by Susan Wiggs
“Mom said the movie theater in town is closed down.”
“That’s a fact. They were going to tear the Lynwood down, so I bought it.”
A spark of interest flashed in Cody. “Yeah?”
“I’d like to reopen, for old time’s sake. One screen, maybe show some independent films.”
“That’d be cool.” Cody studied the other objects in the case—a baseball autographed by Joe DiMaggio, the stub of a ticket to a Beatles concert, a display of prize rodeo belt buckles, and photos of Gavin posing proudly by his vintage airplane. Pretty radical stuff, he decided.
His perusal drifted to a framed picture of his mom on a horse. “When was that taken?” he asked, to fill the silence.
“First summer after high school,” Gavin said. “I invited her to spend a year up here before starting college. She studied painting with a local artist.”
“She never finished college,” Cody said, hearing contempt in his own voice. He didn’t care. All his friends’ parents had degrees and stuff. His mom had, well, her job. And him. And lame-ass suspicious Brad who lived in fear that Cody and his friends were going to help themselves to uppers or painkillers from his sample cases.
He looked at the picture, taken in a pasture with the mountains in the background. Slender and suntanned, long legs and bare feet, her head thrown back with laughter, she looked pretty amazing. For the past couple of years, his friends had been giving Cody a hard time about his mom. She was a lot younger than most moms. She looked like a shampoo ad or something. It was kind of cool sometimes, having a mom who was a babe, but mostly it was embarrassing as hell.
“I still have that horse,” Gavin said.
“The one in the picture?”
“Yeah, that’s Dooley. Your mom learned barrel racing on him.”
“He must be pretty old.”
“Twenty-something. Do you ride, Cody?”
“Not horses.”
Gavin chuckled, showing perfect teeth. And his eyes—they had that crinkly, twinkly look Cody recognized from old movie posters. He didn’t trust this guy. How did you know he was being sincere when he was an actor?
“I guess that’ll change now that you’re here,” Gavin said. “Or maybe I’ll take you flying once I pass my physical and get my license renewed. You interested?”
“We’re only staying until you get through with your recovery period.” Even that was too long for Cody. Worse, he had to enroll in the local high school here in Noplace, Montana. He had stormed for weeks in rebellion, but his mom was adamant. He got a minor reprieve this week—it was winter break in Noplace. But pretty soon he was going to have to be the new kid. A fate worse than death. “Mom says a few weeks or so. Then we’re out of here.”
Gavin’s grin stayed fixed in place. But the movie-star gleam in his eyes dimmed as if Cody’s words were a light switch that suddenly turned it off. “Let’s go see if supper’s ready.”
Cody felt kind of shitty as he followed his grandfather into a big dining room with fancy crystal and china laid out. What did the old man expect? Instant bonding, like on those long-distance phone commercials? He and Gavin Slade were complete strangers. After this transplant thing was over, they probably wouldn’t ever see each other again.
Grandfathers made friends with grandsons when they were little and cute, not when they were sixteen, wearing a ponytail and combat boots. Not that Cody wanted to cozy up to the old man, anyway. It was gross, thinking about his illness. He had some kind of fluid bag attached to a tube going inside him, doing the work his kidneys were supposed to do. The very idea of it made Cody want to hurl.
His mom joined them in the dining room. She was smiling in a nervous way. Her gaze kept darting from her father to Cody. “Hi, guys,” she said.
Gavin held a chair for her. It was corny but kind of nice seeing the old guy do that. Once, Cody had tried holding a chair out for Claudia. “What, like it’s going to get away from me?” she’d asked, then cracked up. Cody had laughed, too.
Dinner was about the best thing that had happened since his mom loaded him into the car at the crack of dawn yesterday. Prepared by an Asian nutrition expert named Tadao, it consisted of pasta with fancy sauce, fresh bread, a bunch of grilled veggies, and a big salad of exotic fruit.
