Once in a Blue Moon (22 page)

“Even though it ends tragically?”

“She chose love over what society expected of her. I see that as more brave than tragic.”

“I didn’t know you were such a romantic.” His tone was teasing, but the gaze he directed at her across the table was as intimate as an embrace. She felt a light shiver go through her.

“Blame it on Tolstoy,” she tossed back lightly. She didn’t dare say more. In the mood she was in right now, flushed with the wine and Randall’s company, it wouldn’t take much for her to do as Anna Karenina had and throw caution to the winds.

After supper was over and the dishes cleared away, they retired to the living room for coffee and dessert—tiny cups of espresso and amaretti biscuits. She lingered over the first cup but said no to a second, murmuring, with some reluctance, that she ought to start thinking about heading back home. Before she could get up, he stilled her with a hand on her arm. “No, don’t go—not yet.” He paused, smiling at the trepidation that must have been evident on her face. “Don’t worry. I wasn’t planning to seduce you,” he said, though his eyes told a different story. “I have a favor to ask. Feel free to say no if you think I’m imposing.”

She was intrigued. “I doubt I’d think that. But I suppose you should tell me what it is before I promise you the moon.”

“I wondered if you’d take a look at the novel I’m working on. I’m only a few chapters into it, and I haven’t shown it to anyone yet, not even my editor. I trust you to give me an honest opinion.”

“I’d be honored,” she said.

Minutes later she was ensconced in the bedroom in back that doubled as his study, absorbed in the pages he’d given her to read. It wasn’t at all what she’d expected. Unlike the pulse-pounding thrill ride that was
Blood Money
, this one had a slow, almost elegiac quality. She was immediately hooked nonetheless by the story of a teenaged boy, presumably a runaway, hitchhiking along a lonely stretch of highway in the pouring rain. The writing alone made her want to read on. It was so evocative that she felt the boy’s exhaustion and fear of whatever he was running from. She felt the loneliness of the old man who stopped to give him a ride as palpably as if she’d been in that car, the rain sheeting down too fast for the windshield wipers to keep up with it. When she was done, she went in search of Randall, whom she found loading another stack of CDs into the player.

“It’s good,” she said. “I’m glad you didn’t give me the whole thing to read or I’d have been up all night.”

He smiled and walked over to her, taking her in his arms. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to stay the night anyway?” he asked softly. “I can’t offer you the whole manuscript to read, but I know the author, and he might be persuaded to tell you how it ends.”

He reached for her hand and brought it to his mouth, pressing his lips to her upturned palm. Lindsay began to tremble. She might have been standing there without a stitch on for how deliciously exposed she felt. She couldn’t move; she could scarcely draw a breath. Any thoughts of an early departure, or of her boyfriend, faded from her mind. When he brought his lips to her mouth, it was no accident this time. The effect was electrifying. She had never before been kissed like this, as thoroughly and seductively as Anna by Vronsky. She sensed he was taking his time because he saw this not as the end of the evening but as the beginning in some way. Lindsay felt it, too, that quickening inside, like the point in a novel where she’d think,
This is where it gets good
.

She was so carried away, she was scarcely conscious of moving into the bedroom or of their clothes coming off. Both seemed to happen of their own accord. Then came a succession of exquisite sensations, each one melting into the next, as they lay tangled together on the bed. There was only Randall’s touch and the brush of his lips as he caressed every newly awakened inch of her. She stroked him, too, trailing her fingers over his muscular chest, with its mat of curly hair, down to where his tan line ended and the pale flesh began . . . and below.

When he finally entered her, she tilted her hips to meet his thrust. Then they were two people moving as one. For Lindsay, it was a revelation. With other lovers—even Grant—it had been good but never
this
good. This was on a whole other plane. She felt a connection to Randall that was more than mere desire, that had its roots in something deeper.

Then she was coming in a blinding rush, and moments later he came, too, with a sharp cry of release. Afterward he didn’t pull out right away. He held her tightly, as if fearful that she would slip away altogether once they drew apart. She could feel his breath coming in soft, noiseless bursts against her ear. Neither of them spoke. There was no need.

Even after they drew apart, they remained close, facing each other with their noses almost touching. Close enough for her to see, in the faint light spilling in from the hallway, the bristly patch on his jaw, the size of a small coin, where he’d missed a spot shaving.

