Family Tree (3 page)

CJ put together her bag. “Bribery will get you everywhere. I heard there was a six-week wait for a table there.”

“Unless you're with Martin Harlow. I'll have my assistant book it and give you a call.” Annie bade the reporter a hasty farewell.

Then she grabbed her things—keys, phone, laptop, tablet, wallet, water bottle, production notes—and stuffed them into her already overstuffed
business bag. For a second, she pictured the bag she'd carry as a busy young mom—diapers and pacifiers . . . what else?

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh my God. I don't know a thing about babies.”

She bolted for the door, then clattered down the steps of the Laurel Canyon town house complex. Their home was fashionable, modern, a place they could barely afford. The show was gaining momentum, and Martin would be up for a new contract again soon. They'd need a bigger place. With a baby's room. A
baby's
room.

The heat wave hit her like a furnace blast. Even for springtime in SoCal, this was extreme. People were being urged to stay inside, drink plenty of water, keep out of the sun.

Above the walkway to the garage, the guy on a scaffold was still washing windows. Annie heard a shout, but didn't see the falling squeegee until it was too late. The thing hit the sidewalk just inches from her.

“Hey,” she called. “You dropped something.”

“Sorry, ma'am,” the workman called back. Then he turned sheepish. “Really. The thing just slipped out of my hands.”

She felt a swift chill despite the muggy air. She had to be careful now. She was pregnant. The idea filled her with wonder and joy. And the tiniest frisson of fear.

She unlocked the car with her key fob, and it gave a little
yip
of greeting. Seat belt, check. Adjust the mirror. She turned for a few seconds, gazing at the backseat. It was cluttered with recycled grocery bags, empty serving trays and bowls from the last taping, when the key ingredient had been saffron. One day there would be a car seat back there. For a baby. Maybe they'd name her Saffron.

Annie forced herself to be still for a moment, to take everything in. She shut off the radio. Flexed and unflexed her hands on the steering wheel. Then she laughed aloud, and her voice crescendoed to a shout of pure joy. She pictured Martin's face when she told him, and smiled all
the way up the on-ramp. She drove with hypervigilance, already feeling protective of the tiny invisible stranger she carried. Shimmering with heat, the freeway was clogged with traffic lined up in a sluggish queue. The crumbly brown hills of the canyon flowed past. Smog hovered overhead like the dawn of the nuclear winter.

L.A. was so charmless and overbuilt. Maybe that was the reason so much imaginative work was produced here. The dry hills, concrete desert, and dull skies were a neutral backdrop for creating illusion. Through the studios and sound stages, people could be taken away to places of the heart—lakeshore cottages, seaside retreats, days gone by, autumn in New England, cozy winter lodges . . .

We're going to have to move, thought Annie. No way we're raising a child in this filthy air.

She wondered if they could spend summers in Vermont. Her idyllic childhood shone with the sparkle of nostalgia. A Switchback traffic jam might consist of the neighbor's tractor waiting for a cow that had wandered outside the fence. There was no such thing as smog, just fresh, cool air, sweet with the scent of the mountains and trout streams. It was an unspoiled paradise, one she had never fully appreciated until she'd left it behind.

She'd known about the pregnancy all of five minutes and she was already planning the baby's life. Because she was so ready. At last, they were going to have a family. A
family.
It was the most important thing in the world to her. It always had been.

She thought about the fight this morning, and then remembered the flower delivery. This moment was going to change everything for them, in the best possible way. The stupid quarrels that blazed like steam vents from a geyser suddenly evaporated. Had they really argued about a water buffalo? A scissor lift? The missing cap on the toothpaste tube?

Her phone vibrated, signaling a text message from Tiger, her assistant. M
AJOR MECHANICAL TROUBLE WITH THE SCAFFOLD
. N
EED U NOW
.

Sorry, Tiger, Annie thought. Later.

After she told Martin about the baby. A
baby
. It eclipsed any work emergency at the studio. Everything else—the water buffalo, the scissor lift—seemed petty in comparison. Everything else could wait.

She turned onto the Century City studio lot. The gate guard waved her through with a laconic gesture. She made her way around the blinding pale gray concrete labyrinth dotted with the occasional green oasis of palm-tree-studded gardens. Turning down a service alley, she parked in her designated spot next to Martin's BMW. She'd never cared for the sports car. It was totally impractical, given the kind of gear they often toted around for the show. Now that he was about to become a father, he might get rid of the two-seater.

