The wolfhounds rose and followed Diane through the door, unbidden guardians for the road ahead, and she felt oddly comforted by their presence. A number of strays and wanderers loitered by the screened porch, hoping for the chance to sneak inside. Cattle dogs, a pit bull, and a pair of border collie mixes, dirt-dull mutts that belonged to nobody and everybody. They wore lean and hungry looks, a natural sneaky submis-siveness born of curses and kicks, just this wary side of their wild cousins. The yellow dog she had seen that morning slunk away, tail low, when the wolfhounds stepped outside. Crisp cool air energized her senses and swept away the lingering fatigue from her cross-country flight and the lack of sleep. She checked for approaching cars and trucks, tried to gauge the distance of the bend that curled around the next hill, but the road was empty, no sound except the huff of the hounds, the crunch of their pads on the gravel. They sauntered past a row of patchwork businesses and houses so baked they appeared almost flat and walked along a dirt berm fronting other reclaimed homes reimagined into colorful, eclectic shrines. The dogs kept pace on the packed ground, now and again bending their heads at an interesting smell, the mark of others who had passed this way. Finn lifted his leg and pissed into a brittle sage, the parched earth sucking in the liquid at once. She played out the two alternatives regarding this Mary Gavin: either Erica incognito or someone else altogether. In her staging of the meeting, the rescue went off without trouble. Erica would acquiesce and spare all queries. Lost in her thoughts, Diane did not notice that the houses had disappeared from both sides of the road and that the road itself veered off in an uncertain rising curve that promised only emptiness. “End of the line, boys.”
To the left lay the shell of a derelict baseball park, the grandstand collapsing, the infield overgrown with thistles and clumps of stubborn grass. Stone dugouts harbored mice and the bones of a stray cat. Nothing else stirred on the winter's day, desolate and empty, the ruins of all that had once vibrated with life. A plastic bag skittered across the low hump of the pitcher's mound, and when she closed her eyes, she could imagine the bygone time, the young boys at play the stands crowded with cheering fans. All vanished, ashes, dirt, memories, and those, too, disappearing. Beyond the outfield fence, she could see another road in the distance, the houses hanging on to the side of a small mountain, and as she crossed the arroyo, she began to pray in earnest, with the plaintive heart of a schoolgirl begging for remedy or reward, of a married woman desperate for a child, of an aging wife asking for her husband to be spared misery. In the deserted hills, quiet as a chapel, she prayed that Norah had told the truth, that the child's mother could be found and restored, that Erica would come home. A pair of magpies streaked across the sky toward a juniper tree, and her hopes lit out after them.
Mick and Finn straightened and pointed their heads to the crest of the road, sighting the approaching figure, and tensed to run. Diane clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and they took off, covering great swaths with each stride, kicking up clouds of dust, till they slowed and circled round the person in the distance, long before she recognized who it was. Maya drew closer, waved, and called out a greeting. From ten yards, she shouted, “How long you planning to be out here, nature girl?”
“I've lost track of time.”
“It's after two thirty.” Maya could read the disappointment on Diane's face. “Why don't I take you to her?”
“You know where she is?”
“Where she has always been. Right around the corner. You can see for yourself that it's Mary, not your daughter.”
They veered off the road and followed an inclined path to a small wooden house hidden from view by a stand of conifers. An iron sculpture stretched across the front yard; peeling red and yellow paint covered two horned arcs welded and joined to a central pole. Judging by the height and breadth of a person, the figure could be a stylized cross, a tree, a man. The house behind the sculpture bore the wear of fifty years, the wood bleached to gray, but cheered by the trim around the windows in bright turquoise and the door deep burgundy. A string of feathers—hawk, crow, black-and-white magpie, the barred blue Steller's jay, roadrunner—hung down in a wreath and danced in the breeze with a sound bordering on silence.
Maya knocked, and in the time between the call and response, Diane panicked. Her exhausted heart pounded, a prickle of fear raced up the back of her neck, and intense pressure built in her chest, causing her breath to be rapid and shallow. A film of perspiration on her brow evaporated at once in the cold, thin air, and the frost of sweat gave her a second skin, a mask that hid her true identity.
The door swung open, and there she was.
Nothing had changed, nothing had ever happened. Diane had a fixed memory of her niece at age nine, and she was eternally so despite the young woman before her with the spiked blonde hair and the fine sun lines at her eyes. Familiar but strange in these alien surroundings, the discordant pictures on the walls, the blue jeans and yellow blouse she had never seen, thinner than imagined, but those same eyes, scent of jasmine, and the unabashed smile.
The door swung open, and there she was.
A ghost. An unexpected reminder of the life discarded. A shard of memory found like a lost keepsake, forming into wholeness. She had not thought of her mother in days, yet there was her echo, standing in the door, the least expected.
“Aunt Diane. How did you find me?”
“Erica.”
They stood facing one another at the threshold, neither one budging. The hounds jostled for position and whimpered to be let in, and Erica opened the door wide to accommodate both dogs. Taking Diane by the elbow, Maya pushed her in after them. The wolfhounds trotted straight through the sitting room and headed down a hallway on a mission. The women stood in awkward silence like three points of a triangle that seemed to contain within its boundaries a host of secrets.
Maya spoke first. “This seems to be some kind of kin of yours, Mary; least you could do is say hello.”
Freed from their traces, the other two broke toward each other and collided in an embrace. Diane exhaled the chaos in her body, and Erica allowed herself a moment's forgiveness. They held on, wordless, until Erica pulled away and took in her aunt at arm's length. “I'm so sorry.”
“Erica, Erica, let me look at you.”