Courting Trouble

by Maggie Marr

  “Do you want to move to Alaska?”

  Ash turned her face away from the window. She sat taller and lifted her chin from her hand. In Ash’s eyes Tulsa saw uncertainty, sadness, and a hint of fear—but the jut of her chin and the set of her mouth were hard and determined. “I think it could be cool.”

  Cool? The nonchalance of Ash’s reply raked across Tulsa’s nerves. Oh yes, Alaska could be cool. Tulsa fought the urge to mock her young niece and point out all that Ash would leave behind, the opportunities here that weren’t in Alaska, the family support, her school, her friends, her team—but to point all this out would only force Ash to dig in her heels. Tulsa reached for her glass of Chianti and took a slow sip. Ash had to come to the realization of what she would lose on her own—all that Tulsa could hope to do was point Ash in the direction of the facts. Facts that would allow Ash to make the decision that Tulsa wanted her to make.

  “What does Brie say?” Tulsa asked.

  “She said she wouldn’t want to go because it’s so cold. And it’s night for like seven months out of the year.”

  Tulsa reached for the fresh baguette and set it on the cutting board. “Will you make the garlic butter?”

  With a tiny toss of her head, Ash slid off the stool and ambled toward the refrigerator. With her long hair and curves she looked like a beautiful woman—Tulsa’s heart ached with the idea of Ash away from her mother as she tried to navigate the beginning of her womanhood. Being without a mother made for a lonely world.

  Ash pulled the butter from the refrigerator, grabbed the garlic and a smaller cutting board, and sidled up beside Tulsa.

  “Do you know what high school you’d go to?” Tulsa asked. The serrated knife sliced through the crusty bread.

  Ash lifted her shoulder and shook her head no. “Dad says he doesn’t know but he’ll find out. He said he thinks the high school where his job will be is pretty small.”

  “He moves around a lot up there, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said softly. “I think so.”

  “Well, that way you’ll get to go to a lot of high schools, right? Meet a lot of different kids.”

  Ash bit her bottom lip as though this thought hadn’t popped through her mind. She crinkled her eyebrows and peeled the skin off the garlic.

  “Might be tough, though, to do volleyball,” Tulsa added.

  Ash crushed the garlic with the flat of her knife. “Maybe.”

  Tulsa reached for the box of aluminum foil. She pulled out a long sheet and ripped it from the box. “Good thing you’re used to the cold.” She laid the foil flat on the counter. Ash mixed the garlic into the butter.

  “Dad said some mornings your eyelashes freeze.”

  “That’s colder than here.” Tulsa slathered butter and garlic across the first slice of bread.

  Ash’s confidence was slipping. She was wavering, but she didn’t want to back down and admit defeat—she was a McGrath and an adolescent girl, and as both the will to be right, especially about her own independence, was a torrential force. But there was one thing—one person—that Tulsa felt certain could tip Ash over to staying in Powder Springs.

  “So what does Dylan think about you moving to Alaska?”

  Ash tilted her head and looked at Tulsa. Her eyes were so beautiful—bright, bright blue—filled with the newness of life, and yet there was a weight, a hint of uncertainty. “He doesn’t want me to go.”

  “But you do,” Tulsa said, “for sure want to go.” She kept her tone soft, open, non-confrontational.

  Ash took a furtive glance over her shoulder, toward her mother’s workshop in the backyard, and then returned her gaze to Tulsa. She closed her eyes and pursed her lips. Tulsa thought she saw the faintest of quivers around her mouth.

  “I’m not sure I want to stay here… with Mom.”

  Tulsa’s heart pattered faster. Now she was getting somewhere with Ash. Digging without being too obvious.

  “She…” Ash placed her hands on the counter as if to steady herself for the backlash she anticipated. “It just seems like she doesn’t want me to grow up.”

  “Ash, you know—”

  “No, really.” Ash interjected her words faster, louder, pleading that Tulsa listen and actually hear what she had to say. “Mom wasn’t even going to let me see my dad. My dad. Because she doesn’t like him. She doesn’t want me to go anywhere with my friends. The only reason she let me ride home from the game that night with Dylan was because you were there spying on me.”

  “I wasn’t spy—”

  Ash cut Tulsa to quiet with a sharp look.

