Turning Point

by Lara Zielinsky

  “I didn’t have any reshooting today. I have one song to rerecord in the sound studio tomorrow. I don’t even have to go in to work on Wednesday at the moment.” Gwen waved her to the seat next to her son at the dinner table and placed a plate in front of her.

  “Plans for the holidays?”

  “I haven’t stayed in town for the holidays yet,” Cassidy admitted. “I thought Ryan and I could find out what it’s like.”

  Chance piped up, “We could go to Disneyland!”

  Gwen shook her head ruefully, but said nothing. Her husband, Lou, changed the subject. “Time for grace.”

  Cassidy linked a hand with Ryan and one with Gwen at the end of the table. The young Talbots on the other side also joined hands with their parents. Chance and Deter tried to escape notice as they thumb-wrestled. She bit her lip against a chuckle as Lou prayed, “Thank you, Lord, for the bounty your love has shown us.” He paused. Cassidy looked up, catching his fleeting frown before his face smoothed over again. “Amen.”

  “Amen” echoed around the table, and she released Gwen’s hand as she felt the woman tug slightly.

  “So tell me,” she asked sociably. “How’s the semester finishing up?”

  “My students have their first research papers due just before the break,” Gwen answered.

  Cassidy wrapped her mind around the idea of fourth grade research papers. It couldn’t possibly be anything like her college philosophy papers. “What sort of topŹics are they doing?”

  “Sharks, surfing, dogs, cats, that sort of thing.” Gwen gave a half-shrug.

  Cassidy nodded. “Good luck with that.” She turned to Lou. “How are things with you?”

  “Fine.”

  She nodded politely. He was seldom as talkative as his wife, but his tone told her that was all she would get as a response. With an internal grimace, she decided she’d have to make some inquiries with a particularly gossipy neighbor and figure out the source of the odd feeling she was getting from Gwen and Lou. Besides, I

  ought to get home so I can finish working on all these script Ideas. She returned to her dinner, a casserole dish that was among Gwen’s best recipes, as Lou informed her in the small talk that filled in the silence.

  When Ryan had finished, Cassidy excused them, collecting his schoolbag and waiting while he put it across both shoulders, backpack style, as he had done since they had been camping. She quickly tendered their goodbyes, then paused at the door. She automatically reached for the check she had written, a regular agreement to defray some of the costs of the Talbots keeping Ryan so frequently late into the night. “I forgot it,” she said. “Tomorrow, all right?” When Gwen hesitated before nodding, Cassidy thought she had her answer to their atypical behavior. Cassidy being a day late with the check usually did not bother her.

  Cassidy leaned over and kissed Gwen’s cheek. “Thanks for everything,” she said sincerely. “I didn’t expect dinner. It was lovely.”

  “Sure,” Gwen said, a little more quickly. “See you tomorrow.”

  Following Ryan into the kitchen, Cassidy put her bag down and set the draft script on the kitchen table. “You just had dinner. Snack is after your bath,” she said as he opened his mouth to ask.

  The order of events given, Ryan ran into the bathroom. She heard the taps twist and water start to fill the tub. Grabbing a fresh towel and washcloth from the linen closet, she entered the bathroom. “Are you going to wash yourself, too?”

  “Yes, Mommy.”

  She returned to the kitchen. Flipping on the radio to a soft volume, she sat down at the end of the table and opened the script and the notes she had gathered in her conversations with Brenna, Paul, and Rich.

  Cassidy kept one ear out for alarming sounds from the bathroom but threw the rest of herself into the work. The writing staff had been more open to the actors’ sugŹgested paths for their characters since Rich’s script, Aleutian Blues, had been accepted last season. Cassidy had remained quiet about her character’s development, though — until now.

