American Diva (27 page)

“I
can’t
pay for it,” Mrs. LaRue said, getting defensive. “And Allen sure can’t, and neither can his worthless father. Oh sure, he can live in that big fancy house you built for him, but he wouldn’t give a dime to us if he had a pocketful. Anyway, I read in
Parade Magazine
that you made six million dollars last year, so I don’t think you’ll miss it.”

“You can have whatever you need. But I thought—”

“I know exactly what you thought,” Mrs. LaRue interrupted her as she forked bacon onto a paper towel. “You thought you were going to swoop in and save Allen when you haven’t even seen him for almost a year.” She frowned with disdain and shook her head. “I don’t know when you got the idea in your head that being a big shot music star suddenly makes you God’s gift.”

“Mom, lay off,” Allen said.

“You want me to lay off? Then how about you lay off drugs for a change?”

“This is so embarrassing!” Gail cried. “We have this fine-looking man in our midst and we’re going to fight?”

Audrey suddenly stood up. “You’re right, Gail. There is no point. So how much?” she asked.

Every last one of them avoided her direct look.

“Come on, how much?” she asked again.

Allen shrugged. “Amber, the nurse down there, told me the hospital alone would probably want four grand. Can you believe that? I was only there a day, and they’re gonna want that kind of money. It’s highway robbery. They’re just sticking it to regular people.”

“It wasn’t like they did anything but pump your stomach,” Gail said. “It’s almost like stealing.”

Audrey closed her eyes. “Four thousand, then?” she asked.

“Ten thousand,” Mom said calmly.

Gail gasped, and Allen paled and glared at his mother. But Audrey didn’t flinch. She just nodded and put down her coffee cup. “I’ll have it wired in today. If you will excuse me now, I am going to go throw up,” Audrey said, and walked out of the kitchen.

“Wait, Audie!” Gail cried, and jumped up to run after her sister.

That left Jack, Allen, and Mrs. LaRue and the most uncomfortable silence Jack had ever experienced. Allen eyed him curiously as Mrs. LaRue slapped a platter of bacon on the table. “Help yourself,” she said, and stalked back to the stove.

Allen grabbed three pieces and shoved them into his mouth.

Jack would not have guessed, not in a million years, that this was the crap Audrey had to put up with from her own family. He had a newfound admiration for her. It took a very strong and determined person to pull herself out of this shit hole and make something of herself. These people were unbelievably miserable.

Jack was a betting man, and at that moment, he was betting he and Audrey would be heading back to the airport just as soon as he could get their stuff together. And if she wasn’t of a mind to go just yet, he was contemplating picking her up bodily and carrying her away from these bloodsuckers.

So
anyway, I told Danny’s lawyer he could stick it, and if Danny wants to see his boys again, he’ll just drop that whole thing.” Gail paused to exhale the smoke from her cigarette. “Can you believe his shit?”

“No,” Audrey said, staring into the little stream that ran behind her mother’s house. The previous owners had made a little oasis out of the lawn and the stream, but since she’d bought the house for Mom, no one had weeded down here. The Johnson grass was as high as the fishing platform where she and Gail were sitting.

“I don’t think it ever crosses his mind that all this fighting isn’t good for our kids,” Gail said, as if she were completely innocent. From what Audrey knew of it, she started the fighting more often than not. She couldn’t guess how many times Gail had called to complain she didn’t like who Danny was dating and refused to let her sons around the skank, as she put it.

But this morning, Audrey was content to let Gail talk, because her mind was a million miles away. She couldn’t manage to accept that she’d been called home under the pretense of life or death to hand over ten thousand dollars for Allen’s emergency room visit that was not, by any measure, an actual emergency.

That was beside the point, really—she would have handed over one hundred thousand if that was what they needed from her. What she couldn’t accept was that they didn’t seem to need
her
. In
any
capacity. She was nothing but a checkbook to them. Somewhere along the way she had ceased to be a sister or a daughter.

