“Maybe she’s writing her memoirs.”

  “She’s not writing her memoirs.”

  “She could be!”

  “This might sounds nuts…I sound like Mom.” Our mother loved a conspiracy. She once became convinced that a garbage bag of couch cushions was the dead wife of our neighbor, the murderous Mr. Fluke, who worked at a garden store. “But I saw a date. I think I did. It all happened so fast.”

  “What kind of date?”

  “A year. On file boxes, on a folder, lots of places. Kind of jumped out at me: 1951.”

  “You do sound like Mom,” Shaye said.

  I threw a pillow at her and missed. I was in my pajamas, too, and I lounged in the leather chair. Its seat had a permanent crater from all the time it had spent accommodating demanding asses, something Shaye was pretty familiar with, too, if you asked me. “Well, we’ll never know now. She locked her door. I tried to go in there to snoop when she was looking around for an extra bottle of shampoo.”

  “A bottle of Breck circa 1977. It’ll make us go bald.”

  “It’ll make you go bald. I brought my own.”

  “She’d have a few things to say in a memoir. Didn’t some movie star come once? Ava Gardner, a fancy car, and something-something in a bar?”

  “Yeah. I feel like we’ve heard the same three stories over and over.”

  “Ava Gardner,” Shaye counted on her fingers. “Grandma and the drought…”

  “The time the lady set her room on fire when Mom and Nash were babies.”

  “So? It’ll be a short book.” Shaye bit the skin by her fingernail. “Can you believe she never got married? I can’t imagine it.”

  “Sure, you can’t imagine it.” I was joking, but maybe it was a bad time for it, especially after that fight I’d heard. I’d given Shaye a set of glass bowls for her first wedding to the brooding, controlling Mathew, a pair of vases when she briefly moved in with that sweet but chaotic artist from Montana, a knife set for her brief, disastrous union with Quentin, the fuming egomaniac, and nonstick pans when she married Eric.

  “Shut up!” she said, but it didn’t have much gusto. “Well, she had a few men in her life. There was that one guy for a while.”

  “She did? What guy?” Tex snored from the corner of the couch, where he probably didn’t belong. I could hear the sound of insect applause, the tick-tick-tick of moth wings against the glass of the window.

  “Hangy ears, backwoodsy name. Hooper? Hopper? Cooper! That was it. You don’t remember?”

  “I didn’t know! No one tells me anything.”

  “A few years before her mastectomy.”

  “I didn’t know about any Cooper.”

  “They weren’t together that long. It was before Harris.”

  “Harris? They’re together, for sure?”

  “Honestly? You can’t tell just by the way he looks at her? The man adores her. Oh, Cal, you’ve never been much of a romantic, have you.”

  “No, I guess not. You’re right.” She was. My first childhood crush had been on the Professor from Gilligan’s Island. He was the practical one, sure, but he was also the only one who might actually save the lost, with his phone made out of a coconut.

  “And I’m right about Harris. Trust me.”

  The ice had long ago diluted the alcohol in my glass, but I sipped it anyway. The radio was on softly. That stupid Dr. Yabba Yabba Love was back, with her easy psycho-relationship BS: What you think you see, you see. “God, turn that off,” I said. Shaye sat up, reached over, and pushed the power button. The unit was from the days when bigger was better and laser shows were in. Either the stereo was now off or the captain had just landed the spaceship.

  I flipped through another magazine I found under the coffee table, feeling slightly irritated. If Shaye knew so much about Nash, what was I doing here? “It’s like the historical museum of magazines down here.” I held up a Woman’s Day from 1960, with a woman and a man beaming over a glossy turkey.

  “That one had Reno in it.” Shaye pointed, and I reached for a Look from 1958, with Jerry Lewis and family on the cover. “No, that one.”

  “Confidential?” The face of some dead movie star beamed up at me, his teeth a row of perfect white Chiclets. “How do you know these things?”

  “I saw it when we were kids. It’s the same one.”

  “Your memory is amazing. Ask me what I had for dinner yesterday. No idea.”

