Rafael looked over at Lisa’s parents. Mrs. Perry openly wept. Mr. Perry sat as still as a statue with his eyes fixed on the wall.
Lisa took David’s arm with a glance at Rafael. He gave her a nod and followed the woman he loved out of a church so quiet that the tap of Lisa’s heels reverberated against the walls.
Lisa and David made a striking pair as they walked down the aisle arm in arm. She wore a simple black dress that hugged her slender frame. Despite the height of her black pumps, her back was ramrod straight. David was only a few inches taller than her, given the shoes. Their blond hair shone under the bright slants of sun that came from the high windows, like two golden children of God.
The three of them exited the church into the bright sunlight.
“Let’s go get my kids,” David said.
“Let’s go get your kids,” Lisa said.
“I’ll drive the getaway car.” Rafael patted David’s shoulder. “Welcome to the rest of your life.”
18
Lisa
Unfortunately, the getaway car didn’t get them far. They had to fetch the children from Lisa’s parents’ house, where they were being watched by a high school girl. By the time the babysitter had given them the rundown of eating and diaper changes and gone on her merry way, Lisa heard her parents’ car coming down the driveway. With Laine perched on one hip, she ran to the front window.
If a car could be mad, that’s what her mother’s station wagon looked like as it came barreling down the driveway. Gravel spit out from under the tires. Positioned too close to the right side of the driveway, the corner of the bumper clipped shrubs. Mom sat close to the wheel, her face purple. When she lurched to a halt, Lisa’s father reeled forward, his thin frame seeming no stronger than a pubescent boy’s.
“Oh crap,” Lisa said, instinctively backing up from the window. David and Rafael stood together behind the couch with the large red flower pattern that they’d had for at least thirty years.
“Gamma.” Laine pointed.
Oliver came running to the window but stopped at the sight of his grandmother. “I think Gamma mad.”
Mom charged down the walkway, teetering in her high heels. Her jaw moved as if chewing nails that she would soon spit out into deadly metal shards no bigger than grains of salt. Her father followed behind, carrying his wife’s purse.
“David, you might want to take cover,” Lisa said.
Mom burst through the front door. “What in the name of God were you thinking? I’ve never been more embarrassed in my life, and that’s saying something considering this one.” She pointed at Lisa.
“Mom, take it easy,” David said.
Her father set his wife’s purse on the table by the door and walked straight to the liquor cabinet, where he poured himself a generous amount of gin.
“I mean I expect it from your sister. This explosive, emotional behavior is her bailiwick, but you…you have been the steady one.”
Laine whimpered and hid her face in Lisa’s neck. Ollie stared at his grandmother with wide eyes and grabbed a handful of Lisa’s skirt.
“Mom, you’re scaring the kids,” Lisa said.
Rafael stepped around the couch. “I could take them upstairs or something.”
“How about you take them into the kitchen for some ice cream?” David asked.
“Sure.” Rafael held out his hand. “Oliver, would you like to join me for some ice cream?” Lisa almost wept with relief when Ollie nodded his head and took Rafael’s hand. “Should we take your sister, too?”
“Yes. She likes ice cream.”
Lisa handed Rafael the baby and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.” She didn’t think it was possible yesterday to love him more today, but she did.
By the time Rafael and the kids were gone, their mother seemed to have lost some of her steam. “Obviously, you’ve gone temporarily insane due to grief. You just made a buffoon out of yourself in front of half the town.”
David shrugged out of his suit jacket and laid it across the back of the couch, then loosened his tie before answering. “Mom, you may find this hard to believe, but I don’t care what people think. My wife was running heroin for the mob with my children in the car. Do you really think I give two craps about anything at this point? I’m selling my house and getting the hell out of Dodge. I’m going with Lisa, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“But the kids. Who will take care of them if you don’t have me?”
“I’ll hire someone. And Lisa will help.”
“You won’t have a job out there,” Mom said.
“I’ll get one.”
Curious what the invisible man in the corner thought, Lisa looked over at her dad. He had an expression on his face she usually only saw when he was watching the Colts play and they were winning—a mixture of joy and admiration. He caught Lisa watching him and turned his back to her, filling his glass.
“I don’t understand how this has happened,” Mom said. “My boy. My perfect boy.”
“Yeah, Mom. Me either. I did everything right and my life still turned to shit.” He walked over to the bar and poured himself a drink. “I haven’t been very truthful, though, so maybe that’s where it all went wrong. I didn’t want to marry her. I loved someone else.”
“What?” Lisa stared at him. “Who?”
“A girl at college. We were just friends, but I was crazy about her. She loved someone else. Married him, actually. I’d already promised Mari we’d get married when I finished school. I couldn’t break a promise.” He downed the whiskey. “I’ve been miserable for most of my adult life. Don’t you think that’s sad?”
“I do,” Dad said.
Dad spoke! Wonders never ceased.
“Like father, like son? Is that it?” Mom screeched the last three words.
“Lois, I didn’t say that,” Dad said.
“You must be miserable. You must hate me or you’d come in from the shop for more than to stuff your face with dinner I’ve faithfully cooked every day for thirty-four years.”