  She sighed, releasing her residual anger. Most of it. The general outline of this script had to have been in the works for months. Cameron had not mentioned it to her once, even in passing, and he loved to talk about work when they were together. The original interaction appeared to have been intended to be between Chris and the other mission member, Rich’s character Dr. Pryor. Cameron had substituted ChapŹman’s Lieutenant Raycreek. He’d also expanded the interaction, taking the camaradeŹrie, which would have been fatherly from Pryor, too far. Cassidy was working at reining it in — for Chris Hanssen’s sake, as well as her own. After experiencing Brenna’s touch, she could not imagine having any physical contact with Will ChapŹman, even if it was acting.

  A spark of jealousy flared. According to Brenna, she and Will had had a brief affair. Cassidy admitted that stung, but she also knew that it was irrevocably over now, if it hadn’t been before. Brenna calling him out in front of reporters certainly sealed that.

  Inhaling, she put her pen down, her mind flying back to the momentous occaŹsion: The Kiss. She was unable to forget a single nuanced movement of having Brenna in her arms, their lips pressing against each other, her own lips moving from Brenna’s to taste soft skin along her jaw. She had not planned it, hadn’t even really fully identified the emotion that was gripping her, until they were microseconds

  awuy from that first contact. She just knew that she’d been growing warmer and warmer all day, as she watched Brenna work on the tent or splash with Mike Connell in the mountain spring. She certainly had not expected the rush of connection she felt while innocently treating Brenna’s burned hand.

  Kissing Brenna had been precipitous and revealing. By then, she had needed to know. She had seen a question, and what she thought was invitation, in the gray-blue eyes. She had needed to feel the other woman’s reaction, needed to know if Brenna experienced the same sparks when they touched or talked. During their dinner, she had decided to take a chance and had followed when Brenna left the camp. Her guess had been right, but that had only served to make things more complicated.

  Cassidy burned whenever she looked at the woman. Knowing Brenna would never have an affair, Cassidy forced herself to hold her desires check. On set today she had been partly successful, mostly by staying away. But when we were in my trailer…

  Cassidy closed her eyes. Her mind drifted back over lean muscles and conjured up the unforgettable scent of Brenna’s soft skin.

  “Mommy?”

  Shaking her head, Cassidy straightened up to see Ryan with damp pajamas clinging to his body, anxiously looking up at her. “Yes?”

  “I finished my bath.”

  “I see that.”

  “Can I have my cookies now?”

  She suppressed her chuckle at her son’s one-track mind, nodded, and stood. Ryan immediately sat on her vacated seat and propped himself on the table.

  “What’re you working on?” He reached for the papers.

  “Something I have to do for tomorrow,” she explained, moving the pile out of the way as she set a glass of milk and a plate of chocolate wafers in front of him. Cassidy sat down and picked up the script as Ryan munched away, dunking the wafers into the milk before eating them.

  He finished with a slurp before she had finished reading a lengthy section of dialogue between Hanssen and Raycreek. She resisted striking the entire exchange and cut only one of his lines strongly suggesting that intimate relations were possiŹble, along with her reply. God, that one made Chris sound like a teenager.

  Finally she put down the pen, inhaled and exhaled to clear her mind, and announced bedtime. “What should we read tonight?” Together they went through his shelf of books and selected Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

  Since he had been learning sounds and letters in his pre-K class, Ryan sounded out far more words in the tale than Cassidy expected. She ended up listening more than reading. Pride filled her, growing stronger until, when the story was finished, she praised him profusely
. He giggled; she tickled him, making him laugh harder. When they quieted, she brushed his bangs back and kissed his forehead. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Mommy.” She tucked his covers to his chin and walked out, turnŹing off the light as she went.

  Once again in the kitchen, facing an evening of quiet, Cassidy listened as a news brief concluded on the radio, then a voice announced the start of an hour of jazz. Cassidy returned to the kitchen table and picked up the pen. After another hour, she felt a more acceptable version of events was unfolding in the pages. It wasn’t perfect, but she hoped it would result in less damage to Hanssen overall.

