Autumn Dreams

by Gayle Roper

  The lost feeling threatened him again, but he fought against it. He couldn’t let himself panic every time he felt bored or wretched. After all, he had survived 9/11, unlike so many of his business connections. He had come away from the experience with nothing but a ruined suit, raspy breathing, the echoes of screams that still haunted him in the night, and a vision of collapsing steel and concrete that never faded.

  For years before that infamous day all he’d thought about was business, business, business. Somehow, though he never intended it to be so, God had gotten lost as he found success. Not that he ever said, “I don’t believe anymore, God. Get out of my life.” It was more, “I’m so busy being successful that I don’t have time for You, Lord.”

  “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

  He rested his forehead against the window. That’s why he was here. To learn to love God. When he’d felt God pulling him to sell the Harmon Group and take time to reevaluate, he never expected it to be so painful. So frightening.

  He took a deep breath and forced himself to stand up straight. For want of a better idea, he pulled out his laptop and wrote Andy the longest e-mail he could ever remember writing him. When Dan reread it before hitting send, he was surprised at how full of Cass it was. He almost erased it and started over, but then he thought about how much his sister-in-law would like teasing him about Cass, and he sent it electronically winging across the Atlantic.

  Next, he went on-line and checked the figures from Wall Street as of closing Friday. He made a quick e-trade on a generic brand pharmaceutical company he had investigated just before he closed his business, and he made himself several thousand dollars. He wondered if the client he had researched this pharmaceutical company for found it as profitable as he did. He sighed. He’d probably never know because he’d never see the client again.

  The phrase “footloose and fancy free” struck him. To be that unencumbered had never appealed to him, and now here he was, his feet loose and his fancy as free as it ever would be. He shuddered.

  Then he thought of Andy again. He could make an e-trade for his brother. Of course, Andy had no portfolio. He barely had enough money for living expenses. But why should that be a problem? Dan had more than enough.

  Taking the money he’d made for himself that morning, he set up a new account in Andy and Muriel’s names, investing the money on their behalf. Then he put five thousand in each of three separate accounts, one for each of Andy’s three kids. When it came time for college expenses, only a year or two away for the oldest child, Uncle Dan would have grown a sturdy nest egg, mature and ready for use.

  He sat back, immensely pleased with himself. Why had he never thought to do such a thing before? He glanced at his watch. He had been busy trading for twenty-one minutes. At this rate the day would fly past. Hah!

  At eleven there was a knock on his door. He answered, filled with the ridiculous hope that it would be Cass who needed to ask him something, anything. Instead, it was Brenna who asked, “When would you like me to clean your room, Mr. Harmon?”

  Oh. He blinked. I need to leave. “I’ll just go—” He twirled his hand vaguely because he had no idea where he’d go. “I’ll be back sometime after lunch. Is that all right?” He grabbed a pair of sunglasses and his jacket and dashed down the stairs, feeling as if he were a terrible inconvenience.

  He hit the sidewalk frowning. He’d stayed in hotels all over the country, no, all over the world. Why had he never felt so dispossessed before?

  Ah. I never stayed in my room during the day before.

  He’d always had plans, purpose, a raison d’être.

  He wandered to the boardwalk as a default destination, crossed it, and went down onto the beach. Today he wore walking shoes, and the sand didn’t pour in as readily as it had yesterday. He walked for several blocks in the hard sand left by the receding tide, head down, hands in his pockets. Was he a fool or a very wise man to have closed the Harmon Group and come to this little town? Could he ever survive the inactivity, the boredom?

  He came to a cluster of shell fragments lying along the tide line, some aberration in the rushing waves depositing significantly more in this one place. They were all broken, even the heavy clam shells and the sturdy black mussels, some pieces pounded to fragments smaller than a tack head. Shattered they were, just as he was, smashed by the pounding waves of a relentless, unfeeling ocean.

  Are You like the ocean, Lord? Are You trying to break me?

