Black Ember

by Ruby Laska

  “Lucky you.”

  “How are you holding up?”

  “All right, I guess. I mean I could do without the stilettos and the push-up bra—and I’m not sure I’m receiving enough oxygen because my Spanx are too tight—but it was a beautiful wedding and….”

  She was stumped. Usually she could do this for hours, complimenting the food and the flowers, the inspirational words of the officiant, the choice of music. She could find a connection with any guest, no matter how obscure, and get an entire table of shy people talking. But tonight she felt like she had nothing to say.

  “…and they seem very happy,” she concluded lamely.

  “Yeah. Yeah…they do.”

  Neither of them spoke after that. Zane reached for her hand, closing his fingers around her wrist, and gently tugged her toward him. She nestled in the crook of his arm, turning so that his chin was on top of her hair. His arms wrapped around her and she felt safe and snug, anchored there in his arms, exactly where she was meant to be.

  It was a perfect moment. But Caryn was an expert in perfect moments gone bad, especially when it came to weddings. A memory came back to her, of another wedding, another time. She had been dressed in a junior bridesmaid outfit, all of ten years old, holding tightly to the hand of the nanny who’d been hired to stay with her so that her mother and her new husband could go on their honeymoon. Caryn had been promised a new family, a new daddy to always love her, and she had just realized that the first thing her new daddy was going to do was take her mother away for two weeks while she was moved into a new house where nothing was familiar.

  Or how about Randall’s wedding to Cleo? Caryn had been in college for that one, and she’d had to take time off from spring semester of her sophomore year. Georgia had been perfectly understanding—“Of course you’ll go, darling, don’t give it a thought”—and had even offered to come stay with Caryn in the California coastal town where the ceremony was to take place, even though she hadn’t been invited to the wedding. Instead, Caryn had gone alone and been seated at a table with Cleo’s model friends, and felt both guilty and ridiculous all evening.

  And then there was Georgia’s marriage to Harry. That one had actually been rather nice. Seven hundred guests at the Plaza, with the governor himself in attendance. By then Georgia and Randall and Cleo were all cordial, so they were there too. Caryn had spent that night smiling for all she was worth, for one photo after another, and it was only when she watched her new stepfather toast his bride that she realized with a pang that while Georgia and Harry were fond of each other, and would make a great team, there was no passion between them.

  “You sure you’re okay there, Barracuda?” Zane said. “Those sighs get any longer, I’m probably going to have to do CPR on you.”

  “I hate weddings,” Caryn mumbled, leaning back against his chest. It would be so nice to just ask him to take her somewhere, anywhere, and kiss her senseless, make her forget everything that was wrong, but she was a bridesmaid, and bridesmaids stayed until the end. Caryn may have enjoyed her brief stint as carefree Carrie, but there was still enough of her mother in her that she couldn’t skip out on her responsibilities.

  As if reading her mind, Zane said, “I’d offer to take you for a long drive, and keep going until we ran into another rainstorm. But somehow I don’t think you’d take me up on it.”

  “Zane.” Caryn closed her eyes, hoping she was doing the right thing. “There’s something I need to tell you. A few things, actually.”

  “Uh-oh,” Zane said, his arms tensing slightly. “This sounds awfully familiar. Except usually I’m the one winding up for the see-you-later pitch.”

  “No, no, it’s not that.” Was she really going to do this? Cal had promised to keep her cover, and if she just kept her mouth shut, she could hang onto the perfect memory of her time with Zane. Unsullied by drama, by messy exits, he could live in her memories as a perfect story, the one man with whom she truly lost herself, the man who made her believe in love again.

  But if she told him who she was, he would know she’d deceived him from the start. He’d lose all respect for her and the story would be tainted. It would be just another failed relationship in a string of them, and Caryn would go back to her old life knowing it was just a little more empty than before.

  Except…she owed him this. Zane had showed her who he really was the other night, with rain pounding down and lightning flashing. He’d opened up and offered her his heart, even if it was just for a few hours, and she wasn't going to repay that by hiding.