  “Quiz me. I’m answer woman.”

  “Eric, for starters. Tell me what’s going on there.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I can’t. I don’t even want to talk about it.”

  “He doesn’t mind running things while you’re gone?” Shaye and Eric both did freelance marketing and were making a go of it under one umbrella.

  “Mind? He couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”

  “Okay, where are the kids? I’ll ask that.”

  “Eric’s girls are home. But, you know, Josh and Emma always spend a month with Mathew in the summer.”

  “How is it that I sort of forgot about Mathew?”

  “Lucky you.”

  I turned the fragile pages of Confidential, trying to find old Reno, then gave up. I tossed it back on the pile. “Tell me why you ate all the fortune cookies, how about that one?”

  “Your magnetic personality will bring you a new hobby,” she said. “Duane’s mother started hoarding, too, when she got Alzheimer’s.”

  Duane, that’s right. That was his name, the boyfriend from Montana, whose new girlfriend was probably enjoying those vases. I rose, stretched my legs. Wandered over to that big window that looked out over that bigger night. Tex woke up. He stared at me, alert and watchful.

  “Nash isn’t hoarding. Look how tidy the rest of the house is. She seems perfectly fine, that’s what’s strange. Maybe it’s a mission of some kind. Wouldn’t you need something like that out here? Still, why not just tell us? We’ve got to get into that room.”

  “Well, she’s not fine.”

  “Those papers, I know. It’s not right. It isn’t. The room is stuffed.”

  “Not the papers.”

  “What do you mean?” It was so dark out that window. Who knew what the snakes and wolves were up to in that darkness? Except for the white beam of the moon, shining down on the pool as if the pool were a silvery baptismal font promising renewal, it was only black and more black out there.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “What?” Why didn’t anyone ever tell me anything?

  “She’s dying.”

  The moon shines down on the swimming pool. It makes the water look silvery-black and shimmery, as if a dip in it might save your soul. A leaf floats across, a small, glowing boat, a cupped hand. It hits the edge and spins.

  They don’t speak, but they are walking close together because of the dark path, and their shoulders nearly touch. Hadley has turned in early; her porch light is already off.

  “I’ll make a stop here,” Lilly Marcel says. The white dots of her dress are illuminated, too, tiny stars, as she heads off to the toilet.

  Nash waits. She can see the constellations in the sky. She rubs her arms against the cold. She doesn’t feel capable of protecting anyone. She wonders about soldiers and guards, and—wait—men in general, all of the people who are assigned to be strong. They must be just as scared as anyone else.

  The door of the shack bangs and Lilly is back. “Now the baby wakes up,” she says. “A night owl.”

  Nash likes this thought—a little swimming life, already equipped with habits and preferences. She follows Lilly to the cottage and up the stairs. Lilly has her hand on the knob of the door when they hear a long, high-pitched scream.

  Lilly grabs Nash and shrieks. The noise is the strangled cry of a woman getting her throat slashed, but it is not a woman. It’s a sound Nash has never gotten used to.

  “A rabbit,” Nash says. “It’s only a rabbit, caught by a hawk or maybe a coyote.”

  “Oh, my God. That is the most chilling thing I’ve ever heard.”

  It is. You know that fangs are sinking into the soft flesh of a neck. It’s horrible.

  “Get in here, fast.” Lilly grabs Nash’s arm and pulls her inside. She turns the lock.

  “Are you all right?” Nash asks.

  “I don’t know.” Lilly sets her palm to her chest. “Rabbits have it rough, don’t they. Jesus, where’s the light switch?”

  Their hands hit against each other on the wall, and Nash’s shin hits the bookshelf with an audible clunk. It’s the darkness and that scream, and now Nash’s poor shin, and they both start to laugh. They are holding each other’s arms and giggling madly from tension and the shared knowledge of their own false courage. A scream like that will set anyone on edge.

  Lilly wipes her eyes. “Oh, God, oh, God. Where is that light?” she sputters.

  Nash hits the switch. They squint at each other in the sudden brightness, and this is hysterical, too.

