Catch a Falling Star

by Jessica Starre

  He was, face it, bored. After nearly ten years of dealing with patent law, he no longer found it appealing. Had he ever? Of course he had. He remembered tirelessly arguing cases in law school with his friend Donald Burke. In their first years at the firm — which had belonged to their fathers — he and Donald had continued their energetic debates. But in the last few years, the work had become less engaging and more rote.

  For a moment Matthias let his thoughts wander to other areas of law that he had studied during law school. What if had chosen a different area? Criminal law, for example. He supposed that might be interesting, but probably only in the way that watching a train wreck was interesting. He could just imagine what his father would have thought. And he could easily guess what Donald would say if Matthias suggested he wanted to start representing criminals. (“There’s no money in that,” was what Donald would say, as if either of them needed more money.)

  He sighed and tossed his reading glasses on the desk before wandering restlessly over to the bookcases that lined one wall. Open-shelved bookcases, not the kind covered with glass beloved by attorneys the world ’round. Matthias didn’t want to fuss with glass doors when he was pulling books out by the armful to find the citation he needed. And he had Beverly and her team of housekeepers to keep the dust down.

  In fact his office was so clean and well taken care of that it practically gleamed. It didn’t look like anyone actually worked here, although he knew for a fact that he had been quite busy all morning. Which meant he was a man who had made no impact on his surroundings.

  That was a depressing thought. Maybe he ought to toss some printer paper on the floor just to prove he existed.

  A knock at the open door made him swing around. Beverly, wearing her usual neat suit and low heels, said, “The curator is here, from the museum. Anita Trainor. And … her helper.”

  He wondered what the helper had said or done to make Beverly refer to her like that, but he didn’t ask. He glanced at his watch. Brianna had told him ten A.M. and it was ten A.M. on the dot.

  “Would you like me to oversee the arrangements?” Beverly asked.

  “No, I’ll do it,” he said, grateful for a task that wasn’t related to patent law. Maybe what he needed was a short break, and then everything would go back to normal.

  “Very good. Shall I show them in?”

  This was the room where the plate was kept, so they might as well see it in situ, so to speak. And if he carried it out to them he’d probably break it at the last minute. Not that that really mattered to him. But it would shatter Anita’s heart.

  “Yes, please,” he said, closing the folder on his desk and putting the paperweight on it.

  A few moments later, Beverly showed the two women in, Anita carrying a box of packing materials and … it appeared to be Brianna hauling in a heavy case of some sort. He would probably recognize those crazy red curls fifty years and ten thousand miles from now. He smiled.

  “Oohff,” Brianna said, and set the case down on his desk, a little harder than was probably good for the desk. “I think I herniated a disk.” She pushed a palm against her back and arched, the thin fall sweater she was wearing pulling taut … but she probably wouldn’t appreciate him ogling — never once in their acquaintance had she given a signal that she even noticed he was male — so he turned to Anita and exclaimed at the sight of her cast and sling, “Oh my goodness! What happened?”

  She responded with a rushed explanation of her fall, and he expressed concern and thanked her for coming by despite the fact that she must be in a lot of pain. She gave a little laugh and said, “Oh, no, thank you, Mr. Gustafson! What a generous donation. And of course I am thrilled to be the one to take care of it.”

  She turned to look at the plate on its pedestal in the corner. “This is it?” she asked, reverence in her voice.

  “That’s it,” he said. He turned to his desk and pulled open the lower drawer, running his fingers along the tabs of the file folders until he found the one he wanted. Anita went nearer to the plate, keeping her hands very close to her body, like a kid who’d been warned not to touch anything.

  Brianna was looking at the Oriental rug in the center of the room, one he particularly liked from Armenia, woven with religious symbols in red, gold, and blue. He thought he might tell her about it, and maybe she would smile that smile she had when she was unexpectedly enchanted by something. The things that enchanted Brianna were not the usual things. Maybe her eyes would shine the way that made him feel warm and appreciated. Maybe —

  But she didn’t look at the rug long enough for him to put any thoughts together. Apparently she wasn’t especially taken by it, because she wandered over to the bookshelves. She wasn’t going to find Nard’s The Law of Patents or Root’s Rules of Patent Drafting: Guidelines from Federal Circuit Case Law any more interesting than she’d found the rug.