  She gently disentangled his hands from hers, and pulled away from his embrace, turning so she could say what she had to say while looking into his eyes.

  An eruption of cheering caught her attention. They both turned to see the wedding party closing ranks around a man and woman who were making their way over the lawn from the parking area.

  “I’m so glad you made it!” Matthew yelled, shaking hands enthusiastically with the man, while Jayne gave the woman a big hug.

  “Well, look at that—Buddy made it after all,” Zane said. “Now you can meet your boss before you go back into work. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

  He had his hand around hers, tugging her toward the group. Tottering on the painful heels, Caryn had no choice but to mince along trying to keep up.

  She briefly wondered if she could kick off her shoes and make a run for it, but the couple had spotted her. The man—Buddy Travers, her bio-dad—was dressed in an ill-fitting shirt and a wide shiny tie, and he didn’t have much hair left, but what there was had been slicked carefully over his bald head. He was grinning from ear to ear, but he never let go of the hand of his date who, as they got closer, Caryn could see wasn’t a woman at all but a girl, a teenager with the combination of features that suggested Down syndrome. She was smiling too, clutching a flower from Jayne’s wedding bouquet in her hand.

  Who was the girl? Was this Melanie? As Caryn’s mind raced to catch up, Zane reached them and enthusiastically shook Buddy’s hand and then gave the girl a hug, taking care not to crush her flower. Then he grabbed Caryn’s hand and pulled her forward, into the light of the candelabra hung from the tree.

  “Buddy, I’ve got someone for you to meet. This is—”

  But Buddy’s face had gone stark with shock. He stumbled forward, peering at Caryn intently. She could smell aftershave and as she looked into his watery blue eyes, she had the unsettling feeling of seeing a face she knew not at all and also very well, because his features were so like her own.

  “Oh, sweet heaven above,” the man who had fathered her thirty years ago said. “Caryn Louise Carver. I’d know you anywhere.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “How about another?”

  “Sure, I guess,” Zane mumbled.

  They had dragged two of the rented chairs into the barn, with a hay bale from the loft serving as a footstool. Cal reached into the galvanized tin bucket that they’d lifted from the drinks table, and pulled out a couple of root beers. He popped the tops off and handed one to Zane.

  “Thanks.”

  “I really don’t mind going to fetch you something stronger…”

  “Nah, I think this is about all I can handle tonight.”

  They clinked bottles and drank. Zane was grateful for the company; Cal was working tomorrow, and Roan had to study for an exam Monday and had gone home. Everyone else was paired off and tucked away: Matthew and Jayne had left to spend their honeymoon night at the Three Horses Inn; Deneen had finally collapsed and Jimmy had carried her off to bed. Chase and Regina had disappeared at some point to make the most of their weekend together, and all of the guests had gone home. The caterers had packed up their things, leaving the few leftovers in the fridge The rented tables and chairs were stacked and ready to be returned in the morning.

  And Carrie—make that Caryn—had taken Zane’s truck without telling anyone where she was going.

  Cal was working a double tomorrow, having traded shifts to get the day
of the wedding off, so he was done partying. Which suited Zane just fine: he didn’t need to be drunk to know exactly how he felt, and getting drunk wouldn’t fix it anyway.

  “God, I can’t believe I didn’t see it,” he berated himself for the third or fourth time.

  “It wasn’t just you, man,” Cal reminded him.

  After Buddy’s pronouncement, there was a shocked silence that was filled almost immediately with excited cries of recognition. Deneen’s eyebrows went sky-high, and the other guests in the vicinity clearly didn’t need long to put two and two together.

  It had taken Zane a little longer than the rest of them to catch up. Sure, he’d heard of Caryn Carver. He just hadn’t ever given her much thought. Another spoiled rich kid, using her daddy’s fame to get a fancy job in fashion—not exactly his cup of tea. He hadn’t paid much attention to her face on the news, but he seemed to remember that she had long blond hair and dressed like a fashion plate.