  “Be still, and know that I am God,” a voice that sounded remarkably like his father whispered in his ear. “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.”

  Dan stared at the horizon where it faded into the sky. Wait patiently. The very thought was so antithetical to his personality that he almost gagged.

  I don’t know how to wait patiently, Father. I’ve never done it in my life. I’m a doer, Lord, a Type A of the first magnitude. The prospect of sitting on my hands waiting scares me witless.

  He waited for another impression, preferably a comforting one that told him how wonderful he was for following God this far, and now that he’d proven his obedience, he could go back to work. Nothing came. Sighing, he walked to the boardwalk and grabbed a hamburger in one of the snack shops.

  When he deemed he’d been gone long enough, he walked slowly back to SeaSong. Why, he didn’t know. There was nothing to do there. In fact, why was he in a B&B to begin with? Why not an oceanfront suite at a big motel on the beach? He could certainly afford it. More room. A better view.

  He shook his head. Somehow he knew SeaSong was the place for him. How he knew, he couldn’t explain. He, pragmatic, realistic, and show-me to the core, just knew.

  Cheers off to his left drew his attention. A football game was going on over at the high school. He veered in that direction. Only the second day in Seaside and he was already desperate enough to attend a high school football game where he knew none of the players. Unbelievable. He handed the man at the gate his money and went in.

  On the far side of the field a line of girls in skimpy red and white uniforms were yelling, “Defense! Defense!” as they shook their pom-poms and bounced on their white tennies. On this side of the less-than-stellar but real turf, a line of girls and two boys in green and gold jumped and cheered as a player in a green jersey streaked down the field, the football clutched against his body. The stands closest to him erupted. The green shirt was brought down by a flying tackle from a big kid in red and white, and the other side cheered.

  He glanced up at the frenzied crowd, trying to remember when he’d last been that enthusiastic about any game, let alone a high school one. Of course, he had season tickets for the Knicks, the Jets, and the Yankees and enjoyed taking clients to the games; it was good business. Certainly he enjoyed the games more when his teams won, but he never felt the emotional involvement of these fans.

  He turned back to the field and watched as a kid in a green jersey raced across the goal line. Score one for the home team.

  He glanced at the cheerleaders doing cartwheels and looked up into the stands at the screaming crowd. How small town and unsophisticated.

  Then he saw Cass, jumping up and down next to a huge guy wearing a green and gold football jersey over his sweatshirt. She turned to the big man, a huge smile lighting her wonderful face, and he wrapped her in a hug. She kissed his cheek.

  Dan turned and left. He could do without high school football.

  Six

  WHERE WAS SHE?

  Tucker asked himself that same question every day, had asked himself every day for almost a year. Where was she? Or better yet, where was her body?

  He stared out the back French doors to the sparkling pool and the manicured lawn beyond, all the way to the sharp drop-off at the edge of the property. In the distance he could see greater Los Angeles spreading for miles. At night the view looked like a fairy city, its lights winking at him. Now it looked like the clogged
metropolis it was with a layer of smog sitting on it like a loathsome, yellow gray toad. It was a wonder any of them could breathe.

  He wandered out into the yard, ducking so he didn’t crack his head on his stepmother’s hanging plants at the edge of the patio. He hated those plants, but Patsi ignored his complaints just as she ignored most everything else about him.

  The few occasions he’d managed to get her to notice him recently had all been when he’d bumped his head on one of the baskets and sworn mightily. Today it was a hanging fuchsia that clobbered him.

  “One day I’m going to throw all these things over the bank!”

  She looked at him with her eyes wide in that ingénue look of innocence that had gotten her minor movie parts when she was young but which now sat very poorly on the face of a fifty-year-old woman. “Tuck, you watch your language. And just because you’ve gotten tall is no reason to take the plants down.”

  Personally he couldn’t think of a better one. He reached up for the huge fuchsia he’d just cracked his head on.

