Page 83 of Satisfied By the Slime
“What is he?” Oz asks, his voice hushedwith wonder.
“An alpaca. They’re like small, opinionated llamas.”
Barnaby decides Oz is interesting. He walks right up to the fence and presses his nose against Oz’s outstretched hand. Oz’s colors flare, and he makes a sound that’s something between a hum and a sigh.
“Soft,” he breathes. “So soft. Like how I imagine a cloud would feel like.”
Barnaby approves of whatever he feels, because he pushes his whole head against Oz’s palm, demanding scratches. Oz obliges, his substance conforming gently around the alpaca’s ears, and Barnaby’s eyes half-close in bliss.
Bartholomew has emerged from the hay shelter. He approaches with the measured pace of a creature who wants you to know this is his idea, not yours. But he approaches. He presses his nose to Oz’s shoulder and inhales.
Gram watches from the porch, her hands still working the wool, her expression warmand amused and something else. Something knowing.
“You going to stand there all day spoiling my boys?” she calls out. “Or are you coming up for coffee?”
We sit on her porch. She brings out a tray with two mugs—coffee for me, ninety-percent cream for her—and a glass of water for Oz. The alpacas have settled in the yard, Barnaby still drifting close to the porch steps like he’s hoping for more attention.
I tell her everything. The ridge, the cave, the green light. Captain curled in the corner. The offshoot Oz sent in the dark. The Ridge Walker’s confession about the cat, the car, forty years of watching.
Gram listens the way she always does, which is to say completely. Her hands never stop working the wool, but her eyes don’t leave my face.
And then I tell her about the message. The words Oz caught before the connection frayed.I’m still here. I never stoppedwaiting.
“Oz lost the rest of it,” I say. “He doesn’t know who it was for.”
Gram’s hands still.
That’s how I know. Gram’s hands are never still. She felts while she talks, felts while she listens, felts while she watches television, and, concerningly, felts while she drives.
But now her fingers have stopped moving, and the wool sits loose in her lap, and something has shifted behind her eyes.
“Do you know who the message is for?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer right away. The porch creaks. The alpacas hum.
And then Gram looks at me with an expression I recognize from funerals, from hospital rooms, from moments when the cost of a secret finally comes due.
“I know,” she says. “It’s for me.”
Chapter 21
What Could Have Been
Maisie
The alpacas settle.Barnaby folds his legs beneath him near the porch steps, and Bartholomew follows suit in the shade. The light has shifted, the sun dropping toward the ridge, stretching shadows long across the yard.
Gram sets the wool in her lap. She picks up her mug, drinks, sets it downagain. Her hands find each other in her lap, fingers interlacing, and I realize she’s steadying herself.
“I was twenty-three,” she says. “Just arrived back in Coyote Springs. Your grandfather was still in Tucson, finishing up his engineering degree. We weren’t married yet. Weren’t even engaged, though he’d asked twice and I’d put him off twice.”
She looks out at the ridge. The same ridge she’s been looking at for fifty years, maybe, from this same porch, in this same chair.
“I came out here because I needed distance. From Tucson, from the expectations, from a life that felt like it had been written by someone else.”
Oz is very still beside me, listening the way he listens to bodies. Completely.
“I used to walk the ridge at dusk. Every evening. The light does something to the desert right before it goes, and I wanted to be up there for it. That’s when I first saw him.”