  Nothing like Carrie, in other words.

  But she didn’t deny it. Buddy grabbed her hand and stared at her as though he was looking at an angel fallen from the sky. For a moment, they were frozen like that, and then Caryn mumbled some excuse and bolted for the house. Zane didn’t go after her right away, and for that he was kicking himself. By the time he finally went looking for her, she’d bolted out the back door and made her escape. He didn’t care about his truck, and didn’t mind a bit that Carrie—no, Caryn—had helped herself to his keys…but he was pretty sure she was too upset to drive safely.

  He would have tried to grill Buddy about what the hell was going on, but Melanie had tripped on a tree root in a poorly lit part of the lawn, and Buddy had his hands full comforting her. The old guy was so good with Melanie, but Zane could tell that he was shaken.

  Whoever Caryn was to him, it affected him deeply.

  “I just don’t get how he knew who she was.” This, too, Zane had said several times already, and it was a testament to Cal’s loyalty as a friend that he answered as patiently this time as the last few.

  “Well, either Buddy’s a lot more of a celebrity watcher than we ever knew or their paths crossed at some point in the past.”

  “But how?”

  “Before he came here, Buddy was in Iraq, with Turk. And before that he was out in California somewhere. And Caryn’s dad’s an actor in Hollywood, right? So, I don’t know…maybe Buddy was their handyman, or their pool guy, or…or, I don’t know, the guy who drove her to school.”

  “Which was why his face went white as a sheet when he saw her? And also why he recognized her despite the fact that she’s had two makeovers over the course of a few days? I don't know, man…it doesn’t add up.”

  “Well, she looked every bit as shook up as he did.”

  They were silent for a few moments, drinking their root beer. One of the barn cats came out from behind an old grain trough, looking for a handout and meowing. She jumped lightly up onto Zane’s lap, and he rubbed her fur idly.

  “Maybe she needed a kidney, and he donated it,” Cal suggested. “Or she started choking in a restaurant and he did the Heimlich and saved her life, and her dad was so grateful that he bought Buddy the bar and—”

  “Yeah…no,” Zane said. “And it doesn’t even matter. I mean…now at least I have a clue why she was down here, trying to blend in. I mean, I don't know why she was spying on Buddy, but it’s pretty clear he was the whole reason she’s on this little adventure.”

  He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice, and he should have guessed that Cal would call him on it. Living with a guy in quarters as close as the bunkhouse meant that there were few secrets among them.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. You’re thinking she used you, right?”

  “Well, not used me, exactly—”

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to step on your manly feelings. I should have said, you see this thing ending and you don’t like it.”

  Zane wanted to argue, but the fact was that Cal had pretty much nailed it. “Whatever,” he finally mumbled.

  “But, you don’t have all the facts. You have almost no facts. Shouldn’t you be finding Caryn and talking to her instead of holing up in a barn with me and Marilyn Monroe?”

  Zane looked down at the little barn cat, who was purring happily and arching her back against his hand. Regina had named all of the barn cats after her favorite movie stars. Clark Gable, a big tom with a torn ear, was a champion mouser, while Marilyn mostly lazed about in the sun.

  “Well, I don’t know what exactly you expect me to do,” he hedged. “A girl steals a guy’s truck, that’s a pretty good signal she wants to be left alone.”

  “I’d offer to arrest her,” Cal said, “but I’m not sure I could convince the Chief it was a good use of department resources.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, look, Zane, I’ve got to be at the station in six hours. This is sure fun and all, but I need to get a little shut-eye if I’m going to take good care of the citizens of Conway tomorrow. You going to be okay?”

  “Yeah, sure, I was just about to turn in anyway,” Zane lied. He finished the root beer and tossed the bottle into the tub with the other empties.

  The two men turned off the lights and closed up the barn, then headed back to the house. The moon was low in the sky, a creamy slice of glowing light. The air was scented with the floral arrangements, which drooped a little now, and a silver paper bell rolled lazily across the lawn.

