Texas Gothic

20



mrs. McCulloch—to my surprise—held me back with a question, waiting until the others had cleaned up their lunch trash and moved downhill. Even Ben left, carrying the camp chairs back to ops for Caitlin, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t noticed he’d left me alone with his mother.

She busied herself putting away deli meat and cheese into a big cooler. “I hope that Ben hasn’t made things too difficult for you, Amy.”

How was I supposed to answer that? Of course he had. But I couldn’t tell his mother that.

“He’s obviously under a lot of pressure,” I said carefully, then added, to be fair, “And he’s been a gentleman when it counts.”

That pleased her, which was my aim. Because I had questions. I just had to figure out how to phrase them tactfully. “I’m relieved to know that there isn’t as much antagonism between Aunt Hyacinth and your family as I thought.”

There. That sounded much better than What the hell is your son’s problem?

Mrs. McCulloch closed the ice chest and pushed it into the SUV. “We’ve always gotten along with your aunt, but Ben and Steve—Steve Sparks, our manager—they’ve had a lot of frustrations lately. Hyacinth never had a problem with us fording the river on her property, but Steve wants us to lease the bluff to a cell phone company to put a tower on, and Hyacinth … well, she’s adamantly against it. She says—” Ben’s mom broke off with an embarrassed laugh. “Well, she has her reasons, even if we don’t understand them.”

I looked at the bluff she meant, a big, beautiful hunk of granite that dominated the vista like the prow of a red-rock ocean liner in a rolling sea of hills. “It would be a shame to ruin that view.”

That was grounds enough for me, but Aunt Hyacinth was undoubtedly worried about electromagnetic fields, which was probably the part Mrs. McCulloch didn’t understand.

“It would,” Mrs. McCulloch admitted, following my gaze. “But Steve says it would also be a lot of money. And it would be nice in case Mac … Well, just in case.”

In case Grandpa Mac someday needed long-term residential care. That was how folks tactfully phrased it. Mrs. McCulloch didn’t have to finish the sentence for me to hear the looming nightmare in her voice. Ben’s mom, I’d noticed, tended to say a little more than she meant to.

Like how she seemed to say Steve Sparks’s name a lot, which, on one hand, was natural if they worked closely together on ranch business. But she was also a widow with a lot on her shoulders.

Maybe I felt protective of her because I’d grown up with a single mother whose “I march to the beat of my own new age synthesizer” was sometimes mistaken for “I need a big strong man to tell me what to do.” Or maybe it was just that Steve Sparks was a condescending jerk, without Ben’s mitigating qualities.

Such as the charm with which he compared me to vermin. Or to his horse, which I supposed might be construed as a compliment.

I was working my conscience around to asking his mother about the Mad Monk, but I was too slow. Ben returned, sliding his phone into his pocket and looking, if possible, even more tired than before.

“Fencing accident, Mom. I’ve got to go.”

“Oh dear,” said his mother.

“Fencing accident?” I assumed another one had fallen down, but I didn’t tease him about sinkholes or any other cause. He looked too grim.

He answered me tersely. “Barbed wire. High tension. It snapped with a man in the way.”

My imagination filled in the gaps, and I felt an odd stab of responsibility. My palms were sweating, and I shoved them in my pockets, shaken by the strength of my reaction. “Can I help? I’m certified in first aid.”

Ben looked surprised by my offer, and said genuinely, “Thanks. But Steve took Clint to the ER, where he’ll be okay with some stitches.” He ran a hand over his face. “If this gets blamed on that ghost …”

He didn’t look at me, but he didn’t really have to.

“Don’t be silly, Benjamin,” said Mrs. McCulloch. “Why would anyone think it’s the ghost? It’s the middle of the day, and no one got hit on the head.”

If someone weren’t injured, maybe seriously, I would have laughed at Ben’s exasperated reaction to his mother’s logic. I pressed my luck with a question. “Why would a ghost—a hypothetical ghost,” I corrected at Ben’s dark look, “want to injure someone repairing a fence?”

“Why does the f—” He caught himself and looked at his mom. “—ictional thing do anything?” said Ben scornfully. “Just ask anyone: to protect his ‘treasure.’ ”

His air quotes were aggressively ironic, and Mrs. McCulloch reassured me with a hand on my shoulder, “He’s not angry with you, honey. Just at the situation.”

“Amy knows how I feel, Mom,” said Ben, shepherding her toward the SUV’s passenger seat.

“Right back atcha, Francis,” I called, then felt awful because some poor guy was cut up by barbed wire and though it couldn’t possibly be my fault, I felt like it was. Which meant I’d better get back to searching, and planning what to do if digging continued to make things worse instead of better.

• • •



I was running out of time, at least for that day. Phin and I both had chores back at the ranch. Spectral obligation or not, the goats had to be fed and the plants had to be watered. And we still hadn’t found anything.

Phin’s square and mine were a knight’s move down from Lucas and Emery on the chessboard of the Site B section. “Maybe we picked the wrong place,” I said. “We seem to be well below the feet, going by where they found the tibiae and leather fragments.”

“You’re welcome to move if you want,” said Phin, digging into her next layer. “What does your gut tell you to do?”

My gut—and her tone—told me not to imply a lack of faith in her methods. I knelt back down, groaning just a little, and returned to work.