Donald didn’t look convinced. “She’s going to want details.”
“I’m calling the event planner first thing on Monday.”
• • •
Brianna unlocked the front door. She saw Natalie’s backpack on the table, but no sound or smell of dinner started. Dakota came trotting over to say hello, but no Natalie. Brianna patted Dakota, then shut and locked the door behind her, dropped her bag in the corner and went to find her sister, who was sitting crosslegged on her bed, listening to her MP3 player and and petting Jasmine.
She wasn’t studying, so that was wrong. She was just … sitting there. She wasn’t crying. She was just … not doing anything. Brianna’s stomach turned over. That was how Natalie coped with everything hard. She found a still place inside and went there. Not like Brianna, who had messy sobs all over everything.
She knocked on the door to get Natalie’s attention. Jasmine looked up, saw who it was, and settled her head on her paws again.
“Today sucked,” Brianna announced, and went to sit down on the bed. She rubbed Jasmine’s head, and Jasmine sighed and let her.
Natalie took out her ear buds and said, “What happened?”
“You first,” Brianna said.
Natalie gave a half-smile. “I got shot down.”
“You … what?” The idea that someone — Joe? — could turn down Natalie was frankly unimaginable.
“So I’m never listening to you again,” Natalie said.
“Yeah, I guess. What happened?”
Natalie shrugged, elaborately unconcerned, like she didn’t have any hurt to hide. Oh, Natalie. Brianna wished she could have only good things, wished they could both have only good things.
“He said he had to work,” Natalie said, scratching Jasmine’s belly.
“Well, he’s an idiot,” Brianna said. “Although maybe he really did have to work.”
“Maybe.” Natalie shrugged again. She fiddled with the ear buds.
“Richard came by work.”
Natalie’s head shot up. “What?”
“He wanted to say he was sorry. The bastard.”
Natalie played with one of Jasmine’s floppy ears. “That sucks. I mean, I’m glad if he’s sober now, but — ”
“Exactly,” Brianna said, falling back on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. “If is the operative word. And I’m not even sure I care. I mean, good for him, but what does it have to do with me? He’s been out of my life for thirteen years. I hardly even remember him.”
Watch me make this quarter disappear, Daddy! Want to go to a movie this weekend?
Natalie was watching her with a look of concern in her blue eyes. Brianna closed her eyes. Jasmine’s tail thumped against her arm.
“I told him I didn’t care he was sorry,” she said.
“I wouldn’t care either, Bree,” Natalie said stoutly, which probably wasn’t true. She would care. She would think it mattered. She was a nice person, that was the difference.
Brianna flung an arm over her eyes to keep the tears from leaking out. “I told him ‘sorry’ wasn’t enough. I wanted repayment.”
Jasmine’s tail thumped harder, which meant Natalie was rubbing her belly. “Wow. What did you mean by that?”
“I have no idea.”
Natalie made a sound and Brianna lifted her arm away from her eyes to give her a suspicious look. “You’re laughing?”
“At us,” Natalie said. “I mean … we might as well wear big ‘Loser’ signs. We don’t even know what we want.”
Brianna shifted onto her elbow and said, “We know what we want. It’s just … things keep getting in our way. I want to keep paying the bills, so we don’t end up on the streets. I want to make a go of Once in a Lifetime. I want Richard to fade back into the shadows where he came from and leave me alone. I was doing fine without him.” I want Mr. G to notice me. I want to call him Matthias, like friends. Like lovers. If you couldn’t even say it, how could you make it come true?
“What do you want, Nat?” Brianna asked, and then realized it was a stupid question. Natalie wanted to live, that was what Natalie wanted.
“I want to go to the ball,” Natalie said, her fingers stilling in Jasmine’s fur, a slight smile on her face.
“The ball?” Brianna said, sitting up and staring.
“You always talk about the Cooper-Renfield gala as if it were the biggest pain in the ass.”