After shoveling away about nineteen pounds of food, Cody glanced up to see both his mother and his grandfather watching him. Neither of them had eaten much. Gavin was on some sort of low-protein diet. He couldn’t eat things that made his kidneys work hard because they didn’t function at all anymore.
“You must’ve worked up an appetite out at Lonepine today,” Gavin commented.
“It’s good,” he said, and sucked down a whole glass of milk.
“Be sure you tell Tadao you enjoyed it,” his mom said.
Shit. She was always doing that. No matter what it was—having a good meal, talking on the phone, whatever, she had to add her own little goody-goody twist on it. Her own little adjustment or correction. This morning he’d expected her to totally humiliate him in front of that girl, Molly. But for once his mom had shown mercy.
She’d seemed kind of flustered around Sam McPhee, like she couldn’t quite decide what to make of him. Cody wasn’t sure what to make of the guy either. He was okay, but Cody thought it was totally bogus of him to make him pay off the trailer damage with slave labor.
He helped himself to more milk from a cut-glass pitcher, feeling a slight sting from the blisters on his hand. Blisters, for chrissakes. He was pretty sure he’d never given himself blisters before. Especially not by shoveling horseshit.
He got the idea from that Bliss guy that Lonepine was some kind of hotshot horse breeding and training ranch. It was cool, working in a barn where a mare was about to give birth any minute. When it was time to go today, Cody had felt a twinge of disappointment. He wouldn’t have minded seeing the horse being born. It would have given him a good story to tell Claudia.
Maybe the manure story was funny enough. But honestly, he hadn’t felt much like laughing. There had been a moment, when he was alone in the barn, with the smells around him and the light falling between the rafters, that an odd feeling had settled over him. Maybe it was the quiet or the sense that he was totally alone; he didn’t know. But it had felt kind of pleasant.
“It’s nice to be together with the two of you,” Gavin said suddenly, pressing his palms on the table as if he never planned to eat again.
“We let too much time go by,” his mom said in a quiet voice.
“I know, Michelle,” Gavin said. “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you how many times I picked up the phone, but I never knew what I’d say—”
“Let’s not do this, Daddy. Let’s not drag up all the old regrets. We can’t get back the years we lost. We can only go on from here.”
Cody did his best not to roll his eyes. This was just what he’d been hoping to avoid—a big emotional scene where they go “I’m sorry I’m sorry” all over each other and then drag him into the middle of everything as The Grandson You Never Knew.
“Can I be excused?” he asked too loudly.
They both looked at him as if he had a booger hanging out of his nose.
“I told Claudia I’d call her.”
“Girlfriend?” Gavin asked.
“Yeah.” Cody felt about two feet taller just saying it. He loved walking through the halls at school, hearing everybody whisper: He’s going out with Claudia Teller….
“So can I be excused?” he asked.
His mom nodded. “Go ahead, honey.”
“Thanks… for dinner,” he said, then hurried out into the cold night. When he got to his own room, he collapsed on the bed, clicked on the TV, and realized that working outside in subfreezing temperatures all day had made him more tired than he’d ever been in his life. He was asleep before he even remembered he meant to call Claudia.
Monday
Chapter 9
You’re kidding, right?” Cody asked at the breakfast table.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Cradling a coffee mug between both hands, Michelle regarded her son in the clear light of the mountain morning. His cheeks were stuffed with blueberry muffin. Chewing slowly, he washed it down with a big gulp of black coffee.
When did her son start drinking coffee—black, of all things?
He took a final swallow. “I said, you’re kidding, right?”
She’d heard him the first time, but making him repeat himself for the sake of manners was ingrained in her. Funny how he’d never learned that lesson. The second time around, he was supposed to fix his tone of voice, ask his question politely and without food in his mouth. Yet in all his life, he’d never done it.
Maybe he kept thinking she’d get tired of correcting him. He’d worn her down on so many other matters. When he wanted something—ridiculously expensive shoes, a pierced ear, a snowboard—he became like water dripping on a rock: constant, incessant, wearing her away until she caved in.
“No,” she said. “I’m not kidding. You’re going back to Mr. McPhee’s today.”
