Firefly Island by Lisa Wingate Page A

the house for move-in had failed to do it. Clearly this place had been sitting empty for a while, given over to the closet critters and the stuffed heads on the walls.
    Taking a deep breath, I unclenched my hands and shook out the tension. Maybe communications had somehowbroken down, and Mr. West didn’t realize we were arriving so soon. No man in his right mind would lure a research scientist with a master’s degree and his family halfway across the country to live in a place like this.
    No man in his right mind . . .
    Outside the window, Daniel stepped away from the U-Haul, and Nick trotted curiously to the gate, trailed by Pecos the dog. I squinted through the dirt-encrusted glass as the truck rolled to a stop and a man stepped out, the patchy shade of a magnolia tree slipping over his cowboy hat and faded pearl-snapped western shirt. He was tall, a head taller than Daniel even, and broad-shouldered with a thick build. His knees bowed outward slightly, his jeans tucked into boots that accentuated the arc.
    Grabbing a napkin from breakfast and wiping greasy dirt off the inside of the window, I tried to get a better view of my first honest-to-goodness cowboy. He very much looked the part. He even had a bright red bandana tied around his neck, just like in the movies. I was suddenly enamored. I’d never met a real live cowboy. I’d rubbed elbows with a few congressmen and senators who claimed to be, but this man was authentic. Most certainly, this was not Jack West. Even from here, I could see that his shirt was threadbare, a piece torn away near the elbow. His jeans had holes on both front legs where car keys or loose change had worn through the fabric. This was no millionaire, but a workingman. Perhaps he was the ranch foreman Mr. West had mentioned in his communications with Daniel.
    The cowboy and Daniel greeted each other with a handshake, and something about it stopped me just as I was about to move toward the door. My heart did a quick flip-flop in my chest. The burn started in my stomach again. A fluttery, panicked feeling beat its wings with the desperation of a sparrowtrapped in the rafters of a shopping mall. Sometimes you can tell exactly what’s being said, just by watching a conversation. I knew even before the stranger turned to follow Daniel to the house—this was the man himself, ragged cowboy clothes or not. This was the infamous Jack West. And it was clear from the body language that he wasn’t one bit surprised we were here. It was also clear that no apologies were being offered, which meant that he didn’t see any problem with moving a family into a filthy, smelly, vermin-infested house.
    I felt our lives sliding off a cliff. If there was one thing my father, who was a fantastic judge of people, had taught me, it was that present behavior predicts future behavior. Most people will tell you who they are within the first five minutes, Mal, he’d advised me when I left for my post-college embassy job in Tokyo. You show me someone who doesn’t care what kind of first impression he makes, I’ll show you someone who’s the center of his own universe. Look out.
    I felt sick. No one who intended to treat an employee decently would begin a relationship this way. Daniel and I had just made the biggest mistake of our lives. We’d quit our jobs, we had almost no savings to fall back on, and nearly everything we owned was in a shipping container headed to Texas. We were trapped, hopelessly entangled, like the rat pills and the cricket legs in the dust motes.
    Tears pressed, and my last romantic thoughts of this move to Texas as one big adventure faded like a mirage on a hot day. I wavered between running for the bathroom or choking down the emotion and greeting Jack West properly. Years of being dragged along to boring lobby-sponsored family events had taught me the art of the pasted-on smile. I knew how to pretend to be happy when I wasn’t, but some