Secret Triplets(36)

 

 

Chapter Sixteen

 

 

 

 

 

The forest and the street Kyle had given me were only 20 minutes away, but I made it there in 10. Maybe I sped; I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that my foot nudged the gas pedal until the world outside my windows was a blur and the only thing to do was weave by the cars that were crawling along the road ahead of me.

 

The landscape was dirt and scrub as far as the eye could see, arid plains that looked to be incapable of sustaining a forest for miles, but still I pressed on. Something was drawing me to Carson Valley Way, some deep knowing.

 

Once I got there, the street itself was what I’d imagined the rich, nice neighborhoods of Spain or Mexico must be like: tan and white adobe two-story boxes with front lawns of tiny pebbles and one single bushy tree apiece. Each box had the same perfectly square windows with the same darker brown border, the same one-car garage. The whole neighborhood had clearly been the brainchild of one individual architect. It was not Brock’s scene at all, but then again, how much did I know about the man, really?

 

Yet as I drove up and down the street, I saw no sign of a green pickup truck, or any pickup truck for that matter. No, I drove up and down and back up the thin street several times but saw nothing. Finally, in exasperation, I pulled over on in the circle at the end of the street, glanced out the window, and saw just what I was looking for.

 

“Turquoise Trail” the yellow-lettered sign read. And though the dirt road snaking into more arid plains indicated not the slightest sign of turquoise, it did, on the far-off horizon, offer a hint of trees. That had to be it, Santa Fe National Forest.

 

Brock wouldn’t be content to live near the forest; he would settle only for living smack dab in the middle of it. At last, I’d finally found a lead.

 

I grabbed an apple from my center console, took a generous bite, and turned down the “Turquoise Trail” dirt road. I was getting close; I could feel it.

 

The dirt road was bumpy and meandering, tending left and then right before definitively going left again. More scrub and dirt rolled past my windows, though I barely noticed. My gaze was locked on the horizon, on the green mass I was getting nearer to every second. Then I was in the thick of it, driving on dirt that suddenly housed whole hills of low, bushy trees and little plops of ambitious grasses. Those then gave way to a whole forest of trees. They were tall and small, wide and thin, and every shade of green was present: lime and olive and seaweed and emerald. The trees were everywhere, of every kind—elms, pines, crabapples, oaks, maples, cottonwoods. I was so overcome by this sudden infusion of nature that I almost missed the two massive pines dipping together over a dark, unmarked dirt road.

 

I stopped the car and peered down the road. At the end was some sort of wooden building and, nearly blending in completely with the trees, a green pickup truck.

 

I pulled down the dirt road and parked beside the ’92 pickup truck.

 

With trembling hands, I tucked the chickadee canvas under my arm and got out of the car.

 

I stopped at the rough wooden door, the slats all mismatched—some too big, others too small, yet all somehow coming together to serve their door-forming purpose.

 

I lifted my fist to knock and paused.

 

This was really happening. I was really doing this. I was really going to see Brock again after all this time.

 

I knocked. In response, the whole door shook, but that was all. After that, nothing. There was no shuffling inside the cabin, no movement anywhere.

 

Brock’s car was right there in the lot out front. Didn’t that mean he had to be home? It wasn’t like green ’92 pickups were all that common of a vehicle.

 

This time I knocked with more force, but again there was no response. The third time, I knocked so hard the whole door trembled and then opened. Tentatively, my hand on an outer slat, I pushed the door open farther and stepped into the single room.

 

There was a sleeping bag balled in one corner and an old-style stove in the other, but there was otherwise little sign of life in the dank place.

 

A rifle cocked behind me, and I whipped around to see. In the doorway was Brock, his rifle pointed straight at me.

 

“Don’t move,” he growled.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Seventeen

 

 

 

 

 

His gaze flicked to my belly, and the gun drooped.

 

“No,” he whispered.

 

“Yes,” I whispered back.

 

Tears coming to my eyes, I stepped toward him and said again, “Yes.”

 

We stood there for a minute while Brock’s face registered every possible emotion, from surprise to rage to despair to fear to, finally, happiness.