Chapter Thirty-Six
I pace the barn floor, smacking Daisy’s journal against my leg.
I want to tell Cash about Earl killing Joaquin, but it’s not exactly something I can explain over text.
I open the journal to the page about Joaquin’s death.
I could send Cash a photo. What will he think when he finds out about the lasso around Joaquin’s neck, the birthmark round his?
“No,” I say aloud. I need to find Kaylee first. If what Daisy said is true, maybe her family knows about Earl. I need to know what really happened to Daisy.
I text Mom and get Blue tacked up faster than ever. I know the way to her ranch on horseback but not by the roads.
The fog only allows me to see ten feet in front of us. I let Blue canter but not gallop. My heart beats in rhythm with his hooves. It hammers into the tips of my fingers, into my throat, even into my eyes.
Blue takes us to the back corner of the ranch.
The ground is slick with mud. I sit back in the saddle to slow Blue down, not wanting him to slip and fall like he did many years ago when I was hurt.
We get closer and closer, almost to the rocky land between our ranches.
The drizzle stops, but the fog is thick again.
It floats all around us, billowing and pulsating as Blue carries me through it.
After getting through the rocky land between our ranches, and just as I think we’re getting close to Kaylee’s gate, I hear, “Dahlia!”
Someone is riding towards me at a gallop. Her hair falls behind her like a river and she and her horse are a dark silhouette.
“Dahlia!” she screams.
She leans over the horse’s neck and then I see her blonde hair. I shake my head. This can’t be happening. Why is she out here?
“Dahlia!” she screams, louder now as she and her horse gain on me.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to apologize.” She huffs a big sigh.
“For what?”
She rolls her lips together and her cheeks turn pink. “For the orchard.”
She doesn’t have to say any more. Misery is written all over her face.
“I was on my way to your place. Dahlia, I didn’t ever want to hurt you. I’m so sorry for what happened. It’s unforgivable, I know.” Her face is red and splotchy from crying. “Please forgive me.”
I circle Blue around, pointing him towards home.
I can’t look at her. Scenes from the fire play out in my head.
Kaylee brought that guy away from the bonfire.
She was there first, asking if Cash and I were OK.
It adds up. I become light-headed, feeling as though I may topple off Blue.
My injured hand finds the saddle horn as everything becomes fuzzy.
“I promise it was an accident. The biggest mistake I’ve ever made. I’d been so stressed and that guy I was with convinced me to smoke a cigarette. I’ve never smoked, not ever. It was so disgusting. I accidentally dropped it when he tried to kiss me.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and I play it out in my mind.
“I’ve been tormented by it,” she says, pulling back on her horse’s reins to keep him still. “You don’t have to forgive me, but please don’t turn me in. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it up to you.”
My breathing becomes laboured as I take this in.
I bite the insides of my cheeks to keep myself from crying.
She circles her horse in front of Blue and tries to catch my eye.
I look up. We watch each other through the thick fog.
She burned down the orchard. Earl killed Joaquin. How much worse could it get?
After several moments, I break the silence.
“So,” I say quietly, “I was coming to find you because I’m pretty sure your ancestor, Earl Drake, killed Cash’s great-great-great-uncle on my ranch. Now I need to know what happened to my ancestor, Daisy. She died there too.”
Kaylee pulls a sleeve over her face, slicked with tears and snot. “I’m sorry. What?” She sniffles and her eyes squint like she’s heard me wrong. “You heard me about the fire, right?”
“Yeah. I heard you.” I swallow hard. “I don’t have words for that right now.”
She pulls her horse’s head up as it grows impatient and paws the ground. “Dahlia?”
“What?”
“Why would that guy, Earl, have killed Cash’s great-great-great-uncle?”
“He wanted to take over my ranch and others’. He felt entitled to graze his cattle wherever he pleased. Kaylee, he killed people and sheep because of it.”
Wheels are spinning in her mind. Her eyes dart around. “No! No, no, no…” She covers her mouth.
“What?”
She shakes her head vigorously. “You need to come with me.” Before I can argue, she whips her horse round and begins cantering off.
*
I tie Blue up next to Kaylee’s horse at the hitching post. Blue welcomes the rest and drinks down the bucket of water I fetch him. Kaylee wouldn’t slow down long enough for me to tell her Blue needed a break, but the misty air helped keep him cool.
I follow Kaylee into the office attached to the barn.
None of it is as fancy as I thought it would be.