“Did you feel that?” he murmured, his lips curling in a sleepy smile.

“What?”

“Oh, I’d give it about a nine point oh on the Richter scale.”

She chuckled softly. “A best-selling novelist, and the best you can come up with is an earthquake metaphor?”

“Would a tsunami work better?”

“Trite.”

“Okay, we’ll just have to settle on mind-blowing, then. Not very original, I know, but it’s the best I can do. My circuits are pretty fried.”

She snuggled in close so that her head was nestled against his chest. For a long while, she was content to just lie there, basking in the afterglow and listening to Randall’s heartbeat as it gradually slowed. “Tell me something about yourself that I don’t already know,” she murmured at last.

“What is it you want to know?”

“Something that will make you seem a little less perfect, so I’ll know you’re real.”

She felt him tense, and she drew back to look at him. He appeared troubled, for some reason, but he was quick to shrug it off. “Oh, I’m real, all right. In fact, I’m about as real as it gets. So don’t go putting me on any kind of pedestal.” He spoke in a lightly ironic tone.

“Why, do you have something to hide?”

Lindsay smiled to let him know she was kidding. This time he didn’t smile back. His eyes searched her face, still wearing that troubled look. Then he pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her. Even so, she shivered a little, as if a cool breeze had wafted into the room.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

“D
O
I
LOOK OKAY TO YOU
?” Kerrie Ann turned away from the full-length mirror. When Lindsay didn’t answer right away, she bit her lip, frowning. “That bad, huh? Do you think I should change?”

“No, you’re fine.” Lindsay smiled. “It’s just that this is the first time you’ve asked for my opinion.”

“So lay it on me, okay? ’Cause I don’t want to go in there looking like someone who can’t take care of her own kid.”

Today’s hearing was to decide whether Kerrie Ann should be allowed overnight visits with her daughter. The final decision on custody was still pending, but this was a crucial step. If the judge deemed her sufficiently reformed and she didn’t blow it, she’d be halfway home. Still, in a life that was more about ifs than whens, Kerrie Ann knew better than to count on anything.

“Well, since you ask . . .” Lindsay stepped back to eye her more critically. “I’d lose the bracelets—all that jingling will be a distraction in the courtroom. The necklace, too. It’s a little too . . .”

“Bling?” Kerrie Ann supplied.

Lindsay put it another way: “Do you have anything that isn’t quite so . . . um, shiny?”

Kerrie Ann fingered the heart-shaped pendant given to her by Jeremiah. She liked that it was shiny, with her initials spelled out in zircons. Besides, it had sentimental value. “I don’t see what’s wrong with it,” she said, straightening her back and jutting out her chin.

Lindsay remained firm. “You can borrow my pearls,” she said.

“And look like somebody’s grandma? No, thanks.” But Lindsay just stood there giving her the Look, as if to say,
This is no joking matter
. Ordinarily it would have prompted another smart remark, but Kerrie Ann put a lid on it this time. Too much was at stake. “You got anything that’s more my style?” she asked in a meeker tone.

Lindsay fished around her in her jewelry box before offering a teardrop pendant, gold set with an opal, on a delicate gold chain. “This will look good with what you have on,” she said as she fastened it around Kerrie Ann’s neck.

“Not half bad,” Kerrie Ann grudgingly conceded as she checked her reflection in the mirror. “Thanks.”

“No problem. It’s only fair, since you helped me out the other night. Never mind that I nearly went lame in those shoes,” Lindsay groused good-naturedly. “Honestly, I don’t know how you get around in those things. I had to take them off as soon as I got there.”

Kerrie Ann reached for her makeup kit. “Was that the only thing you took off?” She slanted her sister a coy look as she applied blush to her cheeks. All she’d gotten out of Lindsay so far was that she’d had a “nice time,” which didn’t explain the dreamy-eyed look she’d been wearing all week or the way she went all girlish and secretive whenever Randall phoned.

“None of your beeswax,” Lindsay retorted, but her reddening cheeks only confirmed Kerrie Ann’s suspicions.

She would have let it go, but she sensed something was troubling Lindsay. “If you’re feeling guilty, don’t,” she advised. “You’re not the type who cheats on your boyfriend because you want to try out a new flavor. I’m sure it happened for a reason.”

