My Hero (26 page)

Cal and I are back together.

She couldn't get that sentence out of her head.

Once inside her apartment, the first thing she did was turn on the television, not simply to get a much-needed news fix but to supply herself with some background noise to drown out Diana Griffin's haunting words.

Cal and I are back together.

And Holly couldn't for the life of her recall how she'd responded when those words were spoken on the phone. She was fairly sure she responded vocally, other than just sitting at her desk feeling gut punched and out of breath and dizzy.

Cal and I are back together.

Surely she'd said something. A startled little “oh” no doubt, if not an audible gasp. She did remember saying brusquely to Diana, “I'll have to get back to you” before slapping the phone back in its cradle.

She turned the TV up another notch before she went to the refrigerator, where, if the gods had been sympathetic, she'd have found a Sara Lee coffee cake awaiting her. Instead, there were three yogurts, two of which had expired, and what was left of the split of champagne she'd bought last week to celebrate her promotion.

Jesus. Was it just a week? It felt more like a month. Shaking her head, Holly reached for the chilled little bottle, plucked out its plastic stopper, and drank the last flat ounce—gack—just before the phone rang.

It was probably Mel, who typically remembered something he'd meant to tell her when he was in the middle of the New Jersey Turnpike. Thank heavens for speed dial. Tonight he was probably calling to clarify exactly what he'd meant by wicked.

“What?” she asked when she picked up the receiver.

“Hey.”

Oh, God. It wasn't Mel.

“Hey,” she responded. The word sprang from her lips automatically even though Cal was the last person on earth she wanted to talk to right now. She wasn't prepared to be cool and unconcerned, to converse with him as if she'd never even kissed him much less gone to bed with him, to come across as if she weren't angry and hurt, sounding not like
Sleepless in Seattle
but
Wretched in Manhattan, Devastated in New York.

“How did you get my number?” She asked the very first question that popped into her head. It seemed neutral enough. At least it was better than hanging up.

“Ve haf our vays, liebchen.”

Cal was laughing. Laughing! God. How could he laugh? How
could
he when all Holly wanted to do was cry? She was hardly able to breathe, much less talk.

“Just a minute,” she told him. “I've got something on the stove.”

As if there really were a pot about to boil over, Holly put the phone down on the bed and walked briskly into the small galley kitchen, where she stood for a moment, motionless, her head a blank and her heart as heavy as a stone.
Don't just stand here. Do something,
she told herself. So she reached down, opened the door of the oven, then let it slam closed. She opened the refrigerator, stood in its cool wash of light a second, then slammed that door closed, as well. She went to the sink, turned on the cold water, and bent forward to slurp from the tap.

None of the frenetic activity helped her know what to say to Cal, though. It wasn't like her to avoid a confrontation. It wasn't her habit to skirt an issue. To skulk. To pussyfoot. Hollis Mae Hicks was not a pussyfooter, by God. She was used to saying exactly what she felt, and she told herself she ought to pick up the phone and do just that.

Cal and I are back together.
What do you have to say about that, bub? Care to comment, asshole?

Oh, but just now, just this minute, she couldn't bear to hear one of those knee-jerk male responses. A
What are you talking about?
or an
It's not my fault,
or a
Give me a fucking break, will you?

Holly stalked back to the bedroom and picked up the phone from the bed, hoping against hope that her caller had grown bored while she was gone and had hung up. She didn't hear a dial tone, but at least he wasn't laughing anymore.

“Still there?” she asked in a tone neither sweet nor sour.

“Still here,” he said. “I miss you.”

The stone in Holly's heart increased to the size of a boulder, pressing against her lungs, hampering her ability to inhale or exhale properly.
I miss you, too. Oh, God. I'll be missing you the rest of my life.

“That thing in the kitchen…” she said. “I…uh…I need to get back to it.”

He didn't say anything then. To Holly it seemed less an absence of sound than a dark, profound silence—almost palpable across two thousand miles.

“Cal?”

“Yeah, well, listen…” Now his voice was brusque and all business. “I don't want to keep you. I just called to ask you a quick question anyway. About that fifty-dollar bill you gave me at the airport. The one for Ellie.”

