Moondust Lake

by Davis Bunn

  “Sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “Nineteen months back, I had to fire my only son.”

  Buddy pushed his bag to one side and sat on the bed. The mattress bowed and the springs complained. “I didn’t know.”

  “We kept it quiet because we had to. I caught him stealing from the company. Since I let him go, I learned he’d gotten himself hooked on prescription painkillers.”

  An image flashed through Buddy’s mind, of Cliff Hazzard’s son in full wild-man mode. Hazzard Junior had all his father’s fierce passion for life, but none of his drive, and no restraint whatsoever. “I’m so sorry.”

  “So you waltz in here, looking like everything my son wasn’t. All I could think was, it’d be just like your father to drop you in my lap like a lure.”

  Buddy nodded slowly. “His very own in-house spy.”

  “That was a terrible thing to suspect.”

  “Yes, it was. But it could very well have been true. It’s not, by the way.”

  “Oh, I know that. I checked you out. Plus, the longer you talked, the clearer I saw the pain in your eyes. Saw it with a father’s hard-earned wisdom. So I’m calling to apologize and to ask, are you certain there’s no chance of making up with your dad?”

  “There isn’t. No.”

  “I’m sorry. For both your sakes.” Cliff Hazzard’s tone went from caring to brisk. “But in that case I want you to come work for me. Your team is welcome, long as they pass muster.”

  “Sir . . . I don’t know what to say.”

  “Take a day or so, think on what we’d need to get you to choose us over that IS group’s offer. Only don’t think too long. I’ve got two other candidates I’ll be stringing along until we shake on the deal.”

  * * *

  When Buddy opened the bedroom door, he discovered his sister poised by the kitchen door leading to the porch. Carey watched something through the screen. His mother was nowhere to be seen. “Sis?”

  Carey lifted the hand not holding the roller. She did not turn from staring at whatever lay beyond the door.

  Buddy moved up alongside her, just in time to see his father step uncertainly from the car. Beth’s note dangled from one hand like a summons. He did not move directly up the sidewalk. Rather, his body angled crablike toward where his wife stood on the front porch.

  Jack Helms waved the note in Beth’s general direction and demanded, “What’s the meaning of this?”

  “Don’t come any farther.”

  The voice startled Buddy as much as his father. Beth rarely addressed her husband in anything other than a tone of warm concern. Now, however, she sounded cold as a cocked pistol. Jack blinked and angled his head, as though looking directly at his wife was as impossible as staring straight into the sun. “Don’t use that tone of voice with me!”

  “Stay where you are, Jack.”

  The old black man stopped rocking and used the front railing to draw himself erect. Silently Josiah shuffled inside his own apartment and quietly shut the door. When he was gone, Buddy’s father said, “I asked you a question.”

  “That should be clear enough. I’ve left you.”

  “You divorce me and you won’t see a dime!”

  “I have no intention of divorcing you. Or asking you for anything. Or the children. I’m here because I can afford this place without help from anyone.”

  The words struck Jack Helms like unseen blows. “I—I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  “That’s hardly a surprise.”

  “Aren’t you coming back?”

  “That depends on you.”

  “Me? What in . . .”

  “There are two conditions. Meet them and I’ll return. Otherwise, no.”

  “You don’t set conditions! I’m the head of my household. Me! The man, the elder, the—”

  “Do you want to hear the conditions or not?”

  He blustered, but caved. “Oh, go ahead.”

  “First, you and I will enter counseling. Three times a week. Kimberly and Preston Sturgiss are both trained clinicians. I would prefer that we see a woman. I feel it would be better for us. But it’s your decision. That’s why I asked Preston to join us for lunch. So one of them could see you at your worst.”

  Buddy glanced at his sister, wanting to ask if she had known. But Carey was frozen solid. She gaped through the screen door, her mouth slightly open, her forehead creased. Like she was straining to understand words spoken in some foreign tongue.

  “What do you mean ‘worst’? I was having lunch!”

  “Second, you will meet with each of your children. You will apologize to them and ask their forgiveness for driving them away.”

  “What . . . wait . . . I haven’t . . . They’re not . . .”

  “Let me know when you decide.” She turned away.

  “Wait!”

  “Jack, I have nothing else to say to you.” She stepped inside her apartment and firmly closed the door.

  CHAPTER 9

  Buddy worked in the apartment bathroom. He scrubbed the grout and the basin and the bath with a wire brush. He made a mental list of all the things he wanted to change, starting with the bath’s only light, a low-wattage bulb that glowed sullenly above the cracked mirror. No amount of scouring would alter the way he felt about this place. But the manner in which Beth had spoken to her husband had revealed a determination that was as startling as it was unusual. Buddy and his sister shared a confused look as he borrowed her roller and gave the bathroom walls a new coat. But neither said a word.

  He drove to the local Home Depot and returned with a new box spring, mattress, shower curtain, and bathroom light fixture. Carey left to help her beau set up for a gig in Santa Barbara’s premier jazz locale. Buddy showered and dressed in his street clothes and drove to his favorite local diner on Higuera Street, not far from the Farmers’ Market. Whatever the local growers brought in, the restaurant cooked fresh every day. Buddy returned with a feast of turnips, stewed cabbage, lima beans, corn, hash brown casserole, green beans, snap peas, and a dozen biscuits. The old man was back on the porch when Buddy returned, and declared, “Those sacks of yours smell like my mama’s Sunday dinner.”

