by Loree Lough
As he assembled his tools, Noah pictured Billie’s tiny house. It wasn’t large by anyone’s standards, but she had made the most of every square inch, filling the rooms with comfortable old furnishings that reminded him of his grandmother’s house.
It had been nearly a week since Noah and Alyssa had paid Billie the impromptu visit. He remembered how she’d welcomed them with genuine warmth, despite the early hour, then patiently explained the objective of each website page. Pleasant as they were, those things hadn’t kept him up nights. Nor had the scent of fresh-baked cookies, or the yellow sweater that brought out the green flecks in her dark eyes. The scene he couldn’t shake had happened so quickly; he would have missed it if he’d blinked: Billie, tenderly brushing crumbs from Alyssa’s face in a gesture he could only call motherly, and it set his heart to beating double time.
Any day now, she’d call to let him know the website was ready for his final approval, and when she did, he’d have to go back there, to the place that made him feel—for the first time since leaving Chicago—at home. And Noah didn’t know how he felt about that.
It seemed easier to focus on those tense moments when her brother had picked up a camera and aimed it at Alyssa. Since leaving Chicago, Noah had done everything humanly possible to ensure there would be no photographs of her, anywhere. Other kids her age had stacked up three years of school photos. Alyssa did not, because he’d kept her home on picture day. It was the only way to ensure facial recognition software wouldn’t lead one of O’Malley’s henchmen to their door.
Noah couldn’t apologize for his brusque behavior and hasty departure without explaining why he’d behaved like a paranoid lunatic. And yet, for the first time since entering the WITSEC program, that’s exactly what he wanted to do. He heard his little girl singing in the back room. The thumps and bumps accompanying her solo told him she was dancing, too.
“Alyssa, you’re supposed to be doing your homework, remember?”
He heard silence, then, “Yes, Daddy.”
“When you’re finished, we’ll walk across the street and get some ice cream, okay?”
Her “Okay, Daddy” harmonized with the bell above the entry door. Deidre O’Toole was the last person he expected to see in his bike shop. The article he had read in the Howard County Times highlighting her Little Theater stated that the former Broadway star was sixty-five years old. He’d never been a math whiz, but even Noah knew she couldn’t have worked with stars like Ethel Merman and Carol Channing unless she was in her late seventies.
“Noah Preston, you handsome devil,” she gushed, “just the man I wanted to see.”
“Got a hankering to buy a bicycle?”
“Handsome and funny, too? If you tell me you’re on the Forbes 500 list, I’ll leave that old husband of mine and we’ll run away together.” She threw back her head and laughed.
Noah wiped his hands on a cleaning rag. “Sorry, looks like you’re stuck with Felix. I’m so poor that church mice put money in the collection basket for me.”
“I do love a man with a sense of humor,” she said, winking. And then, with a flourish of her great black cape, she hiked up her skirt and climbed onto the counter stool.
“I’m here to offer that beautiful child of yours the lead in my next production. I’ve looked and looked, and you know me…why settle for second best when you don’t have to?”
Noah swallowed. His daughter’s love of music was rivaled only by her talent for memorization, something Deidre must have figured out as Alyssa sang her way past the theater as they walked to the hardware store. But what Noah knew even better than Deidre was that a good memory also helped her keep details of her new life straight. Her old life was precisely why the audition could never happen.
“Where is she? I’d love to break the news myself.”
“Doing homework.” He took a deep breath. Noah liked the woman—everyone did—but if it came to a choice between disappointing her and risking a photograph falling into the wrong hands… “I appreciate the offer, but we’re not interested.”
“What?”
“Sorry.”
“What can I say to change your mind?”
“Nothing. But we’ll buy tickets.”
Alyssa stepped up beside him. “Hello, Miss O’Toole.” She looked up at Noah. “Are you talking about Snow White?”
“No, hon,” Deidre said, “we’re talking about Annie. It’s the next play I’m producing, and I need someone just like you for the lead role.”
