by Deanna Roy
“Oh, it’s a wonderful place,” she said. “So many lovely sights. And the music. This close to Nashville, you know. I think that’s why my Chance took up singing like he did.”
“He’s very good,” I said.
“How did you meet him?”
“I went to a movie premiere and he did a number with the band who played afterward.” I did my best to avoid the word “party.”
“What did he sing?” She turned down a side road with lots of cute cottages lined up, like a retirement village.
“The first one was ‘Let the Good Times Roll,’” I said. “Then ‘When a Man Loves a Woman.’”
She shot me a knowing look. “That Chance. He always was a charmer.”
“It worked on me,” I said, relieved to talk about him with someone who wouldn’t mock how easily I fell for him.
We pulled up in front of a tiny bakery with only three parking spots. “Isn’t it quaint?” she said. “You have to try their teacakes.”
I wondered if this fuss had to do with my hat and maxi dress. I got out of the car, realizing I hadn’t eaten in a while. As I stood up, lightheadedness caught me off balance and I had to catch myself on the doorframe before I stumbled.
Thankfully, Mrs. McKenzie was busy on the other side and didn’t notice. I took a deep breath and steeled myself to get inside. We walked between two rows of rosebushes to enter the little shop.
“Hello, Lila!” Mrs. McKenzie called out as we approached a glass cabinet filled with pastries and cakes. My head swooned at the sight of them.
A tall thin lady with her copper hair tied up tight in a fat round bun smiled at us. “Carol Ann! So nice to see you.”
Mrs. McKenzie turned to me. “This here is Chance’s girlfriend visiting from California. She’s in the movie business.”
I extended a hand. “Just the back end. I don’t act.”
“Sounds fancy to me,” Lila said. “Take a look at the goodies and let me know what you’d like.”
All of them, I thought, but then simultaneously, a wave of nausea came over me. Great, little grain of sand. Decide, already. Hungry or sick?
Apparently the wayward speck had both things in mind. I pointed out an oversized blueberry scone, hoping to get a nice caloric bang for my buck while not inciting a puke-fest. Mrs. McKenzie ordered several teacakes and a pot of Earl Grey.
We settled on a horribly uncomfortable set of wicker chairs with a glass-topped table between us. “Tell me everything,” Mrs. McKenzie said. “I haven’t seen Chance in months. Is he well? Did he grow a beard? Has he gotten thin?”
I tried not to cram too much scone into my mouth despite the need for food firing through me like a cannon. When I swallowed, I said, “He is still clean shaven, although he gets pretty scruffy in the evening. He is definitely not thin.” I paused to reflect on that hard chest and those corded shoulders. “He must be finding some way to work out on the road.”
Mrs. McKenzie took a delicate bite of a teacake and sat back in her chair. “Lovely. So good to hear that he is well. Did he happen to tell you why he left?”
The bite of scone in my mouth suddenly went dry, and I coughed. I tried pouring the tea, but it was steaming and not even brewed yet in the pot.
Tears streamed from my eyes until my body settled down and I managed to get the bite down.
“Are you quite all right, Jenny dear?” Mrs. McKenzie asked. “You seem very excitable.”
I decided to hell with it and sipped the bit of watery tea I’d put in my cup. My tongue burned instantly, but I felt better.
“He didn’t talk much about home,” I said finally. “Mostly he told me about his music, and places he’d been on the road.”
“I heard a terrible rumor he was hitchhiking,” she said, folding her napkin into a tight little square. “Is it true?”
I wasn’t going to out anything Chance wouldn’t want me to say. “I don’t know. I only saw him in LA.”
She frowned. “So what was all that nonsense in Star magazine? Those pictures were…” She unfurled the napkin to wave in front of her face as if she needed air.
“Faked,” I said. “It’s a sad but true part of the movie industry that bottom feeders use famous people as a way to sell papers and get television ratings.”
She sat up. “I guess I knew that. But those pictures…”
Yeah, she was picturing them. My face burned.
“Photoshop,” I said. “They have entire teams of people sticking one person’s head on another person’s body.”
“Oh, my land,” she said. “That’s just awful.” She reached across the table to squeeze my wrist. “I feel just terrible that I thought those terrible lies about you were true. I can see that you are really just a victim of a horrible scheme.”
Yeah, right. A scheme I set in motion all on my own. I refused to feel bad about lying to Chance’s mom. Everything I said was true, just not in my case. Not this time.
My stomach had settled and I attacked the scone with more energy. This was going well, really. And surely Charlie would report my appearance to Chance. And if he heard I was with his mother, well, maybe that would be what got him home.
“Do say you’ll stay with me, dear. I’d love to hear every detail about my boy. I’ve missed him. I can take off work tomorrow and we can see the sights. I can show you all of Chance’s favorite places.”
As tough as it seemed, this was probably a good idea. The more I kept close to the people who knew Chance, the more likely I would be to find him.
But I’m pretty sure his mother didn’t want every little detail.
Chapter 39: Chance
Bus tickets were a lot cheaper than I remembered and I had enough to easily cover the short trip back to Chattanooga. The bad part was the schedule wasn’t very good and I had to wait an hour just to board. It might have been faster to hitch.
