Anacacho, An Allie Armington Mystery Read Free

plane
will be landing in a few minutes to take us to the ranch, then pick
him up in time to join us for dinner.”
    The flight takes a little over an hour. Anesthetized
by the vodkas, followed by two glasses of red wine, Reena falls
asleep immediately, giving me time to arm myself for a meeting with
Paul.
    Seven years. What will he look like? How will I feel
when I see him? He never said goodbye. Our short but intense love
affair ended as suddenly as it began.
    “ Come home,” my mother had sobbed,
then blurted the tragic news. Her mother and father gone forever.
Early morning fog on the highway. Tractor-trailer smashed their car
to smithereens. When I didn’t answer, she turned the screw. “Angela
is giving up a major assignment in Paris. She’s already on her
way.”
    Since it was “only” my senior year, there was
nothing to do but pack up and go. No time to steal a night wrapped
in Paul’s arms. Only time for a hurried explanation and his
sympathetic, “Do what you have to do. We have a lifetime to
share.”
    Angela fell weeping into my embrace, then led me
upstairs, where Mother lay in the curtain-drawn bedroom staring
into nothing. I went to her, arms open, but she sighed. How well I
knew that sigh. Not now, it said. Not now.
    The following morning we drove to Temple for the
funeral. It was a crisp, blue-sky day with gum trees flaming
against the green slash pines, and blurring to a bright Christmas
streamer as we hurried east.
    I hunched in the front seat next to Dad, who gripped
the wheel in silence, his mouth drawn in a tight line. In the back
Mother’s tears, punctuated with choking moans, were blotted by
Angela’s kisses and Kleenex.
    To her credit, Mother held up during the service,
but she was hopeless at the grave. As the caskets were lowered, she
keened, and collapsed in Dad’s arms. He swooped her up like a
feather, nodded for Angela, then headed for the car.
    Minutes later he stood by my side as people murmured
their sympathies.
    Mother’s lifelong friend grabbed Dad’s hand. “Poor
thing. Too bad she was an only child. No one to share her grief.
Thank heavens she has Angela...” She glanced in my direction and
rushed on, “... the two girls to lean on.”
    I ignored the slight. By age five I learned the fine
art of dissociation—an effective weapon against rejection. Angela
was Mother’s favorite and everybody knew it.
    Paul called every night the first week, then every
other the next, and, finally, not at all. I couldn’t understand
what was happening, but there was little I could do. Trapped at
home in Lampasas, I was too proud to call him or mention his
strange behavior to Reena or Susie, though after the truth came
out, I remembered Reena never answered the phone.
    By that time I was dealing with a more pressing
problem. I was pregnant. There was nothing else to do but call
Paul. When I finally got up the courage, I was informed he was on
his honeymoon.
    That news forced me to make the most agonizing
decision of my life. The following morning Angela trumped up a
modeling interview in Dallas and asked me to go with her. Mother
was too dazed to protest, but Dad thought it was a good idea for us
to escape Mother’s pervasive grief and offered to stay home while
we went on our lark.
    Some lark. I remember only Angela’s tears, not
mine.
    Though Paul’s abandonment and the loss of our child
were devastating, I didn’t learn Reena was the cause until I went
back to UT after the Thanksgiving break.
    The screech of tires meeting the runway pulls me
back to the present and I peer out the window as the plane taxis to
the hangar at the far end of the airstrip.
    We deplane and Reena introduces Miguel Alvarez, who,
with his wife Adelena, is in charge of the house. He nods mutely,
takes the shopping bags and luggage from the pilot, then races to
open the doors to a late-model station wagon with “Anacacho Ranch”
painted on the side.
    We travel down the tarmac away from the hangar,