  Lilly takes a big breath, exhales. “Whew. There. All is well.” Her eyes are bright blue.

  The black windows gape at them. Anyone could be out there. “Let’s close those curtains,” Nash says.

  Lilly’s suitcase is open on the bed. She follows Nash’s eyes to it. A corner of it is stacked with baby clothes. Nash can see a tiny sweater and a tiny pair of socks. “Just in case,” Lilly says. She holds up a sock in each hand.

  “Oh,” Nash says. Her heart feels struck.

  “I know,” Lilly says. She tucks the socks back into her bag. “Am I going to have to walk you back now?” She gives Nash’s braid two short tugs.

  “Then I’d have to walk you again,” Nash says.

  “It could go on all night.”

  “I’m fine. This is practically my backyard. I grew up here.”

  “If you say so. My God.”

  “It’s okay,” Nash says.

  “We heard its life ending.”

  When Nash leaves the cabin, she thinks again about Lilly’s choice to stay out here alone. The curtained windows glow with yellow light, but the whole cabin seems like another rabbit out in the open. Nash doesn’t understand what leads some people to the edge. The bull riders, for example, with their arced backs and tight, gripping fists, full of bravado but with breakable bones and heads that could smash like overripe gourds. Or those men who walk on the wings of an airplane. Last summer, she and Jack saw one at the air show at Lansing Field, and they stood together and gasped when that tiny figure emerged from the door of the roaring plane. Or the women, even, who come back from Reno with stories of dancing with strangers, who marry men like Stuart Marcel, who drive too fast in cars with the wind blowing their hair.

  Lilly shouldn’t be there alone, Nash thinks for the hundredth time, but she supposes everyone has their reasons for their rash acts.

  Nash hurries back toward the house, past the stables where all the horses are tucked in, past the riding rink and the pastures and the pool with its beam of holy light. Her heart is beating fast because of that rabbit and Lilly Marcel and because it feels darker than usual with her mother gone.

  There is the chew and spit of tires against gravel. It makes her think her mother is home, but of course her mother isn’t home. Nash recognizes the sound of the truck: It’s just Jack, coming in from a night out.

  She waits for him. He hops out, tosses Nash the keys. She misses, and they land at her feet.

  “Aw, Peanut, it was a bad throw.”

  She smells the alcohol. He is one handsome man, oh, dear, he is, and that smell of alcohol and his eyes in the night—Nash may understand heedlessness after all. All lovers are bull riders and wing walkers. Every person who risks giving their heart over stands with their feet at the edge of a high, open doorway.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asks.

  “Waiting for you.”

  He grins. “Oh, really now.”

  “Really now.”

  He takes a pinch of her shirt and playfully pulls her closer. It’s an infuriating gesture, closer to him but not to him, his hand grazing her skin. She wishes he’d kiss her. “It’s getting late. Better head in.”

  “If you say so.”

  Nash watches him head away; he’ll go down that path that leads right past Lilly Marcel’s cabin. She shouldn’t think what she’s thinking.

  He turns around to look at her once more, walking backward as he speaks. “Bob Watson said he saw mustangs on his property.”

  They came only a few times in a person’s lifetime, and Jack knew how she felt about those wild horses. She hoped and hoped she might one day see them. She’d confessed it that afternoon when they sat together next to the lake, after he’d taught her how to smoke a cigarette. Seeing them changes you, he’d told her, that’s what any cowboy knew, and she was sure it was true, same as seeing any rare event, those comets that came once every hundred years, a blue Mount Charleston butterfly that crossed your path. You would have gotten a singular, extraordinary message from nature then, a message that would leave you transformed.

  “You may just get your wish, Peanut,” he says.

