heart filled with a jumble of conflicting emotions. I made myself promise that my whimsical romantic scenarios would be contained to the night. That I wouldn’t entertain any such girlish silliness come morning.

But making vows was easy. Keeping them had always been much trickier.

I
T HAD
been forty-eight hours since we’d ridden in the Trans Am. Both of us knew we were taking a chance by pulling it out of the garage and driving in the open again.

As forcefully as I’d once worked to keep Donovan heading west down Route 66, I was now doing everything in my power to get him to abandon it. Problem was, the stubborn man just wasn’t listening to me. Not about that. Not about anything.

“Donovan,” I began, as he jingled his car keys impatiently in our room, motioning for me to hurry up so we could leave. “Are you
sure
you don’t want to take the bus to the church?”