“It is. I keep trying to think up ways to get out of going, but I have to be there in case the caterer put the wrong date on her calendar or the violinist tries to stab the cellist again.”
Natalie wasn’t paying any attention to her. She was apparently looking at a picture only she could see. “All I can imagine is the music and the fairy lights and everyone so beautiful … ”
That was the magic that Brianna tried to pull off behind the scenes, but when you were in charge of the magic, it didn’t seem so magic anymore. It was just a lot of hard work and headaches.
“How come you’ve never said so?” she asked.
Natalie shrugged. “I’m not a donor. I’ll never get invited.”
“Nat, I work there. I’m in charge of the gala arrangements. I can write you a damned invitation.”
Natalie was looking down at Jasmine, not at Brianna. “I don’t have a dress or anything.”
“They rent them in town,” Brianna said. “It can’t be that expensive. Seriously, how could I not know this about you? If you want to go to the ball — ”
“I want to dance in the moonlight and drink champagne.”
“It’s not that thrilling.”
“I want to do it anyway. I want to see what men look like up close in their tuxedos.”
Brianna smiled. “They look exactly how you think they’re going to look.”
“And the women in their dresses.”
“They’re all so high-minded they’re incapable of holding an amusing conversation.”
“And caviar. I want to taste caviar one time in my life.”
“It’s very salty. And, ew.”
“And then I’ll lose my glass slipper at midnight,” Natalie said, leaning back against the pillows with a contented sigh, looking pale and tired.
“Okay, so I put off painting the house until next year. This year, you go to the ball.”
“You weren’t going to paint the house anyway,” Natalie said, and smiled.
• • •
Brianna shoved her arms in her coat sleeves, grabbed her purse, and stepped over the threshold. She was supposed to meet Virginia Drake at one to go over the plans for her daughter’s sweet sixteenth birthday, but she had promised Natalie she’d go look at dresses at Luxury to Lend and that had taken longer than she’d thought it would because Natalie had to try on Every. Single. Dress. Pure delight for Natalie, and torture for Brianna as she tried not to watch the time ticking away.
Finally Natalie had decided on the one she wanted to rent, and put it on hold, and patted it lovingly, and taken photos of it with her phone — “I’ll need shoes and accessories to match.” Which Brianna hadn’t thought about and hadn’t budgeted for, but that was a worry for another day.
So Brianna had brought her home and dropped her off and grabbed her proposal for Virginia. Now, if she could just make it to Virginia’s house in — she glanced at her watch — twenty minutes, she’d be okay.
Richard was standing on the sidewalk, looking up at the house.
She turned her shoulder on him, locked the door behind her, and decided what to do. She would just pretend he wasn’t there. She stepped around him without acknowledging him and went to her car. Piece of cake. He just wasn’t there.
“Brianna,” he said. “You’re right.”
That made her stop, which was stupid, because there was nothing her father could say to her that she would ever want to hear.
“What am I right about?” And wished she had just shut up.
“You’re right that I owe you more than an apology.”
�
�I don’t want anything from you,” she said, and got into the car.
“I’ve got a job,” he said. “Remember how you used to tell me, ‘Dad, get a job’?” and she slammed the door.
• • •
A dog barked at him. Richard turned around to see the little black mutt race down the porch steps and come in his direction. It was the same little dog that had barked at him the first time he’d been here. He took a step back. He didn’t think he was in any danger from the mutt but he wasn’t really a dog person. It was hard to know what a dog was likely to do.
The blonde girl came out, shutting the door behind her. “Oh, good grief, Jasmine, what’s — ” And then she saw him and said more sharply, “That’s enough, Jasmine,” and the dog went over to where she was standing and flopped down by her feet.
She had a cup of yogurt in her hand, and she had obviously intended to come outside to eat her lunch, even though the October afternoon was a little cool for a picnic. He had no idea how long he had been standing here on the front walk, watching down the street in the direction where Brianna’s car had gone.
