Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
She glanced up and spotted the distant sign for the farm that she’d driven past so many times.
But she’d never stopped before, or even really noticed this place.
Her boots crunched over the gravel as she crossed the shoulder and approached the barbed-wire fence that separated her from the property.
A pair of metal No Trespassing signs dangled from the rusty wire.
One of the signs included an AR-15 graphic to drive home the point.
Izzy looked past the fence, and her pulse picked up as she studied the old ruins.
No roof, no doors, just crumbling walls and a chimney surrounded by creosote and cactus bushes.
Time and weather had sculpted the flat stones, and they looked like stacked pancakes, golden and glowing in the evening sun.
Izzy ducked through the fence. Her fleece snagged on a barb, and she jerked it free.
Glancing around, she looked for the farmer or landowner, but no one was in sight.
In the distance beyond the yucca crop was a low white farmhouse and a gray trailer home tucked beneath a cluster of oak trees.
Beside them was an arched hut that looked like maybe a nursery for plants.
Izzy adjusted the settings on her camera as she approached the old ruins.
The evening light was perfect now, creating crisp shadows, and the golden prairie grass rippled in the breeze.
Picking her way through, she circled the crumbling house, searching for the perfect vantage point.
Nothing felt quite right, so she just began shooting.
At the paneless window, she crouched down to get a more dramatic angle.
The stones made a frame around a rectangle of pink sky streaked with feathery clouds.
It was a striking sunset view, and she could only imagine how the same scene would look when the stars came out.
The composition reminded her of La Ventana, the rock formation she’d photographed back at Gold Springs Trail.
If she could capture the Milky Way through this window, the two rock windows could be a pair—one man-made and one created by nature.
The idea of it brought a rush of adrenaline.
Izzy rounded the building, getting more and more excited as she captured shot after shot in the fading light.
Why had she never been out here before? This place was a gem.
But unlike the landmarks within the park boundaries, this spot hadn’t been photographed repeatedly to the point of being overdone.
She crouched down and captured another shot through the window, and her energy picked up again. She felt giddy with excitement. This subject was original. She needed to come back after dark and really nail this.
Izzy stood and looked at the farmhouse again.
Normally, her philosophy about private property was to snap away and hope no one noticed.
And if they did, she would politely explain that she was a nature photographer and something on their land had caught her eye.
But she should probably get permission this time.
For one thing, she wanted to come back again after dark. But for another thing, the AR sign.
She slung her camera around to her side and started trekking toward the house, following a narrow path that linked up with the dirt road coming off the highway.
She studied the rows of yucca and agave plants as she walked.
This whole place was worth photographing.
She imagined what the crop rows would look like from a high vantage point, such as the top of the stone bluff to the west.
For the first time in months, she felt a genuine spring in her step.
The confidence was back, a tangible thing that she had once taken for granted but that had been replaced by fear and exhaustion.
Lately, her confidence had seemed to shrink, and she’d been overwhelmed by feelings of defeat, a dark sense that no matter how hard she tried to carve a path for herself, her choices were predetermined, and her dreams were destined to fall by the wayside.
Right now, though, in this exact moment, at the close of this exact day, she suddenly felt different. Like herself again. And hopeful—hopeful—so much so that the whiplash of it made her smile.
Her shoe caught on a rut, and she stumbled forward, catching herself. Deep tire marks were carved into the road, and she looked at the pattern as she neared the farmhouse.
Izzy halted.
She studied the tire impressions. Then she glanced up at the trailer near the house, where a dusty truck was parked. The old white pickup looked like hundreds of others around here. Except for the tires. They weren’t the standard size, but bigger.
Her pulse picked up and her mind started racing. Approaching the trailer, she thought back to the photo Leanne had shown her. Coincidence? Maybe. But something in her gut told her no.
About ten yards from the truck, Izzy stopped and stared at the Ridge Grappler tires. Her pulse was racing a mile a minute now. Before she could talk herself out of it, she lifted her camera and took a photo.
“Hey!”
She whirled around to see a man on the front porch pointing a shotgun straight at her.
· · ·
Leanne whipped into her driveway and rushed to her door. Fumbling with her keys, she ignored Gus’s high-pitched mewing. She hurried inside, and Gus darted in behind her.
Leanne went straight to the spare bedroom, where cardboard moving boxes were stacked against the wall. She hadn’t touched a single one of them in months.
She lifted several boxes off the top and heaved them onto the floor as she read the labels. Then she grabbed another box and moved it atop the first two.
The large bottom box was labeled “Books/Misc.”
Leanne retrieved a metal nail file from the bathroom, sliced through the packing tape, and opened the flaps.
The box smelled musty and neglected, like so much of her personal life since she’d moved home to Madrone.
She rummaged through a layer of paperbacks until she reached the hardcover books at the bottom.
Culling through the piles, she spied her yearbooks.
She grabbed the oldest one, from her freshman year, and set it on the tower of boxes.
Hannah Rawls would have been a senior, and Sean Moriarty would have graduated the spring before.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered, flying through the glossy pages until she reached the section for after-school activities.
Yearbook Staff.
The photo beneath the heading showed a group of high school kids slouched in chairs around a row of computers. Some kids had their feet propped on desks and some had cameras around their necks. Leanne skimmed the faces, trying to conjure names to go with them.
Her attention caught on a familiar smile.
“Oh. My. God.”
· · ·
Izzy’s heart was in her throat.
“I…please,” she stammered. “I was just—”
“Enough!”
Her stomach seized. She wanted to throw up. The man glared at her down the barrel of the shotgun.
A screen door squeaked open somewhere behind her.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Dad, no!”
The door smacked shut. Someone ran up behind her, but she had tunnel vision, and all she could see was that black gun barrel.
The old man looked over her head. “You know this one?”
“She’s fine, okay? Put that thing away.”
Scowling, the man lowered the gun and gave her a long, hateful look. Then he spat on the dirt and walked inside. The screen door slammed behind him, and Izzy’s shoulders slumped.
Slowly, she turned around.
“Sorry about that.”