  “Okay, maybe a tiny bit of spying,” Tulsa said and buttered another piece of bread. “But it’s because she loves you, because she wants you to be safe, and she wants you to have all the good things in life—”

  “And not get pregnant at seventeen like she did,” Ash said, her voice flat. “Look, I get it. But I’m not her. Just because she made mistakes doesn’t mean I’m going to make the same ones.” She plopped a buttered slice of bread onto the aluminum foil.

  “No,” Tulsa said. “You’ll make your own.”

  “Right, probably, maybe. Okay. Yes. I am sure that I will make mistakes, but how can I make any if she won’t let me out of the house?”

  “She lets you out of the house.”

  “For school and volleyball. And I can ride home with a boy if my aunt is tailing me.” Ash rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. Adolescent irritation oozed off her.

  “If I go to Alaska, I get to be with my dad and I get to be me and not be completely controlled by Mom all the time.” Ash turned her face toward Tulsa. “I’ll miss everyone and my friends, but I don’t know—it might be worth it—instead of stuck in this house with Mom.”

  Tulsa winced. Ash made Savannah sound like an antisocial recluse. And while most of the time Savannah seemed to enjoy a solitary life more than a social one, Tulsa was certain that Savannah didn’t want Ash to suffer because of her mother’s solitary nature.

  “It’s hard to let go,” Tulsa said and placed the final piece of buttered bread on the foil. She reached over and washed her hands in the sink. “She doesn’t want you to get hurt, and it’s a hard balance to strike as a parent.”

  Ash washed her hands and took the dish towel from Tulsa. “It may not be a balance she has to worry about much longer.”

  Ash’s tone was harder. Her face wasn’t open, as though she’d said enough and was finished sharing with Tulsa.

  “I have homework before the game,” Ash said and turned to leave.

  Tulsa wrapped the foil and placed the bread in the oven, uncertain how silence could sound so very loud.

  *

  Tulsa might have preferred the harsh words and loud yelling of a mother-daughter battle to the tense and weighted silence of dinner. Not much was said over pasta and salad and garlic bread—in fact, close to nothing except Tulsa’s questions about that night’s volleyball game and Ash’s history test that day. Averted gazes, silent chewing, the scrape of chairs and the clatter of dishes as the table was cleared. Jumpiness prickled Tulsa’s skin, caused by the silence and all that went unsaid. The car ride through the darkness to the high school was no different. They dropped Ash at the gym door where she said “bye” and scurried inside while Savannah and Tulsa parked.

  At least now there was noise. The cacophonous slap of volleyball leather to wood floor pounded off the rafters of the gymnasium as the two teams warmed up for their game. Savannah sat in the third row with a saved seat for Tulsa. Tulsa stood in the doorway, having just finished a call talking down a client who desperately wanted to set her cheating husband’s Bentley on fire because she’d discovered yet another out-of-wedlock child he’d fathered during their marriage. Tulsa slipped her phone into her purse and flipped her hair over her shoulder.

  From this spot, so close to the volleyball court, she could watch the girls warm up. Ash’s eyes briefly locked with Tulsa’s and Ash flashed a quick smile at her aunt. Ash leapt into the air and
spiked a ball hard across the net and into the floor. A tickle of pride fluttered through Tulsa. Ash had talent. As a freshman she was starting on the varsity team, and if she continued to grow and get better, according to her coaches there was potential for a college scholarship.

  “She’s quite a player.”

  Tulsa tilted her head to the side. Cade knew he was taking a chance by speaking to her. The settlement conference had been earlier that day and neither Tulsa nor Savannah had recovered from Bobby’s surprise.

  “Think there’s volleyball in Alaska?” Tulsa asked.

  She couldn’t quell the heat that pressed through her when her eyes landed on his sharp-cut jaw. His chest rose and fell with a deep breath and his tongue licked his lips.

  “I hope so,” Cade said. His voice was deep, filled with a resignation.

  He couldn’t tell her how he’d advised his client nor could he tell her anything about what his client said, but with that tone—that one statement—Tulsa knew how Cade felt about Bobby taking Ash to Alaska and for that knowledge she was thankful.

