Here Without You (24 page)

I’m an idiot. This call is on the landline, not my cell.
And it’s obviously Kelley or Kylie with some sort of car trouble, rather than the State of Texas calling to stamp out my delusions of motherhood.

‘Let’s see that grisly wound.’ Kathryn takes my hand and examines the cut. Light green eyes sparkling, she says, ‘I think we’ll be able to save the finger. Let’s bandage that up and then give you something less disaster-prone to do while we wait.’

As though I’m six again, my stepmother seats me on the corner barstool, applies ointment to the gash and covers it with a neon-pink bandage.

‘Reid told me that you’re my role model, instead of Sharla,’ I say, and her worried gaze flashes to mine. ‘I must have known that, deep down, for years. But I never really acknowledged it. I always thought who I was – who I’d become – came down to blood, but that’s just not true. I don’t know who I’d be without you. Which seems pretty damned unfair, given the fact that my existence ruined your life.’

Pressing a kiss to my forehead, she sighs. ‘Oh, honey – take a look around. Does my life look ruined to you? I have
three
very beautiful, talented daughters, a loving –’ We hear Glenn outside, preparing the patio cooking area and belting out his own version of an eighties pop song, in which
grills
are crazy about sharp-dressed men. ‘– slightly insane husband, and I’m preparing to become a grandmother
twice
in the next few months! I have a wonderful life, Brooke, and I’m happy you’re part of it.’

When the doorbell chimes, I freeze in place. I can’t breathe.

‘Go and answer the door, honey,’ Kathryn urges, slipping
outside with Glenn so River won’t be overwhelmed with new faces, everyone hovering, before he even gets in the door.

I walk to the door, shaking, and pull it open, hoping my smile looks friendly instead of panic-stricken. There he stands, gripping Kris’s hand as securely as I’d held Reid’s on Wendy’s front porch just a week ago. Next to him is a miniature rolling case shaped like a rather squared-off frog. Green, of course. He makes no move to enter, and his unsmiling expression doesn’t waver.

According to Wendy, River is forty inches tall and weighs thirty-four pounds, putting him in the sixteenth centile for both height and weight. The medical consensus: nutritional deprivation for some portion of his first few years; with proper nourishment, he may be able to make up for some of it. In our pre-visit call last night, she notified me about his food hoarding, and the psychological causes of it. ‘Also, he sometimes experiences nightmares – and occasionally, night terrors. Most nights, now, he sleeps just fine. But these are a possibility since he’ll be in an unfamiliar environment.’

I calmly accepted everything Wendy said, asking pertinent questions and taking meticulous notes, and when I got off the phone, I walked to the creek, sat on my rock and cried until my throat was raw.

I squat down to his level and fix a careful smile on my face. I’m an actor.
I can do this
.

Years ago, I found a skittish litter of kittens living under Glenn’s tool shed. They were lightning-fast balls of fluff, and I wanted to hold one of them more than life itself. So I sat
in the grass all afternoon, as close to motionless as I could manage, cooing and sweet-talking as though I was the safest girl who ever lived.

Moderating my voice in that same way, I speak to my son, to whom I am still a stranger.

‘Hello, River. I’m glad you’ve come to visit. Would you like to come inside?’

Like those kittens, his dark blue eyes regard me warily, assessing whether I can be trusted. An eternity passes before he nods, once.

Standing, I welcome Kris as well and offer to take River’s case. His soft little fingers brush mine as he passes the handle to me, and I turn and lead the way through the living room and down the wide hallways, biting my lip.

‘Your room is right next to mine. Here we are.’

Pausing in the doorway, he angles his head and scans the room – eyes moving deliberately over each individual object. I place his case on the bed and wait. When his gaze reaches me, he doesn’t skip past. I’m given the same careful regard as everything else. The thing that finally lures him into the room is the golden-coated stuffed puppy. Drifting closer, he comes to the opposite side of the twin bed, chewing his bottom lip. Kris remains in the doorway.

‘I think that puppy needs to be held.’ My voice is still whisper-soft. ‘Know why?’

His eyes flick to mine.

‘Because we’re having
hot dogs
for dinner, so he’s a little worried.’

One eyebrow quirks up, and I suppress a gasp – for the
beat of two seconds, he is Reid, and I know in that moment that he’s going to be fine. I’ve never known anyone as stubborn and indomitable as this child’s father … unless it’s his mother. He’s survived the hand he was dealt because he’s tough as nails, as small and breakable as he appears.