Audrey swallowed down tears of helplessness as she watched the minnows swim about and Gail went on about Danny. She didn’t want to admit it to herself, but wherever she went these days, she felt like she didn’t belong. She’d never felt as alone as she had the last couple of months, which was ironic, seeing as how she was
never
alone. But she felt lonely at her core, almost as if somewhere along the way she’d lost Audrey.

She didn’t know what was important to her any longer, didn’t know what she wanted or what made her happy.

The only ray of warmth she’d felt in the last few weeks was Jack. Just like the warmth that spread through her the moment she saw him walking down to the creek. He stood below the platform, his hands on his hips, and smiled up at her. “Ever catch anything from up there?”

“Snakes,” Gail said. “Come on up here, sugar, and we’ll keep you safe.”

Jack chuckled, the sound of it so soft and familiar that Audrey wanted to fling herself into his arms, bury her face in his shoulder, and let him cover up the world from her sight.

She did the next best thing—she swung her legs off the side of the platform and jumped down.

“Hey, where are you going?” Gail asked as Audrey stepped in front of Jack and looked up at Gail. She felt his hand on her arm, and allowed herself to sink back against him, allowed herself to feed off his strength. “Don’t know,” she said. “Maybe to see Dad.”

“Oh God,” Gail said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Remember Hayley Grant?”

“Sure. Blond and pretty, and everything I wasn’t.”

“Well, Dad’s dating her now.”

Jack’s hand tightened around her arm, but he didn’t move, just stood behind her, propping her up as Audrey tried to process the information. “Hayley Grant is a year younger than
me
,” she said incredulously.

“That’s why I am warning you,” Gail said cheerfully. “Tell Mom I’ll drive the boys to Bible School, okay?” she said as she lit another cigarette. “And if you see Allen, tell him to quit stealing my smokes! Man, I’ll be glad when he moves out!”

Audrey relayed Gail’s information to Mom, who was busy cleaning the kitchen and could only grunt something under her breath in reply. She didn’t see Allen, either. When she asked, Mom told her he’d walked to town.

So a half hour later, after walking through what constituted a media gauntlet in Redhill (a Fort Worth TV crew, the local biweekly paper, and radio), and answering a handful of benign questions (
My brother is fine
.
The tour is going well
.), Audrey and Jack were standing in front of the godawful, million-dollar house Dad had built. They were staring at half of a car that was, inexplicably, on the front lawn.

“Looks like it might have been a Roadster,” Jack said, eyeing it thoughtfully.

“It is half of a car,” Audrey protested.

“But it’s the good half,” Jack said. “And he’s still got the motor.”

“What good is a motor without the car?” Audrey asked.

“There’s my girl!” Dad’s voice boomed at them from the front door.

He strode out onto the lawn, Hayley Grant on his heels. Unlike Mom, who seemed to shrivel up as she got older, Dad looked healthy and fit and even younger than his fifty-five years. He was handsome and he knew it—he’d had more affairs than Audrey believed even he could count. He grabbed Audrey up in a bear hug and squeezed her tight, jerking her back and forth like a dog with a chew toy before setting her on her feet. “I heard you were in town.”

“Gail?”

“Nope. Hayley’s mom works at the hospital. Oh hey, you remember Hayley, don’t you?” he asked, stepping back and grabbing Hayley’s hand.

Audrey forced a smile. “Of course.” She stuck out her hand. “Hi, Hayley. You look
great
.”

“Thanks!” Hayley chirped as she grabbed Audrey’s hand and pumped it several times.

With a beaming grin on his face, Dad turned to Jack. “And who is this?” he asked.

Audrey quickly introduced him as her friend.

“Oh yeah?” Dad said. “What happened to Luke the Kook?”

“He stayed with the tour.”

“Not surprised,” Dad said, hitching up his pants. “That boy never missed a moment in the limelight, did he?”

Jack snorted.