  “Rough day for everyone,” Tulsa said. Her voice softer—she wouldn’t press, she wouldn’t ask, she wouldn’t dig or punish or judge. These were the facts, the situation, and really as Tulsa watched Ash yet again jump high into the air and spike the ball to the ground—she realized that a big part of what would happen was now up to Ash and Judge Wilder.

  “As much as I’d like to,” Tulsa said, “I can’t control everything.”

  “That’s quite an admission from you,” Cade said, his voice containing a hint of a tease.

  “She’s fourteen. She’ll testify and the judge will decide. Savannah feels the same way.”

  Tulsa’s eyes traced over Ash’s long legs, her athletic frame. She wanted so many things for her niece. She wanted to make Ash’s life easier—to help Ash on this journey—to save her from the inevitable potholes, missed turns—the mistakes and the pain of discovering all the wrong choices you’d made. But Tulsa couldn’t live Ash’s life for her. Tulsa shifted her coat, which was draped over her arm. “Her mom will always be here for her, I’ll always be there for her—hopefully her dad will too.”

  “Is Savannah…” Cade’s eyes drifted from the volleyball court to the far side of the gym. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s strong. We all are. We have to be.”

  With Tulsa’s words the muscle in Cade’s jaw flinched. Tulsa and Savannah and now Ash had weathered the rough-and-tumble knocks of life, but they persevered—they soldiered onward.

  “We’ll get through it,” Tulsa said. “We always do.”

  He pursed his lips together and his gaze shifted from the bleachers to Tulsa.

  “Alone,” Cade said.

  There seemed to be so much more he wanted to say, and there was so much more she wanted to hear, but the whistle sounded and it was time to start the game.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “She wants to move to Alaska?” Jo squinted and her forehead wrinkled, her normally placid features registered surprise. “But it’s so cold.”

  “Spoken like a true Los Angeleno,” Tulsa said.

  “She’s an adolescent girl. She doesn’t know what she wants,” Emma said and twirled a curl between her thumb and pointer finger.

  “Or what’s good for her,” Tulsa said. “She’d leave all her friends, her team, her boyfriend, and everything so she can have more freedom and not do what her mother says.”

  Emma, Jo, and Sylvia all nodded.

  “That is pretty much fourteen,” Sylvia said.

  “The custody hearing is next Monday?”

  Tulsa nodded. “Our last supervised visit is today. Lunch. No school—”

  “What’s the holiday?”

  “Tonight is the Powder Springs fall carnival. The last time anyone will be outside without snow boots and a parka.”

  “I saw the weather.” Emma’s eyes widened. “You might get ten inches of snow this weekend.”

  “Or it could be eighty degrees and sunny,” Tulsa said. “Welcome to Colorado.”

  “So, you’ll be home…” Emma let her sentence trail off in hopes that Tulsa would finish it for her.

  “Soon,” Tulsa said. “I think Wilder will rule quickly and whatever he decides about Ash’s custody will dictate when I come home. Everything stays status quo until the end of next week, but if Ash is moving to Alaska…” Tulsa lifted her shoulders.

  “Then you may have to stay and help Savannah,” Sylvia said.

  “Right.”

  Both Emma and Jo nodded and there was understanding in their eyes—no pressure, no irritation, just understanding. They were not only the best of colleagues but the best of friends.

  “Oh, I remember what I wanted to tell you!” Emma broke in, her voice high and quick, filled with excitement. “Albie and Sonia have figured out visitation for Sparkles!”

  Jo rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and shook her head. “They could have purchased two dozen of those dogs for the amount they spent on attorneys’ fees to figure out visitation.”

  “One month on then one month off, holidays every-other year.”

  “Seriously?” Jo asked.

  Emma nodded. “It works best for Albie for when he’s on set. He can work around his visitation schedule with Sparkles if it’s month by month. But I think the real reason it got done is they both found someone new.” Emma leaned forward and cupped her hand around her mouth as if telling a secret. “It’s all over People magazine, but Albie told me a couple weeks ago.”

  While Jo loathed the celebrity freight train that hammered through the offices of McGrath, Phillips, & Lopez, Emma adored it. Due to confidentiality requirements, Emma couldn’t gossip about clients with anyone but her partners, so Tulsa was more than willing to listen to Emma and her tiny tidbits of gossip.