Alyssa’s eyes widened as Noah’s heart thundered.
“But I don’t have curly red hair.”
“No biggie. We’d get you a wig.”
“I don’t have little black shoes or a red dress, either.” She frowned. “Well, I have black shoes, only I grew a lot since first grade and Daddy hasn’t had time to get new ones for me.”
Deidre fluttered a long-taloned hand, setting half a dozen bangle bracelets to jangling. “Don’t you worry about any of that. I’ll see to it you have everything you need.”
Alyssa clasped her hands and tucked them under her chin, trembling with excitement. “Oh, Daddy,” she said, looking up at him, “could I be Annie? Could I, please?”
He’d been clenching his jaw so tightly that his teeth ached. How could Deidre put him in this position?
“I’m sure every little girl in town wants to be Annie,” he said, openly glaring at Deidre. Thankfully, she got the message.
“It’s not like playing pretend,” Deidre said to Alyssa. “Starring in a play is a lot of hard work. You’d have to practice for hours, every single day, whether you feel like it or not.”
“How many?”
Deidre rubbed her chin. “Oh, I don’t know…three or four hours, I guess.”
Noah watched as Alyssa’s eyebrows drew together and her lips formed a thin line. Then she held both forefingers aloft. The first time she’d done it, she’d still been in diapers, inspiring Jillian to say, “Looks like she just gave birth to an idea!”
His daughter looked up at him now. “How long is four hours?”
“About as long as it takes to watch The Sound of Music twice.”
The birthing-an-idea expression returned, but only for a moment.
“There are a lot of other kids in Annie, because they’re in a…” She looked up at Noah once more. “What’s that place called where kids hafta live when they don’t have a mom or a dad?”
“Orphanage.”
“Yes, that’s it.” She faced Deidre again. “Would I have to work that long if I was one of the kids in the orphanage?”
“No,” Deidre said. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“Good. Because The Sound of Music is a long movie.” She paused, then said, “Would I have to try out for one of the orphan parts?”
“Yes, yes, of course you would.”
Not if I have anything to say about it, Noah thought.
“Auditions begin soon,” Deidre said as they walked her to the door. From the sidewalk, she said, “I’ll make sure you get a flyer.”
And I’ll make sure Alyssa never sees it. But Noah knew as well as everyone else on Main Street that Deidre was accustomed to getting her way. Maybe just this once, he could relax the rules a bit. It had been three years, after all, without a single incident.
Father and daughter stood side by side, watching their famous neighbor cross the street, and when she disappeared into the Little Theater on the Corner, Alyssa took his hand and skipped all the way to the back room, singing, “I’m going to play an orphan, I’m going to play an orphan!”
He hated to disappoint her, but what choice did he have? “Time to get busy on that homework, cupcake.”
“Okay, Daddy.” She sat at her worktable, then said, “You know what?”
“What.”
“I love you to the moon and the stars, and more than anything in the Milky Way!”
He recited his portion of their mantra. “And I love you to every continent, to the bottom of the sea and around
the equator ten times.”
Noah went back to work on the Venge, and with every pull on the crescent wrench, counted the things he’d left in Chicago: his wife’s grave. His family. The career that afforded him a big house and status cars. He couldn’t believe any of that had ever mattered, because the most important thing in his world was humming “Tomorrow.”
He tightened the pulley’s hex-head bolt with a force that matched his anxiety. An ugly thought roiled in his head. It wasn’t easy, admitting that the raw, unbridled hatred that put it there also put him on a par with O’Malley. One day soon, he hoped, Max would stop by to tell him that former senator Hank O’Malley was dead.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“WELL, THIS IS a nice surprise!”
Instantly, Billie recognized her mom’s not-so-subtle hint that she didn’t call often enough.
“Just giving you and Dad a heads-up. I can’t come to Philly this weekend, after all.”