  —

  Veronica is on the telephone. She is wearing her silk robe and sits at the wood table in the kitchen with the phone in front of her. She pokes her finger in each hole of the dial. Her head is bent down, and when Nash comes in, Veronica only glances up at her. It’s late, and Veronica’s makeup is off, and her eyes look weary and distant. Her real name is Dorothy, she admitted one cocktail hour. Tonight she is Dorothy again. She is saying, Please, please, into the phone. That phone has heard plenty—pleadings and apologies and declarations of love and hate. Nash thinks about how much anguish phones have suffered through, especially at late hours. Night has a way of stripping you down and leaving only your true, scared self. At a late-enough hour, we are all rabbits, hiding safely in our warrens, or making mad, dangerous dashes, or trembling in the open.

  I’m sorry, Veronica says. She sounds crushed. I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you.

  Nash hears it again and again, the way people hurt each other without meaning to, making decisions based on runaway hearts and dimming passions, past mistakes, and promises of change. In a lifetime, the recipe always needs amending—more of this, a little less of that, what to do now that the cake has fallen. Not many people mean to be cruel, as far as Nash can tell. But there are always those few who do.

  It’s a different car. When you live out in the middle of nowhere, you know cars. You know the sound of a strange one same as you know a rattle in the grass.

  Nash watches from the darkness of the main room. The car is long and low and it comes down the road with its lights off. This is strange. Very, very strange, and she doesn’t know what to do but watch. Boo begins to bark in the quiet house. He races down the stairs, and with the late hour and the uncommon speed, he loses traction and skids across the floor.

  Nash scoops him up and holds his tense little body. “Shush,” she says.

  A man gets out of the car. He walks along the road but turns away from the house, down the path to the pool and the cottages. He is a large, walking shadow. He is holding something. His hand grips it against his chest.

  Nash feels all-out panic; her heart stomps. There is not time to get Veronica off the phone so that she might call Jack or Cliff or Danny. This man is more dangerous than a wolf or a mountain lion, this seems obvious, and for a moment Nash thinks about getting the shotgun from under her mother’s bed. Instead, she is out the door before logic kicks in. She was raised here, and, more than anything else, more than her friends from school or her books or some hazy vision of the future, the ranch and the women who come here are hers. Even though she is barely eighteen years old: hers.

  She runs down the porch steps. She waves her arms, as if scaring a rabid dog away from chickens. “Get out!” she yells. “Get away from here!”

  The man takes off running. His long dark coat flaps behind him, and the camera—she sees it’s a camera now—bangs against his chest. He gets in his car. The back wheels of his car spin and swerve in the gravel.

  Veronica is out in the yard in her bare feet. “What is going on?”

  “A man,” she says.

  “Who?”

  “Someone trying to take pictures, I don’t know,” Nash says. But she does know; they both do. At least, they know who sent him. He’s not a reporter from Confidential or Photoplay. Only one other person would likely see the pictures the man is after. The photos would be proof of wrongdoing, as if a man like that needed proof. She begins to shake. Veronica puts her hands on Nash’s shoulders.

  “Some people can’t stand the outrage of being left.”

  “She left him?” Nash is surprised. She thought it was the usual. It happened so often, a powerful man finding a replacement when he got bored.

  “She told Ellen. Of course she told Ellen! Ellen’s got that kind of face. A killer would confess to Ellen.”

  If her mother knew this, she never would have gone running to help Gloria. Gloria’s most recent romantic calamity or whatever it was would have had to wait. Alice knew the dangers. Angry men who were left—well, there had been Vic Jones that one year, and then Harv Cullins. Vic waved a gun out on the front lawn, and Harv smashed a car window with his fist.

  “Come on. Come inside.”

  Nash must have set Boo down without realizing it. He stands on the dark porch, looking worried.

  “You should have seen yourself,” Veronica chuckles. “I never knew you had it in you. Watch out! You’re one tough cookie, after all! I’m never going to cross you, Nash McBride, that’s for sure.”

  Veronica has her arm around Nash. She is in that robe and her bare feet. Her toenails are painted red. Her eyes look smaller without all that makeup, but softer, too. “Let’s put this goddamn day to rest.”

  She squeezes Nash’s shoulder. It’s almost motherly. Veronica does not have children, but Nash wonders right then if every woman is a mother in one way or another.