On the other hand, Copper had tolerated Walter with the cheerfulness that the Lab displayed toward anyone who filled the food dish, so it wasn’t like Copper was entirely reliable either.
She sat down on the front porch and draped her arm over her unreliable dog.
If Snake-Eater doesn’t bother me again—if this was all a misunderstanding—would I still want to stay?
She dug around in the hollow space under her sternum and found that the answer was probablyyes.
Until I get a train ticket, anyway.
The thought of the train seemed distant and unimportant. What did she want to go back for, anyway? To go to yet another strange place. To an apartment that wouldn’t be hers, and probably she’d have to share with another person, and that meant finding a place that would take Copper. Hard enough when you already had someplace to live, let alone when you were sitting at a train station making phone calls.
And then a strange job. Having to learn all the new scripts for the new work and the new people. Dashing home at lunch to take Copper out.
Copper was much happier in the desert, that was for sure.
The house seems happy to have me in it, Father Aguirre said.
Cicadas rattled in the paloverde trees. The air shimmered with heat, but nothing more.
Does that make three of us, then? Me and the dog and the house, happier together?
She searched, and found that the answer, once again, was probably yes.
Chapter 13
Grandma Billy was back before sunset, carrying a load of blankets slung over her back and holding a pitcher that dripped with condensation.
“Should we really be drinking?” asked Selena, staring at the jar. She could smell sage and alcohol from here. “What if something comes out?”
“Told you, the stuff at night is just to scare you,” said Grandma. “Get enough of this in you and you won’t scare easy.”
“I may be more scared of the mojitos than the monsters,” said Selena dryly, but she got two mason jars from the cupboard anyway.
They sat down on the back porch together with the pitcher between them, the way they had several times before. Selena kept looking for the roadrunner, until it got too dark to see more than dim shapes.
Are there more fetches out there? Am I going to turn my head and one will be standing next to me?
“So tell me about this husband of yours,” said Grandma, more or less out of the blue.
Selena blinked. “Eh? What? Walter? He’s not my husband, just my partner. I mean, we didn’t get married.” That was one of the few sensible things she’d done, not marrying him. It made the split so much easier. “Why do you ask?” He wasn’t fun to think about, but it turned out that thinking about fetches suddenly appearing was even worse.
“’Cause I’m nosy.”
“Oh. Uh.” She glanced at Grandma, but the older woman had a faint, interested smile and nothing more. “Well, I lived with him.”
“We all make mistakes.”
Selena snorted. A mistake. God. If she could stuff Walter into a neat little box labeledmistake, the world would be so much easier!
“He wasn’t a mistake at first,” she said cautiously. “I mean ... I was in pretty bad shape from my mom and he understood all that, and he was okay with it. It was good at first. But then ... well ...you’vebeen married ...”
She stared into her mason jar. She still wasn’t entirely sure about this “desert mojito” thing. It tasted like sagebrush smelled, or at least what sagebrush would smell like if it were grown in the middle of a distillery.
“You know what it’s like,” she said finally. “When you have to live with somebody.”
“Eh, yeah ...” Grandma Billy poured herself another slug of mojito. “The first one was pretty, but not worth much. Fun to date but awful to live with. ’Course, that was back in the day, when they were still calling mesirinstead ofma’am, and I wasn’t thinking too straight myself.”
“Sir?” said Selena blankly.
