Touching Stars (35 page)

“No need to hurry back,” Blackjack said, as if he was reading my mind. “Your mother will be in good hands with me.”

I looked at the smile that seemed to have permanently settled on her face and the way her hands fluttered upward to pin a stray lock of hair. I was very afraid that the last place my mother needed to be was in Blackjack’s all too capable hands.

“S
o last night Weather Woman comes in, lank hair, no makeup, and wearing the dreariest gray suit this side of the Midwest. Of course she’s late, too, so there’s no time to do anything more than powder her nose and tease the hair a little. Then, in the middle of telling viewers about a tornado in Iowa, she bursts into tears.”

“Ariel, you’re making this up.”

“I swear, Eric, this really happened. She pulls out a huge red handkerchief, like a clown uses at the circus. You know, the kind that just keeps coming and coming, and she pulls and pulls and finally starts to blow her nose. This goes on so long I think the station manager is going to run on set, snatch her by her unfashionably wide lapels and drag her off camera.

“Before he can get to her, she looks up and says, ‘I’m so sorry, but I’ve just been terribly upset ever since I heard about this tornado. Did you know two cows got caught up in the funnel? It was terrible, awful.’ Then, she pauses, and we’re all thinking she’s really lost it. Finally she says, ‘I’m afraid it was
udder
disaster.’”

Eric groaned. “Okay, that’s it. Now I know you’re lying.”

“Of course I’m not lying. Last week she asked the viewers if they know what happens when the smog lifts in Los Angeles? Then she strips off her jacket, and she’s wearing a local university T-shirt under it.” She paused. “Care to make a guess which one?”

“No.”

“UCLA. Get it? When the smog lifts, you see L.A.”

He gave in to laughter. Not because of Weather Woman’s puerile jokes, but because Ariel had taken the time to find them and work them into her cheerful morning gig on the telephone. Last week he had looked up Ariel’s station on the Internet. A man named John Cravits was the staff meteorologist and always did his own weather reports.

“You’re something else,” he said fondly.

“Well, so are you, Ace. And I miss you. A lot.”

He imagined Ariel’s world. Late nights, later mornings, Napa Valley wine, traffic tie-ups and Bel-Air bashes. Hollywood’s bony, tanned women, who at their worst looked like overcooked turkeys and at their best made a man feel as if he’d been on a monthlong fast. Air-kissing, back-patting, ass-kicking Los Angeles. For a moment he was so nostalgic for the taste and smell of Southern California that he was ready to hang up and call the airline.

“I miss you, too,” he said, and meant it.

She sighed. “How’s Gayle? How are the boys?”

He gave a perfunctory answer to the first, maybe too perfunctory, because he knew Ariel would wonder why he had glossed over his ex-wife so quickly. Before she could ask, he launched into the progress he was making with his sons.

“I guess it’s working,” she said when he’d finished. “You being there. Despite missing you, I’m really glad. Now maybe they’ll come visit you all the time when you move out here with me.”

He had been standing. Now he lowered himself to the edge of the bed. “It sounds like you have plans for my life.”

“There’s a good job opening up, Eric. And you’re on great terms with every single person who’s doing the looking.” She named two men and a woman whom he knew and admired.

“What is it?”

“Associate professor of broadcast journalism at USC. And better yet, the teaching is only part-time. They’re saying right up front that they expect whoever takes it to be gone for part of each year doing freelance or other work. In fact, they’re encouraging it, because they’re hoping whoever they choose will take his best students along for hands-on experience. And we know you’ll be able to find plenty of freelance work, or you can start producing your own stuff. You’ll have your choice once the word gets around.”

“You mentioned my name?”

“Not really. I just said I didn’t think you were planning to stay in Atlanta. That’s all. Well, maybe a little about you considering some new directions.”

He knew how Ariel worked. She was unrivaled for planting seeds that were guaranteed to grow into magical beanstalks.

