Ortiz must have cooled off slightly, because a couple of hours later, word came from up top no charges were being filed against me. After giving my statement, I was free to go.
Miguel dropped me off at the Tribune, where I picked up my truck. I gave enough of a statement to the reporters to appease them, then drove to my house, packed a bag, and left a message with Constance’s housekeeper informing her I was taking a week off. Let her worry about the museum for a while. On the way home to Dove and Daddy, I swung by the mall. At eleven A.M. on a weekday morning, I was the shop’s only customer.
“Are you sure?” The skinny girl with the platinum crew cut looked at me nervously in the mirror.
“Absolutely,” I said and told her to get on with it.
“For the love of Mike,” Dove said when she saw me. She ran her fingers through my newly shorn neck-length hair. “You look like one of them fashion models in the magazines.” We walked out to the barn so Dove could feed an orphan calf whose mother had died while giving birth.
“Slow down, you greedy little thing,” she said as she held the bottle up and the calf eagerly drank.
“What happened to the cow?” I asked as I perched on the side of the stall.
“She was just too weak to make it,” Dove said. “And we don’t have any spare mamas to graft it to, so I guess I’ll be its mama.” She looked up at me and smiled.
I smiled back. “Like with me.”
“That’s right. Only I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts this one will probably be a mite easier to raise than you were.”
“I was a good kid,” I protested, kicking the side of the stall with the back of my boot.
“When you were sleeping.”
“Dove?”
“Yes, honeybun.”
“Did Mama ever talk about me to you? I mean, before she died. Was there anything she ever told you to tell me?” I don’t know what I was searching for, some words of wisdom maybe, something to tell me how to make it through the rest of my life.
Dove thought for a moment. “Not really,” she said. “She talked a lot about you, but it was always the things she was going to do for you. She even talked about what colors your bridesmaids’ dresses were going to be. That was when you were insisting on everything you got being pink.” Dove looked at me, her face still and sad. “I don’t think she thought she was really going to die. Just couldn’t imagine not seeing you grow up.”
As we walked back to the house, she stuck her cool, dry hand on the back of my neck, then stroked my hair.
“Feels nice,” she said. “Maybe I should go for it too. Garnet’s going to snap a garter next time she sees you.”
“It just seemed like it was time,” I said, grabbing her hand and squeezing. “Where is Aunt Garnet, by the way?”
“That’s right.” She gave a rusty cackle. “In all your excitement you didn’t hear the latest. Rita called.”
“She did?”
“From Las Vegas.”
“What’s she doing there? Wait, maybe I don’t want to know.” I opened the back door and we went into the kitchen.
“She got married, the little fool.”
“I don’t believe it.” I went to grab my braid and caught empty air. This new hairstyle was going to take some getting use to.
“Believe it. Garnet was so upset she went straight home to consult with the clan. Your cousin Remar’s youngest son, Lyle, is doing pre-law down at the university in Little Rock. They’re talking annulment.”
“That’s going to be a bit difficult. She’s over twenty-one and I’m willing to bet the ranch that marriage has been more than adequately consummated.”
“That’s what I told Garnet, but you know her, nobody can tell her nothing. They’re still hoping to get their hands on that money Rita was going to marry into.”
The thought of Rita and Skeeter and the hullabaloo their marriage was causing made me smile more than once over the next few days. I helped Dove get all her pots and pans back in proper order, watched Daddy work with his latest love, a sorrel mare named Reba, and rode miles and miles over trails Jack and I had ridden together.
One day I stuck a jar of strawberry preserves in my saddlebag. As I stood on the edge of a deep ravine with the intentions of throwing it, in some great symbolic gesture, Jack’s voice seemed to speak to me.
“Now, honey,” he said. “There you go making something fancy out of nothing but plain old strawberries. Wouldn’t they do a whole lot more good on a nice piece of toast?”
And I laughed. Maybe it was his voice in my head, or Dove’s, or my own. It didn’t matter. Because the whole point is, we’re all a part of the people we love and they’re a part of us and that never changes; it’s a whole long chain, not held together by genetics but by something we can’t see or measure.
I cradled the jar in my lap, sat on the edge of the ravine and watched a hawk cruise for its supper. It wasn’t the last time I cried for Jack, but it would be a long time before I cried again.
“You’re lucky the police didn’t shoot you,” Dove said on the fourth morning as she poured me a cup of coffee. She’d had me replay the scenario at least a dozen times, frustrated she missed out on the excitement.
“Believe me, I had their attention.” I picked at the coffee cake she set in front of me.
