“I understand,” Stacie said, chewing her lip and thinking. She tried to remember what vehicles she had seen on her way in. She had been distracted and in a hurry. In comparison to Dee’s small army of trucks and tractors, the VW was tiny. A goat playing in a crowded cow pen. A very small goat. That only mollified her the slightest bit, she was wasting time here if she had already left.
“Dee? Did Josie ever write down Maria’s address?”
“I’m not sure, why?”
“Because I need to talk to her,” Stacie said. She felt like an idiot. How many conversations between them and she never found out where she lived? It only added to her distress. They hadn’t known each other for very long, yet she couldn’t bear the thought of Maria leaving without seeing her one more time.
“You don’t need to leave the ranch to find her,” Dee said, developing a sudden interest in picking some imaginary dirt out from under his nails.
“What?” Stacie said, rounding on the taller man. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard him, she wanted him to spit out the rest of what she could tell he was dying to say. He just grinned down at her, although he did step back a bit. “Dee, I swear if you’re screwing with me.”
“She’s down by the creek. She wanted to take her Bug, but I told her that was a bad idea,” Dee said, then muttered something about all the stubborn women he was surrounded by.
She didn’t have time to feel sorry for him, she was more worried about Maria trekking it out that far into the back forty without a guide or a 4x4.
“Dammit.” Maria’s Bug looked like a lot of fun to drive, but it wasn’t even close to the modified dune buggies she had occasionally seen running around the beach and back roads. All it would take is one slip into soft sand or hitting a root the wrong way and the Bug would be history. “Why didn’t you let her borrow Josie’s Wagoneer?”
“I did offer. She refused,” Dee said. He pulled a key off his key ring and tossed it to her. “Here, take it now. I know you have the jeep, but the wagon has the winch on it—just in case.”
She snatched the key neatly out of the air. “Thanks, and Dee?”
“Yeah?”
“Sorry for being such a bitch.” That didn’t seem to be nearly enough of an apology after the way she’d been acting all week, so she kept going and hoped it wouldn’t sound like she was just making excuses. “Things have been a little intense the last couple of weeks.”
Dee waved her words away with the same motion he used to swat at an annoying horsefly, then shooed her towards the front door. “Hey, don’t worry about it. If it was Josie, I’d be acting a little crazy, too.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?” Stacie said. She knew he wasn’t really talking about Josie. He would do anything in the world for her, always had and always would. And, that was the point Josie was trying to make earlier, wasn’t it?
“In a heartbeat,” Dee said. He squinted up at the ceiling for a moment, then scratched his chin. She had never seen him look so serious. It didn’t fit his personality well, and he fidgeted under the stress of being the one to offer sage advice for once. “My advice is, if you ever find the one person in the world that understands your specific brand of crazy, go for it. Otherwise you’ll just find yourself alone and crazy, and that ain’t right.”
*
Compared to her spry jeep, the Wagoneer was a lumbering elephant, practically unstoppable but cumbersome to drive. The dust storm it kicked up behind her was impressive. All she could see was a tan colored storm in her rear view mirrors. After the third or fourth slide out she slowed down just a bit, but not as much as Josie would have liked. She could practically hear her giving her an earful about how she was driving. The crazy teenager she knew was long gone, there wasn’t going to be any more wild rides in the back of a pickup truck while drinking stolen beer, and that was perfectly okay with her. There were other things in life to experience, things her teenage self might not have fully appreciated—but she did now.
She was chasing the future, her future. What was it that Maria has said? Something about possibilities, she thought. She could get on board with that. There was nothing wrong with making a commitment to try and see where things led, not when the alternative was failing to try at all.
She almost didn’t notice the yellow Bug sitting in pretty much the same spot her Jeep had been parked in last week. It wasn’t quite yellow anymore. With its light covering of dust it could have been mistaken for an oddly rounded, domelike stone sitting among it’s less symmetrical cousins.
She jumped out of the Wagoneer and did a lap around the Bug. She put her palm down on the hood to see if it was cool, then rolled her eyes. “Engine’s in the back, silly,” she muttered, then had to rub the pained expression off of her face when she realized she had just cranked her neck around to make sure no one had seen her. A lone squirrel was the only one witnessing the embarrassing event. It chattered at her merrily, then ran from her glare when she caught site of it, tucking into the underbrush only to reappear high up in a nearby tree. Her bruised ego had it laughing at her. She finished her lap and checked the right spot this time. The engine had had time to cool and Maria was nowhere in sight.
She hiked the short distance to the river, then called out several times. Starting to worry now, she stepped out onto the flat rocks until she
