Lita had thrown her arms around him the minute he arrived, and he was grateful to be able to hug her back unreservedly, without a single improper thought crossing his mind. Everyone greeted him with gratitude and enthusiasm, and it felt like a homecoming, even though there were a couple of people he didn’t even recognize.
He’d come back, basically, to pick up the rest of his belongings from the shack, and his original plan was to do it all in one day: speed over to Magdalena, pack up his stuff and hit the road. But Lita convinced him to stay the night, and after she helped him box up his effects, he assisted her in making sandwiches for everyone. They all ate lunch outside, on and around a picnic table that had been set up near the fruit trees, and he heard story after story about the horrors people had endured over the past month.
Ross and Lita stayed at the table after Dave and the others had gone.
“So was your job still there?” Lita asked. “After?”
“It was still there.” He paused. “Jill wasn’t.”
“Oh, Rossie! What happened?”
He picked at the crumbs on his paper plate. “I don’t know, really. She left a note saying she was leaving, but that was all the note said. It didn’t tell me anything other than that. I’ve tried to call her several times, but she won’t pick up. My guess? It was never real in the first place, her interest in me. It was real on my part. Still is,” he said ruefully. “But I’ve never had good luck with women. For a brief time, I did. Now it’s over.”
“Maybe she’ll think about it and come back,” Lita said encouragingly.
“Maybe,” he said, but he knew that wasn’t true. He might still have feelings for Jill, but it seemed pretty obvious that whatever she had felt for him had died with the monster.
Ross stood. “I have a whole afternoon ahead of me here, and you’re trying to get this place in order. You must have something for me to do.”
He ended up performing his old chores, feeding the chickens and collecting eggs. It was relaxing this time, rather than stressful, and afterward he helped Dave and a guy named Don dig a hole to bury the bodies of deformed rodents that had been collected from around the ranch.
Once again, he took dinner in the Big House with Lita and Dave, filling them in with more detail on what had happened at the last, then he walked across the yard to spend one final night in the shack. He had no laptop, but the TV was still here, and he turned it on for white noise as he prepared to go to sleep.
He had no dreams.
Leaving the next morning made him sad. He had grown used to this place and these people. Magdalena felt like home to him, and though he now had the job that he wanted and a rental house near the beach, it was hard to reconcile the fact that if he ever returned, it would be as a visitor rather than a resident, and nothing would be the same.
“I only look forward,” Jill told him once. “It’s too sad to look back.”
He understood what she meant.
“Call me,” Lita said, hugging him and crying.
“I will,” Ross promised.
He drove back to San Diego, stopping off in Yuma for coffee, gas and a bathroom break before making a marathon run across the desert in an effort to beat the heat. Back in California, he unpacked the pickup, took it back to Enterprise, and someone from the rental car agency drove him home. Tired, he lay down on the couch, intending to take a short nap before finding a place for all the boxes he’d brought back, but when he opened his eyes again, it was morning. He’d slept through not only the rest of the afternoon but the entire night, and he awoke hungry, though his body clock was off and he was not in the mood for breakfast. Tacos sounded good, and he wondered if that little stand on the beach, Surfside Tacos, was open this early.
He was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, and he took them off, got in the shower and changed into clean underwear, pants and a shirt. Tacos still sounded good to him, and he put on some sneakers and walked outside, looking toward the beach.
It was about 75 degrees and clear, the ocean as blue as the sky.
He breathed deeply, thought of Jill, and smiled sadly to himself.
Nice weather for a walk.