Fireside

by Susan Wiggs

  Silence.

  “I can’t hear you.” Bo tried to keep the annoyance from his voice. “Talk to me. I’m trying to understand.”

  “I wanted to find some place where they could help me get back with my mom,” said AJ.

  “I want that, too, AJ, but skipping school and jumping on a train is no way to handle it. Jesus, why would you take off like that?”

  “Because nothing’s happening.” His voice was low and unsteady.

  Bo pulled into a loading zone and turned to him. “Listen, there are people who would like nothing better than to send your mom south of the border and out of the U.S. forever. They’ll use any excuse to justify it. If you become a runaway, they’ll claim you’re a baby outlaw and they’ll say, ‘Why should we grant residency to a woman who is raising a delinquent?’”

  “So every time a kid does something bad, they have the right to deport the mother?”

  “Nope, if the mom’s a U.S. citizen, we get to keep her. I didn’t create this system but you need to abide by it.”

  “The system’s not working. My mom didn’t do anything wrong. She did her job, every day. She works harder than anybody I know. She paid her taxes, I know she did because she showed me one time.”

  “She’s a good person,” Bo said. “We know that. She doesn’t deserve what happened to her, and that’s why we’re going to work so hard to help her. Just because you’re not seeing any progress doesn’t mean nothing’s happening. Running away from me is probably the worst thing you can do.”

  The kid showed iron control over his emotions. He narrowed his eyes and turned to Bo. “I can think of worse.”

  Bo took a deep breath. Flexed his hands on the steering wheel. “I know you’re bummed about your mom. But what are you going to do? You can do crazy stuff, like skip school and take the train to the city, which accomplishes nothing except maybe to prove to authorities that you’re trouble. Or you can try to make the best of a bad situation.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  The terror that had gripped Bo earlier was turning to ice crystals. “You think? Well, you’re wrong. And if you think anything about this situation is easy for me, yeah, go ahead and tell yourself that. Just remember, I’m the last person you should be running away from. I’m the only one working on getting your mom back. Nobody’s more committed to that than I am.”

  “Sure, so you can take off, too. That’s all you care about.”

  “It’s business,” he explained. “It’s my job, and I have to do it. And going to school is your job.”

  More silence. It was nearly dark now. In the falling light, Bo caught the gleam of a tear in AJ’s eyes. It cut him like a knife, seeing the boy in pain like that. AJ had lost his mother. Now Bo was planning to leave him.

  Or not.

  He put the car in gear and pulled out into the stream of traffic. “Listen, maybe I was wrong, AJ. You gotta remember, I’m new to this...to being responsible for somebody. I don’t need to go down to Virginia. Let me figure out a way around that.”

  “You just said it was your job.”

  “You’re my job, too.”

  “I didn’t ask for that,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, you got it. So I’m taking you home. And don’t give me any lip about Avalon not being home, because it is. Right now, that’s your home base.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “You’re crazy,” said Bagwell, practically yelling at Bo. “It’s in your contract. You have to go to Fame School.” They were at the Hilltop Tavern, drinking beer and shooting pool with Ray Tolley and Eddie Haven. It was boys’ night out and the first time he’d left AJ since the New York incident. Dino was taking AJ out for pizza and a movie tonight.

  Though Bo no longer tended bar at the Hilltop, it always felt like home to him. “I don’t have to,” he said, twisting a cube of chalk on the end of his pool cue. “And it’s a precontract agreement with the Yankees, anyway. I’ve memorized practically every word. It says I’ll pursue media training, and I will.” He lined up a shot, rammed it home with lightning-quick accuracy. “I don’t know what they have left to teach me. I’ve been trying for this practically all my life. I’ve dreamed about everything, every damn minute.”

  “You know what they say about dreams,” Bagwell pointed out.

  “No, what?”

  “They’re always better than the reality.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “There you go. That’s why you’re supposed to have rookie training. You have to learn not to swear, or chew with your mouth open, stuff like that.”

  “I can figure that out on my own,” Bo insisted.

  Bagwell snorted. “What, is there some kind of online course?” He paced back and forth near the pool table, clearly impatient to play the winner.

  For the first time, Bo clearly understood why. He aimed again and missed. “I can’t up and leave.”

  “Because of AJ?” asked Rayburn Tolley, lining up a corner shot.

  “Yeah, exactly. I thought it would be simple. I’d take off, Dino would look after the kid. Turns out the kid’s kind of freaked out. I’m afraid if I leave, he might run away again, and he might stay gone.” He took a small sip of beer. “I can’t risk it.”

  “You’re an admirable fool, that’s what you are,” said Ray.

  Bo shook his head. “Don’t admire me.”

  Tolley took his shot, sinking his target. “Okay, I won’t. No problem.”

  Bo grinned. “You’re a real pal.”

  “What about taking AJ with you?” asked Eddie Haven. “I spent my whole life tagging after my parents, and it didn’t kill me.” Eddie came from a show-business family that had traveled constantly.

  Ray—who had been Eddie’s arresting officer in an old, old case—threw back his head and guffawed. “If you consider court-ordered community service ‘okay,’ then I guess you’re doing just fine,” he said.