“Mary Margaret Elizabeth Landon, you had better have a good excuse.”
“Remember Bud, my next-door neighbor? He’s having surgery tomorrow, and since he doesn’t have any family, I promised to take care of his place and his cat while he’s in the hospital.”
“That’s my Billie, always looking out for other people.”
Her mother’s sarcasm inspired a soft groan. What would her mom say if Billie admitted that she’d offered to look after Bud once he went home, too?
“Who’s looking after your business while you’re looking after Inky?”
“Believe it or not, Mom, I can walk and chew gum at the same time. As long as I have electricity to run my laptop, I can work.”
“You’ll wear yourself to a frazzle, make yourself sick.”
“Don’t worry, I bought a baby monitor, so I can sleep in my own bed and make sure Inky is okay.”
Her mom sighed. “Well, I suppose we can do this weekend thing anytime.”
“Actually, I was wondering how you and Dad would feel about spending Thanksgiving here. I’ll invite Todd and Dani, too. It’ll be a little crowded, but we manage at Gramps’s cabin, and it’s even smaller than my place.”
“That might be fun, and who knows? Troy might have a place of his own by then, and some of us could stay over there.”
“If you tell him I said this, I’ll deny it. But I sort of hope he won’t find anything, at least until after Christmas. I really enjoy having him here.”
“I hate to say I told you so, but if you’d stayed in Philadelphia, you’d have no reason to miss your family.”
Well, that hadn’t gone as expected. The two of them had been over this ground so many times, Billie had lost count.
“Oh, dear!” her mom said. “There’s someone at the door. Can I call you later?”
Saved by the bell, Billie thought. “Sure. Love you, Mom.”
She hung up and called the next number on her list. A weird little buzz of disappointment went through her when he didn’t pick up.
“Hi, Noah,” she told the machine, “it’s Billie Landon. I got your email and loved your suggestions. If you’d rather see the changes in person, let me know so we can schedule something. Otherwise, just shoot me an approval in your reply and I’ll make it official.”
She’d barely hung up when the phone rang again.
“Billie, m’darlin’, how are things on your side of the fence?”
“Things smell like bacon. I thought your doctor told you that’s off-limits from now on.”
“That’s kind of why I’m calling. Doc’s nurse just phoned to say I need to be at the hospital by seven tomorrow for all the pre-op stuff. I know you said you’d drive me, but I can take a cab. Hopkins is a good thirty-minute drive. And it’ll be rush hour, meaning—”
“I’m driving you. Got it?”
“Then have dinner with me tonight. We’ll make it a big one. And early. My last hoorah, since I can’t eat after midnight.”
Billie thought back to yesterday. After showing her where he kept Inky’s food and litter, and how much to feed the fish, Bud had handed her a legal-sized envelope that read To Be Opened in the Event My Doc Was a Quack. She would never admit it, but the minute she’d gotten home, Billie had opened it…and found Bud’s will. How ironic that someone she barely knew trusted her more than the man she’d married had.
Billie swallowed. “How about if we celebrate after your doctor gives you a clean bill of health?”
Bud agreed, then they chatted about the weather forecast, the latest gas prices, the accident that blew out the traffic light at the corner of Old Columbia Pike and Main Street, and finally agreed to leave for the hospital at five-thirty the next morning.
Afterward, Billie spent the day cleaning and doing laundry, making calls and answering emails so things wouldn’t pile up while she was looking after Bud.
It was nearly three when she answered a third call.
“Sorry to be such a pain,” Noah said, “but I can’t get your email to download. Is it okay if I stop by after I pick Alyssa up at school?”
She pictured his clunky PC and enormous monitor, and put part of the blame there.
“I’ll be here all day,” she said, “so come over anytime.”
They arrived an hour later, and once Noah got Alyssa started on her homework, he and Billie sat at her desk.
“Was this here the other day?” He picked up a framed photo of Billie in a flight attendant’s uniform.
