Tres Leches Cupcakes (25 page)

“I’ll try to put a rush on it, but I can’t make any guarantees,” Marcus said. “Where will you be staying?”

“Here’s the number I can be reached at until late this afternoon,” she said, writing down Rex and Caro’s phone number on the back of a business card he had on his desk. She’d already planned to pack up and be gone before either of them got home from work; now she simply had more reason to do so. She added her e-mail address too, just in case. “Then I’ll go to Albuquerque.”

“It won’t be done today,” he said. “But we could possibly have it sent to the Albuquerque station when we finish.”

“Or I can come get it. I won’t have much in my schedule, and I don’t mind making the drive.” Maybe not having her phone would also make it easier for her to stay away from everything. “I’ll call you with the number to my hotel as soon as I get checked in. Or you can e-mail me anytime; I check my e-mail a few times a day.”

“That would be good. Thank you for all your help,” Marcus said sincerely. “Be assured that we are giving this priority attention.”

The house was empty when Sadie returned, and it felt isolating to be in a home where she was no longer welcome without her phone connecting her to the world where she didn’t feel all that welcome either.

She’d picked up some U-Haul boxes on her way home but put them aside as soon as she entered the house. Using Rex and Caro’s phone, she called Pete and left him a message that she no longer had her phone but could be reached here until about three o’clock, at which time she planned to go to Albuquerque. She took a few minutes to put together some green chile stew, another favorite meal of Rex’s, as a bit of a peace offering. She diced the potatoes that would need to be added later into a bowl of salted water and left it next to the Crock-Pot. Caro would know what to do with it.

Then there was nothing left to do but pack.

It was an affront to her organized ways not to make lists and charts that explained the contents of these boxes from bottom to top, but she didn’t have time for the planning process. She hoped Rex and Caro wouldn’t mind storing most of her stuff until she knew where she would be going after the Balloon Fiesta and her court date were over.

Bathroom supplies went in one box, nonessential clothing in another. The plush blanket she had fallen in love with went in with her jackets and shoes. Caro had helped her pick out that blanket on their very first shopping trip. She’d assured Sadie she’d love it, and she’d been right.

Sadie didn’t think she’d collected too many things, other than clothes, during her stay, but she ended up with two whole boxes full of souvenir-type things she’d bought since arriving in Santa Fe. Each item reminded her of the good times with Caro, and she allowed herself to feel downright sorry for herself as she wrapped the more fragile pieces in newspaper. She reached for a sheet of newsprint to wrap up a beautiful ceramic bell they’d bought in Taos, when Ethan Standage’s picture caught her eye.

She smoothed the paper out on the bed and read a recap of the previous night’s exhibit—she hadn’t realized she’d grabbed today’s paper out of the recycle bin; Rex must have already read it. The article spoke of the ten-year anniversary and the basic process Ethan went through for his prints and anthologies, but toward the end there was a quote from Ethan that Sadie found surprising.

“I’ll be cutting back on my photography for the next little while, but I still plan to have an exhibit next fall.” Ethan Standage is widely known as the heir to the Cold River Ranch, which has been owned by his family for generations. When asked the reason for the change, Standage said, “I spoke tonight of the three facets of life I try to pattern my choices around: temporal reverence, spiritual acuity, and creative expression. I’ve worked hard to accomplish all of those things within my preservation and my art, but I’ve only been able to pursue those things because of the support and the legacy of my family, and my place, ultimately, is with them. I’ve been raised since my childhood to take over the ranch and I am eager to approach a new challenge. I am not leaving my art behind, but rather making room for more things in my future.”

She couldn’t help but wonder if this change could be connected to Shel having been told there were bodies at the site, or to Margo having gone to the ranch. Ethan’s sudden devotion to the ranch felt a little bit like circling the wagons, pulling into the ranch in order to protect it or himself or something. But, Sadie reminded herself, she wasn’t investigating. All those questions were for the police, and she would do well to leave them alone.

She placed the ceramic bell in the center of Ethan Standage’s picture in the paper and proceeded to wrap it up tightly before putting it into the box and moving on to her next keepsake, and then the next, and the next. Each of them had a story connected to their purchase, most of them directly tied to Caro. Sadie looked forward to the day when she could think about her friend and the good times they’d had without feeling such heavy regret.

One of her favorite purchases was a woven table runner she’d bought from a Navajo woman who sold her pieces at a roadside shop. She ran her fingers over the tight stitches. Sadie had bought it with the expectation of putting it across the sofa table behind her couch at home. She hoped that all this drama was at least getting her closer to that goal.

She realized while putting the table runner in the box that she’d almost forgotten about the rope hammock chair she’d also purchased in Taos. It had a long piece of wood from which the hammock chair portion hung, making it awkward to store. She’d put it under the bed. She got on her hands and knees in order to retrieve it, glad to have remembered it at all. When she was pulling it out, she noticed a box she didn’t recognize. It wasn’t very big—a large shoe box for hiking boots, probably, but it was pushed up against the wall at the head of the bed.

Sadie had helped Caro move out the girls’ leftover items when she’d moved in, putting them into the smaller guest room further down the hall. They must have missed this box; it
was
hard to see. She pulled the box out and raised her eyebrows at the layers of packing tape wrapped around it.

The box wasn’t heavy enough to contain the hiking boots it was made to hold, and nothing shifted inside when she shook it slightly, which meant whatever was in there was likely packed pretty tight. Since it wasn’t hers, she knew she couldn’t cut the box open without feeling guilty about it, so she simply put it on top of the stack of boxes she’d just packed up, then retrieved a Post-it note from the kitchen and wrote “This isn’t mine. I found it under the bed.” She stuck the note to the green shoe box, then set it next to the hammock chair on the top of the stacked boxes.

