Nothing Personal (22 page)

“I’m just saying, maybe you could ask him for another chance.” Her mom’s voice sounded small and scared, and Desiree twisted her hands together between her legs, pressed her elbows into her sides.

“I just
told
you.” It was the Bad Voice, the really loud one, and she shrank a little further into the door. “He’s been out to get me from Day
One.
He wrote me up for every little thing he could. And the second he found something he could use, some stupid rule that everybody breaks anyway,
bam.
”

Her father’s fist hit the steering wheel with a
thunk.
The car went sideways, and her dad said a bad word, and there was a screechy sound.

“Chris. Slow down. Please.” That was her mom. Desiree could see the side of her head, but she couldn’t see what she looked like, because it was all dark. She wished her mom would look back at her. They’d been supposed to go see Santa Claus at the mall tonight. And then her mom was going to take her to get ice
cream, even though it was cold outside, but that was OK, because it was a Special Occasion, and it was a Girl’s Night Out.

They were supposed to go right from day care, but then they had to go a different way, because her dad had called to get picked up, and th
ey had gone to his work instead, even though he usually didn’t come home until she was in bed. And now he was driving, and he was mad. And Desiree wanted to ask about Santa Claus, but she didn’t.

“Did he say you could file for unemployment?” That was her mom again, and her voice was
quiet, and scared.

“Do you think I sat around and talked to him about unemployment? Should I have said, ‘Oh, excuse me. Could you pretty please toss me a bone so my wife won’t be on my fucking back
when I get home tonight?’”

“
Shh,” her mother hissed. “Desiree.”

“Do you think you could be just a little bit supportive?”
Her dad’s voice sounded mean. “Maybe take my side for once? One time? Is that too much to ask?”

“I just said . . .” Her mom’s voice
was wrong, wiggly, and Desiree knew that meant that she was going to cry, and she pressed her fingernails into her palms and bit her lip to keep from crying herself.

“
I just wondered, are you going to be able to get unemployment,” her mom said. “Because if you can’t, we’ll have to move again. We can’t pay the rent on my tips. Not past January. Even if you watch Desiree until you get another job, so we don’t have to pay for day care.”

“
Excuse me for not thinking it through, while I was sitting there getting fucking
fired.
But I’ll tell you what. Since you have to have all the details, I’ll show you the letter. And then you decide for yourself if there’s likely to be unemployment.”

Her dad’s hand
came out of the front, groping toward Desiree’s leg. She shrank against the seat again, pulled her legs to the side. She could see his head now, because he was leaning over. His hand was grabbing all around, and then it took hold of a piece of paper that was lying on the floor.

And then th
e car was going the wrong way. They were going sideways, and there was the screechy sound again, and somebody was screaming. Her mom. Her mom was screaming. And then there was a really big bang, and Desiree felt the seatbelt yanking tight around her, and she hit her head hard against the window.

A
nd it hurt, and she wanted her mom. But her mom didn’t come.

And after a long time, some people were shining lights inside the car, and they talked and talked, and then they took her out and put her on a bed thing and put the bed in a place like a room, but it wasn’t a room, because it was a truck. And her mom still didn’t come.

She didn’t tell Alec all that
, of course. Nobody wanted to hear all that. She just laid it out for him in a few bald sentences.

“
Holy . . . Wow,” he said blankly. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t.
How would you?” She was embarrassed now. Oh, yeah. This was definitely the way to get a guy. Cry all over him, again and again. Yeah, she was sure men found that really attractive. No wonder she’d been single so long.

She stood up abruptly. “My butt’s cold, and I’ll bet yours is too. Let’s walk, OK? Unless you want to get back.”

“No, I want to walk.” He looked a little disconcerted, and no wonder. But he set off with her down the packed snow of the path, took her gloved hand in his own.

“Not exactly what you had in mind,” she suggested. “For your romance.
Not quite walking barefoot on the beach.”

“Exactly what I had in mind,” he said firmly. “Being with you, that was the main part of the whole deal.”

“Having me weep all over you,” she persisted.

“Also fine by me.”

She gave it up, walked beside him in silence for a few minutes.

“
What was your mom like?” he asked at last.

It wasn’t the question she’d e
xpected, and she struggled a little with the answer. “I don’t remember too much, mostly just images. Moments, feelings. She had curly red hair like me, and I remember that I thought it couldn’t be so bad to have red hair, even though the other kids said so, because she did, and she was pretty.”