Heading for Martin's trailer on foot, she passed a group of tourists on Segways, trolling for a glimpse of their favorite star. One eager woman paused her scooter and took Annie's picture.

“Hey there,” the woman said, “aren't you Jasmine Lockwood?”

“No,” said Annie with an almost apologetic smile.

“Oh, sorry. You look like her. I bet you get that a lot.”

Annie offered another slight smile and veered around the tour group. This wasn't the first time someone pointed out her resemblance to the cooking diva. It was confusing to Annie. She didn't look like anyone but herself.

Martin, the golden boy, liked to say she was his exotic lover, which always made Annie laugh. “I'm an all-American mutt from Vermont,” she'd say. “We can't all have a pedigree.”

Would the baby look like her? Brown eyes and riotous black curls? Or like Martin, blond and regal?

Oh my God, she thought with a fresh surge of joy. A baby.

Power cords snaked across the alleyway leading to the studio. The trailers were lined up, workers with headsets and clipboards scurrying around. She could see the scissor lift looming above the work site. Fully
extended, its orange steel folding supports formed a crisscross pattern, topped by the platform high overhead. Workmen in hard hats and electricians draped in coiled wire swarmed around it. Some guy was banging on the manual release valve with a black iron wrench.

She spotted Tiger, who hurried over to greet her. “It's stuck in the up position.” Tiger looked like an anime character, with rainbow hair and a candy-colored romper. She also had a rare gift for doing several things simultaneously and well. Martin thought she was manic, but Annie appreciated her laser focus.

“Tell them to unstick it.” Annie kept walking. She could sense Tiger's surprise; it wasn't like Annie to breeze past a problem without attempting to solve it.

Martin's cast trailer was the biggest on the lot. It was also the most tricked out, with a makeup station, dressing area, full bath and kitchen, and a work and lounge area. When they first fell in love, they'd often worked late together there, and ended up making love on the curved lounge and falling asleep in each other's arms. The trailer was closed now, the blinds drawn against the burning heat. The AC unit chugged away.

Annie was eager to get inside where it was cool. She paused, straightening her skirt, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. There was a fleeting thought of lipstick. Shoot. She wanted to look nice when she told him she was going to be the mother of his child. Never mind, she told herself. Martin didn't care about lipstick.

She quickly entered the code on the keypad and let herself in.

The first thing she noticed was the smell. Something soapy, floral. There was music playing, cheesy music. “Hanging by a Thread,” a song she used to sing at the top of her lungs when no one was around, because the right cheesy love song only made a person feel more in love.

A narrow thread of light came from a gap under the window shades. She pushed her sunglasses up on her head and let her eyes adjust. She
started to call out to Martin, but her gaze was caught by something out of place.

A cell phone lay on the makeup station shelf. It wasn't Martin's phone, but Melissa's. Annie recognized the blingy pink casing.

And then there was that moment. That sucker-punch feeling of knowing, but not really knowing. Not wanting to know.

Annie stopped breathing. She felt as if her heart had stopped beating, impossible though that was. Her mind whirled through options, thoughts darting like a mouse in a maze. She could back away right now, slip outside, rewind the moment, and . . .

And do what?
What?
Give them fair warning, so they could all go back to pretending this wasn't happening?

An icy stab of anger propelled her forward. She went to the workstation area, separated from the entryway by a folding pocket wall. With a swipe of her arm, she shoved aside the screen.

He was straddling her, wearing nothing but the five-hundred-dollar cowboy boots.

“Hey!” he yelped, rearing back, a cowboy on a bucking bronc. “Oh, shit, Jesus Christ.” He scrambled to his feet, grabbing a fringed throw to cover his crotch.

Melissa gasped and clutched a couch cushion against her. “Annie! Oh my God—”

“Really?” Annie scarcely recognized the sound of her own voice. “I mean,
really
?”

“It's not—”

“What it seems, Martin?” she bit out. “No. It's
exactly
what it seems.” She backed away, her heart pounding, eager to get as far from him as possible.

“Annie, wait. Babe, let's talk about this.”

She turned into a ghost right then and there. She could feel it. Every drop of color drained away until she was transparent.