  After a moment, he remembered what he was doing and stopped staring at Brianna, who was trailing a finger along the spine of one book after another. He handed the folder to Anita, who took it awkwardly in her good hand.

  “That’s what I can find about the provenance,” he said. The folder contained the bill of sale from the gallery from which his father had purchased the plate, along with an independent appraisal by a well-known name, and a few other relevant documents.

  “May I sit down?” she said, and he indicated his chair behind the desk. She took it and promptly lost herself in studying the documents.

  Brianna had wandered from bookshelf to bookshelf, and now she was at the end unit, squatting. Which meant she was looking at the lower shelves. Which meant she had spotted —

  “Sherlock Holmes?” she said, and sounded delighted. The things that enchanted Brianna. “Edgar Rice Burroughs? Oh my god! You have Dashiell Hammett! And of course they’re the first editions of the hard covers.” She promptly sat on the floor and started pulling volumes out, which made him blink because no one ever treated his belongings like that, and he was absolutely sure no one had ever sat on the floor before. Then Anita looked up, cleared her throat, and said, “Brianna, what are you doing?”

  Brianna turned red, said, “Oops!” and jumped to her feet, then crouched down to put the books back where they belonged. Matthias didn’t care — books, even first editions, weren’t art objects to him but things to be touched and read and enjoyed — but he didn’t say anything except, “Did you see that dreadful movie?”

  “You can’t be talking about The Maltese Falcon or you wouldn’t call it dreadful, so you must be talking about the one based on A Princess of Mars,” she said. “No, I didn’t.”

  There went that topic of conversation. Matthias forced a smile. “Well, don’t.”

  She gave a last longing glance at the shelf and he asked, “Are you a Holmes fan?”

  “No, not Holmes. Tarzan. Well, not Tarzan so much as … my grandpa had a whole collection of those stories. And not just Tarzan, but all of these, Sam Spade, The Continental Op, Buck Rogers, Zorro. He had hardbound copies of the ones he could find that way, as long as they weren’t too expensive. His paychecks didn’t run to first editions. I read them all one summer, I was about ten or eleven. I don’t know what happened to them after he died.”

  Matthias didn’t really know what to say to that, so he accounted it fortunate when Anita said, “Brianna, I’m ready for a closer examination. If you’ll open that case? And then get out the pad and unroll it on the desk here.”

  Brianna moved away from the bookshelf to do Anita’s bidding. Matthias settled a shoulder against the wall and watched.

  • • •

  The house smelled wonderful. Mr. G’s house was amazing — a Georgian-type manor set on acres of beautifully kept lawn and gardens — but it didn’t smell like anything. Okay, maybe it smelled like lemon oil and air freshener. But it didn’t smell like home.

  Brianna’s stomach growled the moment she walked through the front door. She could tell Natalie had made chicken soup with dumplings, one of Brianna�
��s fall favorites, even though it wasn’t quite soup weather yet.

  “Oh, gimme,” she said, coming into the kitchen, where Natalie was sitting on the stool, her nose in a book, both dogs lying at her feet. She was reading … an accounting textbook. No Tarzan for Natalie. If Brianna had gotten to go to college, she wouldn’t have chosen a course of study as boring as that —

  She stifled the thought, reminding herself that it was good Natalie was being practical because if she had wanted to go into theatre or something, what would Brianna have said? Not on my dime, sounding like parents everywhere. Or would she have said, Right on, sister, follow your dreams? She was kind of glad she hadn’t had to find out.

  “Bowls are where the bowls always are,” Natalie said, getting up and setting her book aside. The dogs got up with her, and Dakota made a move toward the dinner, but Brianna hip-checked her and sent her into the living room. Jasmine went to her usual place by Natalie’s chair at the table without having to be told.

