Chapter 20

June 28, 1997 · Gone Two Days

ONCE, WHEN LUCE WAS TWELVE,she stumbled upon a book in the library on Japanese cuisine and pored over it day and night. The pages were faded, but she studied how to slice fish across the grain for sashimi, the ideal springy texture for perfectly cooked udon. She'd never had Japanese food, didn't even know anyone who had, but something about the precision of the instructions, the presentation, the order, was enthralling. And then one day when she came home from school, there, on the kitchen counter, was a small chunk of fish, a packet of seaweed, a bag of rice. She hadn't asked her mother for it. She hadn't even talked to her about the book. It was just there, and then there was her mother, flinging a hand towel over her shoulder, pulling a knife from the drawer. Should we try hand rolls first? her mother had asked, and Luce had to bite the insides of her lips to keep from bursting right there with joy.

This was the thing she had never let herself remember. For all the time she spent trying to not care about her mother's betrayals, her returns, the fucked-up thing was that she did.

She cared.

She could hold on to that truth for only a few seconds before it was too heavy. She swiped at her face, got back to work.

Luce checked in on Roo—he was hunched over a piece of paper, drawing, ignoring her because he was mad at her about the phone thing. Fine. That couldn't be helped. He had to be asked three times if he was hungry before he lifted his head to respond. Of course he was hungry, he said, but he was focused at the moment on fulfilling another of the tasks he'd heard over the phone. That piqued her interest. She was going to ask more questions but decided against it—let him have his thing, if his thing was making him feel better. And then she heard a big, wet, rattling cough come from down the hall. She tore into Gem's room, laid her ear above Gem's mouth. She held Gem's thick-boned wrist, bony beneath such papery skin, and felt her pulse. It was slow. She needed to clear what was in her lungs.

Of course, one day, Gem would die. Death was natural, and there was something strange about people who resisted nature. She'd be released. And Luce knew that's what she was supposed to be whispering into Gem's ears right then, affirmations that she could let go, that they would be okay. But those sounds wouldn't come. It wasn't true. With her thumb stroking the soft inside of Gem's wrist, Luce leaned close to her ear and whispered, "Stay, stay, stay."

Maybe it was time to give in and call the police, call the hospital, let the outsiders come in and find Gloria and take these problems away from her. But every time she let her mind follow that fantasy, it slammed into the same wall: they'd all be separated. She wouldn't be allowed to care for Roo on her own, or for Gem. It was out of the question.

What should she do? What was there to do? The few Red Grovers who'd stopped by to drop off food or check on them said they were searching for Gloria too, so how could it be that nothing—nothing—had been figured out?

Gem's stomach was warm and soft beneath Luce's face. "Please," she whispered into the sheet, grabbing Gem's hand and placing it on top of her own hair. "Please, please, please, help." Gem's hand slid off, thumping back onto the mattress.

The woman on the phone was asking for Gloria. Luce said she wasn't home. She was about to hang up and move along, but something buzzed inside her, a sweep of bark along her chest. She reached, absently, to the dirty locket inside her shirt, still shut. Instead of ending the call, she asked if she could give a message to her mother. The woman on the phone sighed, a little frustrated, Luce thought, and said she'd like to reschedule their meeting, since Gloria hadn't shown up for the last one. And it hit her. Luce knew this voice.

It was the voice she followed closely, as it was breaking the story about the serial killer who was targeting young female prostitutes. It was the voice that broke the story of the teenage sex ring, that talked through rescue efforts in front of the fire. A voice she had trusted, that she blared on the TV at the community center, gathered around the flickering screen shoulder to shoulder with other kids in her class or friends hanging out after school, whoever happened to stop by when one of her stories came on.

"Ruby Wells?" Luce said, more meekly than she'd planned, because sure, it was possible she was wrong. The woman paused a moment on the other end of the line, startled—it had been a weird presumption. Then she said, "Yes, this is Ruby Wells."

Luce, flushed, thinking quickly, asked where and when she and Gloria were supposed to meet—her mother is forgetful, she said, often needs her help to remember things like this. "Thursday," Ruby told her, a little skeptically. "At Gribbons Park in Fairfax."

Thursday. The day her mother hadn't come home.

"I'll have her call back to reschedule," Luce said, flying in the dark, and then, taking a wild shot, "And I assume it's about the same thing as last time, but so I keep her in the loop, any updates she should know about?"