  “I’m not dragging AJ anywhere else,” Bo said. “He’s been uprooted enough.”

  “I have a solution,” said Bagwell. “You can do a lot of the stuff they work on at Fame School, only you could do it here. With Kimberly van Dorn. She was a media trainer in L.A.”

  Bo had been thinking the same thing. He pictured himself spending hours and hours with her, being told what to do and how to do it. The hours and hours together he could handle. Being bossed around by her... “Not a good idea. Besides, I’m told this whole thing is about meeting people. That’s the point, not which fork to use and how to order wine.”

  “Is not,” Bagwell said simply. “There’s plenty she could teach you.”

  Meanwhile, Ray lined up another shot, sank it.

  Damn. Ray was really on his game tonight. He sank two more balls before he missed and handed the play back to Bo.

  “Seriously,” Bagwell added, “there are things you need to know before you start running with the big dogs. A guy can easily be led or manipulated into saying stuff.” Bagwell knew what he was talking about. He had played exactly three stellar games with the Boston Red Sox before an injury had ended his major-league aspirations. He’d returned home to Avalon, where he went to work at his father’s small-engine repair business and play for the Hornets in summer and in the Dominican Republic in winter.

  “She’ll drive me crazy. Why her?” Bo asked with a scowl. His turn again. He tapped the hole he wanted his ball to go into, and lined up his shot. He misjudged the angle and the ball hit one bumper, then wandered away, a failure.

  “No need to play dumb,” Bagwell said. “We’d all do exactly the same thing in your shoes.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Leaving the bank with her mother, Kim felt a sense of cautious optimism. Bo had been right; as a victim of pressure sales, her mother was entitled to recourse from the bank. Fancy that, Kim thought. Information from a guy they could trust. It ha
d to be a first.

  In consultation with a specialist at the bank, she and her mother had worked out a payment plan that would help Penelope extricate herself from the punishing, complicated loan, assuming they were very careful, and a little bit lucky.

  “We should celebrate,” Kim said.

  “I’m on a strict budget now, and I intend to stick to it.” Penelope snapped her pocketbook shut and headed for the car. “We need to stop at the grocery store on the way home and I’ll prove it to you.”

  “We’ll stick to the budget,” Kim promised her. “We just need to figure out how to celebrate for very little money.”

  Penelope nodded. “I used to take you to the St. Regis for high tea, remember?”

  “I remember my shoes pinching. And the harp music was boring.”

  “I never cared for it, either.” Her mother stabbed the key into the ignition and started the car.

  “Yet we went all those times. I thought it was so important to you.”

  “And I thought it was such fun for you. One of us should have spoken up.”

  “I’m speaking up now,” Kim said. “No more boring teas.”

  “Hear, hear.” Penelope pulled out of the bank parking lot. Even her driving felt smoother, more confident. Dino Carminucci had been giving her lessons. Penelope said he was a natural coach, but Kim suspected a deeper appeal. It was a bit of an adjustment, this idea that her mother might be dating.

  “You went quiet, all of a sudden,” Penelope said. “What are you thinking about?”

  “You, dating. That’s what you and Dino are doing, right? Dating?”

  A pause. “We’re enjoying each other’s company. Very much. You’re not troubled by that, are you?”

  “No, of course not,” Kim said quickly. “God knows, you deserve your happiness, Mom.”

  “I know you’re angry about the things you’ve found out about your father. But I hope you’ll remember, his way with finance was only one aspect of him. I didn’t spend our thirty-five years together in a state of constant suffering. Nor did you grow up in misery. In many ways, we were a very happy family.”

  “Were we? I know it felt that way at the time, but now...there was no foundation, Mom. It was all a big pretense.”

  “We weren’t pretending to be happy. We simply...were.”

  Kim’s father had been demanding, judgmental. She could see that so clearly now. Yet pleasing him had brought her something she thought was happiness. To know how much she’d yearned for his approval, how much it had meant to her, all for an illusion—that was what made her angry.

  “Mom, you’re kidding, right?”

  “I spent more than three decades of my life with your father. And for the most part, they were happy times. I suppose we had our ups and downs, same as everyone. When I look back through the years, I can see little signs along the way that something wasn’t right. I ignored them. Or perhaps I was too preoccupied with all the work that went into maintaining appearances. I forgot to come up for air. I did love your father, but being left that way, with all his secrets coming to light after he was gone... Everything’s so different for me with Dino. Not to compare him with your father, but the man’s entire life is an open book. He has four adult children and an extemely bitter ex-wife. He’s been very honest with me about his past. He was no saint. But I think he’s wonderful.”

  “And I think he’s a lucky guy, being with you,” Kim said. She was happy enough for her mother, though Kim herself was buoyed by the knowledge that for once in her own life, happiness didn’t depend on pleasing some man, or bending over backward to make him look good. What a novel idea.

  Back in L.A., she used to think in terms of what would be good for Lloyd—from his needs in bed to his looks in front of a camera. It was humiliating to realize she had actually rationalized that way of life to herself. No more, she thought. Never again.