  Brianna got down two bowls and Natalie went to the utensil drawer for spoons and the ladle and Dakota poked her nose in the doorway as if to make sure Brianna had really meant to banish her.

  “Get!” Brianna said forcefully, because that was what you had to do with a malamute if you didn’t want said malamute taking over the universe. Dakota sighed as if her heart had been broken and dragged her forlorn body back into the living room where she plopped down in a spot where she could watch them. Which she did, intently. If anyone spilled anything on the floor, look out for the crazy malamute.

  “This smells heavenly,” Brianna said to Natalie, ignoring Dakota’s sad-eyed gaze. “After the day I had it is like the perfect meal. What made you think soup? I thought you were planning to grill the chicken.”

  “I wasn’t feeling too well,” Natalie said and shrugged. “So it seemed just what the doctor ordered.”

  Brianna forced herself to keep ladling soup. It was probably only an unfortunate choice of words. “Not feeling well? Like you have a headache?” Then because she didn’t want to sound like helicopter-mom, she added, “Because that is what I’ve got. Splitting headache. You should have seen me trying to deal with Anita all morning.”

  “No,” Natalie said, taking her bowl over to the table, then going to fill water glasses. “You know. Tired, achy.”

  Brianna let her breath out in a whoosh. “Natalie — ”

  “Nothing the soup won’t cure.”

  Brianna nodded, the words she wanted to say lodged in her throat. Natalie was a grown up now. She knew how to take care of herself. She knew she had to take care of herself. She knew the signs and symptoms — by god, who knew them better than Natalie? But —

  “Okay,” Brianna said. “You know — ”

  “I know.”

  “We will do whatever it takes, Natalie. Whatever it takes — ”

  “I know,” Natalie said. “And it’s nothing the soup won’t cure.”

  Chapter Four

  Saturday morning, and no more excuses. Richard looked at the house. It looked the same as it always had, except maybe the paint was peeling a little worse than he’d ever let it go. There was a battered Ford of uncertain vintage in the driveway. The lawn had been mowed recently. In all other respects, it was what he remembered it being. Home.

  No, not home. He had given up the right to call it that a long time ago. But there had never been anyplace else he had ever wanted to come back to.

  He had tried looking her up in the phone book and online but couldn’t find her. That didn’t mean she wasn’t still here. Chrissy wouldn’t be one to put up a Facebook page. And it could easily be that she used a cell phone instead of a landline. But it had been a long time and she might have moved. She might be anywhere. She might have gotten married again, changed her name. He might never find her again. Find them.

  He got out of his rental car and walked up the sidewalk. He had practiced all the things he might say to her but now those memorized lines seemed stupid, pointless. You didn’t rehearse this. You just came to do what you had to do.

  He knocked on the door. There never had been a doorbell.

  A minute later a pretty young woman he’d never seen before opened the door. His heart sank. A tiny blonde, probably college age. Maybe the battered Ford belonged to her. She wouldn’t know what had become of the occupants of this house —

  He cleared his throat. “I’m looking for Chrissy Daniels,” he said. He didn’t say I’m looking for my wife.

  The blonde’s eyes widened. “Chrissy Daniels?” she said.

  His heart lifted for a moment. She recognized the name. Maybe she did know where Chrissy was.

  “Who is it, Nat?”

  Another voice, sounding a bit like Chrissy, but not Chrissy.

  “It’s about your mom,” said the tiny blonde.

  Your mom. Christ, the voice was little Brianna, though she couldn’t be so little anymore —

  Suddenly she loomed in the doorway, a grown adult, with a face he would always recognize, her crazy red curls and emerald green eyes a delight when she was a child —

  Those emerald green eyes narrowed the moment she saw him and her mouth twisted in an ugly grimace.

  “Get the hell out of here,” she said, and shut the door in his face.

  • • •

  Richard’s legs had buckled and wouldn’t carry him to the car, so he sank unsteadily to the front step and hung onto the nearest porch rail with a trembling hand. The world seemed to swoop crazily around him, and he needed a drink in a way he had not needed a drink since he had finally, finally gotten sober.