“My kids are on the East Coast.” It was the first thing he’d thought of as she spoke. Not that the job was perfect. Not that it meant he would be living close to Ariel for the first time in their relationship. Not even that it would give him the flexibility he needed to move back into reporting at his own speed.

Those things came a heartbeat later, when he also thought about Gayle and the life he had left behind a dozen years ago.

“Your kids can fly, Eric. They have airports in Virginia and direct flights to L.A. They’re big boys, and the chance to spend time in a different part of the country will be good for them.”

“When is the committee making their recommendation?”

“They’ve just started the process. You have plenty of time to get involved.”

“Okay.” He pictured her on the other end of the phone, the wide blue eyes and pointed chin. The black snaking curls. And the smile. He could hear Ariel smiling on the telephone. She knew she was reeling him in.

“Give Weather Woman my love,” Eric said.

“Oh, I definitely will.”

He was smiling as he hung up.

He was still smiling when somebody rapped on his door. Dillon pushed it open before Eric could get up to answer. His son was wearing gray sweatpants and a T-shirt that read Crime Scene In Progress in bold letters.

“Dad, you’d better come with me.” Dillon motioned for him to follow.

“Wait a minute, aren’t you supposed to be at camp?”

“I came home to see how Noah’s feeling. I’m skipping breakfast.”

Eric knew Noah was already feeling better, but apparently the word hadn’t reached as far as the Allen farm.

He got up and followed Dillon into the hall. “What’s the hurry?”

“Buddy’s talking. You’ve got to hear this.”

Eric smiled. All his sneaking into the carriage house and Noah’s bedroom had paid off. “I figured he would eventually.”

“Yeah, well. You were right, I guess. I’ve gotta get Mom, too. Noah wants you both to hear this.”

This time Eric smiled to himself. He wanted Gayle to hear it, too.

They found her in the kitchen, running water into pans for the cleaning crew. “Hey, what are you doing here?” she asked Dillon.

“I came to see how Noah is. Mr. Allen said I could. But you gotta see what Buddy learned.”

Gayle’s eyes flicked to Eric’s. “I bet he’s talking, right?”

“You won’t believe it,” Dillon said. “Come on.”

They watched him launch himself out of the inn’s kitchen, grabbing a wedge of breakfast pizza—an inn specialty—as he ran out the door.

“You’re going to love this.” She dried her hands on a dish towel. “I know what he’s going to say.”

“You’ve heard Buddy talking, and you didn’t tell anybody?”

“Not exactly.”

Eric tried to piece that together. “Then how do you…” He realized what she was really saying. “Don’t tell me you’ve been sneaking in to teach him to talk!”

“Sneak? I don’t sneak, Eric. I live there.” She narrowed her eyes. “Wait a minute. Have you…?”

He nodded.

She stared at him; then she burst out laughing. “I don’t believe it.”

“What have you been trying to teach him?”

“There’s no place like home. And you?”

He wiggled his eyebrows, Groucho Marx style. “Up, up and away.”

“That figures.” She threw the dish towel at him, but he caught it and hung it up.

“Okay, we’ll see who was better, you or me,” he said.

“Better? Maybe it’s just a question of which of us was smarter. I’m inculcating family values, and you’re trying to send him into the stratosphere.”

They were still laughing and arguing when they entered Noah’s room. Noah, looking perkier than he had yesterday, was whispering to Dillon. Buddy was preening himself on his perch and looking very proud.

“I hear Buddy’s talking,” Gayle said. “Your dad and I have a bet about what he says.”

“Umm…What do you think he’s going to say?” Noah’s eyes were fixed on his brother’s.

They told him what they’d been doing.

Noah finally looked away from Dillon and straight at Eric. “So let me get this straight. You’ve been sneaking into my room, trying to teach
my
bird what
you
want him to say.”

“Pretty much.” Eric favored his son with his most disarming grin. “I thought you’d get a kick out of hearing him talk. I didn’t look for love letters or bad test scores while I was here.”

“Funny, Dad.” He turned to Gayle. “And you’re just as bad.”