The ride back gave me time to think things through. Charlie said Redmond had brought Jenny around, so she must have figured out where I used to live. I pictured her on the porch with him and Ace and Pete and wanted to laugh. They’d think she was a wild thing with that crazy hair.
She sort of was.
I had this lightness inside I had forgotten I could feel. I’d lost it a long time ago, way before the accident, maybe as far back as when my dad left.
No, there were good times after that. Mom wasn’t a crazy church lady right off. I think she believed Dad would come back. She called his going away a midlife crisis, not that ten-year-old me knew what that meant. It sounded bad, though.
Maybe I lost it when Mom did figure it out. Hannah got sick with the croup and we had to go to the hospital. She had to sleep in a little tent thing. Mom tried harder than she ever had before to get hold of Dad. He’d been gone something like two years by then, so looking back, I wondered why she thought it might work. Maybe she believed he would come out of fear for Hannah.
He didn’t. And I knew the score then. If he wasn’t going to come back when one of his kids was in the hospital, he wasn’t coming back at all.
About then she decide to let Jesus take the wheel. I had no opinion on the matter. We already went to church, and my Sunday school teacher was nice. We got cookies and coloring pages.
But Mom definitely took salvation seriously. As I got older, I couldn’t stand how nothing was ever interesting to her unless it involved the right hand of God. I got wilder and wilder, because nothing got my rocks off faster than seeing her go ballistic in the name of the Lord. I’m sure He got a whole lotta earfuls about me.
Hannah handled Mom’s deep end with a lot more grace. She was rebellious too, but in a quiet way. She buried herself in school activities, keeping to things that made Mom proud, like French club and orchestra. No cheerleading with short skirts or dance teams with their peppy gyrations, two things that made high school worthwhile back in my day.
I moved out at the first shot, but I could see by then my mother struggling to make ends meet. The only work she ever did was a few hou
rs a week in the church gift store. Maybe Dad sent less money by then, with me grown.
So even though I couldn’t much stand to be in her company, I did deposit half my paycheck into her accounts. When I left five months ago, I dumped pretty much every dime to my name into hers so she wouldn’t be too hard up while I was gone.
Now I was going back.
I set aside how I might feel about seeing everybody and focused on Jenny. She was one pure good thing, no part of my past. I figured if she was here that meant she had told the truth about that man with his hand on her arm. He wasn’t anybody to her but a boss, maybe a too-friendly boss, but still, not anybody she belonged to.
Outside the window, the familiar landscape of Tennessee soothed my soul. I’d seen a lot of the country now, end to end. I could appreciate my hometown in a way I hadn’t before. It had a character all its own.
I wondered if Jenny liked it. Not that it mattered. LA suited me just fine, or San Diego, I guess, since she said she lived there.
Crazy, making any sort of plans on a girl I knew maybe three hours.
Another song started forming in my head. It’d been there a while, since the beach, but I’d ignored it, playing it off. I let it come along, though, now that I knew she was looking for me and maybe some song was playing in her head too.
When you look a mess
How your eyes confess
How you see the best in me
Just a bead of sweat
Sliding down your neck
Things I don't know yet about you
It's a list that never ends
At last the bus pulled into the Chattanooga station. Charlie must've looked at the schedule and figured out when I’d be arriving, because she was there, still in her work scrubs even though she must have been off a while. It was dinnertime.
She came up to me and didn’t even bother with hellos, but said, “That girl has been all over town with your mother.”
I shrugged. “So they’ll get to know each other.” A couple guys unloaded the bottom of the bus, and I watched for my guitar. I felt anxious to see Jenny, but maybe I wanted to get to the house and shower and things first. I’d given up my room to Pete, but I still had clothes and random things boxed up in the garage.
“Where do you want to go?” Charlie asked. “Redmond said she’s staying at the Fairfield near the mall.”
“Take me to the house first. I want to unpack some things.”
We got in her car. “So you’re staying, then?” she asked.
“For a spell,” I said.
She started the car and pulled out of the bus station lot. Her jaw was set sort of hard, like she was angry.
“You pissed that I’m going to see this girl who flew all the way to Chattanooga just to see me?” I asked.
She concentrated on the road. Evening was setting in and some of the streetlights were coming on. I settled back, used to Charlie being mad. This was her natural state. Didn’t bother me none.
“Doesn’t it seem a little suspicious?” she asked, pulling up to a red light. “This girl finds you at a party, gets you caught up in some scandal, and then shows up at your door?”
She turned to me, her face all screwed up with anger. “Aren’t you worried about who she is? What she’s doing?”
I looked out my window at the businesses lined up along the road. Truth was, I wasn’t worried in the least. For all I knew, we were both caught up in something that could have happened to anybody at that party. So many people were there looking for attention.
“We found each other at the same time at that party,” I said. “And it was clear to me all along that she didn’t really belong there. I don’t know a lot about Hollywood and how it works on the inside, but these photographers and celebrity mags work whatever angles they can get.”
“You were naked, Chance. And there were pictures of you with all these other actresses. It was like it was planned to be as salacious as possible.” The light turned green, and Charlie jumped on the gas a little hard, sending us screeching into the intersection.
