American Diva (25 page)

He smiled that knee-bending smile of his and shook his head. “Midland.”

“
Midland?
” another woman cried out. “I went to Midland! What year were you there?”

“Way too long ago to remember anymore,” he said. “You would have been in grade school.”

Several of the women tittered.

“Any luck?” Audrey asked the woman at the computer.

“No, hon, I can’t seem to find him.”

“That’s because he was discharged today, Delores!” someone shouted from the back.

“Well, it doesn’t say so here,” Delores said, punching some more keys. “Are you sure?”

“Audrey, did you write that song ‘Going Home’ about Redhill?”

“Umm, I think that’s a Kelly Clarkson song,” Audrey said.

“Are you sure? I could have sworn you sang it.”

“I’m . . . really sure,” she said.

“If you’re looking for your brother, they sent him home to your mom,” the only male in the room, an orderly, said. “You need a ride over?”

“No, thanks,” Jack interjected. “We’ve got it covered.”

“Well, it doesn’t say here that he was discharged,” Delores said sternly. “All this technology they are making us use isn’t worth a flip if it doesn’t work right.”

“Will you sign an autograph?” another woman asked.

“Where’s Lucas?” someone shouted at her.

“Audrey, please don’t leave until I get your autograph. My Allison would
kill
me if I saw you and didn’t get your autograph,” a nurse said, digging in her purse as another woman passed a prescription pad around.

“I can’t even find a record that he was ever even here,” Delores insisted.

“Delores, for God’s sake, he went home!” Melissa snapped at her before turning another wide grin at Audrey. “I love your new album. You know, I’ve heard a lot about you around town, and I told my husband, I said, ‘You know, that’s just jealousy talking. I think she’s probably real nice.’ And look, you
are
!” she said, clasping her hands together gleefully. “You’re just so nice and pretty and
I
think you’re really talented.”

“Thanks,” Audrey said weakly and took the church bulletin someone thrust at her and signed the back of it.

“Is he your boyfriend?” Melissa asked, eyes narrowed.

“No,” Jack said.

“You want to be mine?” a female doctor asked to the delight of the others.

A half hour later, they’d escaped, and Audrey pulled the Cadillac into the circular drive in front of her mom’s house. She turned the car off and looked at Jack. “Sorry about the hospital. But I think it is only fair to warn you it was probably pretty tame compared to this leg of the journey,” she said, pointing to her mom’s house.

He smiled and touched her cheek. “It’s okay. I knew you were popular before I flew you down here.”

Audrey laughed.

He glanced at the house. “Now what?”

“Now? We go inside and wait for everyone to get up.”

“Okay. Let’s go,” he said.

They approached the front door like they were approaching enemy lines. Audrey motioned for Jack to stop once they reached the porch, and then very carefully moved a small gnome from his guard post at the door and picked up the key upon which he’d sat. She replaced the gnome and let them into the house.

The front room, done up in lace curtains and blue carpet, smelled of Ben-gay, tomato sauce, and cigarettes. There was not a sound or light in the house, so Audrey put her bag down near the same blue plaid couch Mom had owned since the beginning of time—it reeked of cigarette smoke—and looked at Jack.

He glanced around the room, nodded to the blue La-Z-Boy recliner that was in front of the plasma TV. Audrey nodded; she sat down on the couch and watched as Jack moved to the recliner. Once he was settled, he looked at Audrey in the light of the gas lamp outside and winked.

“
Sorry
,” she whispered. “It’s the best I can do.”

He grinned, folded his arms across his belly, and closed his eyes.

Audrey lay down on the couch, wrinkling her nose at the smell of smoke, and tried to sleep.

She
must have slept, for she was rudely awakened by a shriek so loud and so piercing that she had to peel herself off the ceiling. It was her nephew, Logan, in his Bob the Builder pajama bottoms, screaming and pointing at her. “
Grandma! GRANDMA! Aunt Audrey is dead on the couch! And there is a MAN in here!
”

“I’m not dead, Logan!” Audrey said, trying to gather the kid in her arms. But Logan wriggled away and raced down the hall to the kitchen. “
Jesus
,” Audrey said, pressing a hand over her pounding heart, and looked at Jack.

Logan had awoken him, too. He was standing and looked as if he could have used a few more hours of sleep, but ran his hands through his hair just as Audrey’s mother thundered into the living room.

“Hi, Mom,” Audrey said. “Sorry—”

“What the hell, Audrey?” Mom exclaimed, clutching six-year-old Logan’s hand and staring hard at Jack. “Can’t you ring the doorbell like everyone else?”

“It was almost five in the morning when we got here. I didn’t think you’d appreciate me waking you up at that hour.”

“You could have called and let me know you were coming instead of giving me a heart attack,” she said, eyeing Jack suspiciously as she clutched at the worn, thin cotton robe and put Logan in front of her. “I certainly would have liked to have known you were bringing a guest.”

“I tried to call, I really did,” Audrey said, fully aware that Mom wasn’t really listening. “I tried a dozen times yesterday to tell you I was coming, but you never answered the phone.”

“Well, how could I answer the phone?” Mom snapped, jerking her gaze to Audrey again. She put a hand to her short haircut, as if to smooth it. “I was at the hospital all day with your brother!”

“Right,” Audrey said. “I’m sorry.” She moved to put her arms around her mother, but could feel her stiffen and dropped her arms. “This is Jack Price. He’s . . . he’s—”

“I’m her bodyguard,” Jack said, extending his hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. LaRue.”

“A
bodyguard
!” Mom scoffed. “What do you need a bodyguard for?”

“It’s a long story,” Audrey said wearily. “We went by the hospital this morning when I got into town and they said Allen came home with you.”

