Free Daniel Hecht_Cree Black 02 by Land of Echoes Page B

indication of human presence was an occasional trailer or prefab
     house at the end of a dirt driveway, a defunct pickup truck, maybe a corral occupied by a gaunt, drowsing horse.
    Closer to Window Rock, they passed an area where the ridges visible from the road struck Cree as too uniform to be natural
     mesas; it wasn't until she saw the sign for the P & M Coal Company that she realized they must be recovered strip-mine tailing
     mounds. Sure enough, beyond the farther hills she saw a gargantuan derrick rotating slowly against the sky. Near the highway,
     several preposterously outsized yellow dump trucks and front loaders moved around piles of dirt, putting up clouds of dust.
    Julieta's frown deepened as they passed the operation. She squinted into the lowering sun, gripped the wheel, and drove as
     if eager to get past.
    "So you married Garrett McCarty—" Cree prompted.
    "The long and short of it is, we were married for five years," Julieta said curtly. "It was not so good. The details are irrelevant.
     Divorced in eighty-seven. I did all right in the settlement—ended up with our residence here, the land around it, and some
     money. Somewhere in there I decided I needed to do something with my life. Went to UNM and got a master's in education administration.
     Spent every cent of the divorce money to build Oak Springs School."
    "How do you get along with your ex now?"
    "Garrett? He died three years ago. He was sixty-six. Now his son from his first marriage owns McCarty Energy. Donny McCarty—
     my former stepson, can you believe it?—is four years older than I am. We have a mutual-loathing arrangement. He resented
     me from the start, and his feelings didn't sweeten when I walked away with some of his father's holdings. The bad part is that the court partitioned off my land from a much larger chunk Garrett owned, so the company is our neighbor. Donny likes to make our lives miserable with right-of-way problems or whatever he can dream up."
    The question seemed to drive Julieta back inside herself, and they were quiet again as they approached Window Rock. Julieta's
     anxiety was rising as they got closer to the school and what awaited them there. It occurred to Cree that for all she'd learned
     about Julieta's past, she'd hardly gotten to know the woman at all. She realized she was rather dazzled by her beauty, her
     vividness, and that for all the immediate empathy she'd felt, her dazzlement distanced her. Except for that glimpse of a grin at Earl Craig's house, she knew next to nothing about Julieta's emotional life.
    "I can't help wondering . . . " Cree began. "You had what sounds like a crappy marriage. Why did you keep McCarty's name?"
    Julieta made a face of distaste. "Sheer pragmatism. The name carries clout around here. To make the school happen, I needed
     all the weight I could sling. Having the name, even as an ex-wife, helps me get access and ask for favors in the right places.
     Make contacts in the legislature, raise money from other rich mining families."
    "So you've never remarried? Never had children?"
    "I've had relationships. None of them ever quite made it to the marrying stage," Julieta said distantly. Abruptly she seemed
     to catch herself, and she turned to Cree with an angry face. "But I don't see what my past has to do with Tommy Keeday and
     his terrible problem. Why aren't we talking about that? Joseph and I came to Dr. Ambrose as a last resort when nobody else was giving us
     satisfactory answers. We wouldn't buy into this at all if we hadn't seen what we'd seen and spent the last few weeks trying
     every other imaginable solution. I could really use some reassurance that there's substance to his conclusions or your methods. This isn't about me. It's about Tommy. And, frankly, if you're going to work with him, it's about you. "
    Cree couldn't help feeling personally rebuffed. But she made a mental note of Julieta's sudden defensiveness and decided to
     press on with a less intrusive line of