It was a relief when her boss closed the door for the night and there was only the gauntlet of rush-hour traffic between her and the silence of the mountains. The traffic thinned out on Tanque Verde at the easternmost edge of the city, and then disappeared altogether when she crossed to the Reddington Road. The road snaked into sage-green hills backed by the blue of the Rincon slopes. The pavement ended. Dora shifted into four-wheel drive and began to climb.
The dirt road wound upward into the mountains, past Lower Tanque Verde Falls, past the Upper Falls as well and over the top of a cactus-spiked ridge surrounded by acres of sky. A narrow, pitted, unmarked road led back to Red Springs Canyon—at least when the summer monsoons or winter rains didn’t wash it out. Then Dora stayed downtown with her in-laws until the floods had passed.
Thank the Lord it wasn’t flood season. She needed her own house around her. She wanted a fire, some Mexican beer, the patchwork quilt draped over her feet, and the four cats over her lap. The days were still hot at the end of September, but the nights were brisk, especially up here. She hoped that Juan had made something warm like soup or chili for dinner. She hoped he’d remembered to make anything at all—all too often these days he hadn’t.
Dora sighed. She’d never really minded being the breadwinner for the two of them before. She believed in her husband’s artwork and his need for the time to paint. Up until the last six months he’d also worked restoring the house; he’d sold a bit of his art, and taken on the odd commission. But lately … Dora turned firmly away from that depressing line of thought. Juan needed her now. And so she needed these two jobs. There was no point in dwelling on the inequity of it—for what was she going to do, up and leave? There was nothing in Dora’s blood and bones that would permit her to let a loved one down.
As she approached the wash she saw water in it, turned to silver by her headlights. She ignored the flood signs, gunned her engine, went through the standing water at a steady speed and made it safely up the other bank. She followed the road deep into the canyon, noting that there were lights on in Cooper’s place. A line of smoke came from Cooper’s chimney, and another one from farther up the road in the direction of her own house. Juan, dear heart, had already lit a fire. She smiled as she pulled in beside his jeep and climbed down from the truck.
The house had been a stable that she and Juan had converted themselves—or more accurately, were in the process of converting. The big main room was cozy and complete, with a kitchen at one end of it, but the bedrooms were little more than sheetrock shells awaiting their plaster walls. An old stone barn stood next to the stable, built for barn dances in the dude-ranch days. It made a good-sized studio for Juan. Her own workspace would be in its upper loft when Juan got around to reinforcing the floor; meanwhile her desk was in a corner of the kitchen surrounded by stacks of papers, books, and the inevitable clutter of a building site.
She entered the wide stable door into the house, which smelled of apples baking. She and Tomás had picked them in Wilcox last week, and Juan had apparently made one of his famous pies. Dora let out a small breath of relief as she hung up her beaded Indian jacket, kicked off her cowboy boots. She clung to these signs of normalcy, added them all together each day to convince herself Juan was all right.
“Juan?” she called. He wasn’t in the kitchen, he wasn’t in the bedroom. She crossed the courtyard to the barn, but that was empty too. A single light was lit over his work table; the rest of the studio was dark and cold. The doors had been left wide open. Outside, a movement caught her eye. Four shapes—coyotes?—dashed across the yard, headed toward Cooper’s house.
She stepped farther into her husband’s studio. The floor was cold beneath her feet. On Juan’s table was a sculpted figure that he had been working on all week, the image of a local cowboy hero. It was the kind of schmaltzy commission he loathed but used to accept anyway just for the work. Now he turned these jobs away; he would have turned this one down as well only this time she’d clipped the overdue electric bill to the client’s request.
Dora stood in front of the table and looked at the work before her in alarm. The cowboy’s blandly handsome features had changed: his eyes were thinned to narrow slits, his nose was hooked, his cheekbones high, and stag horns were growing from his forehead. Beside it, a bucket of plaster was overturned, its contents puddled on the table and the floor. Juan’s favorite cup was smashed and coffee was stained across the wall.
She could feel the rapid beating of her heart as she crossed the room to the open doors. “Juan?” she called into the night. Silence and darkness answered her. He’s all right, Dora told herself firmly. He just got a little frustrated and now Ke’s gone for a walk, that’s all.
She turned off the lights, shut the doors, and crossed the yard to the kitchen’s warmth. But even sitting beside the fire, a warm quilt wrapped around her, Dora found herself shivering as she waited for her husband
