Page 17 of The Mountain Echoes

We both see Hudson thunder down the stairs.

Celine brushes past me and chases after her husband. I hear raised voices as she drags him into one of the rooms of the large house.

The sounds of their argument dull after I hear the thud of a closing door.

I walk outside with the intention of leaving.

I get distracted when I find Earl leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette, facing the ranch house, looking at it with a trace of worry in his eyes.

I like Earl.

He and Rami have kept Longhorn going through thick and thin—though lately, it’s been more thin than thick. Now it’s prime for a developer to snatch up, which is why I’m hellbent on buying it and keeping it a ranch.

“Howdy, Mav.” Earl nods at me.

“Earl.”

He holds out his cigarette to me. I take a long puff and hand it back to him. I don’t smoke per se, but I don’t mind a drag here and there. Earl knows that.

“What’s on your mind?” I ask him because his brow is furrowed.

He nods at a window upstairs, and I look up. I see the shadow of a woman.

Aria.

“I know Celine has told you stories about Aria. Don’t listen to ‘em.”

I nod slowly, considering how to answer him. “Who should I listen to then?”

“Yourself. If she’ll let you close enough.” A shadowpasses over his face. “She’s not the same girl who left ten years ago.”

“What do you mean?” I turn away from the window.

There’s something about Aria Delgado that makes me curious. As a man who usually does not get interested in women like her, cold and dispassionate, my emotions seem alien to me. There seems to be something robotic about her.

Except when you saw her lie down beside her father’s grave.

“She’s…hollow.” He lets out a long breath, shaking his head slowly. “Rami made mistakes with her. Regretted them. But he was a stubborn sumbitch, and he didn’t know how to say he was sorry.”

I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I listen because it seems he wants to talk. He lost his closest friend. I can see he’s grieving.

“Now, he’s gone and…Longhorn…,” he trails off.

“Earl, you’ll be taken care of; you know that, don’t you?”

He gives me a bleak smile. “I don’t got a lot of years left, Mav. I’m not worried about me. I’m worried abouther.”

“Who? Celine?”

He shakes his head.

“Aria?” I ask, confused.

There’s a flicker of something broken in his eyes. “That girl lost the most when Rami died.”

I give Earl a measured look.

There’s a wiry resilience about him—like the kind ofman who’s been knocked down by life more times than he can count and just got back up meaner.