  Near the end of the script, there was a rescue scene, where Hanssen and Ray-

  creek were recovered by a second team led by lakes. In the original version, the search party, which had not included Jakes, actually came upon the two in very comŹpromising state of undress. Cassidy’s version had already put the clothes back on. Now she changed the dialogue to a considerably more business-like, “Time to get out of here.”

  Trying out the new lines, Cassidy almost could hear Brenna’s inflections change as Jakes’ concern about Hanssen’s physical injuries grew. She closed her eyes and just listened as the womans voice played in her head. Yeah, she thought. It works.

  Cassidy laid her pen aside and reread the entire act she had just finished. She bit her lip. In the action text, Hanssen gravitated toward Jakes, almost scornful of Raycreek. She realized that she had better soften that. Chapman might take excepŹtion at being shoved into the background again. She inserted a short exchange between Raycreek and Jakes, hoping it would be enough to satisfy Will Chapman’s ego.

  “Welcome to Dr. Swanson’s Waiting Room,” the radio announced, interrupting her train of thought.

  Dr. Swanson’s voice was soothing, his advice to callers reasonable, and Cassidy found herself sitting quietly, just listening. Twenty minutes later, her head was restŹing on the table, and she slept.

  She knew she was dreaming, but the woods were familiar. They had to be the ones surrounding the campgrounds from the weekend. She moved deeper into the foliage, and the terrain changed, leading down to a riverbank. The water sparkled in the sunŹlight, and she walked to the edge for a drink.

  Reaching for the water, she froze when a splash drew her attention out into the water’s flow. A small reddish brown bear crossed the stream, coming directly toward her. It ambled through the water, not bothered by the current. Cassidy settled carefully to one side and watched it as it emerged onto her bank.

  It looked at her, considering her for a moment, then rooted around a prickly bush full of berries. The bear’s paws grew raw against the thorns and soon it stopped rumŹmaging, soothing its paws with its tongue.

  Cautiously Cassidy approached, earning a wary look from the bear. She passed by it, going directly to the bush and carefully pulled off a handful of the berries, compelled to offer them to the brown bear.

  It watched her for a while, and they sat together in silence, each munching on berries. When she made no further moves toward it, the bear started watching her more often than eating from its dwindling supply.

  Cassidy plucked more berries and held them out carefully, palm open. The bear sniffed, its breath washing warmly across her hand. Its cool nose eased into her palm and gentle nibbles with the vaguest edge of teeth rubbed against her fingers. She felt her heart begin to pound, nerves and excitement combining as she shared a moment with the gentle animal.

  When it finished, the bear angled its head toward her and ambled forward, crowding Cassidy against the bush as she tried to back up.

  It was then that she saw something else, another animal inside the berry bush. A rabbit, spotty brown fur from nose to tail, nibbled on the berries from the safety within. The brown bear watched Cassidy as she removed the rabbit, cuddled it against her chest and fed it several berries. The bear settled to the ground and watched them.

  The scene was idyllic. The sun sparkled on the water, the cool breeze ruffled

  through Cassidy’s hair. She reached out toward the bear. Head lifting and eyes wide, it held very still, as if poised to run, but it permitted her to touch its fur. She rubbed its scruff and watched it nose her thigh as it squirmed under her hand. The rabbit in her lap stopped quivering, and the soothing sounds from the bear made Cassidy sleepy.

  Abruptly the brown bear lurched to its feet. It bared its teeth toward something Cassidy couldn’t see. It backed up and moved around her, facing out, standing between her and some approaching threat.

  She put the rabbit carefully aside just in time. The ground vibrated slightly under her as she rose to her feet.

  A massive bear with brown-black fur lunged out of the bushes. It scraped the ground and air with huge claws. Its lips were drawn back in a snarl, and it bared its teeth ferociously. Rising to its hindquarters, it challenged Cassidy at her own height and scraped at the air again. It released a terrifying bellow that made her cover her ears and stumble backward. She couldn’t find her voice to scream, so she looked around for a place to run.