“Lives of quiet desperation,” Dad said, with a weary smile making the creases around his mouth deepen. “Isn’t that the best we can hope for?”
David laughed and ran his hand over his curls. “Jesus, Dad. That’s morbid.”
The quote was from Thoreau’s Walden. Lisa had studied it in school. “We put value in the wrong things, and we accept our fate without question. We do what we’re told and what our parents did, all the while feeling resentful or miserable.”
“Young lady, you never did one thing I wanted of you,” Mom said. “Running off to New York just because flaky Jane Steward said you had talent.”
“She wasn’t flaky, Mom. She saved my life,” Lisa said.
“Then you shut us out, refused to let us be a part of your life,” Mom said.
“Did it ever occur to you that being less critical of every move I make might grant you more access to my life? I don’t want you around because you make me feel bad about myself. And trust me, your voice is in my head whether you’re around or not.”
“I’m not critical of you. I’m helping you.”
“Do you know what you said to me after the concert? Not ‘Thank God you’re all right.’ No, it was ‘Why in the world would you go to some white trash concert? That’s just asking for trouble.’”
“You’re overly sensitive.” Her mother stumbled over to the stuffed rocking chair and sat. She picked up her knitting basket and brought it onto her lap. “I was frantic with worry, which makes my tongue sharper than it should be. I offered to come out there, and you rejected me, as usual.”
“I told you it wasn’t a good time and why,” Lisa said.
“Now I see it’s because you had the Mexican boyfriend to keep you company.” Mom pulled blue yarn from the top of the basket and started knitting.
Lisa looked at her brother and shook her head. “I don’t know why I bother. It’s not worth it.”
“We saw you on television,” Dad
said. “On that red-carpet thing. You looked pretty.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I knew by the way you held that young man’s arm that you loved him,” Dad said. “I was sorry I didn’t know enough about your life to even know you were seeing someone.”
“They fell in love in two minutes.” Mom’s knitting needles clicked away like steel fingers in a fight. “There was nothing to know.”
Dad didn’t glance in his wife’s direction. “I read the reviews about Raven online. Every single one of them mentioned your performance. How good you are.”
“You read movie reviews?” Lisa asked.
“Only when my daughter’s in the movie,” Dad said before taking a sip of his drink and sitting in his armchair.
Lisa’s eyes stung. He was interested in her. He’d followed the reviews.
David perched on the arm of the couch. “Lisa, you’re not living a life of quiet desperation, are you?”
Lisa shook her head. “No. I thought I could when I came back here last year. I wanted to be here because of Laine and Ollie. I love them so much. I hate that I miss everything. But I couldn’t give up on my dreams. I thought I could, but I was wrong.”
“You never did go the same way as everyone else,” Dad said. “I’ve admired you for it.”
“Me, too,” David said.
Mom’s knitting needles pummeled each other.
“At the premiere, when the credits rolled, the whole theater went perfectly quiet, and then they started clapping. They were clapping for me, Mom. And you know who I owe that to? You. If you hadn’t been so resolute about helping me get through my depression, I would never have found acting.”
Mom didn’t look up, but her needles quieted for a split second. “I wanted you to be normal.”
“I’ll never be your kind of normal. But I’m healthy now. And I found my love.” She pointed toward the kitchen, where Rafael’s low voice alternated with Ollie’s high one. “He lets me be myself. My weird self. He loves me just the way I am.”
David wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. “I need a little of your magic right about now.”
“You can start fresh out West,” Lisa said. “I have a great group of friends out there. The sea air will give you clarity.”
“What’s your plan, David?” Mom asked. “Just up and leave?”
“It’ll take me a few weeks to get everything sorted out,” David said to their mom. “I’ll work with a real estate agent remotely to sell the house. Lisa has a place for me to stay in Cliffside Bay until I can find a place of my own.”
“What about all your things?” Mom spread whatever she was making over her lap. It’s probably a blanket for the poor. She’d never made Lisa a blanket.
“I’ll put them in storage,” David said. “Or maybe I’ll burn everything in a big fire. Half of it was bought with dirty money anyway.”
A horrible thought occurred to Lisa. “Will the DEA let you leave the state?”
“They’ve cleared me of all wrongdoing,” David said. “They’d been onto her for a long time. They knew I had nothing to do with it.”
“After David gets settled, maybe you two could come out for a visit,” Lisa said. “I film for most of October and November, but we could all have Christmas together.”
Mom looked up for the first time since she’d sat down with her knitting. “I’ll want to see the children since they’re being ripped away from me, but I can’t make any promises. I have a lot of responsibilities at the church that time of year.”
“It was just a thought,” Lisa said, under her breath.
“You won’t be able to take care of the kids without me,” Mom said. “You’ll see how it is out there with no family.”
“I’ll be there,” Lisa said.
“When you’re not filming,” Mom said. “Think about it, David. No more free babysitter.”
“I’m their father, Mom,” David said. “I’ll be fine.”
“What about money, son?” Dad asked. “California’s expensive.”
“I can cover him until he gets a job,” Lisa said. “For the first time I’m the stable one. What do you think about that, Mom?”
Mom raised one eyebrow and kept on knitting. “You better put that money away. This could be your last job.”