Could he see that? Could he see through her, straight into her heart? Maybe she had been a ghost for a long time but hadn't realized it until this moment.

The feeling of betrayal swept through her. She was bombarded by everything. Disbelief. Disappointment. Horror. Revulsion. It was like having an out-of-body experience. Her skin tingled. Literally, tingled with some kind of electrical static.

“I'm leaving,” she said. She needed to go throw up somewhere.

“Can we please just talk about this?” Martin persisted.

“Do you actually think there's something to talk about?”

She stared at the two of them a moment longer, perversely needing to imprint the scene on her brain. That was when the moment shifted.

This is how it ends, she thought.

Because it was one of those moments. A key moment. One that spins you around and points you in a new direction.

This is how it ends.

Martin and Melissa both began speaking at once. To Annie's ears, it sounded like inarticulate babble. A strange blur pulsated at the edges of her vision. The blur was reddish in tone. The color of rage.

She backed away, needing to escape. Plunged her hand into her bag and grabbed her keys. They were on a Sugar Rush key chain in the shape of a maple leaf.

Then she made a one-eighty turn toward the door and walked out into the alley. Her stride was purposeful. Gaze straight ahead. Chin held high.

That was probably the reason she tripped over the cable. The fall brought her to her knees, keys hitting the pavement with a jingle. And the humiliation just kept coming. She picked up the keys and whipped a glance around, praying no one had seen.

Three people hurried over—
Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?

“I'm fine,” she said, dusting off the palms of her hands and her scraped knees. “Really, don't worry.”

The phone in her shoulder bag went off like a buzz saw, even though it was set on silent mode. She marched past the construction area. Workers were still struggling with the lift, trying to open the hydraulic valve. She shouldn't have let Martin talk her into the cheaper model.

“You have to turn it the other way,” she called out to the workers.

“Ma'am, this is a hard-hat area,” a guy said, waving her off.

“Leaving,” she said. “I'm just saying, you're trying to crank the release valve the wrong way.”

“What's that?”

“The valve. You're turning it the wrong way.” What a strange conversation. When you discover your husband banging some other woman, weren't you supposed to call your mom, sobbing? Or your best friend?

“You know,” she said to the guy. “Lefty loosey, righty tighty.”

“Ma'am?”

“Counterclockwise,” she said, tracing her key chain in the air to show him the direction.

“Annie.” Martin burst out of his trailer and sprinted toward her. Boxer shorts, bare chest, cowboy boots. “Come back.”

Her hand tightened around the key chain, the edges of the maple leaf biting into her flesh.

The Segway tour group trolled past the end of the alley.

“It's Martin Harlow,” someone called.

“We love your show, Martin,” called another girl in the Segway group. “We love you!”

“Ma'am, you mean like this?” The workman gave the valve a hard turn.

A metallic groan sounded from somewhere on high. And the entire structure came crashing down.

S
o, Dad,” said Teddy, swiveling around on the kitchen barstool, “if the water buffalo weighs two thousand pounds, how come it doesn't sink in the mud?”

Fletcher Wyndham glanced at the show his son was watching, an unlikely choice for a ten-year-old kid, but Teddy had taken a shine to
The Key Ingredient.
Most people in Switchback, Vermont, tuned in to the cooking show, not because of the chef or the hot blond cohost. No, the reason was behind the scenes—a quick blip in the credits that rolled while the slightly annoying theme song played.

Her name was Annie Rush—the producer.

The most popular cooking show on TV was her brainchild, and she'd been born and raised in Switchback. Teddy's fourth-grade teacher had gone to school with Annie. A while back, the show had filmed an episode right here in town, though Fletcher had kept his distance from the production. Since then, Annie held celebrity status, even though she didn't appear on camera.

That was just as well, Fletcher decided. Seeing her on TV every week would drive him nuts. “Good question, buddy,” he said to his son. “That one looks like he's walking on water.”

Teddy rolled his eyes. “It's not a guy buffalo. It's a girl buffalo. They make mozzarella cheese from the milk.”

“Then why not call it a milk buffalo?”

“'Cause it lives in the water. Duh.”

“Amazing what you can learn from watching TV.”

“Yeah, you should let me watch more.”

“Dream on,” said Fletcher.

“Mom lets me watch as much as I want.”

And there it was. Evidence that Teddy had officially joined a club no kid wanted to belong to—confused kids of divorced parents.