“What about it?”
So you don't really miss me, then? You called to ask about some stupid money?

“Do you remember where you got it, or maybe remember who gave it to you?”

“No,” she answered, hardly bothering to hide her irritation.

“Did you get it at Ramon's?”

“I don't know,” she snapped.

“Think. This is important.”

Think? Here's what I think, buster! Why did you even bother to say you miss me when it's obvious you don't? And when did you get back with your wife? You should have told me. Damn you, Cal. That was important. Not some fucking fifty-dollar bill.

“Think, Holly,” he said again. “Please.”

“Oh, all right.”

Holly really didn't have to think. She clearly recalled the moment when she got the fifty yesterday in change from Hec Garcia at his print shop after she'd used his Xerox machine to copy Cal's yearbook. She'd handed Hec a crisp hundred and he'd given her the tattered fifty along with a few smaller bills and forty-two cents in change.

“Hec Garcia gave it to me yesterday,” she said.

“At his print shop?” Cal asked.

“Yes. I did some copying there. What's the big deal?”

“No big deal.”

There was that bottom-of-the-ocean, sunken
Titanic
silence again on the other end of the line, and Holly wondered if he was preparing a confession or framing an apology or working up to an offhand remark about his reconciliation with his wife. If that was the case, she was fairly sure the top of her head was going to explode with anger and the phone was going to melt in her fist.

But all he said was “Well, I'll let you get back to whatever it is you need to get back to.”

And then he hung up.

Just like that.

Cal didn't know how long he sat on the pulled-out sofabed with the dead phone in his hand. Long enough for the sun to set and for darkness to creep into each corner of his room. He had no idea what time it was. What difference did it make? All he knew was that he felt like the biggest fool on the planet.

Yeah. Sure. He'd anticipated that Holly would get sucked back into the rat race once she was back in New York. He just hadn't expected it would happen quite so fast. One minute he was kissing her good-bye; the next minute she was kissing him off.

Just like that.

If he hadn't been such a coward, he'd have asked her whose voice he heard in the background and what the hell was so important in her kitchen that made her sound so damned distant and distracted on the phone.

He'd called to tell her how much he missed her, how much he wanted her, to tell her he didn't want to wait four interminable weeks for her return to Honeycomb, to say he was thinking about flying to New York, thinking about her, thinking about the two of them, together again, maybe always.

She hadn't given him a chance to say much of anything before she raced away from the phone, and by the time she came back Cal was already feeling like a fool. The funny fifty was the last thing he wanted to ask her about, but as a defense, he put on his Secret Service hat and pretended the money was the only reason for his call.

Hec Garcia. He'd think about that tomorrow and decide how to proceed. In the meantime, he was tempted to drive into town, and reclaim his seat at Ramon's while renewing his old acquaintance with Dr. Heineken and Mr. Johnnie Walker.

“Cal?” Ruth knocked softly on his door. “I was just going to make some popcorn for Dooley and myself. Do you…?”

A wedge of bright light from the hallway appeared as she opened the door.

“What are you doing, sitting here in the dark?” she asked, her tongue making a soft, admonishing cluck.

“Just sitting.”

“Are you all right, Cal?” After flipping the switch for the overhead fixture, she stood peering at him in the sudden wash of light. Worry furrowed her brow and dragged down her mouth. “Are you feeling okay? You look a little pale to me.”

“Fine.” Actually now that he thought about it, a headache was flaring in his right temple.

He must've winced or something, because his sister sighed as she settled beside him and lifted her hand to test his forehead for fever. He had a split-second impression of his mother doing that same thing, and it occurred to him that only his mother and his sister and perhaps a nurse or two had ever done that. It struck him as pretty sad. But just then probably anything would've struck him as pretty sad.

“You're nice and cool,” Ruth said, removing her hand. “Were you on the phone?”

Cal looked down at the portable handset. He'd forgotten it was still in his hand.

“No,” he said. “I was going to make a call, but I changed my mind. It wasn't important.”