Lisa sighed. “All right, I’m going to go now. Rafael and I are leaving in the morning on an early flight to LA. David, we’ll take you home.”
David nodded. “I’ll get the kids ready to go.” He headed toward the kitchen.
She walked over to where her mom was furiously knitting and kissed her cheek. “Bye, Mom.”
“Be careful with that man. Latins have mistresses,” Mom said.
“Bye, Dad.” She gave him a quick hug.
“We’ll be excited to see Raven when it comes to our theater,” Dad said. “I sure enjoyed Indigo Road.”
“You watched it?” Lisa asked.
“We all watched them together,” Mom said. “Marigold seethed with envy the whole time, which made it rather unpleasant.”
“Or amusing, depending on your perspective,” Dad said.
“Dad,” Lisa said, surprised.
“This is the right thing for David,” Dad said. “A fresh start will do him good. You look after each other out there.”
“We will.”
And with that, she fled.
They arrived in Los Angeles around midday. Having spent much of the night talking with David and sorting through the details of his move, they both slept on the plane. After checking into the hotel, they spent the afternoon by the pool. Lisa’s energy had been depleted by the visit with her family. It would be a long time before she contemplated another.
Around three, she went up to the room to get ready for the last of the interviews. This one would be on the Late Show with Jake Deveraux. Afterward, they were meeting Genevieve and Stefan for dinner at a famous eatery in Beverly Hills. A year ago, she would never have been able to afford to eat there. Tonight, she would dine with two of the biggest stars in the world. Reconciling that with the experience she’d just had with her mother was complicated. She knew it would be a struggle for the rest of her life. However, she and Rafael had agreed to let part of their pasts go in order to move forward together, and she would do so. As much for him as for her.
The interview went surprisingly well. Sasha had arranged beforehand that any question about the shooting be brief and to the point, so that Lisa could express her desire to have the story be about the victims, not her celebrity. Jake did just that and then transitioned to questions about the film soon thereafter. No small feat, she realized, but Jake was a professional. They played a clip of her first scene in the movie, then Jake said how much he’d enjoyed the screening. “See this one, folks. You won’t be disappointed.”
After she was finished, Jake leaned over to speak into her ear. “Very well done. You take care of yourself. Come back anytime.”
“Being here was a dream come true. I’m sorry I wasn’t funny.”
“Next time come with a story. Mothers are always good fodder.”
“Not if I want to live,” she said.
Jake laughed. “That right there is funny.”
Rafael had waited for her in the greenroom and escorted her out to the car. Paparazzi waited just outside the door. They snapped photos and shouted questions at her. Rafael ushered her into the car. Minutes later, their driver pulled into the driveway of Victor’s.
“Looks clear of photographers,” the driver said.
A valet held the door as Lisa and Rafael entered the lobby of the restaurant. The moment they were inside, two young women approached, asking for a photo with Lisa. She agreed. Rafael snapped one of the three of them.
“I’m such a fan. Thank you so much.” The young woman threw her arms around Lisa and hugged her.
“Is it all right if we tag you?” the other one asked. “We both follow you everywhere.”
Lisa smiled and nodded, hoping they would leave he
r alone soon. “Sure, yes. That’s fine.”
A hostess with the posture and figure of a supermodel appeared. At the sight of the young women, her faint smile turned to a frown. Her neck seemed to lengthen as she looked down at the young women. “Girls, my lobby is not a photo booth. Ms. Perry came here for dinner, not to entertain bad-mannered millennials.” She flicked one manicured hand toward the door. “Your father sent the car and has instructed me to send you home.”
The young women thanked Lisa again before twirling out of the restaurant like a couple of giggling spinning tops.
“Ms. Perry, Mr. Soto, welcome to Victor’s. I’m Anna. My sincere apologies for those girls. They’re not supposed to bother guests.”
“They weren’t dining here?” Lisa asked.
Anna tucked a section of her perfectly symmetrical bob behind one ear. “I’m afraid not. This is a family-run establishment. They’re the daughters of our owner.” She sighed. “And my nieces. Ms. Banks loves our food, which has brought a certain notoriety to our restaurant. My nieces’ favorite pastime is to collect photographs with our famous guests.”
“That’s kind of cute,” Lisa said.
“I’m relieved to hear you say so,” Anna said. “Ms. Banks and Mr. Spencer have arrived and are waiting for you in our private room. I’ll take you to them now.”
Holding thick black menus against her chest, Anna led Lisa and Rafael past tables that glittered with twinkly lights and shiny people. Genevieve and Stefan sat together at a table set for four. At the sight of them, Genevieve sprang to her feet and wrapped Lisa in a warm embrace. The men shook hands.
When they were seated, Anna set the menus in front of them.
Genevieve’s pretty brown eyes narrowed as she looked up at Anna. “What is it, Anna? Something’s bothering you.”
“My nieces are up to their usual antics. They bothered Ms. Perry.”
“It was no bother,” Lisa said. “Really. Think nothing of it.”
“Anna worries too much,” Genevieve said with a kind smile at their hostess.
Missed: Rafael and Lisa (Cliffside Bay Book 6) Page 24