"Who did you say this was?" Ruby asked, and Luce wasn't surprised. Of course she wasn't going to give Luce all the intel. She was as pro as they come. Luce couldn't come up with a lie that seemed credible, and so she hoped the truth could work.

"Her daughter."

"Oh, hello there." Luce heard the rustling of some papers. "Luce, right? How old are you?"

"Yes, Luce," she said, knowing that if she admitted to being a minor, this call would be over. "I'm eighteen."

"Mmhm," Ruby said, the sound of her pen scribbling in the background. "Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?" Luce did not. In fact, she was sure this was going to get right to the bottom of things.

"You were there when Richard Dalton had a heart attack?" This was not what Luce was expecting, but she said yes, she had been. "Have you been contacted by his son, Bobby?" Luce's throat went dry. She thought about his face when she'd smashed his fingers in the door. The dinosaur umbrella he left behind. Bobby. So this was the calling man's name. The likeliest person to know where her mother was.

She'd had no contact with him, she said, her face going red with the lie. Should she be lying? If anyone was capable of tracking her mother down, it would be Ruby fucking Wells.

The fear scraped tight inside. Getting an outsider involved, a journalist, even esteemed, truth-telling Ruby Wells, would piss off a lot of people in the Red Grove, but surely they would understand—her mother was gone, she was gone!, and nobody seemed to be all that worried, and she needed someone who was extremely worried, a professional worrier. She was about to say more when another problem reared up: Luce and Roo were minors, alone and caring for a sick adult they'd surely try to force out of the Red Grove—no, no, it could not happen.

She knew nothing more, Luce said, and took down Ruby's information, promised her mother would call back soon.

Bobby Dalton.

Here, finally, was the next step: Luce would track down Bobby Dalton. She knew his name, and that Ruby Wells was interested in him. She knew that her mother had plans to meet with Ruby Wells—why? To give an interview about Richard Dalton's heart attack? That didn't make sense. What other information did she have that was worth the time of a reporter who would otherwise be cracking open cases that flushed out the worst kinds of men—rapists, traffickers, murderers? Ruby Wells did not deal in piddling trivialities. Learning what her mother had to offer might unlock the door to where she was.

Luce pulled out a container of rabbit stew from the fridge and dumped it into a pot. Juan had dropped by with it—he hadn't seen her mother's car anywhere in the Red Grove, surprise surprise. She flicked a lighter and lit the stove. There was the nub of a joint on the counter and she lit that too, pulling the smoke in.

She didn't need Ruby Wells because she could be Ruby Wells. She'd probably read as many books on predators as Ruby had. She exhaled slowly, coughing once. She could do this. Look for the obvious clues. The fact that they hadn't heard from Bobby Dalton since her mother had been gone was a pretty damn obvious clue. Ruby Wells might say something like, much more than a coincidence. In any kind of case, if an angry young man is involved, he is, statistically speaking, responsible. Do not skip over the connections right in front of your nose.

Heart pounding, she dialed directory assistance, asked for the address and phone number of Bobby Dalton. "City and state, please?" the operator asked. Luce stammered that she didn't know, could they try without that? They could not, the operator said. So Luce named a few nearby towns—Fairfax, San Anselmo, Inverness—but nothing came up. There had to be a way. She tried another town, the big city, and then another, but the operator said, "Sorry, no Bobby Daltons."

"Bob Dalton?" she said. Or, dammit, what was that short for, Robert? But no.

Luce hung up. She would not panic, she would not.

She lit the joint again, closed her eyes. What would Ruby do? She tried to conjure her mother's face, picture it somewhere and let it guide her, and it appeared in her mind but was quickly overtaken by shadow, purple lumps growing up around the eyes, blood on the forehead, tucked into a hospital bed, and then Luce is a little thing, Gloria and Gem the same, both of them fucked by the world, no.

No.

Not anymore. Not again. She remembered then: there was a phone book in the office at Heartwood. There she could find his name alphabetically—didn't need the city—and call every single Bobby Dalton until it was her very own mother who answered the phone, kidnapped, held hostage but unharmed, and so grateful for Luce, needing Luce to speed right over to slash the jugular of this psychopath, phew, amen, no more lives to ruin, his blood spurting across every millimeter of his shitty house, hallelujah, adios.

It was one of the children who first spotted the outsider.

There was a man, a stranger, hiking up a game trail through the woods, noisy as he passed between trees and brush. The child had been playing on a high rock that overlooked the hillside below and had sprinted back to the cabin to alert the women that someone was on the way. A man, thick but not tall, climbing the steep dirt path through the giant redwoods, a man who looked to have a black patch covering one eye.