  “Don’t you dare!” she said with a trace of her old spunk. “You just need to duck. Besides, Mary Lou and Belinda have hanging baskets on their lanais.”

  “Patio, Patsi.”

  “Lanai, Tuck.”

  “Keeping up with the Joneses, Patsi.”

  “Too big for your britches, Tuck.”

  He blinked. They were having an almost normal conversation. Then he watched as the blanket of depression settled on her again. Her face went slack, her eyes lost their fire, and she became a shell. It had been like that ever since Sherri disappeared. Every day Patsi sat on her lanai, staring, weeping, doing nothing except eating her heart out.

  He shook his head in disgust and wandered across the lawn to the white split-rail fence. Bending, he climbed through.

  “I’m on the wrong side of the fence, Patsi,” he taunted. “I can feel the cliff crumbling under my feet as I speak.”

  She didn’t even move.

  Patsi had made the gardener install the split-rail fence shortly after they moved here. “I’m so afraid someone will fall over,” she said, looking at Sherri who at the time was only two to his seven.

  As Sherri got older, she pulled a white chair so close to the fence that she sat with her feet propped on the bottom rail each evening, watching the lights blink on in the distance.

  “It’s a fairyland,” she said. “Quick and bright and free of tarnish. Just like people should be.”

  Tuck never ceased to marvel at his stepsister’s idealism. “People are like the real L.A., Sherri. Ugly. Dark. Black with tarnish. The lights are just illusion.”

  She shook her head, her rose-colored glasses firmly in place. “I like my view better.”

  Idiot girl. Her chair wasn’t there anymore, of course. Patsi had made the gardener put it away.

  “I can’t stand to look at it, all empty and forlorn,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. That was back when all she did was cry.

  Now all she did was stare. And pray. The praying gave him the willies worse than the staring.

  Tuck threw himself down on the ground so his head peered over the edge of the drop. It was a long way down to the rocks clustered at the base of the raw dirt cliff. It fascinated him to look down there and wonder what it would feel like to fall. Sometimes he thought that since the cliff was undercut so badly, making a mildly curved C, all he had to do was lie here long enough, and the dirt beneath him would give way. All over California, cliffs, houses, and occasionally people were sliding down hillsides in the rain. Why not him?

  He reached to his right and grabbed a large pebble that sat in the untended area this side of the fence. He stretched his hand out over the abyss and dropped the stone. It plunged straight down until it hit the vertical wall where the cliff curved back out. The stone made a great bounce before it hit the wall again and began rolling, rolling until it hit the rocks.

  “Tucker, get back here.”

  He turned and saw his father standing at the fence. The man was trim from all his time playing racquetball, and his jawline was still taut though he, like Patsi, was in his fifties. Even in jeans and a black t-shirt, he looked like money, but the money didn’t hide his tension. His knuckles were white where he gripped the top rail.

  “You know how Patsi worries about someone falling.”

  Tuck climbed to his feet, looking back at Patsi on the patio. She stared vacantly, aware of nothing. “She doesn’t look worried to me, Dad.” Though he always thought of his father as Hank, he took care to call him Dad. “At least she’s not worried about me.”

  His father turned and glanced back at his wife. As he did so, Tuck was struck by the amount of white hair Hank suddenly had. Tuck frowned. The idea of his father being old was somehow unsettling. Not that he and Hank had a relationship or anything. It was the fact that Hank was the money machine, and Tuck didn’t want to lose access to his personal golden goose.

  Or share.

  He lowered his head so Hank couldn’t read his face.

  Wherever Sherri is, she’d better be dead.

  Seven

  CASS PULLED TWO pans of her made-from-scratch sticky buns from the oven and upended them on a wire rack to cool a bit. She slid the three quiche Lorraines she had baked earlier that morning into the oven to rewarm. The bran muffins and cranberry-orange bread went into the microwave to warm. Into her large blender she poured orange juice and two bananas and hit frappé.