“My motives were pure.”

“Well, let’s end the suspense. See, it turns out, Buddy only talks if you take him out of the cage and put him on your finger and bring him up to your face. Here, I’ll demonstrate. All ready?”

Gayle and Eric looked at each other and nodded.

Noah opened the cage door and slowly inserted his hand, index finger extended. Buddy hopped right on and only fluttered his wings a little as Noah took him out. Then, after Noah had spoken soothingly to him, he drew the little bird up toward his cheek.

“Hey, Buddy,” he said. “How’s it going?”

For a moment Gayle thought Buddy wasn’t going to perform. He looked around, as if trying to decide.

“So what’s new?” Noah asked patiently.

Buddy turned his head back to Noah, and his eyes grew round with excitement. He chirped and squawked, as if to warm up.

“Thataboy,” Noah said. “Show us what you got.”

Buddy ruffled his feathers and launched into the longest, most blatantly profane string of words Gayle had ever heard.

Finally, as if he had just sung at the Met, he nodded to unseen applause, stuck his head under his wing and began to groom himself.

Stunned, Gayle didn’t know what to say, but Eric was never at a loss for words.

“Dillon, the next time you and I see a garage sale?” Eric said.

“Keep driving?”

“You got it.”

Jared had lain awake most of the night wondering what he should do about Brandy. She hadn’t come back last night, and Miss Webster had stayed over to supervise her campers. Lisa said Brandy wasn’t feeling well, but Jared suspected there was more.

At breakfast, he managed to get Travis alone. “Mr. Allen, I’m sorry, but I need a little time off later this afternoon. Just an hour, maybe two. Do you mind?”

“Does this have something to do with Brandy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bring her back if you can, Jared. Reese is fine, and from what I can tell, Brandy wasn’t really at fault. If anything, she just trusted one of the campers to be more mature than she was.”

“I’ll tell her you said so.”

“Then we’ll see you both at the campfire.”

Jared hoped that would be true.

He avoided his father, aware that if they ended up alone together, his dad was going to ask him whether he and Brandy had performed another pregnancy test. He wanted to handle this on his own, although he did appreciate Eric’s offer to help. But it was definitely time for Brandy and him to face the music and make decisions.

This time he gathered his courage and went to the local Wal-Mart, hiding a test kit under a blue T-shirt off the rack, a package of three athletic socks and a plastic bag of chocolate-chip trail mix. He chose a checkout line with only one person, a stranger his mother’s age who was buying sunglasses and sunscreen, and looked as if she’d driven to the Valley to snap quaint photos of log cabins and deer grazing on hillsides.

When it was his turn, he pulled out his wallet to make the transaction as quickly as possible. Only then did he realize the cashier was a familiar-looking woman from his church congregation. He’d been so busy choosing the shortest line of strangers, he hadn’t even looked at the cashier.

It was too late to run. He hid the test kit under the socks and watched the little pile move toward her.

“You’re Gayle Fortman’s son, aren’t you?” The cashier had a lopsided smile, but it seemed genuine. “I had your brother in my Sunday-school class last year.”

Jared hoped she wouldn’t pay attention to what she was scanning, and to make sure, he kept her talking. “Which brother was that?”

“Dillon. That’s right, you have another one, too, don’t you?”

He watched as she looked down and found the tag on the T-shirt and swiped it across the scanner. He was sweating so hard he was pretty sure he was going to melt into a puddle before she got to the test kit.

“Noah,” he said. “He’s my middle brother. Dark hair? He’s an artist. He’s the one who painted the new mural in the baby nursery. Have you seen it? It’s a farmyard, with cows and sheep—”

He watched the test kit slide across the scanner, but the cashier was paying attention to him, not to the package in her hand. The requisite beep sounded, and she started on the socks.

“And a haystack and barn,” Jared finished. “Grass, you know, leaves. Here, let me bag those for you.” He reached for a bag and threw the scanned items inside, adding the rest as she finished.