His FJ Cruiser was really nice. If I had to choose between some of the foster homes I’d lived in or Bridger’s SUV, I’d live in his SUV in a heartbeat. The seats were soft and lined with pale gray leather, and when he turned the car on, Native American music filled it. I was immersed in sound, swimming in music.
Eagle feathers and beads hung from the rearview mirror, swinging with the movement of the car as he pulled away from the curb. We drove to Mrs. Carpenter’s house in silence, just listening to music. When the car stopped in front of the porch, he glanced at me and turned off the engine. The car became pitch black inside.
“Why did you turn off your car?” I asked, instantly nervous.
“It’s dark out. I thought I’d walk you to the door,” he said as if this should have been pretty obvious. I glanced at the house. The porch light flooded the night and the windows glowed.
“I’ll be fine by myself. Thanks for dinner. And the ride. It was nice, not … running … home in the dark.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to walk you to the door?” he asked, unhooking his seat belt.
“No!” I blurted, reaching for the door handle.
“Wait,” he said.
“What?”
“Thanks.”
“For what? You paid for the meal.”
“Thanks for giving me a second chance.”
“You’re welcome.” I opened the car door and the interior light flashed on, giving me one last look at his face. My gaze lingered on his lips and the truth was, I wanted him to walk me to the door. Really wanted it. Because I could imagine him kissing me good night.
I climbed out of the car and darted to the front door. “Don’t get attached, don’t get attached,” I chanted as Bridger pulled out of the driveway.
16
It was Sunday morning and I couldn’t sleep. Thoughts of Bridger O’Connell were sprinting through my brain. Thoughts like, if I were a smart girl, I’d stop being friends with him. Because I felt a lot more than plain friendly every time I thought of him.
I rolled out of bed and put on grubby clothes, then went outside to work in the garden. It needed a good weeding.
The day was warm, the air utterly still. The screech of a bird filled the morning as I dug the tip of a shovel into the soil at the base of a weed. It screeched again, swooping overhead. I looked up and a small gray bird soared to the far end of the property and into the branches of a knobby pine. Something at the property’s edge caught my eye. It shone white in the morning sun, like a bleached tree skeleton with branches pointing to the sky.
I walked to the edge of the property and paused, noticing for the first time a pattern in the trees. A perfect circle of pines had been planted around a central location, like planets orbiting the sun. Only these trees were orbiting Mrs. Carpenter’s house. And they were perfectly spaced, as if someone had used a tape measure to get them all the exact distance apart.
But it was what lay perfectly spaced between the trees that caught my attention. Skulls. Not human—animal. The skull to my right was a horse skull, to my left a cow. The one in front of me, which had caught my attention, came from an animal with tall, branchlike horns. I clasped my hand around the rough, gray horn and lifted. A centipede slithered in the wet indentation the skull had left, and earthworm trails lined the dirt.
I examined the skull’s empty eye sockets, then turned and went back to the garden, skull in hand, to resume my weeding.
A few minutes later, Mrs. Carpenter walked out of the house in a white denim dress, tan nylons, and rubber-soled pumps with her white hair pulled back in a bun and turquoise earrings dangling in her ears. I leaned on my shovel.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to church with me? And feed the homeless after?” she asked, pausing to look at the pile of weeds I’d pulled out of the freshly sprouting garden.
I wiped my hand across my gritty forehead. “I’m a mess. I’d make you late.”
“I don’t mind being late. The Lord forgives such things. I feel bad leaving you alone all day again.”
I shook my head. “No thanks.”
“The garden’s coming along real nice.”
I looked at the straight rows of sprouts coming out of the ground and smiled. “Thanks.”
“If you want, you can get some of the chicken manure and sprinkle it around the plants. That’ll help ’em grow.” Her eyes moved over the garden and paused on the animal skull. “Where did that come from?” she asked.
“I hope you don’t mind … I found it on the edge of your property. Thought it might look cool in the garden.”
She frowned. “My second husband must have put it there—he’s the one who planted the trees. It looks lovely in the garden and will probably scare scavengers away.” She smiled and got into the truck. As the door slammed shut, I almost called out to her to wait. A whole day alone with no one for company but my sprouts didn’t hold much appeal.
The truck crawled down the driveway as I hacked at the roots of a weed and pulled a fragrant piece of sage from the ground. I tossed it into the growing pile of weeds and felt so lonely my body seemed hollow.