“Want some popcorn? I make it the way Mama used to. Remember? On top of the stove in that heavy black kettle?”

“Yeah. I remember. Maybe later.”

“Aw, Cal.” Ruthie reached up and smoothed her hand across his back. “I wish I could snap my fingers and have things go back to the way they were a year ago. Before Baltimore. Well, maybe two years ago. Before Diana.”

“That'd be a nifty trick,” he said, almost wishing it were possible, even as he realized that if it hadn't been for Baltimore, he never would have met Miss Holly Hicks. For all that was worth now.

She sighed as she leaned her head against his shoulder. “Seems like we're pulling in two separate directions over the ranch, doesn't it? About selling it, I mean. This restaurant thing. It's so important to me, Cal. But so are you, sweetie. I just worry—”

“Too much,” he said, cutting her off. “Don't worry about me. Go ahead and sell the place, Ruthie. I'll be going back to Washington in September, and after that I probably won't get back here more than once every two or three years.”

“You think you're that much better? Dooley says he's noticed it, but…” Her voice drifted off, as if she didn't truly want to confront him over the subject of his health or lack of it.

“I'm just about back,” he lied. “And by September I'll be a hundred percent. You want me to call that real estate agent and tell him that was all bullshit last week? Just say the word and I'll do it.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Let me think about it. I better go make that popcorn for Dooley. You sure you don't want some?”

“No, thanks, sis. Hey, flip off the light on your way out, will you? I think I'm going to try to get a little sleep.”

Half an hour later Ruth and Dooley had made a good-sized dent in the huge bowl of buttered popcorn that sat between them on the couch.

“This is good, honey,” Dooley said, reaching for another handful. “Think we should save some for Cal?”

“He went to bed a while ago.”

“This early? Is he feeling okay?”

“Hard telling,” she replied, drawing her feet up beneath the folds of her robe. “Dooley, you didn't say anything to him about Diana calling, did you?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Not a word. Why?”

“I just wondered. He seemed kinda down tonight. I thought maybe you told him she was trying to get in touch with him.”

“Nope.”

“The bitch,” Ruth muttered. “I wonder what she wants with him now.”

“Probably just looking for more money in the divorce settlement. That'd be my guess.”

“She's got something up her silken sleeve. I'd bet the damned ranch on that.”

Dooley chuckled. “Don't do that, honey. We can't afford it.”

She reached for a perfectly popped, butter-drenched kernel, chewed it thoughtfully, and then said, “Cal said he'll be going back to Washington in September.”

“Well, I wouldn't bet the ranch on that, either.”

“I want my restaurant, Dooley.”

“I know.” He patted her knee. “We'll figure out something, honey.”

Chapter Seventeen

O
ver the course of the next four weeks, Holly became increasingly convinced that Murphy's Law had been misnamed. It should have been named Hicks' Law because everything that could possibly go wrong with her Hero Week project did. With a vengeance.

It started with a cold, the one she caught almost as soon as she got back to New York, a whopping, Texas-sized and Texas-bred infection she no doubt picked up on her flight home from Houston, or maybe it was a parting gift from Cal, in which case she hoped he had one, too, and worse. At any rate, it was a monster cold that had her crawling home from work on Friday, then hardly getting out of bed until she absolutely had to on Monday morning.

“You look like shit, kid,” Mel said upon seeing her, and then promptly put her in a cab and told her to stay home till Wednesday.

The next week her health was substantially better, but her luck certainly hadn't improved. She drove through a torrential rain to Baltimore with Chris Keifer, her favorite cameraman, to get some footage of the site where the shooting had happened the year before. Just as they reached the hotel, the rain stopped, the sun broke through the clouds and things seemed to be looking up for Holly. But only for a moment. It turned out that so many ghoulishly curious sightseers and assassination buffs had caused so much disruption in the vicinity that the hotel management had recently bricked up that exit and torn up the adjacent sidewalk, or what was left of it after people kept chiseling out chunks of pavement where Thomas Earl Starks' bullets had ricocheted and the President's protector had been gunned down.