Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

“Been on any snipe hunts lately?” he said, his chest shaking with silent laughter.

BY THE TIME Linda Gail arrived on location in Mexico, she had done her best to forget what had occurred on the penthouse balcony of the Shamrock Hotel, seventeen stories in the sky. She wouldn’t have really gone through with it, she told herself. She’d had too much to drink. If something hadn’t happened, it was not meant to happen, and hence could not happen.

Liar, a voice said.

She saw herself plummeting past the rows of hotel windows, spread-eagled, naked, upside down. Oddly, the image disturbed her not because of the fate she had almost imposed upon herself but because of the grotesque and unseemly fashion in which she would have been remembered.

She determined she would no longer think about what could have happened. This was Mexico. This was now. Somehow she would find a way out of her problems. Who would have believed where she was today compared with one year ago?

The location was the most beautiful stretch of terrain she had ever seen, the topography and seasons out of kilter in a way that convinced her a remarkable change was about to take place in her life. The mountains were purple in the distance, the grass long and yellow in the fields, and the earth the color of rust where it had been plowed, the irrigation ditches brimming with water that looked like coffee-stained milk. On the long slope that led up to a dead volcano were orchards of walnut and avocado trees, and at sunset the Indians built fires in the shadows and roasted ears of corn in the coals like people from an ancient time.

The set was meant to replicate a Republican airstrip in Andalusia in 1936, complete with biplanes that had Vickers machine guns mounted on the fuselages. But to Linda Gail this enormous, fertile valley, containing livestock and tall palms with trunks that were as smooth as elephant hide, and clumps of banana plants and orchards bursting with bloodred peaches, had nothing to do with modern times. The mountains and the warm, dense air and the great freshwater lake nearby where Indians fished from boats made out of reeds convinced her she was standing in a legendary place that had been transported from the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. If that was true, or even a possibility, it could mean that mankind was being given a second chance. And if mankind could have a second chance, why couldn’t she?

Roy Wiseheart had shown up on the set out of nowhere, driving a British lorry, wearing an Australian flop hat and khaki shorts and a hunter’s jacket with cloth loops for bullets, a scoped rifle jiggling in a rack behind his head. When he braked to a stop next to her, outside an airplane hangar, a cloud of dust floating across her and the crew and the other actors, she tried to pretend she wasn’t angry that he was irritating everyone on the set at her expense. She glanced at the director. His name was Jerry Fallon. He had the leanness of a lizard, and his skin was just as rough. He removed his sunglasses and hung one of the arm pieces from his lip and stared at her and Roy, his nostrils dilating.

“What are you doing, Roy?” Linda Gail whispered.

“Seeing what you’re up to,” he said, getting down from the lorry. “I’m a co-producer now. Didn’t Jerry tell you?”

“No.”

“I want to keep an eye on my investment. You look outstanding. You see those World War I crates over there? One of them is mine. I’m going to take it up.”

Her face was burning. She lowered her eyes. “I need to talk to you.”

“About that little episode? Don’t give second life to the shadows of the heart.”

“Roy, I’m working now.”

“Time for lunch, everybody!” he shouted. “Is that okay with you, Jerry?”

“No, you’re a bloody nuisance, you fucking sod,” the director said.

“Thank you,” Roy said. “Come on, Linda Gail. I made up a picnic basket. Don’t worry about Jerry. I was his wingman in the South Pacific. He’s a Digger but a swell fellow. Right, you malignant wog?”

“Take a break, everyone. Be back at one,” Jerry said. “Linda Gail?”

“Yes?” she said.

“I have high hopes for this next scene,” he said. “We want it right. You with me, love?”

“Yes, I’m with you. I understand.”

“Do you?” he replied.

Why had Roy done this to her? He drove them to an adobe ranch house at the base of the volcano. The bougainvillea reached to the roof; the latticework over the walkways was interwoven with wisteria that had just gone into bloom. “Whose place is this?” she asked.

“An absentee landowner. He rented it to me.”

“Did you arrange this role for me?”

“I don’t have that kind of power. Regardless of what people think, it doesn’t work that way out here. You got it on your own hook.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Let’s go inside. I’ve missed you terribly.” He shut off the engine. “God, you’re lovely.”

“I have to work this afternoon,” she said. “You heard what Jerry said. What are you doing to me?”