I quirk a brow back at him. ‘We’re going to eat outside. You can bring him along if you want. He doesn’t have a name yet. I was thinking about calling him Hot Dog, but maybe that’s why he’s worried about what’s for dinner.’

His mouth twists on one side this time, his eyes shifting back to the puppy.

‘Kris, would you like to stay for dinner?’ I offer.

She shakes her head, smiling. ‘I think you’ve got this. Let me know if you need me – you have my numbers?’

I nod. ‘Programmed into every phone we’ve got, and your card is on the fridge.’

‘Awesome.’ She turns her smile to him. ‘Goodnight, River. I’ll see you tomorrow after lunch, okay?’

When I turn back, he has the puppy clutched to his chest. He looks at me one more time before nodding to her, giving her permission to leave him here with me. Alone.

Brooke is pretty. Her hair looks soft, and I like her smile. Kathryn is nice, and even Glenn is nice. He’s way, way bigger than Harry, but he doesn’t scare me. He shows me how he makes broccoli taste better by sticking the tree part into a bowl of cheese.

I didn’t know cheese could come in a bowl. I like it.

Brooke and Kathryn don’t eat the cheese, but Glenn does and I do. I try my potato sticks and my hot dog in it too. (The food hot dog, not the puppy Hot Dog.) I try dipping a berry in it, but that isn’t very good.

After we eat, I pick up my empty plate. One of my chores at Wendy’s house is to help clear the table. Kathryn smiles and says, ‘Thank you, River.’ She shows me where to put it in the kitchen.

Brooke asks if I want to walk to the creek and we go back outside. There is no fence around their house. I can only see one other house and it is far away.

Brooke makes me step around a big ant pile out in the grass,
but the ants are all running around carrying things and I want to look. She says it’s okay to watch the ants if I don’t get too close. There are so many ants that I can’t count that high.

‘If you get too close, they think you’re a big monster, and they all bite you to make you run away,’ she says. ‘See, one bit me last week.’ She shows me a red spot on her ankle.

I don’t want to make those ants scared.

She has a real creek in her back yard. There are trees on both sides of it. We climb on to a big rock and sit near the edge. I can see down into the water. There’s sand and rocks at the bottom. I don’t see any fish, but there are bugs buzzing around on top of the water and we hear a frog.

‘This is my favourite place in the world,’ Brooke says.

My favourite place used to be Mama’s closet. It was dark all the time and Harry never found me there. This rock is better, I think.

Brooke makes her sweater like a pillow and lies on her back. She says, ‘I like watching the clouds go by through the trees.’

I make my jacket a pillow and lie down too. She points to a cloud and says it looks like a squirrel. I think it looks like Hot Dog. I hold him up above me so I can see him next to the cloud.

‘You’re right. That cloud
does
look more like Hot Dog,’ she says.

I have a bad dream after bedtime. When I wake up, Brooke is sitting next to me instead of Wendy.
I want Wendy. I want Wendy. I want Wendy
.

‘I’m sorry you’re scared and in a new place,’ Brooke says. ‘I know how that feels.’

She rubs my head a little, like Wendy does when I have a bad dream. Wendy had to cut my hair really short because Sean got lice and he gave them to me. I like bugs, but I didn’t like
those
bugs. They itched.

Brooke says it’s a little dark in here, and she goes to open the curtain wide. ‘Is this better?’ she asks, and I nod. There are lots and lots of stars in the sky, and we can see the moon.

‘Would you like me to sing you a song? I don’t know very many, but I know a couple that my daddy used to sing to me when I was a little girl and I had bad dreams.’

I nod again and she picks me up. She sits in the big chair next to the window and sings
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
. That’s a song Wendy sings to me sometimes. I hear her heart go
thump
,
thump
under my ear. The stars twinkle in the sky, like they’re listening to her too.

Usually, prospective adoptive parents meet the kids at a fast-food place or a park, before they do overnights. But that’s not an option for us. I can’t be seen in public with River yet, or we risk alerting the gossip rags to his existence, and the rumours will go nuts.

He’s been to Kathryn’s for two more overnights, during which I got him used to the idea of talking online with Reid. Not that he talks – but he listens.

Reid signed on once in full costume – sword and all. River’s eyes widened while Reid told us about rappelling down a sheer cliff that day – how the winds were so gusty that his hair kept sweeping straight up, and the director kept yelling
Cut!
so someone could spray his hair back down while he hung in place on a rope.

