“Died this winter,” he said and smiled at her, more a baring of teeth than a show of camaraderie. Jenny didn’t know whether he hid deep emotion or a heart of obsidian.
Either was too much to delve into. She let the conversation drop. Judging by the set of his mouth, she doubted Regis wanted to pursue the subject any more than she did.
Lost in their own thoughts, Jenny’s mostly pleasant, Regis’s, she guessed, not so much so, they rode with nothing but the whine of the engine for company until they rounded Gooseneck Point, a long knuckly finger of land poking into the main body of the lake.
“Isn’t it wonderful that Bethy and Anna are becoming best friends?” Regis asked, looking at her from the corner of his eye, a slight curl to his lips, virtually a smirk.
This was not an innocent question. That unmistakable fishhook-in-the-sternum bite and pull let Jenny know it was on a par with asking Barbie if it wasn’t wonderful that Ken was all over Skipper.
“They sure are getting in shape,” Jenny said carefully, more or less the same remark she’d made an hour earlier that had elicited nothing but a grunt.
“You and I are gym widows. They seem totally engrossed in life without us.” He shot her a smile that she didn’t like one bit. Regis was fishing. For what? Secrets of the lesbian sisterhood? Regis had figured out her sexual orientation years ago, Jenny knew that. Straight men who also happened to be idiots thought woman-on-woman was the bee’s knees. As if the lesbian couple was going to spot them lurking in the hall and yell, “Come on in, the sex is fine!” According to Jenny’s totally unscientific research, that had happened exactly never. Besides, Regis wasn’t an idiot and he’d never come across as lascivious.
“I do miss the hash brown casseroles,” Jenny said neutrally. “Green salads with lo-cal dressing just aren’t the same. Why? Does their friendship bother you?”
He seemed to give the question serious thought. “I guess it does,” he said after a few seconds. “Don’t get me wrong, I like Anna well enough, but I think she’s a bad influence on Bethy. Since Anna’s been hanging around, Bethy is … it’s hard to put into words.”
Jenny crimped her lips together as if she held straight pins in her mouth. Had Regis been trying, she doubted he could have been more insulting. Anna was not “hanging around” Bethy. If anything, the opposite was true. As for his “liking Anna well enough,” the way he fawned over her put the lie to that. Jenny suspected the “bad influence” Anna exerted was the self-confidence Bethy had begun to exhibit on rare occasions.
Not trusting herself to speak, she said nothing. Flying to Anna’s defense would expose more about her than she cared to make public.
Jenny wasn’t rising to the bait. Regis could tell his disparagement of Anna upset her, yet she’d chosen to shut him out rather than side with him. Fear coiled through his insides, loosening everything in its path. What had started out as a fine adventure was now officially a horror show.
Ecru, he thought to himself and smiled sourly. His mother’s favorite color. After all these years he finally saw its charm. A period of bland nothing would be restful. Having discovered the darkness he’d long suspected all people carried within, he doubted he could go back to ecru anytime soon.
“I don’t like them spending so much time together,” he said, trying another tack.
“So you’ve said,” Jenny replied.
No softening there. Tough bitch.
“I don’t think it’s fair to you.” Regis pitched his voice to the tune of concerned empathy, no mean feat over the engine racket.
Jenny glanced at him sharply. He held her gaze until he was sure she knew he knew she was gay and infatuated with the woman from New York. That no one else noticed Jenny Gorman was gay and in love he put down to mass hypnosis. People believed what they wanted to believe and saw—or didn’t see—whatever they needed to in order to ratify their beliefs: angels, aliens, ghosts, the Virgin Mary, demons, the Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, leprechauns, or Jesus’s face on a grilled cheese sandwich. Those who wanted to believe the earth was only six thousand years old did not see history, archaeology, paleontology, geology, or astronomy.
The Park Service did not see lesbians. The fact that Jenny was wearing her hair down more often, buying more expensive wine, shaving her legs with regularity, and sparkling every time her housemate appeared went unnoticed.
“What do you mean it’s not fair to me?” Jenny asked after a minute or so.
“Don’t play games,” Regis said coolly, keeping the smile from his lips. The hook was set. With luck it would prod her into a territorial mood and she’d insert herself between Anna and Bethy, keep them from spending their lieu days together.
A woman alone was easier to kill.
FORTY-FOUR
Despite mental gymnastics, Jenny couldn’t eradicate the seeds of uncertainty—jealousy—that Regis planted. For the remainder of the trip she didn’t see desert varnish or intricate sculptures of stone; she saw Anna and Bethy enacting all the boisterous joyous fantasy scenes in which Jenny would have liked to star.
The sort of betrayal Regis suggested, that his
As she and Regis pulled into Dangling Rope she saw Jim, out of uniform, sipping a beer, and chatting up Libby Perez, this season’s lone female concessions worker. Libby was twenty years older than Jim and had the lush velvet beauty of a full-blown rose when the petals are loose and lazy and the reds grown deeper at their edges.
“Jim!” Jenny called before Regis had shut down the engine. “Do you know if Anna’s around?”
Afraid of seeing a smirk on Regis’s face, she didn’t look at him as she jumped ship.
“Is Anna up at housing?” she asked.
“Why? Something happen?” Despite the sandals, Dos Equis, and Libby, Jim came into law enforcement focus so quickly he almost shimmered badge-gold.
Jenny realized she sounded anxious. Damn Regis. Emotional balance was difficult enough to maintain without louts with hidden agendas tipping the scales.
“Regis is worried Ms. Pigeon has eloped with his wife,” she said and was rewarded by a look of annoyance as Regis came up beside her.
Jim laughed. “I think that’s the case,” he said easily. “As I was coming off duty, I passed them in the Zodiac. Bethy said they were headed for Lover’s Leap to do a couple hours in the slot.”
Lover’s Leap. Jenny was crushed. That was a place she’d been saving to show Anna.
“What do you say, Jenny? Shall we go surprise them?” Regis asked.
To her shame, she immediately said yes.
The boat ride to the little canyon with its here-today-and-gone-tomorrow beach was less than half an hour. Neither Jenny nor Regis spoke. Both seemed to have dropped the pretense that this was spur-of-the-moment fun.
The closer they got to their destination, the worse Jenny felt. In acquiescing, she had shown disrespect for Anna, herself, and their friendship. Even in the sanctity of her own mind, she didn’t call it a relationship. The societal connotations of that word were too fraught.
More than once she thought to tell Regis she’d changed her mind, that she needed to get back to the Rope, but a cruel aspect had shut down his face. He looked much as she imagined a soldier would before battle or a cowboy before he shot his crippled horse, so she’d said nothing.
Jenny knew Regis had maneuvered her into this so misery would have company. He wanted to break up Anna and Bethy’s outing and thought he could use Jenny as an ally or at least an excuse. Jenny didn’t picture him as the
