She dropped to her knees for a better look. What was missing?
Rafe’s suitcase. The one he’d packed all those years ago to go off to college. The one he’d unpacked when her father left Elsa here.
She glanced sideways. His clothes were gone from the hooks by the door, as was his hat.
She got up slowly and went to the dresser, opened the top drawer.
His drawer.
One blue chambray shirt was all that was left.
TEN
She couldn’t believe he’d left in the middle of the night without a word.
She’d spent thirteen years living with him, sharing his bed at night, bearing his children. She’d known he’d never been in love with her, but this?
She walked out of her room, saw the family—her family, their family—seated at the table, talking. Ant was retelling his grape-finding story.
Rose looked up, saw Elsa, and frowned. “Elsa?”
Elsa wanted to tell Rose this terrible thing and be held, but she couldn’t say anything until she was sure. Maybe he had walked to town for … something.
With all of his belongings.
“I have … errands,” Elsa said, seeing Rose’s disbelief.
Elsa hurried out of the house and grabbed Loreda’s bicycle. Climbing aboard, she pedaled through the thick dirt that layered the driveway, her legs working hard. More than once she had to zigzag around the dead branches of the fallen trees, which had been exposed in the last dust storm. She stopped at the mailbox, looked in. Nothing.
On the way to town, she didn’t see a single automobile or wagon out on the road in this heat. Birds congregated on the telephone wires overhead, chattered down at her. Several cows and horses roamed free, plaintively moaning for food and water. Unable to butcher or care for their animals, farmers had let them go to fend for themselves.
By the time she reached Lonesome Tree, her hair had worked itself free from the pins she’d used to hold it back from her face, and her kerchief was damp.
On Main Street, she stopped. A tumbleweed rolled past her, scraped her bare calf. Lonesome Tree lay anesthetized before her, shops boarded up, nothing green, the town’s namesake cottonwood half dead; up and down the street boards had been ripped away by the wind.
She pedaled toward the train depot and got off the bike.
Maybe he was still here.
Inside was a room full of empty benches. A dirty floor. A whites-only water fountain.
She walked to the ticket window. Behind a small, arched opening sat a man in a dusty white shirt with black elbow guards.
“Hello, Mr. McElvaine.”
“Heya, Miz Martinelli,” the man said.
“Was my husband here recently? Did he buy a ticket?”
He looked down at the papers on his desk.
“Please, sir. Do not make me interrogate you. This is humiliating enough for me, wouldn’t you agree?”
“He didn’t have any money.”
“Did he say where he wanted to go?”
“You don’t want me to say.”