The Home Place: A Novel by Carrie La Seur

Author:Carrie La Seur [Seur, Carrie La]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062323460
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-07-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

TUESDAY, 7 A.M. MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME

It doesn’t matter how early the next morning comes. Alma hasn’t slept. Chance is in the horse barn polishing a saddle when she spots him, after leaving Brittany with Jayne to get bundled up properly. As she waves at him, something fluttering beyond the barn catches her eye. She walks around to the back of the barn, facing the crenellated butte. This entire back wall, hidden from the farmyard and the road, is an elongated fishbowl view of Eighteenth and Castro in San Francisco, looking toward the Castro Theatre as if through a peephole. A rainbow flag waves in the foreground and the street is filled with people. The flag is real, hung from the barn on a long loop of rebar. Smaller flags populate the ground in front of the mural, dancing out of the painted scene to dissipate onto Montana prairie, getting smaller, randomly appearing to the fence line and beyond. They’re faded and tattered now. Soon they’ll be gone.

“Damn,” Alma mutters. She backs up to take in the whole of the mural: the scope, the detail, the movement, the difficult perspective made convincing. “This is amazing.” Morning light illuminates the colors, inhabits them. Alma can see the delicacy of the brushstrokes, the fine shading and textures. She moves forward to put her fingers on the rough surface.

“Beautiful,” she whispers. These old places can be mirages one day, oases the next, and always they hide secrets. Beyond her line of sight, quick, light footsteps run across the yard. Alma moves to see. Outside the horse barn is a small child in a red snowsuit. “Daddy!” she cries when Chance steps to the door.

Chance lifts her to his chest with one arm. “Good morning, sunshine. Did Grandma give you breakfast already?”

Mae nods and twists her head around to look at Alma walking toward them.

“Is this your friend, Daddy?”

Chance’s eyes follow Mae’s and Alma wonders how he’ll respond.

“This is my old friend Alma,” he tells Mae. “Say hello, sweetheart.” He sets Mae down and she marches up to Alma. Her skin glows café au lait and dark curls escape from her knit cap. She is breathtakingly like Chance.

“Hi. My name is Mae. I’m three.” She holds up fingers but her mittens conceal them.

Alma squats to eye level with the little girl. “Hello, Mae. Are you coming riding with us?”

The girl opens a big, baby-tooth smile and nods. “I’m gonna ride with Daddy,” she says, looking back at him with adoration.

“I’d better take her back across before she gets into the corral.” Chance gathers up Mae from behind and heads across the snowy yard, starting to jog a little as he gets closer to the house. Alma stands in the aperture of the barn door, watching. She’s able to turn away only when the door of the ranch house slams behind him.

When Chance returns she’s working at Jayne’s saddle, lengthening the stirrups. She’s dying to ask about the mural, but something about him is so stiff, so distant, that she keeps quiet.

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