by Dana Mentink
You’re supposed to say you’re sorry about the owner’s situation.
He knew from watching other people what he was supposed to say and how he was supposed to act, but left to his own devices, he inevitably didn’t. He thought of the last update he’d gleaned from his online snooping some weeks before Karen’s accident six months prior. His sister had posted a picture of herself beside a little fruit stand on the edge of the field where she was a tenant farmer. He’d noted the price of the melons in the background, the ramshackle quality of the wooden stand, the faded awning. He knew she’d bought a used truck because he’d seen it parked outside her tiny rented house when he’d used Google Earth in the dark predawn hours of one particularly restless night. He’d known about the truck, and the Facebook page she’d started for her fruit stand, and the letter to the editor she’d penned about the importance of supporting local farmers, all details he didn’t have the right to know. How was that possible? If he had truly understood how much Karen loved Paulo, would he have still acted the same eight years ago?
Probably, because he was a bad man. It was bad, snooping into his sister’s world, and pathetic, like a dumb kid with his nose pressed against the window, staring through the fogged glass at the thing he wanted most.
Good men did not do that, keep tabs on the life of a woman who had disowned them. He wondered again why he’d been given a second chance. It wasn’t out of character for God to use the wrecked. He felt a little spurt of hope. He’d noted in the Bible he’d been plowing through at snail speed that God seemed to pick all kinds of blunderers to work through. God loved bad men too, sinners one and all. That was comforting. But He worked things out in unexpected ways, and that was not.
Rhett didn’t want the unexpected. He had a plan and he needed God to make it happen. God was on board for sure, or Rhett wouldn’t have felt the undeniable directive to turn his life upside down. Certainly what he’d done wasn’t logical or sensible, walking away from a billion-dollar empire—his empire, his magnum opus—but the outcome would be worth it.
It had to be. He felt again the quick, cold flush of doubt, which he screwed down along with the lug nuts. Stephanie appeared by his side, handing him a sandwich wrapped in a paper towel. Bologna and cheese on white bread.
She was wearing a pair of jeans and sneakers and a blue tank top that showed off her slender arms. Far from looking like a literary agent, she looked more like a college kid headed to the gym.
“Is this a to-go meal?” he said.
“I thought we could take it on the road since you’ve finished the tire.”
He peered at the sandwich, feeling the spongy bread squish between his fingers. “White bread?”
“Uh-huh. Only ninety-nine cents a loaf.”
There is a reason for that, he thought. He hadn’t eaten white bread since he was in grade school. He considered the cheese. “Cheddar?” he asked hopefully.
“It’s a genuine American processed cheese food. It’s practically the same as cheddar.”
“Only ninety-nine cents a pack?”
“No, a dollar and a quarter.”
“Extravagant.”
“Sarcasm is not attractive.”
She took a bite of her own sandwich and watched him. “Before you go there, the meat is bologna, also a genuine American culinary treasure and yes, it was on sale. What’s the problem?”
“I don’t eat white bread and bologna.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s cheap, processed food that has no quality ingredients.”
She stopped chewing. “Again, this is one of those moments when you should have said something completely different.”
“What should I have said?”
“Thank you for making me this sandwich, Stephanie, and for doing all that great bargain shopping. I sure am going to relish this delicious meal.”
Her eyes locked on his, vibrant and glowing like pools of rich, dark honey drawn straight from his grandfather’s beehives. How odd that he should remember that now, the memory of the succulent honey trickling over his senses so vividly he could almost taste it. “Thank you,” he found himself saying.
She smiled. “It’s a start.” She held out a note. “It’s from Evonne. She wants to talk to you but doesn’t have your number. Someone in town told her we were staying here.”
He made a show of readjusting the bread.
“Is there something you want to share besides your warped views on food?”
He pocketed the note and studied his sandwich. “What’s bologna made out of anyway?”
“You’ll enjoy it more if you don’t know the answer.”
Rhett took a bite and Stephanie did the same from her sandwich, still waiting.
The bread jammed together in a gummy ball in his mouth. Not altogether bad tasting, but not the smoked Gouda and tomato on sourdough he was used to. He took another bite and ordered his face to look happy about it.
Sweetness burst out of the camper and hopped down the steps, sniffing the air, with a massive shake of his shoulders. Stephanie gave the dog only a passing glance. “So? Who are you really, Rhett Hastings?”
“I’m a businessman. Retired.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I did well. Very well. People like to write articles about me.”
She gave him the other eyebrow. “That’s all you’re going to say?”
He shrugged. Something about her frank stare and the gentle curve to her lips made him want to tell her the whole story, but he’d have to explain everything and he desperately did not want to fall in her estimation. That surprised him. Who was she that he should care? “At least we’ve cleared up that I’m not a serial killer.”
“Why did you retire?”
“I’ve messed some things up. I’m…” He took a deep breath. Could he say it to this woman who seemed to see right past his facade? Could he actually give voice to the belief on which he was staking everything? The fantastic, unbelievable story playing out in his life? “I’m trusting God is going to help me work it all out.”
There. He’d said it. Aloud. To her. He realized he was holding his breath.
