“But that’s not what got you started.” He’d said he’d been doing this for several years. That he’d been living at home.
“No, that was high school.”
“That’ll do it,” Mrs. Laughton said with a sigh. “I taught high school for fifteen years, and the judgements I’ve seen.” She shook her head.
“So you’re a retired teacher?” Espy pulled her attention away from Javi long enough to talk to her clients. She really should spend more time talking to them. If she did, maybe Mr. Laughton wouldn’t be such a crank.
Mrs. Laughton set her bottle of water between her legs. “I didn’t retire, though I should have. I left to go work in the banking business.”
“She makes double the money, and works less,” Mr. Laughton said, probably the nicest thing Espy had heard him say this entire trip.
“I miss the kids though.”
Mr. Laughton grunted. “You say that, but I remember the stories you used to tell about those kids, and you have glossed over how much they stressed you out.”
Again, Espy was surprised by the tenderness in his tone, the fondness she heard for his wife. Where had that been earlier in the trip? But she was glad to hear it now. Maybe getting him away from the rest of the tour was best. Maybe the other tourists were stressing him out, and now he was more relaxed with fewer people.
She could get that. She was not introverted herself, or she couldn’t do this job, but she could see that a five day tour with strangers could bring out the need for privacy and comfort in a person. She hated that he felt like he had to take it out on his wife.
But Mrs. Laughton seemed okay with it. Espy supposed their relationship was none of her business.
She noticed he was availing himself to the snacks, too, so clearly he was more relaxed for now.
Javi, however, was growing more tense as he peered through the windshield, trying to see the storm, but it was still too far away. She couldn’t stop thinking about what the lady in the grocery store had said, and wondered again why he had decided to join her, to help them out.
But she wouldn’t ask him in front of the Laughtons. She would bury her curiosity. For now.
* * *
“It really is pretty out here,”Espy said with a sigh as she looked out over the landscape, vast and filled with scrub brush, waving ocotillo and barbed wire. “Other than the fences, you can really imagine how this looked back in the old days.” She turned to look at Javi. “It does seem weird your town would be, like, out in the middle of nowhere like this, though. I mean, most small towns were settled because they were part of a farming community, or they are on a water source or something like that.”
“Ay, I meant to show you our mural,” he said, tapping the heel of his hand against the steering wheel.
“Yourmural?”
He grunted. “I mean, the mural Sofia, the woman who runs the motel, painted. It shows the history of our town.”
Espy frowned. “I saw some murals at the motel. Sofia painted those?”
He lifted the same hand he’d struck against the wheel. “Well, yes, and I’m actually in one, but that’s not the one I was talking about. She painted this huge mural on the side of the grocery store, facing the street, and it tells the story of the town.”
“Are you in that one too?” Espy teased, making a mental note to look for him in the motel mural.
“No. No, just one friend’s dad is. And, you know, Sofia’s fiancé. But it shows the story of the wagon train that came through the area. As you may have deduced, it broke a wheel, and threw the young son of one of the travelers out of his wagon, and he died. The mother was devastated and wouldn’t leave her son’s grave behind, and the trail boss was in love with her, so he stayed, as well, and the rest of the people were kind of forced to stay, until another wagon train came through and they could move west with them.”
“What a heartbreaking story!” Mrs. Laughton exclaimed from the back seat. “I don’t know if I could live in a place with such a devastating history.”
“There’s a lot of sad history in our town,” Javi said. “Maybe it wasn’t the best reason to start a town. But it’s home now.”
Espy looked at him, unable to deduce what his tone meant. He was staring straight ahead, and his hands were tight on the steering wheel. She didn’t think he was thinking about the widow and the trail boss. What was he thinking about?
“I would love to take some pictures of the mural,” Espy murmured, trying to picture it in her mind.
He glanced over, relaxing a little. “It’s really something. It took Sofia a long time to create, and we all kind of pitched in at the end, because, well, she wanted it finished by a certain time, but she did all the hard work.”
“And she remodeled the motel, too?”
“She and her fiancé. And now he and another friend are working on those apartments over the buildings on the square in town I was telling you about.”
