All she could hear was Copper panting and the sounds of Grandma banging around inside the house. A muffledai-yowp!came from down the road and then the peacock was silent.
A bird skittered to the top of a nearby saguaro and looked around. It was brown and had a sharply downcurved beak. It looked annoyed about something.
Grandma shoved the door open with her shoulder and one foot hooked around the edge. She had two jars in one hand and a shallow clay dish of water in the other. Selena jumped to take the dish from her.
“There you go,” said Grandma. “That’s for Copper and this one’s for you.”
The jar was full of tea, something green tasting and faintly sweet. There was no ice. The glass sweated in the heat, and water rolled over Selena’s fingers as she drank.
“Thank you,” she said. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she’d been. Copper slurped thirstily from the pottery bowl.
“No worries,” said Grandma. “It’s the desert. You get dried out before you know it.”
An awkward silence fell, or perhaps Selena only thought it was awkward. She reached for a script that had served her well. “So what is it you do?”
Grandma snorted. “Do? Well, I get older, mostly. And dig around in the garden and keep chickens. And chase off peacocks.” She fixed Selena with a bright eye over the rim of her jar. “And what doyoudo?”
“I’m a night manager at a deli.”
The words came out and then stood there in the blazing desert light looking faintly ridiculous, as out of place as peacocks. Surely it was not possible that the world had both saguaros and all-night delis in it. No one would believe that.
“Was,” said Selena, in an effort to shepherd the lost words away. “Was a manager. I’m not now, I mean.” Her boss had said they’d hold the job for her if she needed it, but Selena didn’t put much faith in that.
“Uh-huh. So what do you want with Jackrabbit Hole House? You looking for Amelia?” The corners of Grandma’s mouth drew down slightly. “You one of her strays?”
Strays?
Selena took a large gulp of tea while she sorted through the words in her head. “Amelia’s my aunt,” she said carefully. “I know she passed away. The postmistress said to come look at it.”
“Oh,aunt.” Grandma’s frown smoothed away. “I gotcha. She always picked up strays, you see—stray people, stray cats, baby birds fallen out of the nest, the lot. Keeping people from taking advantage was a full-time job, sometimes. But if Miss Jenny sent you, that’s different. Your aunt was a friend of mine.”
“I’m sorry,” said Selena.No, that was wrong. Crap.“Not, I mean, sorry that she was your friend. Sorry she passed away. For your loss. Because she was your friend.” She could hear herself starting to panic and shoved the rim of the jar into her mouth to stop the flow of words.
“I got the gist,” said Grandma, looking faintly amused. “Didn’t know she had a niece. Would have tried to get a letter out if I did, but Amelia didn’t talk about her family much. Said she had a sister, but they didn’t talk. That’s all I knew.”
“My mom,” said Selena. Did she have to say anything more about her? Hopefully not. She didn’t think she had the energy. Her motherhad been troublesome while she was alive, and it was depressing, if not surprising, to discover that she continued to be troublesome after her death.
Grandma took a sip of tea.
“I hadn’t seen Aunt Amelia in a long time. I didn’t know she was sick. I would have come if I’d known. The last thing she sent me was a postcard—” The panic was bubbling up again. Selena dug out the postcard and held it out. Her hand was shaking a little.
Grandma took it, flipped it over. After a moment, she smiled. “Sounds like her, all right. She always wrote just like she talked.” She handed the postcard back. “She wouldn’t have told you she was sick. She didn’t believe it herself. Said she was just tired, right up till she died.”
“I should have come sooner,” said Selena hopelessly. “A year sooner. I didn’t know. I should have. I’m sorry.”
Grandma’s face softened, or maybe the hardness had been in Selena’s imagination. “It’s all right. Things show up when they’re needed.”
Not me,thought Selena.I screwed that up too. I shouldn’t have come out this way. I should have stayed at the post office. What good is looking at a dead woman’s house going to do?
What good was anything going to do? She’d staked everything on this ridiculous gamble, and of course she’d lost—there was no way she wasn’t going to lose—and now she would have to go back to Walter and this whole thing would become the Story of the Time Selena Ran Away. Nothing she could say was going to hold up to the line between his eyebrows and the way he clucked his tongue when he was disappointed. There wasn’t a script alive that could cope with that.
“Jackrabbit Hole House should be fine,” said Grandma, interrupting her train of thought. “I made sure everything was cleaned out. Probably got mice in it, and I’d check under the stove for snakes, but the roof is good. Door’s unlocked.”
It had not occurred to Selena until that moment that she might actually goinsidethe house.Of course you have to, did you think you were going to sleep on the porch?She had finished her tea some time ago, butshe gripped the jar until the wordsBall Masonwere imprinted on the pads of her fingers.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Grandma. “It ain’t haunted. Amelia probably hung around her garden till everything died back for summer, then she went on her way. Nothing there now.” She took a slug of tea. “Well, except the usual run of desert ghosts, I guess. But they’re no bother.”
Selena set the jar down and picked up Copper’s leash. She had no scripts at all for this situation. You smiled politely when people told you about ghosts and said things like, “That must have been very unsettling,” or even just, “My goodness!” None of that seemed to apply to the casual mention that the ghosts were gone or at least not bothersome.