“And she used to sing to me,” she added after
another minute. She couldn’t seem to stop herself from telling him. The residue of terror and tears, she supposed. And she’d laid herself so bare to him this weekend, there didn’t seem like much point in holding back now. “She had this rocking chair, and when I was sad, she’d put me on her lap, and wrap her arms around me, and rock, and sing me this silly song. After she died, I used to get in there by myself and rock, and sing the song, really softly, you know, so my dad wouldn’t hear. But it didn’t feel the same.”

“No,” he s
aid, his voice coming out gruff. “I can see that it wouldn’t.”

“And I r
emember,” she said with a laugh, “I used to think she was so fancy, because she had a black skirt and a white blouse, and a little black bow tie on a piece of black elastic. She called it “my tuxedo,” and I don’t know how old I was before I figured out that it was her uniform. She was a waitress, you see, like my grandma and me. My dad and I would go there sometimes to get her after her shift, and she’d bring me hot chocolate with whipped cream on top, and a maraschino cherry. Just like on my grandma’s Jell-O salad.” She laughed again. “That’s probably why I still eat it, why I’ve never had the heart to tell her that I hate it.”

“No,” he said
, “it’s because you love your grandma.”

“Yeah.” She blinked a few stubborn tears back again. “That too.”

“But,” he said after a few more silent minutes, “you didn’t go live with your grandmother after that? You stayed with your dad? Well, I guess that made sense.”

“It didn’t,
not really,” she admitted, “once I was old enough to think about it. It wasn’t like he ever seemed all that crazy about me. He liked pretty girls, and I sure wasn’t that. Not a very attractive child at all, really. But it would have been a hardship for my grandparents to have me. They didn’t have any money either, though they had a place of their own.”

“The mobile home.”

“Yeah. So I wondered. I always thought,” and the tears were there again no matter how hard she tried, choking her up, “that they just didn’t want me quite enough. I went to Chico every summer for a couple weeks, though, during their vacation. I realize now that they saved it all up for when I’d come. Don’t you think that shows that you really love somebody? If you save all your vacation for them?”

“I never thought about it,” he admitted. “I guess it does, though.”

“That’s why I try to give my grandma nice vacations now,” she explained, “because she never had them, just took care of me. Too bad she only wants to go on the bus to Reno.” She laughed a little again, thinking about that. “But I do try.” 

“But you wondered,” he prompted.

“Oh.” She sighed. “Yeah. Turns out it was pretty simple. Money. My mom’s Social Security. If my grandparents had been my guardians, if I’d even lived with them, been registered for school there, they’d have got the money. And my dad wasn’t the best at holding down a job.”

“But you did end up with them.”

“With my grandma, yes. Because my dad had a girlfriend—well, another girlfriend, but one who made fairly good money, and she wanted to move to Arizona, had an offer of a good job down there.”

“And you didn’t want to go?
”

“It wasn’t
just that.” She swallowed against the remembered shame of it. “She didn’t want me to come. But that was fine,” she hurried on, “because you’re right, I didn’t want to go, and I finally ended up with my grandmother in Chico, where I wanted to be anyway, and where the school was better, and there were more AP classes, which made it so I could finish college in three years, which was pretty important, I’ll tell you that. My grandpa had died by that time, and it was rough for my grandma, so the Social Security helped with that too, as long as it lasted, until I was eighteen. And once I finished business school, you know, I could help her out, and it’s all been good from there,” she finished in a rush. “The occasional Jell-O salad, you know, the occasional heart attack, but otherwise, happy endings.”

She laughed a little
, trembled with tension, or the release of it, she couldn’t tell which. “There you go. My life story. Talk about over-sharing. Cue the violins, huh?”

He didn’t answer her right away. He couldn’t. He’d thought she’d twisted his heart before. Now it was as if she’d ripped it right out of his chest.

“I don’t even know what to say to all that,” he said helplessly after a minute. “I’m at a total loss here.”

“Hey,” she said, giving his hand a little tug, “it’s not
that
sad. I mean, look, here I am. Healthy, wealthy—well, reasonably, and getting better all the time—and hopefully wise. Lots of kids have a harder time than that.”

“Oh, yeah? Not the way I see it.”

“All you need is one person.” She lifted her other hand, the one he wasn’t gripping tight, and put up her index finger in its gray glove.
“One.
One person who thinks you’re special, who you know you can count on to love you no matter what. I had two, my grandma and my grandpa. Lots of kids have
zero.
You know how many kids are in foster care in California? How many kids ought to be? You know how happy any one of them would be to turn eighteen and still have a place to live like I did? Somebody to believe in them at all?”

