“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Irene said, and started up the car.
A few miles later, they turned onto a one-lane pitted caliche road as indicated on Irene’s map. The car rocked up the path, past some cows grazing in an open field, beneath some towering pines, a few of which were leaning precariously over the lane. They went up a rise and over, coasting into a small clearing. A house—at least Frances thought it was a house, but the jury was out—was nestled beneath the trees at the edge of the clearing, smoke curling out of its chimney.
The central part of the structure looked like it had been patched together with Lincoln Logs. Attached on the right was a two-story stucco-and-wood structure, and to the left, a round silo sort of thing made of corrugated metal. The three parts, taken together, were a curious mix of styles and materials. “Are you sure this is the right place?” Frances asked.
“Hey … that’s the car.” Irene pointed at the back end of a brown car parked under a metal carport. It was an old-model Cadillac Seville—Frances had driven one just like it in the late eighties; only hers had been pink. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Irene said. “My bad feeling hasn’t gone away.”
“Should we leave?”
“Not until I find a bathroom.” Irene opened her car door.
So did Frances. She put a leg out, her foot touching the ground, intending to stand. But Irene hadn’t moved. Somewhere, a door shut. “Someone’s coming,” Irene said.
“So, get out,” Frances said.
“Give me a minute—I have to get my game face on.”
“What are you talking about? Your game face is the same as your resting bitch face. You’re not flaking on me, are you?” Frances really needed to know, as she was half out of the car already. But Irene didn’t move. She sucked in a very deep breath. It occurred to Frances that Irene was scared. That was odd—she’d always considered Irene to be the most fearless among them.
Frances stepped out of the car and shut the door. She didn’t feel quite as confident as she sounded. She ran her hands down the legs of her pants and wished suddenly that she’d taken a pain pill, because her head was beginning to throb behind her eye again. It took her a moment to notice the small woman stalking toward her. Not Joan, then. Joan was tall and statuesque. Maybe she’d shrunk with the years? Could someone shrink a full six inches?
The woman was wearing green Hunter boots and a wide, swinging skirt that brushed the tops of them. Her hair was woven into long solidly gray braids. Frances took a few steps forward, smiling, and lifted a hand in greeting. “Hello!”
That’s when the woman snapped a rifle up to her shoulder and aimed it at Frances, startling her so badly that she yelped with alarm.
“Hands in the air!” the woman commanded. “Get ’em up!”
“I think you’re misunder—”
“Get ’em up or I’ll shoot your fool face off.”
Frances needed no further encouragement—she thrust her hands overhead. And then she ducked down, like that was going to save her. Now she was squatting, her hands in the air. It was harder to do than one might think.
“You’ve got no call to be here,” the woman continued, her voice fried with old age. “So, I’m going to count to three while you get back in your car and turn around and leave.”
“May I stand? Because I tweaked my knee on the way down, and I don’t think I can duck-walk to the car.” Where the hell was Irene? How could she have been so wrong about this address? She had three computers, for God’s sake.
“Get moving,” the woman said.
Frances stood up. “I’m so sorry,” she said, hands still in the air. She took a tentative step backward. “We didn’t mean to disturb you. We thought an old friend lived here.”
“Mama? What’s all the racket?”
Now,thatvoice Frances recognized. Joan appeared, coming from behind the Cadillac. She was tall, and wore her hair in braids, too—but they weren’t as gray as Annie Oakley’s. And she was wearing an outfit that made Frances think of judo.
Joan walked forward, squinting. She pulled a pair of eyeglasses from her braids and put them on, then squinted some more. She stared hard at Frances for a long, tense moment.
“Is it okay if I put my hands down? My shoulders aren’t what they used to be.”
“Mama, it’s fine,” Joan said.
The smaller woman still had her gun trained on Frances. “The hell it is.”
Joan sighed. She walked forward, pausing only to push the nose of her mother’s rifle to point at the ground. “Would you please stop? You could kill someone with that thing.”
“Well, I just might,” her mother said. “I don’t like strangers.”