By the time Tamsen came out to the rock, instructing the nearby women and children to stay in the cabin for safety, he was gone. But there was a clear trail of his pathway through the trees, with broken twigs and trampled brush, not the way the women and children moved through the forest here. Tamsen spotted dragonflies and honeybees, but the man had disappeared. This was not good. She was terrified of what his arrival might mean. She was quite sure the man was Hank Monk, and she'd encountered too many men who turned vicious and feral around women, especially, she thought, when that hive of women were operating perfectly without them.

"I have a problem," the man said, suddenly emerging from the forest, though still twenty feet from the cabin. As the children had described, he wore an eye patch. His lips were black and his teeth were black and the sun had left deep creases all across his face. He shifted from foot to foot, seemingly uncomfortable—perhaps all part of his act, Tamsen thought, notorious as he was. If he moved fast, he could probably take out everyone there before they could do anything to stop him.

Tamsen glanced over to Ines, out in the garden, and nodded. They weren't wholly unprepared.

"I need your help," he said, twisting the hat in his hands. He moved his gaze down from Tamsen to the ground, almost embarrassed, a strange gesture that didn't square with the rumors of Hank Monk she'd been hearing for years. "I mean you no harm," he said, and then something behind him caught her attention, something in the trees. She tensed, ready to see more of his men surrounding them. But the figure that emerged from the trees was small, wasn't a man at all. It was a child. Hank Monk followed Tamsen's gaze and turned to see the child, who shrank back halfway into the trees.

"Is that child with you?" Tamsen asked. She could see a half-moon of its face peeking out from behind a tree.

"It's part of the reason I came," Hank Monk said, then raised his voice. "Though I told the child to stay in the goddamned wagon." The child ducked all the way behind the tree.

Just then, from behind a tree on the other side, there was a blur of movement as Ines leapt out from hiding with a tincture-soaked cloth—a potent mixture she'd been perfecting for just such an occasion—jumped on Hank Monk's back, and smothered his face. Hank Monk threw elbows, landing blows in Ines's sides, but she held strong, clutched her feet even tighter around his waist. Tamsen took off, sprinting to where the child crouched behind the tree, lest the child run back to tell Hank Monk's men that he'd been ambushed. The child was not practiced in navigating the redwood forest and soon tripped, and Tamsen threw the child over her shoulder like an animal. The child flailed, but Tamsen held on tightly.

When she reached the small clearing in front of the cabin, she saw that Hank Monk had fallen to the ground. His eyes were closed. Ines, breathing hard, was tying his feet together. She'd called another woman out from the cabin, and the two of them began to drag Hank Monk, one pulling each arm, to a nearby tree to tie him up.

Tamsen swung the child off her shoulder and held their arms tightly. Though the child wore boy's clothes, trousers and a buttoned shirt, they had long hair tucked beneath a hat, like a girl, and a slim, delicate face. The child was no longer kicking and screaming, but instead cried with a quiet, private sorrow that looked to Tamsen like the face her sister Minnie made one year when she accidentally dropped a newly hatched chick into the pigpen, where it had been immediately trampled.

"Child," Tamsen said softly. "I won't hurt you." The child kept crying, but opened their eyes to Tamsen. "You're safe here. I couldn't have you running off. Who were you going to run to? How many men does Hank Monk have down below?"

The child shook their head, but only said, "My name is Mary."

"Okay, sshhh. Catch your breath, Mary. Breathe." Tamsen turned her attention back to Hank Monk. The women dragged him along the ground, and as they did, his shirt rose along his back.

Pointing to the cloth wound tight around his ribs, one of the women said he might be injured. Maybe that was the reason for his deference, Ines said, instructing them to work quickly—the herb was only potent for a few minutes of unconsciousness, and they needed to get him tied up tight. But as they dragged him, his shirt continued pulling up until everyone was transfixed. Beneath his shirt, winding around his ribs and chest, was a cloth that stretched from below his armpits to the base of his ribs, and beneath the cloth, it was plain to see, were breasts.

Tamsen looked to the child to see if she, too, was surprised by this information. But the child just wiped tears with the back of her hand, took a big breath, and looked up at Tamsen.

"Is my mama gonna be okay?" she asked.