  They stopped at Wegman’s and, true to her word, Penelope didn’t stray from her budget.

  Although she never expected it of herself, Kim was getting used to small-town life. She was even getting used to Fairfield House. It was all a matter of adjusting her attitude and making sure she was modestly covered when she stepped out of her room. At first, her mother’s enterprise had seemed the height of insanity, filling the house with unrelated strangers. Yet before long, Kim found a sense of community with the residents of the big, rambling house. Well, with most of the residents, anyway.

  The jury was still out on one of them.

  Not now, she reminded herself. She was not going to think about Bo Crutcher now. She shouldn’t be thinking about him at all, but for some reason, her mind kept going there. Her earlier sense of cautious triumph frayed into an unsettled feeling. She wanted to move on to new things, but kept circling back to what she was best at—finding the upside of any situation. That was really what her career had been all about, and she was good at it. She ought to be able to give herself a positive spin—she was reconnecting with her mom in a way she never had before. Helping Penelope through a financial crisis. Finding the charm in small-town life.

  Daphne McDaniel was getting back from work when Kim and her mother arrived home. The sight of her always lifted Kim’s mood. In only a short while, Daphne had become a good friend. In other circumstances, she and Kim might have nothing to do with each other; on the surface they seemed to have nothing in common. It made Kim wonder how many other people she’d overlooked in the past.

  “Can I help with the groceries?” Daphne offered.

  “Thanks.” Kim handed her a sack, and hefted two of them herself. The three went to the kitchen and began unloading. In one sack, she came across a pocket puzzle game, and handed it over to her mom. “Check it out,” she said, and took out a balsa wood airplane she herself had bought. “We’ve both got AJ on our minds.”

  “That makes three of us.” Daphne reached into her shoulder bag and produced a hand-sized ball made of rubber bands. “This has been two years in the making. I decided to bring it home for him.”

  Everyone in the house seemed determined to give AJ extra consideration. Running away had been an act of desperation, and the boy’s sadness and his yearning for his mother touched them all. “We can give these to him when he gets home tonight,” Penelope said. “Dino took him to get pizza for dinner. Bo and Early are out with friends, so it’s just the three of us.”

  “Then you shouldn’t go to any trouble,” Daphne said. “I’m fine with cereal.”

  “Oh, no you’re not, young lady,” Penelope said. “I thought I’d make a salad with spinach and mandarin oranges. The sort of thing men don’t care for.”

  “A girly salad,” Kim said. “My favorite.”

  Daphne went to her room to get out of her work clothes, which usually meant trading the fishnets and Uggs for black jeans and Doc Martens. Kim finished with the groceries. She noticed her mother studying the cash-register receipt, pressing her lips into a firm line as she folded it up and put it away.

  “Mom, I could help you. I’ve got some savings. I mean, I can’t pay off your debts, but—” Kim said.

  “That’s not what I need from you, and you know it. Money is money, but you...just by being here, you’re helping.” Penelope sighed. “I feel so foolish. Sometimes I think that’s the worst part of this—feeling foolish.”

  “Trust me, everybody’s foolish about something. Look at me and my stupid job and even stupider taste in men.”

  Daphne returned, helping herself to a satsuma from the fruit bowl. “What men?” she asked.

  “A guy in L.A. He was a client.” Kim shuddered.

  “Lloyd Johnson, right?” Daphne asked, leaning forward. “What was he like?”

  “A self-absorbed man-child with symptoms of narcissism—that about sums him up. No idea what I was thinking. I feel like an idiot for believing it would work out.”

  “Aren’t you
supposed to do that?” Daphne asked. “I mean, if you start a relationship thinking it will never work, then that’s kind of the kiss of death, right?”

  “Yes, but this was one of those romances everyone knows is doomed from the start. Everybody except the couple directly involved. I mean, come on. Did anyone think Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra would last more than five minutes?”

  “Dennis and Carmen probably thought so,” Penelope chimed in. “Do we really want to criticize people for believing in love?”

  “No, for having poor judgment. Which I freely admit I had, for a long time. I mean, when things are happening fast in a big career like Lloyd’s, you get swept away. It’s like a wave, and you just go with it.”

  “I know what we need,” Daphne declared, hurrying toward the stairs. “I’ll be right back.”

  It was still hard for Kim to think about what had happened to her old life. She remembered the flashbulbs going off as Lloyd walked the red carpet with the sponsors’ backdrops behind him. She could still hear the shouted questions, feel the rush of excitement at all the attention. She remembered standing off to the side with Lloyd’s other handlers, holding her breath as he responded to question after question the way she’d trained him.

  For the most part his performance was as crisp and controlled as his left-handed layup, and as his career flourished, so did their relationship. They were a team, the two of them. They were invincible. There was no stopping them.

  Then came the night in question. Her mind flinched from the memory. One day, she would have to face up to what had happened—his tantrum, and the fact that she’d willingly provoked him for the sake of deflating his temper, saving his career. What sort of person did that? Where had her self-respect gone?

  “I’m sorry you got hurt,” her mother said. “But I’m also happy for you. I think the Lloyd fiasco will turn out to be a blessing in disguise.”