  “Mine too.”

  “Takes me back, that does.” Josiah turned back to perusing the afternoon sun filtering through the elms. “That’s a mighty fine lady in there.”

  “She is.”

  “Good to know she’s got family caring for her in her dark hour.”

  Buddy went inside, where his mother exclaimed, “You’ve brought enough for an army.”

  “You can freeze some for the days you don’t feel like getting out.”

  She patted his arm. “You don’t need to worry about me, son.”

  Buddy filled up a plate, and took it and a fork and napkin out to where Josiah sat rocking. He drew over a rusting metal table and asked, “What would you like to drink?”

  “Water will do me just fine. Thank you kindly.”

  Buddy returned to the apartment and filled a glass from the spigot. When he set it down, Josiah had the plate in his lap, the napkin tucked into his washed-pale denim shirt. The old man’s palsy made a trial of lifting the beans on his fork, so Buddy went back inside and returned with a spoon. Josiah exchanged utensils and said, “Your mama’s done raised herself a fine young man.”

  “You were very kind, going inside, back when my father showed up.”

  “Just being neighborly, is all. Folks living cheek by jowl got to know when to get gone.”

  Buddy and his mother ate at the kitchen table. The room was so cramped, Buddy could have reached over and pulled items from the stove, utensils from the drawer, or milk from the fridge, all without leaving his seat. But his mother served him as if she were still in the home where she had raised them. He watched her use a scarred ladle to dish out a second helping, and found himself thinking about the kitchen in their home. It was everyone’s favorite room, mostly because of how Beth Helms filled it with love. She had dried her
own spices. She was always making great jars of vanilla sticks and ground clove and cinnamon, and baking the finest tarts Buddy had ever tasted. The granite countertops always gleamed, and the space above the stove had boasted a row of antique copper pots. The lights shone upon the room where Buddy had sat on the stool and eaten lemon chess pie or Bakewell tart, and dared to speak of secret dreams.

  He swallowed down the lump and said, “I’ve been offered two jobs, Mom.”

  “Well, of course you have.”

  “There’s no ‘of course’ about it, especially not with this region still in recovery.” Buddy related the two experiences, while his mother listened with the same calm intensity she had always shown. As though her entire world had not just shifted on its axis. As though she was seated in a palace. Where she belonged.

  Before he was done explaining, she declared, “I don’t want you hurrying into either of those positions.”

  “Mom . . . these are great jobs.”

  “I’m sure they are. But there will be others.” She rose and carried her plate to the sink. “Buddy, I want you to listen very carefully. You are in possession of a very special talent. Some people are fine musicians. My gift is parenting. Yours is business. Anybody with a decent pair of eyes will see this.”

  Buddy sorted through several responses. “I was going to suggest you take my town house.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll move out. Don’t you see? They want me. I’ll get enough money to buy a bigger place.”

  “It’s a very kind offer, but I can’t accept.”

  “But why?”

  “Because your father will blame you for my leaving him.”

  “Who cares what he thinks?”

  “I do. And someday so will you.” She returned to her seat. “Son, Jack is going to look for someone to blame. I don’t want it to be you.”

  “He’s gotten what he deserves. That’s all—”

  “I won’t have you talking about your father like that!”

  He was stung by her tone. “You’re the one who left him.”

  “We all did. And my fervent prayer is that it will cause him to grow.” She planted her elbows on the table. “But for this to happen, he must first come to realize that this isolation is no one’s fault but his own.”

  In the feeble glow of the ceiling light, the cost of the past few days were clearly evident on his mother’s features. Her eyes were sunken, the skin over her cheekbones looked bruised. She was always so poised, so perfect. Now her hair was tied back in a halfhearted bun, one gray strand dangling over her left ear. The ordeal had left his mother looking physically spent, seriously ill. It was not like her to reveal any hint of mortality. Beth Helms was one of life’s unshakeable constants. Buddy felt a hollow ache at the base of his rib cage. “Why don’t you want me to take the job?”

  She nodded, as though genuinely pleased with his answer. “The job is not the issue. I want you to make a success of your life.”

  “Either of these jobs defines success.”

  “Does it, now? What a curious thought. If that is the truth, son, answer me this. Why are you alone? Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”

  The hollow ache intensified. “You know the answer to that. Shona left me.”

  “You can’t go through life blaming others, Buddy. That’s your father’s greatest flaw. That, and his rage. Which I fear you have inherited as well.”

  “How can you say that? I never get angry.”

  “No. You don’t.” She rose to her feet a second time, only now something about the way she moved suggested the transition had cost her far more than she let on. “You need to go now, son.”

  He rose to his feet. “Are you all right?”

  “It’s just a spell.” She raised up on tiptoes to embrace him, though lifting her arms caused her to wince. “My big strong man.”

  Buddy took a step back. “I don’t get you at all.”