He was stunned at her passion. “That’s the reason for the scholarship, then,” he guessed.

“It’s a little thing,” she said, “but it’s something I can do.”

“So maybe that’s where my foundation should be focused, you think?” he asked. “Something like that?”

She shrugged. “It should be wherever something’s happening that you can’t stand, I suppose. And that could be something entirely different. There are lots of sad stories in the world, lots of good causes. I’m not telling you which one matters most.”

“And don’t you think we’d better turn around?” she asked a bit plaintively. “Because
I can’t even feel my toes anymore.”

“Well, good morning, Merry Sunshine.”
Brandon looked pointedly at his Rolex when Alec walked into the break room in mid-afternoon. “We had a good weekend, did we?”

“
You know where I was.” Alec grabbed a Red Bull from the fridge and shifted his laptop case on his shoulder. “Rae’s grandmother. We just got back.”

“How’s Dixie doing?” Tha
t was Joe, veering off on his way across the floor at sight of Alec and coming in to join them.

“Good as she could be.” Alec popped
the top on his drink and took a long swallow. It had been a fairly eventful day, one way and another, and he had a lot of catching up to do before he left tonight. “She went home from the hospital around noon today, and Rae’s got somebody in to take care of her while she rehabs.”

“Tough,” Joe said. “On Rae, I mean.”

“Yeah. It was.”

“Uh-huh.” Brandon took another swig of his
own coffee. “Good of you to take her up there and hold her hand. You trying to tell us you’re not hitting that?”

“Watch it,” Alec warned, trying to keep his temper from flaring.
Deny, deny, deny.
“Rae’s been with her sick grandmother, and I’ve been writing code in a waiting room. So watch it.”

He wanted to drop it, so he dropped it.
“You get what I sent yesterday?” he asked Joe.

Joe nodded.
“Looks good. I got Michael going on it this morning.”

And then
Rae walked into the room, and Alec hoped she hadn’t heard what Brandon had said.

He’d
waited at her house for her to get changed, looked around her pretty living room in surprise, then driven down the hill with her, parked at his place. Had thought about changing himself, decided not to bother, and was still in his jeans and flannel shirt.

Not her, though.
Her hair was up in that twist again, the sexy, snug top and jeans replaced by her brown and cream outfit. All covered up, and still looking so good to him. He did his best not to let his gaze linger, tried to remember what he’d been talking about.

“Hi, guys,” she said, passing Alec without a blink and pulling the milk out of the f
ridge, pouring it into her mug and popping it into the microwave. “Any disasters during my unexpected vacation?”

“No,” Joe said. “Alec says your grandma’s doing better. Glad to hear it.”

“Thanks.”

“Nice to have Alec’s company, too,” Brandon said. “In that waiting room and all.”

“Yes,” she said, punching the button on the coffee machine. “It was.”

Brandon stared at Alec accusingly
as soon as she’d left the room again. “You lie like a dog.”

“You stay with your folks?” Joe asked, ignoring Brandon’s comment.

Alec forced himself to relax. “Yeah. Saw Alyssa for a little while too. She was up for the weekend, getting over a breakup.”

“She OK?”

“Oh, yeah. Liss is a survivor, you know that. She was seeing a surgeon, someone she met on a sales call. He told her he’d just gotten through a rough divorce, hurting, scared to risk his heart. You know, the usual B.S.”

“And he wasn’t,” Joe guessed.

“Nope. She ran into him on the Santa Monica Pier. With his wife.” Alec sketched a half-circle out from his stomach. “About eight months’ worth of not-divorced.”

“Ouch,” Brandon laughed. “That’s
gotta be awkward. What are the odds?”

Alec kept his focus on Joe.
“He showed up at her place a couple hours later to ‘explain,’ can you believe it? Clearly didn’t bother to get to know her very well during their brief romance, because you know Liss has a fairly good left hook.”

That brought a satisfied smile to
Joe’s face. “He ran into a door, huh?”

“Yup.” Alec tossed off the last of the Red Bull. “Gabe and I taught her well. Wonder how he explained that one at home.
She was icing that hand all day Saturday.” He tossed the can into the recycling. “Back to work. Come tell me what I’ve missed, Joe, when you get a chance.”

“I’ll come right now,” Joe said, and they left the room together, leaving Brandon with his coffee. And all his speculation, Alec hoped,
unanswered.