Red Dirt by Anna Jarzab

Author:Anna Jarzab
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

I turn on the overhead light and squint.

Dad’s MULE, a golf cart–type contraption he bought secondhand a few years ago, has been gathering cobwebs in our shed for weeks. It always was a little dilapidated, but now, covered in a thick layer of dust, it looks sad and abandoned.

I wipe it clean with a rag and take the keys from their hiding place in Dad’s toolbox. Not sure where I’m headed, but I figure I’ll know when I get there.

I back the MULE out of the shed. Wayne and Karen’s dog, Dolly, is waiting for me. She comes up to the driver’s side, grinning and panting, and angles her head to be petted.

“Almost didn’t see you there,” I say, scratching behind her ear the way she likes. “Sorry, girl.”

Dolly whines and sniffs my hand as Karen comes ’round the corner.

“There you are, silly dog,” she says, relieved. “She bothering you?”

“Not a bit.” I stroke Dolly’s back, muss her fur with my nails. “You’re no bother, are you, girl?”

“Where you going, honey?” Karen asks. She sounds worried. Probably heard about Reed, too.

“Don’t know. Need to clear my head, is all.”

“Come hang out with us instead. You hungry? I made too much food.”

I shake my head. “Another time.”

Karen hesitates. “All right then. Will you take Dolly with you? She’ll run alongside if you want, but I’m sure she’d be happy for a ride.”

Dolly whines. I pat her flank and she hops into the flatbed.

“Karen, what kind of witch is your dog, anyhow? Can’t nobody resist her.”

“I ask myself that every day,” Karen says with a smile. “You girls take care of each other, now.”

The MULE only goes about twenty-five miles an hour, so it takes a while to get anywhere worth going. I try not to think much as I cruise down empty, twisting roads. The air is sweet with the smell of hyacinths, and the breeze makes the heat tolerable for the first time all day. Feels like any other summer—they’re all the same, boiling and sticky and endless, till they end.

Reed and I fell in love during a summer like this, hot and lazy. Sometimes I wonder if we did it just to have something to do. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why Brayton sticks around, too.

’Round the next curve there’s a cliff that overlooks a small cove where a local man, Bruce Coleman, takes his SCUBA classes for practice dives. I park the MULE on the side of the road and walk to the edge of the cliff.

This spot has an amazing view. Reed and I came here all the time when we were together. It’s the spot where he told me about joining the Army. It’s the spot where I stood when I called to tell him I was pregnant, and the spot where I stood when I called to tell him I wasn’t pregnant anymore.

It’s called Satan’s Chin, this small sheltered overlook. Popular with local daredevils, it rises thirty feet above the water, but the banks on either side have gentle slopes, easy to climb back up once you’ve jumped.

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