I’d pulled three more weeds when an engine rumbled, growing steadily closer, and a vehicle turned into the long driveway. Mrs. Carpenter must have decided to try again to convince me to go with her. And I’d say yes this time. I dug my shovel into the ground and saw it wasn’t Mrs. Carpenter’s baby-blue truck that stopped in front of the porch.
I let go of the shovel and smoothed my hair, aware that I was a sweaty mess.
“Gardening on a Sunday?” Bridger asked as he stepped out of his SUV. He walked toward me, slow and leisurely, his hands in his jeans pockets. He wore a simple T-shirt, but the way it fit him, it looked like T-shirts were invented for his body. At my shovel he stopped and peered down into my eyes. “Hi.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, forcing myself to ignore the urge to wipe under my eyes in case I had mascara smeared there.
“I forgot to get your cell number.”
“No cell phone. Sorry.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Why’d you want my number?”
He grinned. “Why do you think? So I can call you.”
“Call me about what?”
He shrugged. “I knew the Navajo Mexican was closed today and thought you might like some company. I figured you’d be lonely, being new in town and having no family.” My eyes grew round. I was so lonely it was driving me mad.
“Do you have lunch plans?” he asked.
“Lunch?” I looked at my watch. It was barely past ten. “No. No plans. I figured I’d finish the garden and then warm up some leftover chili and corn bread,” I replied.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked.
“For leftovers or weeding?”
“Both.”
“You eat leftovers?”
“If I’m lucky enough to be in a house that has them.”
“All right. But just to warn you, I’m going to be dabbling in chicken manure before I eat lunch.”
He laughed and pulled the shovel out of the ground. “How about I dig and you pull,” he said.
“ ’Kay.”
He sunk the shovel into the dirt at the base of a weed and paused, frowning. “Where did you find that elk skull?” he asked, nodding toward the side of the garden.
I pointed to the edge of Mrs. Carpenter’s property.
Bridger’s eyebrows shot up. “You’ve broken her ring of protection. You should put it back.”
“Her ring of what?”
“Protection,” he answered, his eyes darkly serious.
“Whatever. It’s just one measly animal skull, not an electric fence. And there are at least a hundred more. They make a huge ring around the entire property.”
“Yeah. A ring of protection. I think you should put it back.”
I rolled my eyes. “And what makes you the ring of protection expert?”
He leaned closer to me, looking right into my eyes as if he could see my soul. “My ancestry. I’m Navajo, remember?”
“Mrs. Carpenter didn’t care that I moved it to the garden,” I said, acutely aware of how dark his eyes were. “And besides, it’s protecting my garden.”
Bridger looked between the skull and me. “Just don’t take anything else from the ring.”
When we finished the garden, we went to the barn for the manure. An ancient wheelbarrow with a flat tire sat just outside the chicken coop, used to clean the coop out on a semiregular basis. I shooed the clucking chickens away from the door and stepped inside, but Bridger didn’t follow. He stood just outside the coop, completely preoccupied.
“What’s up there?” he asked, pointing to a narrow flight of stairs with a dead-bolted door at the top.
“I’ve never been up there, but Mrs. Carpenter says it’s an old stable-hand room. She says I can move up there if I want.”
“Why don’t you? It’d be a cool place to live.”
I shrugged. There was no way I was going to tell him I was too scared to live up there, away from the safety of Mrs. Carpenter and her guns.
“Did you know Mrs. C. used to do barrel racing?” Bridger asked. “She competed at rodeos when she was younger. This barn used to be a stable before her first husband died.”
“What happened? To the horses?”
“She couldn’t keep up with the bills on her own, so she sold them.”
We filled the wheelbarrow with rancid chicken manure, and then Bridger helped me spread it at the base of my sprouts. When we finished, he shaded his eyes and peered at the sky.
“You know,” he said, “it is a gorgeous day. Why don’t we pack your leftovers and go on a picnic?”
“That sounds nice.”
He followed me to the front door and paused.
“You’re invited in,” I said, remembering the last time he’d come over and stood in the doorway waiting for a formal invitation. I left him in the living room and went to the kitchen to wash my hands and dig around in the fridge. Instead of getting chili, I got two yogurts, two apples, and two plastic spoons, and put them in a used Wal-Mart bag.