“I’m not going.” Cody jutted his chin defiantly and held up his hands, palms facing out. “I have blisters because I spent eight hours shoveling horseshit yesterday. Horseshit, Mom.”
Michelle felt her lips twitch. Laughing now would enrage him, so she composed herself. “When Mr. Bliss dropped you off yesterday he said there was lots more work to be done and to be there at nine again.”
“That sucks.” He shoved back from the table, giving his long two-colored ponytail an insolent toss.
“What sucks is backing the car into a guy’s trailer,” she reminded him. What sucks is that the guy’s your father, and I have no idea how to explain it to you.
“So go get ready.” She put the mugs in the sink. “I need to phone Brad, and then we’ll leave.”
“Hey, I was going to call Claudia—”
“Later. When you get home tonight—”
Cody curled his lip. “I’ll call her when I damn well please.”
Her face felt hot, burning hot, yet the anger was directed at herself. When he spoke to her like this, she had no idea how to make him stop. It was frightening sometimes, knowing how completely out of her control he was. “Let’s not argue, Cody. Gavin and I have an appointment in Missoula and we need to get going. In case you’ve forgotten, we’re here for Gavin.”
Cody tugged on his jacket, yanking out a pack of Camels, flashing them as he jerked open the door. “Yeah, I almost forgot. You’re here to offer spare parts to your long-lost father.”
The kid had great timing. He knew just when to pick a fight. She had to call Brad, drop off Cody, and accompany her father to Missoula. She didn’t have time to deal with the rage and the hurt that had been ricocheting between her and her son since he turned sixteen.
The kid’s mad at the world. Sam had seen that instantly.
She snatched up the phone and punched in Brad’s number. He sounded groggy when he picked up.
“Oops,” she said. “I forgot you’re an hour earlier.”
“Hey, babe.” A sleepy smile softened his voice.
Michelle tried to relax, but she was too jumpy. “I wanted to call and say hi. I miss you.”
“Miss you, too. Is everything okay out there? Do you need me to come out?”
What she needed, she realized suddenly, was for him to come without asking. To understand her well enough to know that of course she needed him. She was facing a terrifying ordeal; he was supposed to support her.
Dumb. If he showed up now, he’d be bored and fretful about missing work, and Michelle knew she’d feel guilty and that would make her cranky, and then she’d have a terrible attitude about the surgery. She shook her head, trying to veer away from that line of thinking. It was enough that he’d promised to fly in the day of the surgery.
“No, we’re fine,” she said. “Did anyone call?”
“Natalie.” Distaste rumbled in his voice; he’d never liked her best friend. An oft-unemployed cellist, Natalie Plum was the original free spirit. She drove a diehard planner like Brad crazy. “She’s bringing her stuff over to your house today.”
“Good. I was hoping she’d house-sit while I’m away. So how was your weekend?”
“Excellent. Dinner at Canlis with the Albrights. A round of golf at Port Ludlow. Babe, we should really look into getting a place up there. Mike was saying the lot values for the waterfront area have really shot up…”
She tuned out the monologue about real-estate investments. She did that a lot lately. He loved to collect things—resort property, sports equipment, luxury cars—displaying them to the world like hunting trophies. She admired his ambition, the way he was so driven to succeed in his career. In addition to the pharmacy, he had made a killing in the stock market, and money was an obsession with him. Sometimes she wished he’d slow down.
“… he’s a vascular surgeon at Swedish, got into the resort development on the ground floor…”
Michelle made the appropriate murmurs as her mind wandered further afield. She remembered the day she’d finally figured Brad out. He’d just put money down on a thirty-six-foot Hunter yacht, and she told him he was crazy. The vacation home, the ski lodge, the golf membership at Lakeside, the ski place at Whistler—he was wearing her out.
“Brad,” she’d told him last summer while standing on the dock next to the gleaming new sailboat. “Wouldn’t it be easier simply to become a doctor?”
His reaction had been unexpected and sharp. “No, goddammit. It wouldn’t. What the hell sort of question is that?”
