I closed my eyes in an attempt to stop the tears threatening to escape. “I’m a local girl.”
“Maggie, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
I opened my eyes and saw my pain mirrored in his, the glistening of unshed tears. Slowly, he took a step back, distancing himself.
“I can’t be with you for a couple of weeks. I came to tell you good-bye. After I talked to my dad last night …” He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and waited for me to say something, anything, but I didn’t—just stared at him and wondered why my life seemed to be eternally cursed. And wondered how a suffocating wall of tension had sprung up between us. Then I knew. I had crossed an uncrossable line. We had crossed that line. He was guilty, too.
“Are you going to be all right without me?” he asked.
I clenched my teeth and folded my arms over my chest. “You are so arrogant. Of course I’ll be all right without you. I don’t need you to survive because I learned how to do that when I was five years old.”
“Promise me you won’t walk home from work at night. I don’t want to worry about you.”
“Then just don’t think about it, because I’ll walk home if I want,” I retorted. I was mad and wanted him to worry. He didn’t deserve my anger—the kiss was my idea—but I could tell he regretted that kiss, and that made me want to hurt him. “Are you leaving town?” I asked a little too sharply.
“I’ve just got to take care of some family stuff.” He studied me for a moment before looking down at his brown leather shoes. When his eyes met mine again, they were empty, the cold eyes of a statue. “I’m not sure when I’ll see you next.” There was a certain finality in his voice that made bile rise in my throat. I’d heard that finality in so many other voices, so many times in my life. And every time I’d heard it, I was shipped to a new foster home within days. I couldn’t talk.
“Screw this,” he whispered. He took a step forward and caught my face in his hands, looking right into my eyes. “You’ve got to trust me. And I’m sorry.” He leaned down and kissed me again—hard and fast.
Without another word, he turned and left.
I stood in the shadow of the barn for a long, long time. I had just experienced one of the best moments of my life.
Immediately followed by one of the worst.
26
I played Scrabble with Mrs. Carpenter most of the day. If she wondered why I kept spelling words like “bleak,” “sorrow,” “regret,” and “kiss,” and lost three games in a row, she didn’t ask. All she asked was, “Why aren’t you and Bridger out riding bikes?”
I swallowed a lump that lodged in my throat. “He can’t hang out today.”
“Do you need a ride to work? My leg’s feeling pretty decent today.”
“Um. Yeah, I guess I do.”
She nodded, studying me.
When it was nearly time for me to go to work, I went to my room and put on jeans and a black shirt that smelled the faintest bit of Bridger.
I needed to get him out of my mind. I strode out of my room and groaned. Even his sister’s mountain bike was a reminder, propped up beside the chicken coop. It was then that the idea came to me. Even though I didn’t have to cross any mountain paths to get to work, I figured, why not? Riding the bike to work would save Mrs. Carpenter the chore of driving me. She said her leg didn’t hurt, but I knew better.
I walked the bike out of the barn and propped it up against the front porch, then stuck my head into the air-conditioned house. Mrs. Carpenter was stretched out on the love seat, her leg propped up on a stack of pillows, a crochet hook and yarn flying in her hands.
“I’m going to ride my bike, so you don’t have to drive me to work,” I said.
She looked up from her crocheting and frowned. “What about getting the bike home? Will it fit in Bridger’s car?”
I cringed inside. “He can’t pick me up tonight. In fact, won’t be around for a couple of weeks. But I don’t mind riding the bike to and from work—it has a headlight I can use after sunset so I won’t get hit by a car.”
Mrs. Carpenter frowned. “I don’t like the thought of you riding home alone in the dark. Not with wolves and wild dogs in the area. I’ll pick you up. You can put the bike in the back of the truck.” She focused on her hands again, winding yarn on her fingers and sweeping it off with the crochet hook faster than an old woman should have been able to move.
“Are you sure?” I asked, relief welling up in my chest.
“You know I am,” she said, giving me the same look her son had given me when he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“I’ll see you tonight, then.”
As I stepped out onto the front porch, I glanced at the barn and relived the memory of Bridger’s lips on mine. I pinched myself. Hard. “Stop thinking about that,” I whispered, “or you’ll go crazy!”