Looking around the chaos of the house they'd just moved into, Fletcher pondered an oft-asked question: What the hell happened to my life?

He was able to precisely locate the turning point. A single night of too much beer and too little judgment had set him on a path that had changed every plan he'd ever made.

Yet when he looked into his son's face, he did not have a single regret. Teddy had come into the world a squalling, red-faced, needy bundle of noise, and Fletcher's reaction had not been love at first sight. It had been fear at first sight. He wasn't afraid of the baby. He was afraid of
failing
him. Afraid to do something that would screw up this tiny, perfect, helpless human.

There was only one choice he could make. He had shoved aside the fear. He had given his entire self to Teddy, driven by a powerful sense of mission and a love like nothing he'd ever felt before. Now Teddy was in fifth grade, ridiculously cute, athletic, goofy, and sweet. Sometimes, he was a total pain in the ass. Yet every moment of every day, he was the center of Fletcher's universe.

Teddy had always been a happy kid. The kind of happy that made Fletcher want to enclose him in a protective bubble. Now Fletcher realized that, despite his intentions, the bubble had been pierced. The end of his marriage had been a long time coming, and he knew the transition was hard on Teddy. Fletcher wished he could have spared his son the
pain and confusion, but he needed to end it in order to breathe again. He only hoped that one day Teddy would understand.

“The water buffalo is a remarkable feat of nature's engineering,” said the cohost of
The Key Ingredient,
who served as the sidekick of the life-support system for an ego, aka Martin Harlow.

“Why is that, Melissa?” asked the host in a phony voice.

She gestured at the sad-looking buffalo, standing in a small pen against a none-too-subtle computer-generated swamp. “Well, the animal's wide hooves allow her to walk on extremely soft surfaces without sinking.”

The host stroked his chin. “Good point. You know, when I was a kid, I thought I had a fifty percent chance of drowning in quicksand, because it happened so much in the movies.”

The blonde laughed and shook back her hair. “We're glad you didn't!”

Fletcher winced. “Hey, buddy, give me a hand with the unpacking, will you?”

The big items had all been delivered, but there were several loads of unopened boxes.

“The show's almost over. I want to see how the cheese turns out.”

“The suspense must be killing you,” said Fletcher. “Hey, you know what they make with the mozzarella cheese?”

“Pizza! Can we order pizza tonight?”

“Sure. Or we could just eat the leftover pizza from last night.”

“It's better fresh.”

“Good point. I'll call after we unpack two more boxes. Deal?”

“Yeah,” Teddy said with a quick fist pump.

The new house had everything Fletcher had once envisioned, back when he'd had someone to dream with—a big kitchen open to the rest of the house. If he knew how to cook, delicious things would happen here. But the person who made the delicious things was long
gone from his life. Still the old dream lingered, leading Fletcher to this particular house, a New England classic a century old. It had a fireplace and a room with enough bookshelves to be called a library. There was a back porch with a swing he'd spent the afternoon putting together, and it was not just any swing, but a big, comfortable one with cushions large enough for a fine nap—a swing he'd been picturing for more than a decade.

They tackled a couple of boxes of books. Teddy was quiet for a while as he shelved them. Then he held up one of the books. “Why's it called
Lord of the Flies
?”

“Because it's awesome,” Fletcher said.

“Okay, but why is it called that?”

“You'll find out when you're older.”

“Is it something dirty I'm not supposed to know about?”

“It's filthy dirty.”

“Mom would have a cow if I told her you had a dirty book.”

“Great. Here's a thought. Don't tell her.”

Teddy put the book on the shelf, then added a few more to the collection. “So, Dad?”

“Yeah, buddy?”

“Is this really where we live now?” He looked around the room, his eyes two saucers of hurt.

Fletcher nodded. “This is where we live.”

“Forever and ever?”

“Yep.”

“That's a long time.”

“It is.”

“So when I tell my friends to come over to my house, will they come to this one or our other house?”

There was no
our
anymore. Celia had taken possession of the custom-built place west of town.

He stopped shelving books and turned to Teddy. “Wherever you are, that's home.”

They worked together, putting up the last of the books. Fletcher stepped back, liking the balance of the bookcases flanking the fireplace, the breeze from the back porch stirring the chains of the swing.

The only thing missing was the one person who had shared the dream with him.