  Brenna walked into the kitchen through the swinging door that opened onto the dining porch just as Cass poured the beverage into a cut glass pitcher.

  “I put the granola, yogurt, and fresh fruit on the serving hutch,” she said. “The coffee’s ready, and the tea water is hot. I’ve got the basket of herbal and regular teas all arranged. There’s a cream pitcher, sugar, Equal, and Sweet’N Low on each table. I pulled a couple of daisies from a couple of the tables’ bouquets because they were looking a bit droopy. Did I forget anything?”

  “Milk, real cream, and the artificial creamers?”

  Brenna turned from the refrigerator with a tray of the items in her hand. “Done.”

  Cass smiled. “When you take them out, ring the breakfast bell, will you? It’s eight-thirty.”

  “I hope they don’t all come at once. I hate having to serve everyone at the same time. Someone always has to wait.”

  “They’ve got an hour time frame. I think some will make it a lazy Sunday.”

  “I hope.”

  For the next hour and a half, Cass was busy in the kitchen keeping the food coming as the various guests appeared. Brenna and Jenn, much to Jenn’s obvious disgust, circulated among the guests and offered the breads and beverages. Then it was all over for another day. Sated guests wandered from their tables, mingled in the common room for a few minutes, then disappeared to their private rooms. Cass began filling the dishwasher. She also filled the sink with hot, sudsy water for the cut glass and the gold-edged dishes. She glanced at the clock. Ten. If she moved quickly, she’d just have time to grab a bite and change her clothes for church.

  But where was Brenna with the rest of the dirty dishes? From the size of the pile resting on the counter many pieces were still missing. Cass pushed open the swinging door into the dining room. No Brenna. No Jenn either, but that wasn’t a surprise. She undoubtedly took off as soon as the last guests left their tables. Hopefully she was upstairs getting ready for church.

  Cass dropped back into the kitchen, then pushed open the swinging door to the registration area—and found Brenna. She opened her mouth to say something to the girl when she was struck by Brenna’s unnatural stillness. Tension vibrated from her. As far as Cass could tell, Brenna was staring at the registration desk. She tried to see around the girl to see what was holding her in thrall, but for once her height didn’t help her.

  Then Brenna reached for the phone.

  Cass watched as she put the receiver to her ear. The faint, melodic tones of the number buttons drifted in
the air. Brenna twisted and stared blankly out the side window as she waited for the call to connect. Then without saying a word, Brenna slapped the receiver back on the cradle. She remained motionless for several seconds, one hand holding the phone, the other pressed over her mouth. Then she turned her face into her shoulder and swiped her cheek on her shirt. Tears?

  Cass recalled Dan’s words: “She was making a phone call when I saw her, or at least almost making one. And I could swear she was about ready to cry.”

  Cass stepped back into the kitchen, her hand on the door to keep it from making any noise as it slid shut. She returned slowly, thoughtfully to her dirty dishes. What a mystery Brenna was.

  A few minutes later as Cass slotted a piece of antique Limoges china with its pink flowers and gold banding into the dish rack to dry, the door from the dining porch shot open, and Brenna came in with a loaded tray.

  “They loved the sticky buns,” she said brightly, just like she hadn’t cried in years. “They’re all gone.”

  Cass studied her. No sign of weeping except maybe the slightest redness around her eyes. “Then it’s a good thing I held back some for our breakfast.”

  “You held back some what?” Jared asked as he thudded down the stairs and into the kitchen, bringing the aroma of his pine-scented aftershave to mingle with the breakfast fragrances of cinnamon, cheese, and bacon.

  “Sticky buns.” Cass held out a Corelle dish with six on it. Jared smiled and reached. “And you can only have two!”

  He stopped and shook his head. “Aunt Cassandra, Aunt Cassandra, what have I done to deserve such cruel punishment?”

  “If you don’t like it, you can get out the Cheerios. You know where they’re kept.”