‘It looked like this,’ he said, making his hair stand straight up and managing to tease a smile from our son.

Our son
. Every time I think or say it, it becomes less odd and more real.

River’s next overnight will take place in LA. He’ll stay with me three days and nights, and Reid four. Kris will send daily reports to the judge. When I asked her point-blank if the judge was considering an early placement due to Wendy’s health issues, she told me she couldn’t reveal that sort of thing. And then she arched a brow and gave me a meaningful smile.

I’m filming the season finale for
Life’s a Beach
this week. It’s odd working with my old castmates, most of whom would give anything to land either of the film parts I’ve done since I left. There are also a couple of new girls who were hired as replacement-blondes, which puts me on the receiving end of some spiteful glares and mumbled asides. If I decide to return to the show, their dreams and jockeying for the position of top bitch are
over
.

So sad, so sorry.

Should Xavier and I both choose to stick around, the writers will devise an angsty continuation of the boiling-point
romance between the now of-age Kirsten and her sexy long-time obsession, Kristopher. A passionate consummation will finally occur (during ratings week, no doubt), and then some justification for them to part will be devised, of course. Fans will be glued to the screen every week – whining and panting for our characters to screw each other again … until Stan and the writers finally decide to land them in bed. Or more likely, on a picturesque, isolated beach – as if those are
all over the place
up and down the coast of California.

Yawn.

Xavier is as dense as ever, but we still have unrestrained chemistry on film, so Stan is downright smug over his own genius in getting both of us to agree to do the finale. We do a scene that takes two hours of body contortions and crude (on Xavier’s part) lip-locks, and at the end of it, Stan tosses his arms in the air and says, ‘Am I not goddamned brilliant?’

He’s so pompous I want to choke him. But we’re almost done with the episode and it’s been a long day, so I smile tightly and devise a half-dozen ways of killing him in my pretty little head.

Not an hour later, in front of the entire cast and crew, Stan bestows a smarmy, veneer-toothed grin on Xavier and me. ‘I guess you two tried the wonderful world of movie-making and decided that a nice, steady, big-network pay-cheque is something to be missed after all, huh?’

As if we failed on the big screen, like so many optimistic television actors before us.

Xavier grunts in response, but he’s focused on a three-meat sandwich one of the giggly production assistants ran
out (literally) to get him – so his grunt could be a sound of carnivorous appreciation.

I hold my tongue, just barely, until I slide into my car and call Janelle, who’s left me five or six messages I don’t bother to listen to before dialling her back.

‘Brooke!’ she shrieks, and I dial down the volume on my phone. ‘You got the offer!’

Crap. I was about to beg her to find me another romcom, or a soap, or, hell – a set of commercials – anything but more Stan, as long as it’s filmed locally. I don’t want to talk about
Paper Oceans
today. Last week, I hinted at the fact that I’d most likely ask her to turn it down, and she
cried
. I have never heard Janelle cry, and Christ on a cracker, I hope I never do again.

Not to mention the fact that I really do want that role.

After today, I’d like to tell Stan to take his beach-bunny role and stuff it back up his ass.

‘I’m driving,’ I say.

‘Ohmygod! You know how I feel about talking and driving!’

Yes. Yes, I do
.

‘Then don’t leave me a hundred messages while I’m
filming
– I thought someone died. I’ll call you later.’

‘That doesn’t sound like a promising reaction.
Brooke
. Please. Do. Not. Turn. This. Down.’

‘Getting on the freeway!’ Total lie.

‘Okay, okay – call me tonight.’

Shit.

I’m meeting my personal paparazza at my new place in about an hour. Despite Reid’s reluctance to use Rowena to
introduce River to the world, I have faith in her – to a point, of course, restricted to her job. She’s always shown me in the light in which I wanted to be seen. She’s never sold a pic I hated. She’s even been handy a couple of times dispelling rumours I didn’t want to spread.

Even so, we’ve never met at my place before. My home has always been totally off-limits to the media – including Rowena. My new condo is situated inside a walled, guarded community. Ins and outs are filmed, and all non-residents are stopped by a security guard at the big iron gate at the front. Unauthorized visitors are sent packing.

The doorbell signals her arrival.

‘Hello, Rowena.’ She’s wary, like a wild animal being lured into a trap, but too hungry not to follow the smell of food. I shake her hand, which I guess I’ve never done before, because her hand is
tiny
. I knew she was skinny almost to the point of malnourishment, but up close, she looks like she’s got all the might of a parakeet. I can’t imagine how she heaves that camera equipment around.