He so rarely spoke in anger that she didn’t press. But she knew she had touched a raw nerve. He used to want to be a doctor the same way she used to want to be an artist. Now he owned a chain of pharmacies and she was a commercial illustrator.
She listened patiently as he finished his recitation. She waited for him to ask how Cody was doing, but he paused in the middle of talking, yawned, and said it was time to get up and into the shower.
“Wish you were here,” he said, the suggestion in his voice both sexy and familiar.
“Me too.” Out the window she could see Cody puffing away on a cigarette. Dear God. Her kid was smoking, and she had no idea how to stop him. She wanted to tell Brad everything—that her father still had the power to make her cry. That Cody was doing his best to drive her crazy. That she had met Sam McPhee again.
That she couldn’t think of anything but Sam—oh, shit. She’d have to tell Brad. How was she going to tell him?
“I’ll call you later, Brad.”
“Yeah. Take care, babe.”
She gathered up her coat and purse, pausing to glance into the mirror over the hall tree. What, exactly, did one wear to meet a transplant team? They sounded so important, so intimidating. Would they think her red wool blazer was too boldly colored? Should she have gone with the black angora instead?
She shoved aside the ridiculous questions. She was nervous about the appointment. She was nervous about being with her father again. She was nervous about Sam. Clothes should be the least of her concerns.
She stepped into boots and went out to find Cody. He tossed his cigarette butt into the snowy yard.
Fixing a glare on him, she groped in her purse for car keys. “You know, you really should take up bungee-jumping from live power lines. It’s a lot less risky than smoking.”
“Very funny.” He got in the car.
She didn’t want to launch into yet another big lecture about smoking, not this morning. She had to be focused on her father.
When she’d first found out about his illness and bullied Gavin into the transplant, she started some of the tests in Seattle. Once she’d qualified as a donor, she had donated some of her own blood for the surgery ahead of time, and it had been shipped from Seattle and stored. She had more blood and X rays taken, did a lung capacity test, and did the twenty-four-hour urine collection study, a delightful routine she hoped she didn’t have to repeat.
&nb
sp; She felt as if she had been holding her breath for twelve weeks, and she was about to let it all out soon.
At today’s appointment, the team wanted to go over more details, schedule a renal angiogram, and make sure she was mentally prepared for this.
She was not doing so hot on that count.
“So,” she said, flexing her hands on the steering wheel. “What did you think of Mr. McPhee?”
“He said to call him Sam. And the other guy said to call him Edward.”
“So what do you think of Sam?” She tried to keep her voice light, casual.
“He’s okay.”
“Just okay?”
“You want me to think he’s great for making me work in the freezing cold like a farmhand?”
“Ranch hand.”
“Whatever.”
“I think, given the circumstances, you’re lucky to get off with a few days’ work. So you like him?”
“Did I say that, Mom? And why do I have to like anyone around here? We’re leaving as soon as you finish this thing with your—with Gavin.”
“I’m not leaving him until the critical period is over.” She shuddered inwardly, horrified by the possibility that the surgery wouldn’t work, that her kidney would be rejected. “It wouldn’t hurt to make a few friends.”
Trying to push that worry aside, she watched the scenery. The morning sun on the majestic landscape brought out the harsh poetry of the high country. The sight of blanketed fields and soaring mountains filled her with a strange yet familiar yearning. The truth was, she needed the mountains, the air, the clarity of light found only in Montana in order to paint. And maybe she needed to be the person she had been all those years ago, too. A person who dared to love, dared to dream.
But she knew of no way to recapture that young, naive self. The disappointment ate at her, a quiet dull pain, the surrendering of hope. Sometimes she believed her gift was only slumbering or maybe frozen inside, waiting. When she was pregnant with Cody, she had enrolled in a small liberal arts college, and for one glorious semester she had painted. She had a rare talent, and she knew it. Her instructors knew it. The gallery owners who approached her knew it. But making a career as a painter would take years of work and study and time.
