Page 116 of Red Mountain Burning
“Why’s that?”
“I can’t love her the way she deserves.”
“It’s none of my business, but I don’t believe that for a second.”
“I’m an old dog, Margot.”
Never had she seen someone so broken, but she could also still see the faint light of love in his eyes. “It’s never too late,” she told him. “Look at Elvis. Try and tell him it’s too late.”
“Thanks for stopping by. It was timely. But I’d better get back to it.”
“You know where to find us if you need anything. If you’ll allow me to impart one last bit of advice, you might want to try eating a little something.”
He looked down to his skeletal body. “Yeah.”
“I’m serious, Otis. Can I bring something by? I happened to have cooked entirely too much food this morning at the inn.”
“Oh, that’s nice of you, but I’m all right.”
“Suit yourself.” Margot tipped her hat and gave the horse a light squeeze. “Let’s go, Elvis.”
As they left him, Margot felt like she’d taken a piece of his pain with her, and was overwhelmed with sadness. Whether he’d eat it or not, she would be returning with a feast shortly.
* * *
With a block in his hand,Otis watched her ride away. He supposed it took someone seeing him in this state to make him aware of it. She was right. He did need to eat. He needed to do a lot of things.
With each block he’d stacked in the past two weeks, he’d carried the weight of knowing he’d failed Joan. But it was the knowing that she was better off without him that gave him the strength to carry on. It didn’t matter that he loved her with everything that he had. It didn’t matter that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her and that life seemed worthless without her.
What mattered was that Joan be set free to live to her true potential, and the only way that could happen was if Otis wasn’t a rusty shackle to her ankle.
Not reaching out to her was hard, though. Especially after discussing her with Margot. He looked at Elvis and her one last time as they crossed over Sunset Road. He’d seen a lot of Joan in Margot just now, and maybe that had made it hard too.
He carried the block to the wall, slipped it over the vertical cut of rebar, and set it down.Still a lot of work to do, he thought.A lot of guilt to carry.His eyes went over the wall to Château Smooth. The McMansion was now flamingo pink, and the area around the pool had been developed. A line of white cabanas ran along one side all the way to a beach bar with a thatched roof. Though he couldn’t see the pool from his vantage point, he could see the top of a pink water slide.
The anger he’d felt for longer than he could remember faded into a maniacal laugh that echoed off his wall. He folded over, thinking of how wonderful a prank the good Lord above had played on him. Surely this was a dream. There couldn’t actually be a place called Château Smooth opening next door to the property he’d been farming for a good part of his life. It had to be a terrible, terrible dream.
Once he’d let out all the laughter, he went back to stacking concrete. As he worked, he thought more about his encounter with Margot. Thinking of Elvis, he could still see quite clearly the sown-up scars that had once been Elvis’s eyes.
What was it Margot had said?he mused.
Not having eyes makes him see even better.
Otis knew there were lessons to be learned from Margot’s visit, almost as if she were meant to have come by on that horse. It didn’t take him long to link the blindness to Joan’s ludicrous idea of an eye patch, and then he found himself laughing again. This round wasn’t quite as maniacal, and the laughing morphed into crying, and before he knew it, he’d dropped down to the Red Mountain dust.