  “Thanks for taking care of that one, Em,” Tulsa said. She glanced at the clock. “Okay, ladies, I gotta go. I have one more visit to supervise and then I’m working the volleyball booster booth tonight at the carnival.”

  “Enjoy the snow,” Jo said and snorted, though a quick smile followed.

  “Enjoy your convertible,” Tulsa said.

  She waved good-bye, minimized the window on her computer, and closed her laptop. For the first time in a while Tulsa didn’t long for the wind whipping through her hair as she roared up Pacific Coast Highway on her way to Malibu. Even with the fear of what might happen to Ash and the questions surrounding her mother—a big piece of her was grounded in the solid comfort she got from simply being home.

  *

  Crews of volunteers hung white lights along the Powder Springs town square. Ash and Bobby walked toward the Wooden Nickel. Across the street, Wayne wore a flannel shirt and hammered a wood plank onto the stage taking shape on the courthouse steps.

  “Hey, Tulsa!” Wayne waved and then continued hammering.

  She lifted her hand and returned his wave. She’d nearly forgotten the sense of community that came with living in a small town. Dozens of volunteers worked to make the fall carnival come to life. Some of the proceeds would go to the Powder Springs Food Pantry and the various sports teams’ booster clubs would be able to buy some new equipment and uniforms, but this carnival was more than just a fundraiser. This carnival was an opportunity for friends and neighbors and families to gather—to take time out from their hectic work-filled hours of each day and enjoy being together. To enjoy the crisp air that smelled more than a little of snow, to admire the giant mountains that jutted to the sky and the town with its Main Street, all-American architecture. She’d forgotten, living in LA, a place steeped in individualism, this sense of small-town pride.

  The booths taking shape lined the four streets surrounding the square. Each street was blocked off in preparation for the carnival. There would be hot cider, apple turnovers, games, dancing, rides, a talent contest, and even Rose’s cinnamon rolls. The night would be cold but there would be propane heaters and carefully maintained wood fires.
>
  The fall carnival created some of Tulsa’s fondest childhood memories. One of the few times every year when Grandma Margaret actually participated in town life. She’d bring the girls to the carnival where she would work the VFW booth selling fresh coffee and sandwiches.

  Tulsa followed Ash and Bobby toward Rose’s restaurant. Bobby opened the restaurant door for Ash and he laughed at something Ash said. A wide smile spread over Ash’s face. Melancholy spiked Tulsa’s heart. She wanted a healthy and hopefully solid relationship with Bobby for Ash, but Tulsa also wanted the safety and security that a stable homelife in Powder Springs could provide. She didn’t want Ash to spend three years of high school jumping around Alaska.

  Tulsa followed Bobby and Ash into the restaurant. How soon would Tulsa’s tiny family, a family that she felt reconnected to, dissolve? Ash might leave with Bobby and Savannah would stay sad and alone in the giant Victorian while Tulsa returned to Los Angeles. A hollow feeling pushed through Tulsa with the thought of her niece and her sister scattered like seeds on the wind. There was a peacefulness that dwelled within her from the knowledge that Savannah and Ash lived in the old McGrath family home, even if Tulsa chose to reside a half a country away.

  Earlier Cade had texted that he’d meet them at the Wooden Nickel, but Tulsa hoped he got caught up in a depo, or interrogatories, or a status date… or anything, because she didn’t want to see him. Her feelings for Cade were as conflicted as her mixed emotions surrounding Ash’s new relationship with Bobby. All the emotions—emotions she so easily seemed to avoid in Los Angeles—pounded around her. She was barely able to contain her sadness, confusion, even bits of anger and frustration. So many emotions left Tulsa feeling worn and ragged. She couldn’t seem to find the brakes for this emotional roller coaster. Soaring highs when Ash smiled or Cade laughed and plunging lows when memories of her mother and the idea of Ash leaving bounded through her mind. Even this day, in a matter of minutes she’d gone from the comfort of seeing the square transformed for the fall carnival to feeling weighted down with the real possibility of Ash moving to Alaska. She felt the needle-like piercing of her nails in her palm and looked down. She hadn’t realized she’d gripped her hands into tight fists.