She did a final check of the room. She’d gotten everything it seemed—nearly two months of living all packed up and ready to move to wherever she went next.
Please help me get home,
she said in a silent prayer as she retrieved the cleaning supplies from beneath the bathroom sink and set about leaving the rooms cleaner than she’d found them when she’d moved in.

At two o’clock, the bedding and towels were in the dryer, and the walls, baseboards, windows, and bathroom were spotless. No one would even guess she’d been there, which made her sad, but she didn’t dwell on it. She turned off the lights and closed the door on this chapter of her life.

She hadn’t heard from Pete or Marcus, but she was surprisingly okay with that. Her desire to be in the middle of things was sufficiently tempered by what she’d learned that morning. Margo had been part of a vigilante group. Did that mean she’d used Sadie in pursuit of her own agenda? Not that Sadie could be offended by it, since she’d done the same thing in a sense, but it was an interesting shift nonetheless.

She wrote a note to Caro and Rex, thanking them again for having allowed her to stay and explaining the situation with her phone in case Marcus called. Then she cleaned the kitchen. She thought about backing out of helping Lois at the Fiesta, but she would be in Albuquerque anyway, and she really liked Lois. Besides, maybe working together would be the tender clay on which she and Caro could build a new foundation.

With nothing else to do, Sadie took a final walk through the house that had felt like home until just a few days ago. She would miss it here. She would miss Caro, and yet even with this lackluster ending, she was so grateful to have been here. She’d grown and become stronger, learned to trust herself again and regrow her faith in her individual purpose. Santa Fe had been a good place for her to be, and she would never regret having come.

Green Chile Stew

1 tablespoon oil

2 pounds cubed beef or pork stew meat

1 medium onion, chopped

1½ cups beef broth

1 (4-ounce) can chopped green chilies

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon garlic powder

Salt, to taste

Ground black pepper, to taste

2 large potatoes, peeled and cubed

Heat oil in a large pot over medium heat. Brown meat and onion until the onion is translucent. Add broth and green chilies. Stir in cumin, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour. (Add more broth or water if needed while simmering.) Stir in cubed potatoes and simmer an additional 30 minutes, or until tender.

Note: Caro’s girls like this stew boiled down until it’s thick enough to use in a tortilla.

Note: It’s worth buying pork stew meat when you can find it and freezing it for later. Pork is so good with green chilies.

Note: This is easy to convert to a slow-cooker recipe. Add browned meat and everything but the potatoes to a slow cooker. Cook on low 4 to 6 hours. Add potatoes for the final hour.

Chapter 24

Sadie woke up in Albuquerque and listened to the silence of her hotel for ten minutes before getting out of bed. It was strange to have an empty day all to herself. Sadie hadn’t had one in months, and except for the continual thoughts on how much more fun Albuquerque would be with Caro, it might have been a nearly perfect Friday.

Sadie took one of the walking tours that began at the Albuquerque Museum of Art, History, and Science, and then went shopping at the cute boutiques in Old Town. But without Caro to tell her she looked
maravillosa,
she lacked confidence in her choices. She ate lunch in an open-air café—Frito pie with green sauce, as opposed to the red sauce—people-watching all the extra tourists the Fiesta had brought to town, and enjoyed the warmth of the sun as the light dappled through the trees overhanging the patio.

If only she didn’t miss Caro so much. And Pete too, not to mention her children, to whom she hadn’t talked for nearly a week. She feared she’d been pushing them away again, but she wasn’t sure how to reassure them that she was okay. Why were her relationships so complicated?

She picked up a historical novel set in New Mexico from a little bookstore in Old Town and read it beside the hotel pool while getting a little color on her legs. After a conversation with Pete via the hotel phone, where he explained his attempts to help Caro understand things from a police perspective—the jury was out on whether it had been effective—Sadie went to bed early, depressed but so grateful to have purpose tomorrow in the form of helping Lois at the Fiesta.

Saturday morning dawned bright, beautiful, and lonely. The man at the front desk recommended the breakfast burritos at a small café, and Sadie thought breakfast in the park sounded wonderful. She was determined to enjoy every moment of the morning, and she loved the parks in New Mexico, little oases in the desert.

The café was set several feet lower than the road that ran in front of it, and required that the patrons drive past it, down a side road, and then into the entrance which looped around the building before ending at the parking area. Though the access was anything but convenient, she could only assume the food must be worth it, due to how many people were there at eight thirty in the morning.

Moments before entering the diner, she saw a man standing on the corner, set above her thanks to the strange placement of the café. He was looking her way—or at least he seemed to be looking in her direction. It was hard to tell because he wore sunglasses. She tried not to let it bother her as she entered the café and scanned the menu set high above the counter. She ordered a breakfast burrito that she hoped would be as good as Caro’s and a side order of sopapillas. She was quite possibly addicted to the deep-fried bread and usually slathered hers with honey butter. She really should be as big as a house, she’d enjoyed so many of them these last weeks.

After waiting a couple of minutes, she thought about the strange man on the corner so she moved to the west side of the café in order to look out the windows. He was still there, though now he was talking on his cell phone in between glances he shot toward the café. She couldn’t avoid the trepidation that took hold of her. Was he waiting for her to come out? Had someone sent him to spy on her? She tried to talk herself out of it—she’d accepted a long time ago that she was definitely paranoid. But that paranoia had saved her life more than once.