“Like a storybook ending.” Her eyes widened. “I used to trust Him with my storybook ending too,” she said softly.
“Something changed?”
A shadow darkened her face. “There were revisions.”
The silence stretched between them.
Revisions.
She blamed God for whatever had happened, he read in her eyes. In a way, he wished he could do the same, but he knew who was responsible for his revisions.
“Revisions can be brutal,” he said.
“Tell me about it.”
In spite of her prodding, she got nothing further from Rhett, and her curiosity burned like a live wire. Ruthless businessman she could believe; wealthy, likely in light of his food snobbery, but the following-God thing? That set her back a pace. Intriguing, like Jedd Pimm from Agnes’s novel. A man of many layers, and so far she’d only had the barest glimpse of the ones he kept hidden.
I’ve messed some things up. I’m trusting God to help me work it all out.
“Don’t be surprised if He mucks up your plans, Rhett,” she wanted to tell him. “God will hack your story to pieces until you can’t recognize it anymore.”
The temperature was climbing into the nineties by the time Rhett had unhooked various wires and coils and hitched the behemoth up to the truck. Stephanie fanned herself with a paper plate.
“It’s too hot for Sweetness in the trailer,” Rhett announced when he’d finished. She noticed that his sandwich was gone and Sweetness was looking particularly pleased, as he smacked his fleshy lips. Coconspirators, she decided.
“The dog is going to have to ride up front with us in the truck.”
Stephanie heaved a sigh. Whatever will get me closer to that manuscript, she thought, cramming in next to Sweetness who didn’t seem to be inclined to make himself any smaller to accommodate. �
��This dog is enormous,” she said. “He’s got to have elephant genes.”
“I did some research. Brown spots aside, he looks like a Great Pyrenees to me.”
“He’s a great big couch potato,” she said as Sweetness tried to slide his heavy wedge of a head onto her lap. When she blocked his efforts, he turned on his side, jamming his spine against her thigh and wiggling a bit, perhaps to suggest a convenient spot for scratching. She did not oblige. Rhett didn’t seem to mind the fact that he had four paws pressed against his leg.
They rumbled toward the campground exit, an ominous creaking coming from the rear.
“Is it supposed to make that noise?”
Rhett looked peeved. “Yep. It’s all perfectly normal.”
So far precisely none of her trip had been normal. She wondered how many dozens of e-mails Mr. Klein had sent, inquiring in that polite English way that meant, “Where in tarnation are you, you ridiculous excuse for an agent?” She itched to borrow Rhett’s phone again.
Gazing out the window, she noticed little puffs of dust swirling around the tires. Five miles an hour? Her ficus grew faster than that.
Hot Dog Lady tootled up on a golf cart, braking to a halt as they prepared to roll out the front drive.
“Hello, campers,” she said. “Evonne just called again. She’s on her way over to talk to you. She said not to leave.”
Rhett waved an airy hand. “Sorry. In a real hurry. I’ll try to call her later. Thanks for the hospitality.”
“I’ll give her your cell number—”
“No, no. Don’t do that,” Rhett started, but she’d already tootled off. With a loud exhale, he pressed the accelerator and they pushed on.
“Don’t you want to leave your cell number for her?” Stephanie asked.
“No. We’re in a hurry, remember? Agnes wants her dog and you need to get that manuscript.”
Uh-huh. And what do you need? Stephanie settled into the seat, determined that she would know the truth about Rhett Hastings soon enough.
Eight
They drove steadily but slowly. Stephanie dozed, her head resting against the hot window, Sweetness snoring away beside her. She awoke to a hard jolt, and as she opened her eyes she reacquainted her brain with the facts. She was in a pickup. Next to a large dog. Beside a mysterious man who seemed, at the moment, to be guiding the truck and attached trailer to a halt.
“Why are we stopping?” she said, rolling a kink out of her shoulder.
“Gas. This is the only fuel for another fifty miles. Better take a stretch break.” She slithered from the seat, startled when Sweetness hopped down beside her. He made a move to trot off toward the shrubbery, but she quickly clipped him to a leash.
“You’re not going anywhere without an escort,” she said.
Rhett gamely held onto the leash while she used the facilities and trekked into the mini-mart in search of coffee for her and an overpriced bottle of water for Rhett. She figured the one with the palm trees emblazoned on the side was exotic enough for the snooty foodie, though it cost nearly a dollar more. As the clerk rang her up, she wrote down the expenditures in the notebook in which she’d already transferred her paper towel entries. He watched her closely, his head bald and speckled as an egg, his eyebrows thick across his forehead.
Her gaze drifted across the counter, landing on an old book with a rich blue cover, slightly torn. Electrified, she picked it up. “Sea Comes Knocking,” she read. “Are you reading this?”
The clerk looked at her over the top of his reading glasses. “No. I don’t read, but are you by chance Stephanie Pink?”
She gaped. “How did you know that?”
He gave her a bemused smile, revealing a chipped front tooth. “Well, if that don’t beat all. She was right.”
“She? Who?” Stephanie picked up the book, waving it like a banner in front of him. “Where did you get this?”
