“What am I supposed to tell her?” May asked her daughter. Something about seeing her old friend there, bent over in the lamplight, quickened her pulse. “That Gordon’s been missing a month and no one cared enough to tell her? That now her son is gone, too, and no one knows where? That you never even called?”
“Mom.”
“What were you doing all this time?”
“I was in school.”
“Where you were entitled to a little fun, to a normal experience.”
“Exactly.”
“You act like everything happening in the world is happening in the story of your life. Leigh Ransom’s precious life.”
Leigh looked at her mother, uncomprehending. “If it’s not my life, whose is it?”
May turned the engine off and climbed out of the truck. Boyd came out of the bar and waved at her. They met briefly in the street and May went into the diner. Leigh sat in the passenger seat with her hands in her lap. Her mother’s words hung in the air beside her, but she would not look at them.
Inside Leigh carried two cups of coffee to the table where Georgianna sat. “Can I join you?”
“Leigh,” Georgianna stood and spilled a good half cup of sugar down her dress and onto the floor. “It’s so nice to have you back.” Leigh hugged her, and held her breath in her nose. It smelled like the woman hadn’t showered in weeks.
“Hi, Georgie,” Leigh said.
She smiled and sat down. “Place isn’t the same.”
“Pretty quiet.” Leigh sat.
“Your mother’s still getting customers from the highway.”
“I heard they’re going to widen it.”
“That’s what they say.”
“Are you going to stay here?”
“Me?” Georgianna looked out the window, then turned back to Leigh and stroked the back of her hand. “Sweetheart, there’s nowhere to go.”
“There’s a whole world out there, Georgie. You’re only in your fifties.”
“Leigh thinks the world owes her something,” May said. Leigh was about to fire something back when Georgianna laughed softly.
“Yes, well. She’ll get over that,” Georgianna said.
May went behind the counter and washed her hands. She took four heads of cabbage from the walk-in and started chopping.
“Georgie,” Leigh said. Georgianna set the sugar funnel on the table. “I don’t think Gordon liked school much.”
Georgianna waved a hand. “I didn’t think he would.”
Behind them, the chopping stopped.
“Did you know he left? A few weeks ago? Left school?”
More chopping.
“Of course he did.”
“Do you know where he is, though? They found his truck.”
May stopped chopping.
“Oh, he’s around,” Georgianna said.
“Around?”
She nodded, “Course he is.”
Leigh had the same sense she had on the morning of John’s death. Then again on her birthday. For Georgianna, talking about her son was talking about her husband. And talking about either one of them was like talking about the quality of the air.
“Georgie,” Leigh said, and caught her mother’s eye. Georgianna looked up again, and waited, her gaze fixed on Leigh’s. “I was just wondering if you might like a piece of pie?”
“If there’s a lemon cream I’d love that.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I made it myself, and I know it’s good.” She winked.
May whispered at Leigh behind the counter as she took down the lemon cream pie and cut into it. “How could you turn your back on him? Gordon was grieving.” The floor behind the counter was shining. May must have been scrubbing the place raw. The stainless steel, the floors, the stove, the grill.
“I know that.”
“Like hell you did. You and Boyd and Dock making up some dead man on the mesa. So full of bullshit you can’t smell it on your own nose.”
“I didn’t believe any of that,” Leigh muttered. She bit the ragged cuticle on her forefinger with her teeth.
“You what?”
“I said I didn’t really believe any of that. Come on.” She shut her eyes. She could see the narrow house on the mesa lit up inside her eyelids like a film negative.
“Keep your voice down. I have never seen such impatience. He lost his father, Leigh.”
“You don’t know how hard he made it. He didn’t want me anymore.”
“Didn’t want you anymore? What would that have to do with anything?” She raised both eyebrows. “Besides, you were his best friend. You should have seen him the day he saw you making out with that man from Denver. He had his head on the steering wheel out there for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes, Leigh.”
Leigh’s face flushed and her stomach turned. John’s binoculars. “You don’t know how hard it was,” she said dumbly. Gordon saw the man lead her into the factory. Did he see the man walk out two minutes later, alone?
“And then there was your proposal to Dex Meredith. On the day of John’s service, no less.”
“I never proposed to Dex Meredith.”
“Yes, you did. You were drunk.”
Leigh turned her back on May and looked out at the street. She put her hand on the counter and closed her eyes again. “You don’t know anything about it. You refuse to see.”
May circled in front of Leigh and took her daughter’s chin with her thumb and forefinger. “Look at me.” May’s face was lined with wrinkles and spotted in new places — on her temple, on her cheek. Her eyes were a bloodshot, watery blue. The wraith of a long lost beauty looked out. “Your options aren’t as unlimited as you think they are.”
Leigh twisted her face away. “Don’t ever touch me again.”
The bells rang on the swinging glass door and Boyd stepped inside.
“Bring that slice of pie to Georgie,” May said. “You’re going to have to have a more frank talk with her.”
“I’m all done here,” Georgianna said. She stood up from the table where she’d been funneling sugar and looked across the diner at the three of them. “You know what John used to say about that mesa story? Boggs?” She smiled and crossed the room, stood beside them at the counter. They stared at her, not realizing she’d heard them. Leigh’s face was red with embarrassment.
“He knew the story?” May asked.
“Knew it! John said his grandfather made it up himself, just so he could get out of the shop for a few days at a time, keep everyone away and take a break.”
“The heck you say, Georgie. Walkers lived to work,” Boyd said. “That was John Walker or I never knew the guy.”
“But Lord could he be lazy!” Georgie said. “He could put his feet up and read three novels in a row with nothing but a can of beans, a can of sardines, and a can of peaches to interrupt him. And Gordon’s the same way.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how many paperbacks we have in that house. Hundreds, all of them silly. Full of cowboys and gold and stagecoach robberies.”
“Westerns,” May said.
“Westerns,” Georgianna repeated.
“Georgie what are you telling us?” Boyd bumped Georgianna’s shoulder playfully with his own and grinned. “There was never any Boggs?”
Georgianna gave them all a funny look. “What,” she said, “you don’t mean really? A real flesh and blood ghost up there? All these hundred and fifty years?” She shook her head and looked out at the street. “Now wouldn’t that be scary?”
~ ~ ~
The Quonset hut was lit up and the windows in the shop hung in the dark.
Dock opened the door. Annie stepped out from behind him.
“Have you seen him?” Leigh asked before they could say hello. They both looked at her blankly. “Gordon.”
“Is he back?” Dock asked.
“Like two or three weeks ago he came back. A month maybe. I don’t know. They found his truck.”