The Territory (Josie Gray Mysteries #1)(47)
Josie nodded. “You are definitely a lucky man.”
“Now, what can I do for you? I’m sure you didn’t come to rent one of my extra-clean rooms.”
“Actually, I came by to see what room Beverly Gray is staying in.”
Manny’s smile widened. “She’s a character, that mother of yours! You should bring her around more often. Life of the party, she is!” He laughed openly and pointed at the front first door to his left. “Room number one.”
Josie knocked and entered after hearing her mother yell to come in. She sat on the unmade bed for ten minutes and watched her mother in front of the bathroom mirror, teasing her hair and applying makeup, a scene she had witnessed countless times growing up. It was an odd feeling, the familiarity of family combined with the uneasiness of time and distance.
Her mother chattered about neighborhood friends and classmates as if Josie had left only months before. She seemed to have forgotten any sense of bitterness over Josie’s departure nine years ago. Her mother had always had an amazing ability to unconditionally love, hate, and forgive—all in the space of minutes; the problem was that she expected others to behave the same way, regardless of her own behavior.
After her mother finished primping and stopped by Manny’s office to wish him a good morning, they walked half a block to the Hot Tamale for lunch. The Tamale was a popular lunch-hour diner. Small square tables and chairs were scattered everywhere and were rearranged to fit variously sized groups, depending on if they wanted a quiet corner or a hot spot in the middle to socialize. Josie chose a small table at the front window, positioning her chair with her back against the wall.
After a half hour lunch of chicken salad and chips, and more small talk dominated by her mother, Josie asked what her immediate plans were.
“I’m thinking about moving here. Thought I’d come scout it out first.”
Josie was stunned. “Why?”
“All my family’s gone in Indiana. Claudia got married and moved to Maine. Uncle Larry’s dead.”
“Are you sick?”
Her mother laughed—too loudly, Josie thought.
“No, I’m not sick. Don’t you get lonely for family, living out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Josie shrugged. She didn’t give it much thought. She had learned long ago that life was easier if she just let things go. She spent the holidays working overtime, read voraciously, and hiked when the walls started closing in. Dell and Otto were as close to family as she needed.
Her mother pushed her fork through a patch of uneaten chicken salad, and Josie wondered if she was seeing real emotion or yet another con. Had she been evicted, lost a job, lost her latest man?
“You got a spare bedroom I could stay in for a couple weeks? Just somewhere while I scout out the territory? I’ll chip in on food.”
It was Josie’s turn to drag her fork around her plate. It would never work; there was no doubt in her mind. Josie had moved two thousand miles from her mother for good reason; to suddenly share a house, a bathroom in the morning, a kitchen to wash dishes. The thought of it made her sweat.
“I have only one bedroom. The house is really small.” She looked up from her plate. “You better give this some thought first anyway. The only family you have in Texas is me, and it’s not like we communicate very well. The heat is unbearable and you’ll miss the snow and the trees. Jobs are hard to come by, too.”
Her mom flipped her hand out, as if dismissing Josie’s concerns. The conversation turned to banter: Josie detailing why it would not work, her mother responding why it would. Behind each of Josie’s responses lay the real reason that clenched at her chest, but that she refused to speak. Her mother had not been there for her as a child. She had no rights to Josie’s time, attention, or money as an adult. Josie had figured out adulthood on her own, and it was time her mother did the same.
*
At nine o’clock that evening, Josie threw her overnight bag over her shoulders, attached her bedroll and foam mat to straps behind her back, and began the fifty-foot climb up the watchtower. At the top, bugs scurried as she shone her flashlight around the interior room before placing her bags on the map table while she lit the two lanterns. She unfolded an army cot that had been left by some other visitor and laid her mat and sleeping bag out for the night.
She took one of the folding camp chairs and her department-issued binoculars outside on the observation deck and breathed deep. The desert had a different smell from that height. The sand and grit that permeated everything below was nonexistent, and the air was clean and dry. The silence was broken by a soft wind that curled around the deck, pushing through the rafters below to create a low whistling like a far-off train. Josie fixed her gaze on the Texas side for several minutes, away from the drama to the south, and raised her arms, allowing the breeze to lift her T-shirt off her skin. Goose bumps, a rarity in July, covered her stomach and arms. She smiled and wished Dillon were standing beside her.
She opened a package of cheese crackers and popped the top on a V8, her concession to good health. She propped her forearms on the wood railing and spilt open a cheese cracker, eating first the plain cracker, saving the best for last, then washing it all down with the vegetable juice. Marta fussed at her continually for her diet of junk food that was balanced, at least in Josie’s own mind, by healthy cans and jars of vegetables and fruits. Fresh was out of the question. It spoiled in her refrigerator and wasted money. Marta gave her fruit baskets for Christmas and made vegetable casseroles for her birthday, all appreciated but largely uneaten. Of the countless ways she had seen and read about people dying, she figured a lack of fresh produce was the least of her worries.