“Speaking of limelight, Dad,” Audrey said sternly, “could you please stop talking to
Entertainment Tonight
? That story about me singing a Pasty Cline number in a bar when I was six is a lie, and you know it.”

“Oh hell, they love that sort of feel-good stuff,” he said congenially. “Now if I could remember what you were
really
doing at six, I’d tell them that. But I don’t remember,” he said, and laughed loudly, clapping Jack on the back. “How about a beer, there, big guy?”

“Ah, no thanks. I’m working.”

“Working! Boy, this isn’t work!” Dad laughed. “Come on in and at least drink some lemonade. Hayley was hoping you’d come by, Audrey, so she whipped up a can of it.”

“Y’all come in!” Hayley echoed.

Apparently this little fling between Dad and Hayley had been going on long enough for Hayley to set up house. Audrey reluctantly followed Hayley inside, but not before shooting Jack a pleading look.

Hayley led them all into a sunken living room. The floors were Saltillo tile and the furniture right out of Discount Barn. Plastic greenery adorned the valances of every window, as well as the corners and the shelving around a massive plasma TV. Above the fireplace hung the head of a stag, and at the other end, Dad had put up mirrors behind a built-in bar. The room looked like someone had smashed a Wal-Mart and a pub together.

“I have asked Gene a hundred times if I have asked him once to get rid of that car on the lawn,” Hayley said as she swished to the bar in her kitten heel sandals. “But he won’t hear of it! He keeps telling me he’s going to get the other half and fix it up.”

“Why don’t you put it in the barn?” Audrey asked.

“Can’t,” Dad said, accepting a beer from Hayley. “Barn’s full.”

“What about the shop?” Audrey asked.

“Oh,” Dad said, flicking his wrist. “I sold that a couple of months ago.”

He’d
sold
the shop? The same auto shop that had been in the LaRue family since 1931?

“Can I get you some lemonade, Jack?” Hayley asked, a little too sweetly.

“No thanks,” Jack said. He stayed back, leaning up against one of the posts that marked the entrance to the sunken living room, just watching.

“You sold the shop?” Audrey asked incredulously as she sank onto a bar stool.
“Why?”

“I don’t need that shop. It’s more of a headache than anything else. Besides, I’m getting into NASCAR.”

“How are you going to live?” Audrey asked.

“Whaddaya mean?” Dad asked with a frown. “We do fairly well on our joint ventures, don’t we?” he asked, gesturing between himself and Audrey.

Unlike Mom, Dad had no problem accepting her charity—he accepted it with gusto. Their “joint ventures,” as he liked to call it, was really a stipend she paid him every month. She’d originally offered to do it a couple of years ago when the economy wasn’t doing so well and he was having trouble making ends meet. Somehow, the stipend had stayed in place.

“So what brings you to Redhill, Audrey?” Hayley asked as she poured lemonade for her. “You sure don’t get down this way very often, do you?”

“Because it’s almost impossible to get to within any reasonable amount of time,” Audrey said. “And I’ve just been really busy.”

“Oh I bet you have,” Hayley said, nodding eagerly. She leaned across the bar and smiled brightly at Audrey. “We’re so proud of you in Redhill. So what’s it really like, being a big star?”

“Don’t bother her with that, Hayley,” Dad said sternly. “She comes home to get away from all that, don’t you, girl?”

“Well, actually, this time I came home to see about Allen.”

“Allen?” Dad said, still smiling. “Oh, you mean that bit of trouble he had a couple of days ago?”

“A bit of trouble? I thought it was more a matter of life or death.”

Dad laughed loudly at that. “That’s Leanne for you,” he said, referring to Audrey’s mother. “She can make a mountain out of a molehill like no one I’ve ever seen. You should have called me, Pumpkin. I’d have saved you a trip.”

“Come on, aren’t you a little worried about him?”

“Who, Allen?” Dad shrugged. “Way I see it, there’s not a lot any of us can do. The boy is twenty-six years old. If he wants to throw his life away like that, who of us is going to stop him?”