The little blonde — Natalie, right? — sat down on the porch swing. He could hear the squeak of the chain as she rocked. The dog got up and went to join her, leaping nimbly up onto the seat and resting her head in Natalie’s lap.
“Brianna always wanted a dog,” he said to no one.
“She got her wish,” Natalie said. “She’s got this crazy malamute now. That dog is completely nuts. They’re like soul mates. Dakota’s out back now. She’s not allowed out front without a leash.”
“She dangerous?”
“No, Dakota is the sweetest dog ever. Loves everyone, even the thieves, long as they rub her tummy. We rely on Jasmine here to be the guard dog. Dakota just has a lot of, you know, joie de vivre. And an extremely short attention span.”
“She’ll go chase after a squirrel for the fun of it and never listen when you tell her to cut it out,” Richard guessed.
“Exactly.”
“Pretty dog, a malamute, isn’t it?” He was glad Brianna had gotten her dog. What he wished, he wished —
“Gorgeous. You want to meet her?”
Richard tried to figure out how he’d ended up in this conversation. “No, thanks. I’m not a dog person.”
“How do you know?”
Richard blinked. “What?”
“People are always saying stuff like that but I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean. Like, did a dog bite you so you hate all dogs? Or you’re allergic to dogs? Or what?”
Richard shook his head. “I never had a dog, not even as a boy. I guess I never got used to having them around. Don’t rightly know what a dog is like.”
“Come here,” Natalie said, and patted the porch swing on the other side of the dog. Jasmine, she’d called the dog. Pretty name for a sorry-looking mutt.
Richard wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but so far he wasn’t getting anywhere, so he climbed the three steps up to the porch and gingerly sat on the edge of the swing, next to the dog. The dog gave him a look and edged closer to Natalie.
“Jasmine, you be good,” Natalie said. Then, to Richard, “Go ahead and give her a pat.”
Richard reached out and gave the dog a pat. It wasn’t the first time he’d given a dog a pat, but it was the first time he’d ever put any thought into it.
The dog flapped her tail a time or two.
“There you go,” Natalie said. “She liked that.”
Richard reached for a floppy ear and stroked it. Her fur was a little curly but it was soft and sleek, not rough like he expected. Then he scratched her head, which made her flap her tail some more. She didn’t move from Natalie’s side but she gave him what he thought was an encouraging look from dark brown eyes. “She’s a good dog.”
“She’s a great dog,” Natalie said. She took a bite of her yogurt. “We need to go to the grocery store, ’cause yogurt’s about all there is for lunch. But you can have some if you want. Or there’s tea or water if you’d like.”
“I’m fine,” he said. He scratched the dog’s head one more time. The dog was busy watching Natalie eat. “Brianna probably won’t want you to sit here talking to me — ”
“Brianna’s already chewed me out for that,” Natalie said. She didn’t sound concerned. “But I disagreed with her assessment. I don’t think I’m a traitor for talking to you.”
A traitor. Christ, Brianna still saw the world in harsh black-and-white. Or maybe it was just him she saw that way. He could hardly blame her.
“I guess … I mean, there are some things, if you’d done them, I wouldn’t sit here with you, you know? Like if you had smacked her around, then, you know, that’s that. But she says you weren’t like that, you just liked to drink. You did some really shitty stuff because of it, but I guess that you have a disease. Brianna knows that, too, but that’s in her head, not in her heart. In her heart you abandoned her because you didn’t love her.”
Christ. He should have turned down the damned invitation to come sit on the front porch swing. She looked like a nice kid. But hell —
“I always loved Brianna,” he said. “Always. I just sometimes couldn’t — ”
“Be there. I get it, you know. Spirit is willing and all that.”
The flesh is weak. Christ, if that wasn’t the truth.
“Been sober five years,” he said.
“That’s good,” she said.
He patted the dog. She flapped her tail. “Not soon enough.”
“Better than not at all.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But it was easier being a drunk.”