Cranky as a badger, I yanked the helmet from the bike handle, and as I strapped it beneath my chin, I noticed a huge bird circling overhead. I watched the bird, wondering if it was a carrion eater that had found something dead. In spite of the hot day, a chill shivered down my spine. I picked up a fist-sized rock and chucked it at the bird. The rock soared harmlessly through the air and the bird flew out of view.
“Stupid bird,” I mumbled, swinging my leg over the bike.
I got to work, windblown and sweaty, in less than twenty minutes. It helped that the ride was downhill. José let me park the bike just inside the back door and stood eyeing it as if ogling a sports car.
“I think I’m paying you too much,” he said, running his hand over the angular blue bike frame. “This is a Gary Fisher HiFi Pro Carbon bike. Don’t these cost, like, thousands?” José looked up at me for an answer. Naalyehe peered at me from his place at the cutting board.
“I’m just borrowing it,” I said as I tied a white, bleach-scented apron around my hips. I hurried out to the dining room and my feet skidded to a halt. Every booth was full.
José had said New Mexico summers brought tourists to town. You could tell the tourists, too, because they had a certain look about them, like city people trying to look southwestern. They wore brand-new cowboy boots that had probably never touched horseflesh, had on cowboy hats without a trace of sweat on them, and their sunburned noses looked like glossy red peppers. They tipped well, at least.
In addition to the tourists, the summer semester at the university had started, so college kids, a few at least, decided to come in out of the evening heat for a cold beer and some of the best Navajo Mexican food in the world.
It was outdoor eating season, too. Strands of white Christmas lights hung on giant umbrellas over the outdoor tables so customers could enjoy their evening meals in the cool night air, at the steel tables set up on the sidewalk. Tonight necessity made some of them sit at those tables. The restaurant was packed.
Somehow, I got assigned to wait on the outdoor tables. Yana and Penney were better servers, but I got the hard tables. I was back and forth through the restaurant’s glass front door so many times, it was a miracle I didn’t spill anything.
When the sun started to dip behind Wind Mountain, turning the sky a brilliant orange, I had to stop for a breather. All my customers were taken care of for the moment, so I figured it was all right to lean against the brick restaurant and watch the sky fade to black. One thing about being so busy—I could almost forget about Bridger. Almost.
A breeze lifted the stray hairs around my face and cooled my sweaty back. That was one of the nice things about Silver City. Its elevation was high, almost six thousand feet, so though the days were hot, the nights cooled to the point of being chilly.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the smells of juniper and dust, then looked up at the sky again. My breath caught in my throat. The twilit sky outlined a dark shape. A bird, broad winged and floating eerily on the breeze, soared directly overhead. The second one I had seen that day. I hurried into the restaurant and practically ran through the dining room.
“Naalyehe!” I gasped, sticking my head in through the kitchen door. “There’s a bird outside. I’ve seen it twice today and want to know if it means something significant.”
Naalyehe set two steaming plates of food down and followed me to the front of the restaurant. Outside, we peered at the purple sky.
“There,” I said, pointing.
Naalyehe squinted up at the sky, his face following the path of the bird as it flew away from the fading horizon and out of view. “Atash,” Naalyehe whispered. “Flying to the east.” He looked at me, his eyes full of curiosity.
“Is it bad?” I asked, fighting a surge of dread.
“Is there a reason you need protection?”
“What do you mean?”
“That is a golden eagle. The eagle … Atash … is a symbol of protection. That can be good. Or bad. What do you need to be protected from?”
“The poacher, Rolf Heinrich,” I whispered.
Naalyehe nodded. “Be safe.”
“Thanks,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear the tremble in my voice.
Around ten o’clock, things died down. Everyone decided to go home—or to their hotel rooms—which was fine with me. My apron was heavy with tips, my shoulders heavy with exhaustion, and my brain running on overload. I wanted to think about kissing Bridger and what happened after. My gut told me it was a mistake, but my heart and lips longed for more. And now the eagle. How much danger was I in?
“So, how are you and Bridger?” Penney asked with a gleam in her eye. She and I were carrying a bulging bag of trash out to the Dumpster together.
“I don’t know. Not good.”
She let go of her half of the bag and it fell against me, splattering my designer jeans.
“No! What happened?”
“I kissed him.” My cheeks started to burn. “And then he apologized.”