“Yeah, but it was probably hidden behind a stack of work.”
“Cute,” he said, putting it back. “So web design wasn’t your first career.”
A statement, she noticed, not a question. It wasn’t a stretch to assume he was only being polite, because a guy who didn’t talk about himself didn’t really want much information from others. “Bet it was a hoot, traveling the world for free.”
“Not really,” she said, pulling up his website. “You’re usually not in a place long enough to see much more than the inside of a hotel room.”
She’d left her desk drawer open, and followed his gaze to the picture of her and Chuck, standing side by side in the cockpit of a 747.
“Your ex?”
She closed the drawer. “’Fraid so.”
Noah didn’t respond right away, but when he did, Billie didn’t know what to make of it.
“His loss.”
That’s what her friends and family said. How long before she believed it, too?
Pointing, she drew his attention to the monitor. After loading his main page, she reduced its size and pulled up a competitor’s site. Tab by tab, she explained why his worked and the other one didn’t.
“I don’t know what to say, except wow. It’s terrific.”
His expression went from something akin to approval to baffled.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s great. But…” He met her eyes. “I just hope I won’t be sorry.”
“Why would you be sorry?”
“I could use the extra cash. With the economy in the shape it is, who couldn’t, right? But I like not having to rush, and it’s great having plenty of time for Alyssa. I’m not sure I want that to change, even for more money in my wallet.”
“You’re giving me way too much credit. You’ll see some new business—how much, I can’t say—but if I were you, I wouldn’t put a down payment on a yacht just yet.”
Noah produced a check and she tucked it under her mouse pad.
“I’d offer you coffee,” she said as they walked toward Alyssa, “but it’s been on the burner since breakfast.”
“I never touch the stuff after lunchtime, any—”
One look at his face told her why he’d stopped talking so suddenly.
There sat Alyssa amid an assortment of loose photos: Billie and her brothers as kids in front of a Christmas tree; her parents on their wedding day; Great-grandpa Landon on the hood of his shiny black Buick; the house Billie had shared with Chuck. The picture Alyssa held took her breath away. Billie had almost fo
rgotten taking one of her baby’s grave. Almost.
“Alyssa!”
The girl jumped at Noah’s stern voice, which startled Billie, too.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“My knee bumped the box, and it fell off the shelf.”
Billie dropped to her knees and, hands shaking, started gathering snapshots of her life.
“It’s my fault,” she said. “That shelf is no place for family photos. I should have put them into albums years ago.”
Alyssa looked relieved, but Noah did not.
“You know better than to snoop through other people’s things,” he said. “We’re going to have to talk about this when we get home, young lady.”
The girl’s eyes filled with tears. Her lower lip trembled, too.
“I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“It isn’t me who deserves the apology.”
Big, damp eyes locked on Billie’s face. “I’m sorry, Billie. I didn’t mean to snoop.”
“Oh, don’t cry, sweetie. It was an accident. That box falls off the shelf every time I vacuum.”
Alyssa had no sooner dried her eyes on the hem of her shirt than Noah took her by the hand and led her to the foyer.
“Noah. Really. It’s okay.” Billie stood between them and the door. “No harm, no foul, y’know?”
“Don’t worry. I don’t believe in spankings.” He fixed his impatient stare on Alyssa’s face. “But we are going to talk about a punishment.”
“The shoebox slid off the shelf. A few pictures fell out. I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate.”
“Look, I appreciate your concern, but drop it, okay?”
Drop it? How could she do that, with Noah looking so annoyed and Alyssa looking so worried? Billie had never expected to feel anything but grudgingly tolerant of the girl, because for years she’d soothed the ache of losing the baby by telling herself that she didn’t like kids, anyway. They were noisy. Sticky. Demanding. Rude. But this one, with her big eyes and bubbly personality, had exposed the lie.
“You’re her dad,” Billie stated. “And you know what’s best.”
