Night Road(3)

She stared out the window at this new place of hers. It was bold and green and dark, even in the middle of the day. After a few miles, a sign welcomed them to the Port George reservation. Here, there were Native American symbols everywhere. Carved orca whales marked the shop fronts. Manufactured homes sat on untended lots, many of them with rusting cars or appliances in the yard. On this late August afternoon, empty fireworks stands attested to the recent holiday, and a glittering casino was being built on a hillside overlooking the Sound.

Signs led them to the Chief Sealth Mobile Home Park. Aunt Eva drove through the park and pulled up in front of a yellow and white double-wide trailer. In the misty rain, it looked blurred somehow, rounded with disappointment. Plastic gray pots full of leggy, dying petunias guarded the front door, which was painted Easter-egg blue. In the front window, a pair of plaid curtains hung like fabric hourglasses, cinched in the middle with strands of fuzzy yellow yarn.

“It isn’t much,” Aunt Eva said, looking ashamed. “I rent from the tribe.”

Lexi didn’t know what to say. If her aunt had seen some of the places Lexi had lived in her life, she wouldn’t have made excuses for this pretty little trailer. “It’s nice.”

“Come on,” her aunt said, turning off the engine.

Lexi followed her aunt across a gravel path and up to the front door. Inside, the mobile home was neat as a pin. A small, L-shaped kitchen sidled up to a dining area that held a yellow speckled Formica and chrome table with four chairs. In the living room, a plaid loveseat and two blue vinyl La-Z-Boys faced a TV on a metal stand. On the end table there were two pictures—one of an old woman with horn-rimmed glasses and one of Elvis. The air smelled like cigarette smoke and fake flowers. There were purple air fresheners hanging from almost every knob in the kitchen.

“Sorry if the place kinda smells. I quit smoking last week—when I found out about you,” Aunt Eva said, turning to look at Lexi. “Secondhand smoke and kids is a bad mix, right?”

A strange feeling overtook Lexi; it was birdlike, fluttery, and so foreign she didn’t recognize the emotion right away.

Hope.

This stranger, this aunt, had quit smoking for her. And she’d taken Lexi in when obviously money was tight. She looked at the woman, wanting to say something, but nothing came out. She was afraid she might jinx everything with the wrong word.

“I’m kinda outta my depth here, Lexi,” Aunt Eva finally said. “Oscar and me—he was my husband—we never had kids. Tried, just din’t. So, I don’t know about raising kids. If you’re gonna be—”

“I’ll be good. I swear it.” Don’t change your mind. Please. “If you keep me, you won’t be sorry.”

“If I keep you?” Aunt Eva pursed her thin lips, gave a little frown. “Your momma sure did a number on you. Can’t say I’m surprised. She broke my sister’s heart, too.”

“She was good at hurting people,” Lexi said quietly.

“We’re family,” Eva said.

“I don’t really know what that means.”

Aunt Eva smiled, but it was sad, that smile, and it wounded Lexi, reminded her that she was a little broken. Life with Momma had left its mark. “It means you’re staying here with me. And I guess you’d best just call me Eva from now on, ’cause that Aunt bit is gonna get old fast.” She started to turn away.

Lexi grabbed her aunt’s thin wrist, feeling the velvety-soft skin wrinkle in her grasp. She hadn’t meant to do it, shouldn’t have done it, but it was too late now.

“What is it, Lexi?”

Lexi could hardly form the two small words; they felt like a pair of stones in her tight throat. But she had to say them. Had to. “Thank you,” she said, her eyes stinging. “I won’t cause you any trouble. I swear it.”

“You probably will,” Eva said, and finally, she smiled. “You’re a teenager, right? But it’s okay, Lexi. It’s okay. I’ve been alone a long time. I’m glad you’re here.”

Lexi could only nod. She’d been alone a long time, too.

*

Jude Farraday hadn’t slept at all last night. Finally, just before dawn, she gave up even trying. Peeling back the summer-weight comforter, taking care not to wake her sleeping husband, she got out of bed and left her bedroom. Opening the French doors quietly, she stepped outside.

In the emergent light, her backyard glistened with dew; lush green grass sloped gently down to a sandy gray-pebbled beach. Beyond it, the Sound was a series of charcoal-colored waves that rolled and rolled, their peaks painted orange by the dawn. On the opposite shore, the Olympic mountain range was a jagged line of pink and lavender.

She stepped into the plastic gardening clogs that were always by the door and went into her garden.

This patch of land was more than just her pride and joy. It was her sanctuary. Here, hunkered down in the rich black earth, she planted and replanted, divided and pruned. Within these low stone walls, she had created a world that was wholly defined by beauty and order. The things she planted in this ground stayed where she put them; they sent out roots that ran deep into this land. No matter how cold and bitter the winter or how driving the rainstorms, her beloved plants came back to life, returning with the seasons.

“You’re up early.”

She turned. Her husband stood on the stone patio, just outside their bedroom door. In a pair of black boxer shorts, with his too long, graying-blond hair still tangled from sleep, he looked like some sexy classics professor or a just-past-his-prime rock star. No wonder she’d fallen in love with him at first sight, more than twenty-four years ago.