“A lady came in here yesterday. Older, long braid. Real jumpy gal, nervous, you know? She should lay off the caffeine, or whatever else she’s been ingesting.”
“Yes, yes. What did she say?”
“Said there might be a young woman stopping by here soon named Stephanie Pink. She said if you were to come, I’d know it because you’d say something about this book.” His watery blue eyes sparkled. “All very cloak-and-dagger, isn’t it? It’s like a movie I saw one time.”
Her senses reeled. Was Agnes playing some sort of mind game with her? “Did she say anything? Leave anything for me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, giving her a solemn wink. “As a matter of fact, she did.”
Stephanie’s nerves zinged as she put the pieces together. Agnes had rethought the ridiculous task she’d assigned Stephanie—the hunt for her missing dog and a cross-country race to the middle of nowhere in Washington. She’d reconsidered and left her manuscript for Stephanie to find. But at a gas station? With a clerk wearing a “Body by Cupcakes” T-shirt? Not really knowing for sure that Stephanie would actually stop there and spy the book on the counter? It made no sense.
Consider the source, Agent Pink. Agnes was eccentric. Agnes would do exactly that kind of thing, sense or no sense.
“Please, can I have what she left for me?”
He rubbed a finger along his nose. “But how do I know for sure you’re Stephanie Pink? Got some ID?”
She reached for the purse that wasn’t there. “Um, no, I left it in Agnes’s car, but I’m really Stephanie Pink, I promise. I’m her agent.”
“Agent?”
“Well, her agent’s assistant.”
“She famous? An actress or something?”
“She’s an author.”
No reaction.
“She writes books.”
“Yeah?” he said, disappointed, until a smile quirked his lips, the smile of a man who took his entertainment where he could get it. “You’re going to have to do better than talk. Let’s see some proof that you’re who you say you are.”
“But I am Stephanie Pink. Who else would care about this old book?”
“No idea,” he shrugged. “Book collectors, maybe. Could be worth something and you’re trying to steal it.”
There was no sense in trying to explain that one tattered paperback edition of a title that was now in its bazillionth printing with well over two million copies sold was worth precisely nothing. How could she possibly prove who she was? “Do you have a phone? I can pull up my Facebook page and show you.”
Lips crimped, he shook his head. “Left it at home today.”
“A computer? An iPad?”
“Got one in the supply room, but it’s against company policy to let customers use the computer.”
“Then you go back there and look me up. You’ll see I’m telling the truth.”
He grinned. “Can’t leave the shop unattended.”
A reckless tide of wedding cake temper rose inside her. She was about to let loose with a tirade when the bell tinkled and Rhett stuck his head in. “What’s the holdup?”
Sweetness poked his head in.
“No dogs allowed,” the clerk said.
“Rhett, Agnes left something here for me. I have to prove that I’m Stephanie Pink to get it.”
“Who else would you be?”
“I have no idea! It’s hard enough just being Stephanie Pink.”
He must have noted hysteria on the airwaves because he pulled out his phone and typed something in.
“Here,” he said, handing it to her. “It’s your picture on the Klein and Gregory website.”
Snatching it up, she waved it triumphantly at the clerk. He shoved his glasses up higher and scrutinized the screen. “Well, it looks like you, but how do I know…?”
“It’s me!” Stephanie practically shouted, slapping a hand on the counter and causing the clerk to jump. “These circumstances could not possibly happen to any other human.”
The clerk looked at Rhett, who gave him a shrug.
“Well, all right. I guess it is you. You’
ve got a sort of ferocious look about you in the picture and in real life.” With a humph, he pulled a package from below the counter.
Her heart swelled inside until she thought it must surely crack her ribs. It was the same stained and battered box from the back of Agnes Wharton’s car, the box with Stephanie Pink’s future inside.
Rhett took note of the clouds massing in the sky as Stephanie hurried out of the mini-mart, the box clutched to her chest. He and Sweetness fell in behind.
She’d gotten it, Wharton’s story. He considered the implications. Was there no longer a need for them to travel together? Would she make other arrangements to have Sweetness delivered now that she’d gotten her prize?
He watched her tuck a strand of hair behind her ear as she carefully rested her treasure on a weathered picnic table strewn with cigarette butts, patting the box with elegant fingers. Rhett shifted to relieve an odd internal tension. Stephanie Pink had complicated his plans and annoyed him with bologna sandwiches and comments about his lack of empathy. So why was his stomach tight as she carefully untied the string, beaming like a little girl on Christmas morning?
She stopped before she pulled the string clear and shot a nervous smile at him that revealed one dimple he hadn’t noticed before. He wanted to take her hand and reassure her. Sweetness sensed the excitement too, swiveling his hind end from side to side, perhaps thinking there was a game in the offing.
Her slender shoulders tensed in excitement as she opened the box, and he heard her quick intake of breath. He thought suddenly of the girl he’d dated in high school, and the ring with a tiny chip of a ruby he’d given her after he’d pawned his camera. He remembered the feeling of pride he’d felt at being able to put a smile on her face, a smile that hadn’t outlasted his expulsion from high school.
“I can’t be with someone like you,” she’d said.