“And what would that be?” Lindsay eyed her dubiously.

“Look, all I know is that you were out with a hot guy and came home looking like you got royally—” She broke off at the warning look her sister shot her. “Anyway, I’ve never seen you look that way with Grant.”

Lindsay threw up her hands. “You and Miss Honi. I swear, sometimes I think you two are in cahoots!”

Kerrie Ann clicked the compact case shut and swiveled around to face her. “I can have my own opinion, can’t I? Besides, I’ve got nothing against Grant.”

“But?” Lindsay, hands on hips, waited to hear the rest.

“Clearly you’re not getting enough.”

The color in Lindsay’s cheeks deepened. “Does everything have to be about sex?”

“I don’t mean just sex. But that’s a part of it, too. I mean, without it, what’s the point? You might as well be hanging out with your girlfriends.”

Lindsay surrendered with a sigh and sank down on the bed. “It’s complicated.”

Was it, or was she just making it that way? Kerrie Ann wondered. “So did you and Grant have a fight or something?”

“No, nothing like that.” Lindsay sighed again. “You know how you can be going along and everything’s just fine, then you meet someone and . . . and suddenly it’s
not
fine? That’s what happened with Randall. Grant doesn’t know, of course, and that only makes it worse.”

“So, you gonna break up with him?”

“Who, Grant?”

“No, Mahatma Gandhi.”

Lindsay shrugged, turning her palms up in a helpless gesture. “It’s too soon to say. There’s a lot I still don’t know about Randall—he’s a bit of a mystery in some ways. And with Grant . . . well, at least I know what I’m getting. It may not be perfect, but it’s enough. Or it was. Should I give all that up just because a meteor came crashing through my roof?”

“Depends on the size of the meteor,” quipped Kerrie Ann. Lindsay cast her another sharp look, and Kerrie Ann added more seriously, “Isn’t that kind of what happened with us? I sort of landed on you like a meteor.”

“That’s different—you’re family.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t know me. And let’s be honest, I wasn’t exactly what you were expecting. But you took a chance on me, anyway. That says something, doesn’t it?”

“Yes—that I wasn’t going to turn my back on my own sister. This isn’t the same.”

Kerrie Ann felt warmed by her sister’s words. Did that mean Lindsay was starting to accept her? “Maybe not exactly, but my point is that most of the time, you’re better off just going with your gut. Yeah, I know, it can sometimes get you in trouble when you go off half cocked”—the way she had a habit of doing—“but you can also mess up by overthinking stuff.”

“Well, there’s no use dwelling on it. I don’t have to decide today.” Lindsay straightened her shoulders and stood up. “You
do
look nice,” she said, giving Kerrie Ann a final once-over. “I’m glad you decided on that dress.” It wasn’t what Lindsay had picked out for her when they’d gone clothes shopping earlier in the week, a pantsuit that had made her look like a nun in secular clothing. Instead Kerrie Ann had struck a middle ground in choosing a polka-dot wraparound dress that complimented her figure without flaunting it.

“You mean that?” Kerrie Ann asked.

Lindsay smiled in a way that softened the angles of her face. “Yes, I do.” She reached up to finger a lock of Kerrie Ann’s hair. “I also think you look better as a blond than with pink hair.”

Yesterday, with Miss Honi’s help, Kerrie Ann had done a home color job on her hair, doing away with the last of the pink streaks. Not that she didn’t still have a pink streak or two in her, but she’d seen the wisdom in not flaunting her inner wild child before the judge. It wasn’t as big a deal as quitting smoking, which she still struggled with, though the nicotine patches helped, but it made her wonder if there wasn’t a small part of her that was like her sister after all.

Kerrie Ann took one last look in the mirror, smoothing the front of her dress and applying a spritz of hairspray.
It’ll have to do because this is as good as it’s gonna get
. Aloud, she said, “I guess we should get going. It’s a long drive, and I don’t want to be late.”

She wasn’t due in court until three that afternoon, but San Luis Obispo was nearly four hours away by car, and she wanted to leave enough time in case of backed-up traffic or a flat tire. People like Lindsay could afford to show up late for a court date—it was no reflection on their character—but Kerrie Ann had lost that luxury when she’d lost her child.