  On the porch, Zane hesitated. He turned and looked down the drive, searching for headlights coming down the lane. But the night was dark and peaceful.

  Somewhere, out there, his Carrie/Caryn/Barracuda was on the run, and she hadn’t invited him to come along. He hoped she would find what she was looking for. Because he, for one, knew exactly what he wanted.

  He just couldn't have her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  She hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

  She’d only parked in front of the house for a few moments, to think, and to look at the place that her bio-dad called home. It wasn’t what she’d expected. She wasn’t even sure what she had expected—something run-down, a trailer maybe, or a leaning shack with trash overflowing the bins. A junker of a car parked out front, maybe sheets tacked in the windows in lieu of curtains. Evidence of a careless life, a careless man who let things slip through his fingers, even the daughter he’d given up before her first birthday.

  But the address she’d found on the internet, the address she’d memorized before she ever started this crazy trip, was painted neatly on the side of a mailbox that was surrounded by geraniums. There was a stone path leading through a tidy lawn and up to a log house. A pair of rocking chairs sat on the porch, under baskets of trailing vines and flowers. A braided rug at the door held two pairs of garden boots: one large and brown, one smaller and bright pink.

  Melanie.

  Not, as Caryn had suspected, the woman who had replaced her mother in her fantasies of an intact family. At least, not the way she’d thought.

  Caryn was left with more questions than ever. But she’d lost her opportunity to find answers, when Buddy recognized her. She’d run away.

  How was she supposed to face him now? When she’d first conceived her plan to spy on him, she’d been angry at him. She understood now that she’d been carrying around a grudge for years. Who knew how many of her adult relationships had been marred by that grudge? How often had she held a part of herself back, because the specter of the man who left her was never far away? If she was truly honest with herself, wasn’t that why she’d chosen Nathanial? A man who didn’t give himself completely couldn’t exactly ask the same of the woman in his life, which made him safe in a way that someone else—someone like Zane, for instance—could never be.

  Buddy. Zane. Nathanial. Georgia. Melanie. Deneen and Roan and Regina, Jimmy and Cal and Chase, the Burgesses and Matthew’s family…Opal and Turk and the customers at the bar who already knew her name. Her fake name, anyway. All these pe
ople who were in her life in strange, undisciplined ways; the thoughts swirled in Caryn’s mind as she sat in the cab, staring out in the moonlight at the house at the end of a country drive. There was little chance of Buddy coming out and seeing her; it was almost one in the morning, and the whole world seemed to be asleep. Somewhere on the outskirts of town, Jayne and Matthew were spending their wedding night. Just thinking of the pair, of their obvious love and happiness and delight at being married, tugged at Caryn’s heart painfully.

  She’d drive back in a moment, she told herself; she’d apologize to Zane for taking his truck without asking. She’d pack up quietly and in the morning she’d retrieve her things from the police station and, hopefully, be on her way out of town without too much fuss. She would write a sincere apology to Buddy—because she saw now that what she had done had been wrong. She had come here with the intention of spying on him, judging him, getting him out of her system without ever hearing his side, and now it was too late, because she’d behaved so deplorably.

  Maybe someone else could recover from a gaffe like that. From creating a drama at someone else’s wedding and then fleeing instead of sticking around to clean up the mess she’d made. But Caryn wasn’t someone else. She held herself to a much higher standard. Georgia had raised her to be polite, and gracious, and, above all, correct.

  She’d go in a minute, she thought, and she’d closed her eyes just for a second because they were a little gritty from a lack of sleep and maybe a little swollen from crying.

  But now, someone was tapping on her window, and morning light was streaming through the cab of the truck.

  Caryn stirred, the seat belt cutting into her painfully. Buddy stood outside. He was wearing an old plaid shirt and a pair of baggy camo pants, and face glinted with silver stubble. He was giving her a shy smile, and she saw that his front teeth gapped just as her own had before her mother insisted on a second round of corrective orthodontics.