  “I’m not saying don’t take the job.” She patted his arm. “I’m saying take time for yourself. That’s all. View this moment as a gift. A liberation. Search out those elements of yourself that you haven’t been able to see before because you’ve lived with such constant pressure all your days. Take time to breathe. Take time to look. And come to a fuller understanding of who you truly are.”

  CHAPTER 10

  His mother’s words stung worse because they had been so gently spoken. They sank in like barbs and did not let go. Buddy had planned to go home and work out. Instead, he drove to Shona’s.

  The triple whammy that had recently struck Santa Barbara wreaked most of its havoc farther south. Montecito had been particularly hard hit. The steep valleys with their centuries-old eucalyptus groves had become tinder-dry after seven years of hard drought. The forest fires had stayed mostly to the south and east, but a few of the fifty-million-dollar estates had gone up in spectacular fashion. The real devastation had come later, when the coast had been lashed by winter storms, and a decade’s rainfall had arrived in just seven short weeks. Because the fires had stripped away so much of the ground cover, mudslides ripped through the town’s main shopping districts, carrying homes and cars and people the three hard miles to the sea.

  The northern communities like Goleta had largely been spared. The terrain here was mostly level, and the worst they had to deal with were flooded streets. Buddy took the Hollister Avenue exit, off the 101, and entered the developments ringing the newly completed Goleta Valley hospital. Shona’s apartment complex was a charming mix of red brick and gray clapboard. The result was a fanciful blend that proved immensely popular with the younger crowd. He sat in the parking lot and stared at Shona’s window. She had moved in three weeks after they broke up, or, rather, after she dumped him. He had never seen the apartment’s interior. But in those early days, when the thought of her laced each breath with acid, he had often parked in this space and hunted the dark edges for some way to make it better.

  Buddy rose from the car, wishing he had the strength to dismiss his mother’s words as dead wrong. Climbing the stairs left him breathless from a mix of old pain and yearnings he had long pretended no longer touched him.

  Shona’s voice answered from inside. It was muffled, and he could not catch the words. But the tone was enough to cause his heart to hammer. She opened the door, and the half-formed smile slipped away. “Buddy.”

  “Hello, Shona.”

  “Now isn’t a good time.”

  “I understand. I just wanted to ask you one question.”

  Shona’s roommate and best friend appeared in the alcove connecting the kitchen to the living/dining area. She spotted Buddy, and her face flickered with emotions, none of them welcome. “Everything all right, Shona?”

  The words were enough for his former love to step outside. The apartment entrances fronted an open-plan landing, with whitewashed railings that overlooked a central lake. “What do you want?”

  There was no welcome to her voice, no curiosity. Precisely the sound he recalled from the time of endings. He had begged; she had gradually moved from gentle to iron hard. There was no going back. She was done with him. The tone said it all. Then and now.

  He had rehearsed the words the entire way over. But now that he was here, they sounded feeble. “I’m going through some major transitions. I want to get it right. I need to ask why you left me. Not what we talked about. There was so much then, and a lot of it I couldn’t hear. All I could think at the time was, we never argued, we hadn’t—”

  “Don’t, Buddy.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You were always being sorry.”

  “That’s the reason?”

  “Of course not.” She wrapped her arms in tight around her middle and turned to the railing and the waters. The grandmother who had raised her had been full-blooded Cherokee, and Shona’s features were a stunning mix of Anglo and Native American. Copper-blond hair, high cheekbones, permanent tan, hazel eyes that carried a heard-earned wisdom. She was a physical therapist, and like mos
t of these apartment dwellers worked at the sprawling new health complex. “Your father disapproved of me.”

  “Get in line.”

  The simmering coals of old anger resurfaced. “He never said your blood was tainted, though, did he?”

  Buddy started to ask how that could have caused her to break up, and realized at some deeper level that it was the wrong thing to say. She was circling around something, and he wanted to hear what it was. So he held back. Hard as it was, with his entire being drawn by the magnetic power of the heart he would never be able to cherish. His voice sounded raw from the strain as he added, “My mother thought you were great.”

  “How is Beth?”

  He sorted through a whole host of responses. “Wise as ever.”

  She nodded. Took a breath. Released it. Another. “I have no idea who you are.”

  “We were together over two years.”

  “That’s right, Buddy. We were.” She met his gaze with a fire that had attracted him from the very first moment. “And the problem is, I don’t think you know, either. So, how could I?”

  He felt as though she had punched him in the gut. “I don’t understand. But I’m trying to.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.” It was his turn to breathe hard. “I’ve left the firm.”

  “That’s good, Buddy. You needed to.” She wrapped her arms tighter still. “You also need to go now.”

  “Thank you, Shona. For talking with me like this.”

  “Always so polite, Buddy Helms.” Her features hardened. “Don’t come back again. I have a life. A different one. I have . . . Don’t come here again, Buddy.”

  He nodded, the move made ponderous by the terrible weight he carried. “Good-bye, Shona.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Beth Helms sat in the counseling offices’ waiting room and tried not to fidget. She saw how various staffers glanced nervously in her direction. People were unsettled by the turn of events. Beth Helms had made an appointment with their new therapist. She was here looking for help.