  He heard the front door open behind him and he straightened up. He didn’t stand; he didn’t have the strength. He heard a light step on the porch; a floorboard creaked. Not Brianna, of course. She would be stomping. The other girl. It’s about your mom. A roommate?

  She sat down next to him on the front step. A dog, a squirrely looking little black mutt, followed her out and barked at him once. The blonde girl reached behind her to pat the dog and that made it go quiet. Then she sent it back inside.

  “You okay?” she asked Richard.

  He closed his eyes and said, “No, I am not goddamned okay.” He wrapped his hand more firmly around the porch rail.

  “Oh, sorry, I know. Sorry. Bad choice of words. Brianna — you’re her dad, right?”

  He nodded, not able to get any words to form, not looking at her. He didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want her to see him.

  “Brianna’s mom died a long time ago,” she said with all the brutality of youth, and he wanted to howl. Chrissy gone. Chrissy dead. No more chances to make it right with her. His chest tightened and he had trouble getting the next breath in.

  “You can leave me the hell alone,” he said, and covered his eyes with his free hand. Christ, he should never have come back.

  “Eight years ago,” the girl said, apparently not the kind who took direction well. “It was a car accident. It killed my dad, too. They were married. You probably didn’t know that, since you were asking for Chrissy Daniels. I was fourteen when they died. Brianna had just turned eighteen.”

  Eight years ago. Chrissy had been dead for eight years. Christ, it didn’t bear thinking about. How long had he been gone? Brianna had been a kid when he left. He hadn’t meant to be gone for so long —

  “And your mom?” he asked tentatively. Someone must have taken care of them. Someone must have —

  The girl wrapped her arms around her knees. “She died when I was seven.”

  He nodded again, feeling like a bobble-head doll on a dashboard. “So you … ” His throat worked and he made himself say it. If you wanted to pay for your sins, you had to be able to look at them, see what they were. “You went into foster care?”

  “No,” she said. “Brianna petitioned the court for custody, and got it.”

  Christ.

  “Well … good,” he said. “That’s … I guess that’s good.”

  What would have been bette
r, dickhead, is if you’d been here.

  But she didn’t say that, even if she thought it. Brianna would have. Even when she was just a little kid, she called it like she saw it.

  “I don’t even know your name,” he said.

  She stuck out her hand. “I’m Natalie Johnson. And you’re?”

  He looked at her hand. He supposed he would have to shake. He did. She had a small hand, frail. A little blonde angel, or one of the fairy-folk, not quite of this world. “I’m Richard Daniels.”

  A smile quirked her lips. “She calls you Dick.”

  “Or a dick,” he guessed. “When she speaks of me at all, right?”

  Natalie shrugged. “We had some hard times. And Brianna’s not really a sentimental person.”

  Hey, Daddy, watch me make this quarter disappear! Hey, Daddy, you want to go to a movie this weekend? Hey, Daddy, do you think Santa will bring me a skateboard this Christmas?

  He brushed his hand over his eyes again. “She’s never been sentimental,” he said. “But Brianna has always been a good kid.”

  • • •

  Natalie was out there talking to the dickhead. Natalie the traitor. Brianna concentrated on wiping down the counter. The rule was, whoever didn’t make dinner had to clean it up, which meant Brianna spent a lot of time washing dishes. Not that she minded; fair was fair, and Natalie was a much better cook than she was. But Natalie was also a traitor. Trying to make that jackass feel better about getting the door slammed in his face. The door slammed in his face was the least of what he deserved.

  She wrung out the dish cloth and hung it over the faucet. She had been glad when Dick had left, glad, and when Anthony had come along and swept her mom off her feet, Brianna had been happy about that. She hadn’t thought about how great it would be if her dad came back home. Never. Not once. She’d hoped Natalie’s dad could be the dad she’d never had, who’d let her have a skateboard and go to the movies with her.