I wasn’t sure what she meant by the other actresses. “What are you talking about? There was just the picture of me kissing her. And her boss looking annoyed, a shot from some other day since that wasn’t what he was wearing that night.”
Charlie slammed on the brakes and turned hard into the parking lot of a gas station. When we were stopped, she said, “Are you serious? Do you have no clue what all happened?”
My hackles started to rise. “What else is there?”
She jerked her phone out of the center console and tapped a while. Then she turned the screen to me.
I recognized the beach straight off. “Oh, shit,” I said. Jenny was running naked, black bars on her. “She had to be mortified.”
“Keep watching,” Charlie said.
The news guy talked about the director, same as the article. It showed a picture of them together before Jenny got the dreadlocks. He certainly seemed like he was into her, but a picture could be like that. It didn’t mean anything.
I sat up a little when they showed the pictures of me with those actresses. “Nothing happened with either of them,” I said. Two people behind desks made some jokes about sand and then the video ended.
“You can’t tell me this wasn’t some publicity stunt,” Charlie said. “It’s too perfect. Is your girl an actress or a model or something? Is she trying to get press?”
“I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have wanted them following us to the beach,” I said, sticking her phone back in the cup holder. “I just need to talk to her about it. Maybe there’s been some fallout and she needs me to back up her story or something.”
I didn’t like that idea. I liked it a lot better when I thought she’d come for me. But now I knew to hold back my expectations. Truth be told, I had no idea what the next few hours were going to bring at all.
Chapter 40: Jenny
Wow, this woman was into Jesus.
My family wasn’t religious at all, so when I stepped into Mrs. McKenzie’s house, I got sort of wowed by all the crosses and statues and pillows with Bible verses.
“I like to surround myself with the Gospel,” Mrs. McKenzie said as we settled into chairs in her living room. She leaned in conspiratorially. “I let the preacher handle the Old Testament at the pulpit.”
She laughed like this was a great joke. I didn’t quite know what she meant, but I smiled anyway. I could do this. She seemed like a sweet lady who would make it her personal mission to make sure every bereaved family would get a casserole.
“You must be tired of the hat,” she said. “Lovely as it is. Want me to hang it somewhere?”
My hand flew to my head. “Oh, no, I couldn’t. My hair is going to be a disaster after wearing it all day.”
“Well, I can certainly understand that,” she said.
“I’d love to see Chance’s room, though,” I said, hoping to shift attention. I realized I was at her mercy now, since I couldn’t exactly get away without her driving or me calling a taxi. I should have thought this through.
No, this woman would be in my life for always. I needed to stay the course.
My phone buzzed with a text. Mrs. McKenzie dropped her gaze to my purse. “Do you think that could be Chance? Maybe he got a new phone and found your number?”
No way, I thought, but it was an excuse to take a peek. It was Redmond. I’d given him my contact info when we parted earlier. When I saw his message, I dropped my phone.
Chance just got here. You want me to fetch you?
“Are you all right, dear?” Mrs. McKenzie scooted forward in her chair.
What to tell her? If she knew Chance was in town, she’d insist on seeing him. And I really needed him first.
I chose my words carefully so nothing would be an out-and-out lie. “Redmond wants to come get me,” I said. “I think he’s gotten Charlie to help us get to Chance.”
She sat up a little straighter. “Really? She seemed all fluffed up like an
angry cat this afternoon.”
I tapped out a quick YES and tucked the phone in my purse. I had no idea how far away Chance was. I was tired and travel-weary. If I had known he would come this fast, I would have gone to the hotel to get ready.
“I guess she came around,” I said. “How about a quick tour of Chance’s room before Redmond gets here?”
She popped up with more energy than I would have expected. I followed her down the dark carpeted hall, my nerves jangling. I was so close to the end of this search. But I didn’t know what he’d think. Him coming was a great sign that he wanted to see me.
But I had news for him. Big news. I had to be prepared for his anger, his disgust. God, who knew how he would react?
My knees wobbled a little as I walked and nausea flooded me again. No, no, no, I could not get sick here. Somebody like Mrs. McKenzie would figure it out in a hurry. How many reasons could there be to track down a one-night stand? I felt like anybody could guess in two seconds if I didn’t play every moment exactly right.
Mrs. McKenzie turned into a room on the left. When she flipped on the light, I actually took a step back. This didn’t look like Chance at all.
First, the room was neat as a pin. Shelves held perfectly posed action figures from X-Men. On a small wood dresser were stacks and stacks of Pokémon cards.
It was all so…cute. It didn’t suit Chance, who had this gritty edge. Maybe he’d been a normal kid. I looked at the brown and blue bedspread, the robot pillow, and thought — do I know this guy at all?
Then it hit me. There was nothing musical. This guy who’d left everything to sing across the country had absolutely nothing in his room to reflect that this had been a passion of his while he was growing up.
“When did Chance start playing guitar?” I asked.
Mrs. McKenzie held tight to the back of the desk chair. “Oh, I guess he did it pretty early, maybe ten or eleven? He took to it right away.”