‘Ms Cameron,’ she nods, entering haltingly. It’s like she expects to encounter a tripwire and be impaled on my wall any second. I’ve asked her to call me Brooke a dozen times before, but I realized a while back she was never going to, and I gave up.

She’s brought her gear, but it’s all zipped inside a tattered black bag. Glancing around surreptitiously, her desire to fish out her camera is unmistakable. We sit on my new sofas, skirting easily around the rounded corners of the reclaimed wood coffee table. There’s a pink-tipped ivy plant of some
sort in the centre of it, an indoor potted tree by the window and several hanging and potted plants on my top-floor patio.

I hired a plant person. Seriously.

‘I’ve got a proposition for you. It involves top-secret information, and of course a story I want told – photographically – in a certain light.’

‘I’m listening,’ she nods. Her ambitious eyes give me pause.

‘What I’m about to tell you cannot leave this room. Ever.’

Her eyes widen slightly. I’ve trusted Rowena with a lot over the past few years, but I’ve never prefaced anything like this.

‘You’ve always been more than fair, Ms Cameron. I’ll of course agree not to share any information you entrust me with.’

I take a deep breath and keep my eyes directly on hers. ‘I’m adopting a son.’

She blinks twice, stunned. ‘Congratulations.’ Whatever she expected, this isn’t it.

‘Thank you – but it’s more complicated than that sounds, which is why I need you. There’s no ringing biological clock, no philanthropic statement. This isn’t a foreign adoption. I’m adopting my own child, a baby I gave up when he was born four and a half years ago.’ Her eyes bulge. I’ve never seen this much emotion on Rowena’s face. ‘I assume you’ve made the leap everyone else will make – the question of
who’s the daddy
. Well, you’re in luck. If you agree to take photos of the three of us that he and I will approve prior to release, we’ll give you an exclusive.’

I don’t have to tell her that once this comes out, it will be huge. If she times this right, and gets ahead of everyone else, she’ll make a freaking fortune.

‘Oh, my God,’ she says. And then she does something I never, ever expected to see Rowena do. She bursts into tears.

Brooke:
Rowena is all set.

Reid:
K. What’s the plan?

Brooke:
I was thinking we could go somewhere semi-public and have her photograph us ‘candidly’ – like we arranged to happen with you and Emma last May, outside the airport.

Reid:
Shit. How did she ever forgive me?

Brooke:
You told her the truth when it counted, even if it made you look bad. For what it’s worth, I admired you for that. Hated the shit out of you at the time, but admired you. You were a better man than me.

Reid:
Haha.

Brooke:
So, one of the hiking spots in the Hills, really early on a weekday? OH – I know – let’s do it the day he transfers from me to you. The kid swap. Like divorced couples.

Reid:
Yeah – perfect. That will answer the ‘are they a couple?’ question too.

Brooke:
Ok, cool. Rowena is on this. She was stunned that you stepped up, btw. I think you’ve gained a new fan. She’s a single
mom, apparently. She said her guy used to knock her around. She left the day he hit her kid.

Reid:
Jesus.

Brooke:
She says she’s always liked me because I don’t take shit off anyone, lol.

Reid:
Haha. Truth.

Reid:
So have you heard anything more about Paper Oceans?

Brooke:
Yeah. Janelle got the call earlier today – they’ve officially offered it to me. But I’d have to be in Australia all of June. I can’t do it.

Reid:
Brooke. This is your CAREER. Say yes. I’ll take him in June. I’ll probably be done filming by then. If not, it’ll be a small overlap. He and the au pair we’re hiring can come to New York with me. It’ll be fine.

Reid:
Unless you want to do Life’s a Beach instead …

Reid:
I’ve heard that Xavier guy is an exceptional kisser …

Reid:
And Stan is a gem of a producer and not at all egocentric …

Brooke:
I’m crying. Holy shit. Are you sure? Are you SURE?

Reid:
YES. We’ll be fine here without you. This is going to be his life. He’ll adjust. I can do this. And yes, I even promise to call on the
all-knowing and ever-powerful Graham if I need advice.

Brooke:
Is it okay if I kind of love you right now?

Reid:
Yeah. Is it okay if I thank you for letting me knock you up?

Brooke:
God, we’re weird.

Reid:
Hell yeah we are.