Tamsen blinked back her surprise and put a reassuring hand on thechild's shoulder. She told her that her mama would be fine, that she wanted to know, quickly, what she and her mama were doing there? The child wiped a string of snot from her upper lip and sighed, said that they'd heard there were ladies up here who could help them. "Down in the wagon is my aunt Rabbit. She's in trouble with somebody. She's about to blow, is what my mama says."

Ines had finished tying Hank Monk's arms back behind the tree, legs bound as well. Tamsen caught her eye and raised an eyebrow, wondering if this was necessary, but Ines double-knotted the ties, to be sure. Hank Monk began blinking awake.

Someone had brought the child a hunk of bread, which seemed to revive her. "Usually I don't see my mama, and I'm not allowed to call her that. I live with Mrs. Perkins, on Bryant Avenue. But I'm riding with her today and we're fighting bandits. Or, I think we will be anyways."

"Bastards," Hank Monk muttered as he woke all the way up, pulling at his arms and legs.

"I'm sorry we had to do this," Tamsen said, walking closer to where Hank Monk lay on the ground. "But we have to keep ourselves safe. Is what your child told us true, about who is down in your wagon?"

"Mary," Hank Monk bellowed out toward the child. "I told you to stay quiet." Then, turning to face Tamsen: "I'm not sure what she told you, but I will tell you what is true. My sister is down below, and she needs a place to stay hidden for a while. She is with child, and it is coming soon. I tried to come here peacefully, but that didn't work out." He strained against the ties.

"And you know what else," Mary said, her mouth muffled, full of bread. "I have a little dog named Sister. And you know what else? Even though it's only allowed for men, my mama voted in the election." She smiled wide while chewing, stuffing a piece of fallen bread back into her mouth.

"Shut your mouth, Mary," Hank Monk said.

Tamsen asked whether it was true. Hank Monk turned away and spat, but beneath the pucker Tamsen saw a flash of smile.

"Well I'll be damned," Ines said. "A woman voted."

"Why do you live as a man?" Tamsen asked, signaling for someone in the cabin to bring out a cup of water.

Hank Monk snorted. "You think I could run the best stagecoach line in all of California if anyone thought I was a woman?"

"Only I know," Mary said. "I'm the best secret-keeper in the West. And you have to be, too. Otherwise Mama will slit open your belly and feed you to crows, is what she says."

"I understand," Tamsen said before Hank Monk could comment.

"You searched me, clearly," said Hank Monk. "You know I carry no weapons. Please help my sister. Help with the baby, and then keep her a while out of harm's way."

"We have no room—" Ines started to say, but Tamsen lifted her arm and cut her off.

"We will help your sister," she said, a plan unspooling in her mind as if her own sisters' voices were in there whispering, as if the voices of the giant red trees were directing what she said. "And in return, you'll help us. I know you drive through our valley. As you do, lead any threats away from us. Don't let anyone set up camp on our hillside, don't tell anyone we're here. And those you can't lead away, you will get rid of. You will not let anyone do us harm. You will not tell any men who ask where we shelter. Only for that promise can we promise to keep your sister safe."

Ines waved Tamsen aside, worried. She said that getting into any sort of trade with violent folks was a bad deal, risky, foolish. But Hank Monk interrupted before Ines had a chance to go on. "I don't think I can make that promise."

"Yes, you can," Tamsen said, growing more sure by the moment, the voices inside louder and louder. "You will. This is the trade. We will keep this as a place of refuge, but we will not be soft in our rest. We will fight, if we must. Can we trust you to uphold this?"

Hank Monk dropped his chin to his chest, worked his jaw back and forth. "For the safety and care of my sister Rabbit and her companion, who has accompanied her on this journey."

Tamsen nodded. "And the baby."

Ines started to speak, agitated by how much Tamsen was agreeing to take on in this trade with a stranger, but Tamsen reached out to Ines, squeezing her hand. "I know you are worried, and for good reason, sister. But I want you to imagine something. What could this place become if we weren't afraid? If we never had to fear again? We are going to create and protect peace for our sisters."

"But with blood?" Ines asked.

"With whatever it takes," Tamsen replied. Tamsen and Ines held each other's eyes, but Ines frowned, worried still. "We'll mark the boundary, so you know exactly at which point someone is too close," Tamsen said to Hank Monk.

"It's a tragic thing, isn't it," Hank Monk said as Ines released the ropes. "It's women who keep other women safe. Men do it only for their own wives or daughters, because they consider them property. But only women look out for other women, at whatever cost."