Mom softened a little and nodded. “He’s upstairs sleeping it off like a drunk,” she said with some disgust. “Maybe you can talk to him, Audie. I sure can’t.”

“I will,” she said earnestly, and noticed that Jack was holding his bag. “There is a bathroom just up the hall there,” she said, pointing toward the back end of the house. “Logan, will you show him the bathroom?”

“Okay,” Logan said, his terror apparently forgotten.

When Jack and Logan had left the room, Audrey smiled at her mother. “Are you okay, Mom?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“This business with Allen surely has been hard on you.”

Mom pursed her thin lips as if she had to think about it and shrugged. “You do what you got to do. I’ll put some coffee on.”

“Can I use a bathroom upstairs?” Audrey asked, picking up her bag.

“You can use whatever you want, Audrey. This is your house.”

Oh dear God, how many times would they have this conversation? “No, Mom, it’s yours. You know that.”

But Mom had already headed back to the linoleum cave of a kitchen.

That was it, all Audrey was going to get at this stage of the game. No
how are you
, or
thanks for coming
. Nothing but a wave of resentment that would build until Audrey couldn’t stand it another moment. And with only a couple of hours’ sleep, Audrey was hardly in the mood for it. She headed for the bathroom upstairs.

Once inside, she locked herself in and looked around. White tile floors, pink tub and toilet, and for some strange reason, a yellow sink. She had tried very hard to get her mother to accept the help of a design team, but her mother wouldn’t have it. “I always liked this house the way it was. I don’t need to do all that California-type stuff to it. And I don’t need any advice,” she’d said, clearly insulted by the offer.

Lucas’s theory was that Mom was jealous of Audrey’s success. But Audrey wondered what sort of mother was jealous of her daughter’s success? Audrey knew it was more than that—Mom had seemed to dislike her way back before she even knew she could sing. In fact, Mom was the primary reason Audrey had left Redhill at the age of seventeen. It wasn’t her parents’ constant fighting, or the dead-end town, or the desire to sing. It was her mother.

Oh yeah, she’d wanted to pursue a singing career more than she wanted to breathe, but the truth was that singing was the only escape from Mom and Redhill that she could think of. What irritated her was that she had made her escape, and yet she
still
sought Mom’s approval. In eleven years, nothing had changed.

Except that she had become famous. Unbelievably famous. Honestly, who would have thought one song, “Breakdown,” would get the airtime it did, then spread by word of mouth, and then, by some freaking miracle, ride up the charts and stay there for weeks? Who could have predicted that her first album would go platinum? It was luck. A little talent, okay, but a lot of luck and being in the right place at the right time.

Of course, Lucas thought it was clever planning on his part—after all, he did get the radio stations in Austin to play the tune. But the rest of it? Even he couldn’t claim credit for her rocket-rise to the top of the charts.

Funny, but Mom’s dislike of Audrey had grown in direct proportion to the rise in her fame. Now the chasm seemed so impossibly deep and wide, she couldn’t imagine a way to cross it. She’d been in her mother’s house a total of three hours, and already she felt like shit.

Audrey washed her face, brushed her teeth, and brushed her hair, which, she couldn’t help notice, reverted to its usual frizz without the constant attention of high-paid stylists.

A pounding at the door shook her out of her thoughts. “What?” she shouted, unconsciously reverting to her sixteen-year-old self.

“Give someone else a chance!” Allen shouted from the other side of the door.

With a gasp, Audrey vaulted over her bag, yanked the door open, and threw her arms around her baby brother.

“Hey, Audrey,” he said, and lifted her up, twirled her around, and set her down again, letting her go with a pat on the back as he stepped around her into the bathroom. “You didn’t need to come all the way out here.”

“Of course I did—you scared us all to death, Allen! What were you doing in the hospital?”

“Nothing,” he said with a shrug as he leaned up to the mirror above the sink and examined his beard.

“You don’t go to the hospital for
nothing
,” she said with a punch to his shoulder. What happened? Mom said she didn’t know if you’d make it, and—”

“God, she’s such a drama queen,” Allen said with a roll of his blue eyes. In junior high, Audrey’s best friend, Mary Alice Turner, used to drool over Allen’s beautiful blue eyes. “It wasn’t that big of a deal.”

“It
was
a big deal, Allen,” Audrey insisted, folding her arms implacably. “So what happened?”

He tried to look away, but Audrey caught his face with her hand and forced him to look at her.

“Come on, Audie. I have to pee.”

“
What happened?
”

“I just overdid it, that’s all.” He tried to smile. “I smoked a little weed, and then I took a couple of pills, and the combo didn’t work out.”

“I thought you were sober,” she said, dropping her hand.

“I
am
,” he said sternly. “I mean, I
was
. But Gary Torrence came into town—remember Gary?”

Like she could ever forget Gary. He’d been the first guy to feel her up, and without invitation, too—right under the bleachers her sophomore year. “Please tell me you aren’t still hanging out with him.”

“Come on, he’s a friend,” Allen said. “Not all of us can hang out with big stars, right? Anyway, I was just partying with him—it’s not like I
hang out
with him. Don’t look at me like that, Audie! I swear I’m sober. It was just the one time.”

“Famous last words,” Audrey scoffed, and pushed him out of the way so she could dab a little concealer under her eye. “If I had a dime for every time I heard you say that—”

“Whatever.”

“If you don’t stay clean, you’ll go to prison. It’s that simple, bucko. You
have
to stay clean.”

Allen laughed. “What’s the matter? Afraid the press will get hold of it if I do? Poor Audrey LaRue,” he said, mimicking an old lady, “saddled with a deadbeat brother.”

“That’s not it and you know it. I couldn’t care less what the media says,” Audrey said, ignoring the tiny voice in her that said she did care what the media would say. “I just don’t want to lose you.”