“I doubt that,” she said. She finished the last of the yogurt and let the dog lick the container and then the spoon. She set the yogurt and spoon on the porch floor.
“What’s your story?” he said.
“Mine?” She looked startled.
“You’ve been sick,” he said. “I’ve seen what it looks like. You’re real little, like you didn’t get the chance to grow right.”
She tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and didn’t seem offended by the directness of his question. Made sense, considering how direct she could be. A little like Brianna that way, though a lot less angry.
“I was diagnosed with leukemia when I was five,” she said. “My mom was still alive then. I don’t remember that much about her but I remember she was always at the hospital with me.”
He sucked a breath in. “Tough times.” He had a hazy idea that she meant she’d had some kind of cancer, blood cancer, he thought, which meant drugs and maybe surgery. A lot of suffering for a long time. Not like getting your appendix out, over quick and you got back on your feet. Richard had been in the hospital once to get his appendix out.
“But that’s not all,” he guessed.
She shook her head. “I had a relapse when I was nine. That was just after my dad married your … Chrissy. And that time, it was Brianna who was always at the hospital with me.”
“Brianna?” he said. Not that he was surprised. Brianna was solid. But she would only have been a kid herself at the time.
“Chrissy never got sober,” Natalie said, relentless about the truth in away he suspected she’d learned from Brianna. “And neither did my dad.”
Christ. He’d known he had to leave to save his own life but he’d left Brianna behind in the care of an alcoholic who had immediately hooked up with another alcoholic. And yet he still didn’t know what he could have done differently. Not be a drunk, Dick. Lotta help that line of thinking was.
“Then I relapsed when I was fifteen,” Natalie said, reciting a fact like it had come out of a history book, and not that there had been pain and blood and tears. Which he was sure there had been.
“They were both dead by then,” he said, remembering their earlier conversation, doing the math. “Chrissy and your dad.”
“Yes.”
“So Brianna … I hope Brianna … ” Listen to him. Hoping a kid had held another k
id’s hand.
“She did,” Natalie said. “‘We’re sisters,’ she used to say. ‘Not by accident but by choice.’ Still says it. I always knew I was going to be okay because Brianna was there.”
Brianna had always been a good kid. He had no idea where she’d gotten it from.
Chapter Eight
Monday morning Brianna was late to work because Dakota had gotten into something and had vomited all over her shoes, so there had been cleaning up, and a phone call to the vet, and then a mad dash out the door only to find that Mrs. Curtin wasn’t in anyway. Out at a breakfast meeting, which meant Brianna could have driven Natalie to class instead of making her take the bus. Natalie had looked beyond exhausted this morning.
Brianna was worried, but Natalie would bite her head off if she said so. So she was just shutting up these days. She hoped Natalie appreciated it.
Heidi peeked around the wall of Brianna’s cubicle. “Mr. G called earlier. I said you’d call him back.”
Brianna’s heart gave an unsteady lurch. She’d missed a call by Mr. G! She had hardly heard a word from him last week, since the movie. She tried to think if he had called even once since then. Before, he’d been calling a couple of times a week because … well, she didn’t really know why he’d been calling. But he had been and then he’d stopped, which was depressing because it seemed like maybe he’d been calling her because he liked talking to her but now that he’d gotten to know her better he was so over that.
She picked up the phone and dialed his number, which she had memorized. Not because she called it so much — she didn’t — but because … maybe some day she’d be stranded somewhere and she would need someone to call, and he was the most reliable person she knew. He was her just-in-case phone number. Her two-o’clock-in-the-morning-and-I’m-calling-from-the-county-jail number. She doubted he knew that.
The phone was answered by someone who was not Mr. G, probably that awful housekeeper Beverly who looked like she drank vinegar for breakfast to get her started for the day. Then he came on the line a moment later and said, “Good morning, Brianna,” and that made her feel good.
“Good morning, Mr. G. I had a message you called earlier? I was running a little late this morning.”
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