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“It will never be like it was.” Jacob wiped the sweat from his face. Even with the cab door open, the late-summer heat stifled him.
“Well, you can’t blame a girl for wishing,” she said. She lowered her voice to a whisper that curled into his soul like fingers beneath his waistband. “And two Wells give twice as much water. Gets me twice as wet.”
Jacob couldn’t think of a reply. That had been one of Carlita’s favorite lines when they were sixteen. Joshua had probably come up with it. Carlita’s creativity was never revealed in language. Hers was the cu
Joshua came back on the phone. “I never was no good at math, but the way I figure it, we always shared everything fifty-fifty, all the way back to Daddy’s sick little sperm. And now you got everything back and I still got nothing. Another million ain’t so much to ask, when you look at it that way.”
“No. You’ve got your million. I’ll be lucky if I get away with it this time. My partner’s already sniffing around like he smells shit on his shoes.”
“Hey, Jake, I thought you was big time now. Tall in the saddle and all that. I mean, you got this new housing development going up. Got to be some bucks coming in.”
Up at the construction site, two Mexicans were dropping shingle scraps over the side of the roof, hollering out warnings in Spanish in case any workers were on the ground below. It was the kind of careless action that made Jacob glad the safety inspectors only came around at the first of each month. He’d have to talk to the contractor. Even though he wasn’t responsible for any worker’s compensation claims, a few accidents would push up his liability insurance rates. “How did you know I was working again?”
“I got wheels, remember? And I got eyes.”
“Where are you?” Jacob had assumed Joshua was staying out at the estate, waking up at noon and working up to a good drunk by four o’clock. Half the day spent in bed with Carlita, with the occasional time off for runs to the convenience store for Budweiser and Marlboro Lights. A million dollars was plenty of money for that kind of life. Even working in tandem, Joshua and Carlita would never be able to spend it all before either their livers or their lungs gave out.
“Been keeping an eye on my investment,” Joshua said.
Jacob’s stomach clenched. He rose in his seat and scooted out of the cab, kicking the chicken’s head to the dirt. What if Joshua were outside Renee’s apartment right now, or watching her in the laundry? Maybe they had followed her to the grocery store or post office, and were lying in wait to pop up and introduce themselves.
“Where, damn it?” Jacob said.
“See, there’s this fu
“Don’t you dare talk about God. If God were real, my daughters would be alive and we never would have been born.”
“That don’t make no sense.”
“You’re watching me, aren’t you?” Jacob paced around the truck, sca
“It was Carlita’s idea. She’s got a thing for you, you know.”
“No. That was a long time ago. A different lifetime.”
“That same life where you killed your mom?”
Jacob had to restrain himself from hurling the cell phone across the field. “Where are you?”
“You’ll see us when the time is right. Now, about that money you owe me.”
“Why can’t you be happy with what you have? You got the property and the house, and whatever you left across the state line. That’s more than you ever deserved.”
“Except Dad left you about eight million, if I remember right. Daddy didn’t believe in share and share alike, and I reckon you didn’t, neither.”
“Go away. Please. I’ve paid you back enough.”
“Damn it, Jake. You still ain’t figured it out. It ain’t about the money. It’s about the fun.”
“Screw you.”
Carlita was back on the phone. “Hey, what’s this about fun? It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, gringo? Is your wife taking caring of you?”
“You don’t have any business here, Carlita.” Jacob was helpless against her. He felt as if he was over a bottomless pit, clinging to a thin rope with slick hands. Unbidden, that feeling from the hospital swept over him, the one of being submerged in dark, suffocating water. Down in the silent cold where they couldn’t get him.
“But we have so much more to share,” Carlita said, taunting him. “I mean, the boy of fourteen didn’t know what he was doing. I’ll bet your wife has taught you a few tricks since then.”
Jacob heard her cigarette lighter click before she inhaled. The sound triggered flames in his head. Joshua must have whispered something to her because he heard the muted buzzing.
“Josh said to say, ‘Where there’s smoke,’” she said. “I don’t know what it means. You are both muy loco. Made for each other.”
“Let me talk to him.” A sick feeling wended through Jacob’s stomach, a fiery snake of unease.
“Remember under the bridge?” Carlita said. “I know you do. A boy never forgets something like that.”
Jacob stabbed the ‘End’ button and folded the phone. He sat on the truck’s bumper, not trusting his legs. The grinding of the chain saws merged with the buzzing in his ears, and every hammer blow from the roof drove nails into his skull. The phone rang again. And again.
Six times.
They were watching.
He activated the signal and pressed the phone to the side of his head.
It was Joshua. “Ain’t that just like a woman? They won’t let bygones be bygones.”
Then his tone changed, the clumsy rural grammar vanished. “But the past does have a price, brother. Remember that.”
The signal died.
Jacob loosened the top buttons on his fla
Fire.
Billows of black smoke erupted from the open squares of window frames. The roofers scrambled down the ladder, their tools forgotten, the paper from the bags of shingles fluttering in the breeze. The crew leader, a muscular white man in a gray, mottled tank top, ran out of the structure’s interior. The other carpenters raced to the water drums, filling five-gallon buckets and hurrying back to the house. The crew leader grabbed one of the buckets and started to enter the building, but the heat forced him back. Flames were already visible, licking around the front door that had just been installed.
Jacob tried to move, but it was as if cement had been poured into his veins and solidified there, creating a dense and immovable weight. He finally was able to move his lips, completing the phrase Carlita had suggested.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Renee ran the vacuum cleaner over the rug, lost in the hum of tidiness. The windows were open and the breeze caused the curtains to lift and swell. Renee preferred the fresh air and the scent of the pines that grew along the creek outside. The sunlight gave the room a soft, feathery aspect that she found pleasing.
They wouldn’t be in the apartment much longer. She had enjoyed their time together here. It had reminded her of the days in Jacob’s college apartment, cluttered and crowded and close. Back before Mattie and Christine and—