It’s simple and functional – a concrete floor, bookshelves against the walls stuffed with binders, and a plain metal desk.
The furniture may be simple, but the room is cluttered.
Kaylee flips on lights as she tells me about her mom.
“She used to say our family’s history had a secret.
If anyone in town ever brought it up, I was to tell them to talk to her.
If we’re going to find something, my bet is it’ll be in here.
” The dirty floor crunches under our feet as I consider how her mom worked to protect her.
“Dahlia, she never told me what happened. But if what you’re saying is true, then that must be it and I’ve got to know. ”
“Yeah, me too,” I say. “That’s why I’m here.”
She kneels before a filing cabinet and cranes her neck to look at me. “When do you think it was that Cash’s great-great-great-uncle died?”
I lean a hip against the desk and cross my arms. “It was in September of 1926. Daisy died then too.”
“OK. How did you find out?”
“There’s an antique desk in my barn where my great-great-grandma and aunt left documents and letters.”
“Wow, that’s neat.” She fingers through hanging folders in the bottom drawer, then slams it closed.
She goes through every drawer in the cabinet until she’s standing on tiptoe to look through the top.
When she’s done, she purses her lips and rests her hands on her hips, walking circles round the office. “Hmm. Nothing there.”
There are high shelves around the entire room with old photos, horse-show ribbons and rodeo buckles.
The walls are plastered with photos of black Angus bulls, Kaylee riding barrels, and one of her mom with a newly born calf in her arms. She and her mom are like twins, except her mom’s hair was short and she appears to have worked hard her whole life.
“What are you looking for?” I ask, walking to the corner of the room and picking up a branding iron. It’s the same symbol that was on Rhett’s hat when we found Blue.
“Anything about this place’s history. My mom kept everything, if you couldn’t tell.” She reads the spines on binders on the bookshelves. I join her.
“What can I do to help?” I ask, the binders seeming like a dead end.
She turns in a circle, and tugs frustrated fingers against her scalp. “That hutch.” She points. “Will you check through the drawers and cabinets?”
“Sure.” I replace the branding iron. On the opposite wall is a black hutch with brass handles. The first drawer I open is full of receipts and tax documents. I handle it all carefully, hunting for dates in the 1920s and Earl’s name. There’s nothing from before 1983.
The second and third drawer contain vaccination and breeding records, brand inspections and a handful of random items – pens, syringes, ear tags.
“Anything?” Kaylee asks.
“No. You?”
“Nada,” she says, checking through a stack of papers in a cardboard box.
After searching through the cabinets of the hutch and coming up empty, I sit on the floor with Kaylee and look through the boxes with her for over an hour.
“Are we going about this the right way?” she asks.
“I don’t know, but my eyes are beginning to ache.”
“Mine too. I’d ask Daddy if he knows anything, but he’s at the sale barn.” She pushes up and opens the mini fridge in the corner. “Want a soda?”
“Sure.” I stretch my legs out and bump the leg of the desk.
I point towards the desk drawer. “How about in there? From my experience, that’s where they kept everything.”
“Try it.” She taps a long fingernail on top of her soda and pulls the tab. It lets out a satisfying hiss and she sips the foam.
The drawer’s locked – no surprise there.
Kaylee hands me my soda. “I know where she kept the key. I haven’t opened it since…” Her shoulders sag and the most confident girl I’ve ever known looks like a deflated balloon. “Since last year.”
I give her a sympathetic smile. It hasn’t been opened since her mom died. “Maybe I should go…”
“No. I need to go through her things at some point, and this is important. We need to find out what happened. My mom clearly knew something … something dark she didn’t want to tell me about.”
I turn round and pull out my phone while she punches a code into the safe bolted to the floor. Cash texts, wondering where I am. He rode to the ranch to harvest honey.
I’m at Kaylee’s.
You’re at Kaylee’s? Why?
There’s lots to tell you. I’ll be back in a bit.
Inside the safe are rifles and shotguns and another small safe with a handle.
Kaylee pulls at it and the weight makes her arms drop as it slides from the shelf.
Envy tugs at my mind at the thought of the amount of money they might keep in there.
When she opens it, it’s filled with personal belongings.
“These were my mom’s treasures. Nothing expensive, just valuable to her.”
She takes out a little wooden box with mother-of-pearl inlay on the lid. The key to the desk and keys to other things lie inside. Her breathing slows as she stares down at her mom’s things.
I rest a hand on her shoulder. “We don’t have to do this right now.”