Although she’d been born in this desolate wasteland, the bone-dry landscape remained unfamiliar to her. The car’s thermometer displayed 100—it was only June seventh. After living two decades in Rhode Island, temps over eighty degrees constituted sweltering. How did people survive this heat? Better yet…how would she handle three months of hundred-degree-plus temperatures on her father’s ranch? You’re almost there. Eight hours in her car and the wavy heat lines hovering above the baking asphalt threatened to mesmerize Rachel. She gulped several swallows from her water bottle. Her concentration restored, she searched for a large rock, a mountain peak, a saguaro with too many arms—anything that might help her recall the first few years of her life in Hell’s backyard. Nothing. She felt like a tourist in a foreign land. When Rachel was five years old, her mother had died in a horse accident and her father had shipped Rachel east to live with her aunt. Twenty-two years later she was returning to her birthplace—not because she wanted to but because her father had asked her to.