Lindsay might have reasoned that it wasn’t going to take six hours even if they had a flat tire along the way, but she only said, “Off we go, then. Why don’t you round up Miss Honi while I go get the car? I’ll meet you out front.”

In the twelve-step program, Kerrie Ann had learned that you weren’t supposed to pray for anything specific. Prayer, according to the Big Book, wasn’t a Christmas-wish-list type of thing. You were supposed to just pray you’d make it through another day and leave the rest to your higher power. Not that she even knew who or what her higher power was. Growing up, shuttled from one foster home to the next, she’d been exposed to a grab bag of religions—Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal, Jewish—until about the age of thirteen, when it all became lumped together in her mind as one giant conspiracy with the single purpose of making her conform. It wasn’t until she’d joined the program that she began to see faith in a different light. The words of one of the old-timers, a scruffy ex-con called Big Ed, often rang in her head: “It don’t have to be Jesus. It can be anything you want—God, Mohammed, Buddha, or even freakin’ L. Ron Hubbard. Hell, that doorknob over there.” The bottom line, Big Ed had gone on to say, was that it was
yourself
you were praying to, the part of you that had gotten you this far and was keeping you on track. And who was to say that wasn’t connected to God somehow?

So Kerrie Ann prayed. She tried to keep it general, but whenever she sat with her hands clasped in prayer, an image of her little girl rose in her mind. She knew she couldn’t rely on her higher power alone. She had to somehow prove to the judge that she deserved a second chance. Because now, with the Bartholds complicating matters, the stakes were higher than ever. Even wearing the right clothes and saying all the right things, she couldn’t begin to match what they had to offer with their fancy educations and highbrow careers, their nice home, their good standing in the community. And they were black. She knew that judges leaned in favor of placing children with adoptive parents from the same ethnic background. The same rule might apply here.

And what did she have to offer? Only her ninety-day and six-month chips. She had no career, no savings to speak of, no home of her own, and at the moment no means of transportation. In short, she was in no position to provide for her child.

Except for one thing . . .

“Whatever anyone says, don’t forget you’re her mom,” Ollie had reminded her the other day when they’d been walking on the beach. “And kids belong with their moms.”

She warmed at the thought of Ollie. These past weeks he’d been doing his best to distract her from her looming court date: baking her special treats, even though she jokingly complained that he was making her fat, and thinking up fun activities. One day he’d taken her to the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, where they’d ridden the roller coaster, screaming their heads off like a couple of maniacs. Another time he’d taken her to Big Basin State Park to see the giant redwoods. The night before last he’d treated her to dinner at a funky tavern owned by a self-professed film junkie, where they showed old black-and-white movies. That night it had been a ’40s flick starring Bette Davis as a heartless vixen who got hers in the end by perishing in a fiery car wreck. The other patrons had cheered, but Kerrie Ann had taken no pleasure in seeing Bette’s character go up in flames, however much she might have deserved it. She knew what a slippery slope life could be, how one wrong act could lead to another. She was in no position to judge.

Yesterday after work Ollie had driven her to Mori Point, just north of Blue Moon Bay, where they’d walked the unmarked trail that wound past a freshwater wetland and along craggy ocean bluffs. “You know the scene in
Harold and Maude
where Harold’s Jag goes off a cliff? They filmed it right here,” Ollie informed her as they stood on one of the bluffs, gazing down at the steep drop-off below, where surf foamed amid the jagged rocks.

“I don’t think I’ve seen that one,” said Kerrie Ann.

Ollie looked at her in disbelief. “Dude. That’s tragic.”

“What, the movie itself or the fact that I haven’t seen it?”

“Both.” He shook his head. “It should be required viewing.”

“Well, since I missed it, why don’t you tell me the plot?”

“It’s about this guy, Harold, who everyone thinks is nuts. Like, he gets his kicks going to the funerals of people he didn’t even know. Anyway, at one of those funerals he meets this kooky old lady named Maude. He’s just a kid, but they fall in love, and then she dies.” Kerrie Ann gave a snort of disgust and Ollie said, “No—it isn’t creepy. They’re kindred spirits, see? That’s what’s so cool about it. The point is, all that other stuff, like what society expects, is totally bogus when two people are meant for each other.”