Page 20 of The Lonely Road

After a while, I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling, my thoughts still turning.

My life, measured out in hotel rooms, other people’s problems, and the work of making inconvenient things disappear. Years of it. Good money. No complaints I’m entitled to make.

I just hadn’t expected Wildflower Canyon.

I hadn’t expected to drive back into it at dusk and feel—though I’m not going to examine why tonight—a sense of returning.

The radiator ticks.

I close my eyes and tell myself I’ll figure it out in the morning.

Spoiler alert: I don’t.

CHAPTER 6

taya

Ipush through the door of Buck’s Mercantile, shopping list in hand, slightly irritated with myself because I forgot to order coffee beans online. Now, I have to pay Jay Buck’s markup, which is the tax you pay for the convenience of not driving to Durango or God forbid, Aspen.

The mercantile is a store that has been making the same decisions about where to put things for forty years and sees no reason to revisit them.

Hardware in the back left.

Dry goods center right.

A refrigerated case along the east wall that hums as if it hasn’t been upgraded since the eighties.

Rope, nails, motor oil, and locally made jam share the same aisle. Why? Because it’s been done that way since Jay’s grandpappy’s time.

Jay is sweeping the front stoop when I arrive. He’s a solid man in his early fifties who has an unhurried efficiency about him. After all, he’s been running this store for decades and will not be rushed by the modern world.

He nods at me.

“Afternoon, Taya.”

“Afternoon, Jay.”

My attention is drawn to the new ice cream and pastry place next door, where a group of middle school kids is crammed into the booths, loud and varied, with someone’s backpack already knocked onto the floor.

Laughter spills out every time the door opens. I pause for half a second to watch the ease of a town going about its own business on an ordinary weekday.

The Lick opened three years ago, but is still called the new ice cream place, which is weird since there is no other ice cream place in Wildflower Canyon.

It sits next door to Buck’s Mercantile on Main Street, a narrow storefront that used to be a tack repair shop and now smells like waffle cones and brown butter. Wren Foss, who moved here from Glenwood Springs with a pastry degree and what she describes as a grudge against big ice cream, makes everything from scratch.

On Saturdays, she serves a flavor called Canyon Mud that has a thirty-person waitlist, which is considerable in a town the size of Wildflower Canyon.

I know all of this because Joy told me, and Joy knows everything about every food establishment within twenty miles…or maybe a hundred, because she also knows where you can eat in Aspen better than I do, and I lived there.

I grab a basket and start down the aisles, building dinner in my head as I go.

Brown rice.

Devil’s Slip ’n Slide hot sauce, made by a Núuchiu from Ignacio. It costs a pretty penny, but it’s good enough that I splurge and use it sparingly—partly because of the price, mostly because it’ll take your head off if you’re not careful.

A bag each of yellow and blue dried hominy. The weather calls for posole, and once I make it, I can have it for a couple of days or more.

Pork shoulder, cut into thick chunks.