  A growl suddenly sounded beside her, and she fell to her knees. As she scrambled away, she saw the brown bear, only half the Kodiak’s size, raise its hackles and growl at the monstrosity. She tried to reach for it, to hold it back, but missed as the small bear leaped into the air.

  She screamed then, drawing the bigger bear’s attention. It snarled at her and advanced. She looked beyond it to see the brown bear circling again. With an open-mouthed snarl, it leaped again, landing atop the Kodiak’s back, snapping its jaw at the back of the thick neck.

  The massive bear shrugged and easily threw off the brown bear before advancing on Cassidy again. Thorns from the berry bush behind her cut into her legs and her hands. She scrambled around it, briefly glimpsing the rabbit which had retreated inside.

  Eyes gleaming, the Kodiak tore at the bush.

  Cassidy realized it wasn’t after the berries or herself, but the rabbit. She struggled through the bush and grabbed the rabbit, fighting to release them both from the tangle of brambles. The Kodiak’s massive paws clawed down her back, drawing blood, just as she broke through to the far side.

  The brown bear was there, snarling and snapping over and past her to deter the Kodiak from continuing its advance. The massive bear claws landed again on Cassidy’s legs.

  She curled up around the rabbit and kicked out, screaming. The sound of the water rushing nearby filled her ears and the snarling bears continued their fight.

  Cassidy woke herself with her scream, her heart pounding its way out of her chest. Oh my God, she panted.

  Shaking, she got to her feet and turned on her kitchen tap, splashing her flushed face and throat. Still shivering, she shut her eyes tightly and concentrated on bringing her breathing under control. Finally she turned around and faced her kitchen, letting her surroundings come into focus. She heard the radio playing someŹthing obscure, classical, and soft. With a gasp, she shut it off.

  Taking another deep breath, she listened to the house and heard snarling comŹing from outside.

  Grabbing a flashlight, she ran to the porch and quickly shined it into the yard. His spotted coat easy to identify, Ranger crouched in the middle of the yard. She

  aimed her light the direction he was facing and found
  Returning inside, she glanced at the clock. It was after two in the morning. Closing up the bound pages of script and smoothing them out, Cassidy sighed and turned off the kitchen light, deciding she had better finish the night in her bed.

  Despite knowing how much it would complicate things, as the last of the nightŹmare slowly faded away Cassidy wished she could curl up with Brenna. Hugging a pillow as a poor substitute, she closed her eyes.

  Chapter 25

  Brenna watched the sunrise through her front window, seated at the din
ing room table while Thomas and James ate their breakfasts. Dressed casually, she menŹially went over her Tuesday off and made plans for what would be a quiet, at-home Thanksgiving.

  “Mom?”

  “Mmm hmm?” Brenna finished chewing her bite of eggs and then patted her lips with a napkin, turning her attention to James. “Yes?”

  “Are you going to take us to school today?”

  “I don’t have a set call. I have some pages to read on another script, but I had planned to do that here. Why?”

  “I was wondering…could we pick up Marcie?”

  Brenna thought about her younger son’s girlfriend, remembering a brunette girl who was quite shy. “What happened to her usual ride?”

  “Her mom’s got problems with her dad, and well, could you, please?”

  Brenna reached for a half slice of buttered toast. James did not often make requests of her. He barely tolerated the times she dropped them in front of their high school. She mentioned none of that now, however, having learned it was better to just go with the flow. “You’ll have to navigate to her house.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” He seemed distracted and had since getting off the phone with his girlfriend the night before. Without another word, he finished his eggs and returned to his room.

  / wonder what that was all about. She turned to Thomas. “What’s your schedule today?”

  “Just classes. If you’re going to be home, do you want us to come here directly after school?”

  “Please. We have to work on Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “I’m surprised we didn’t plan to go to Mount Clemens,” he said.

  She shook her head. “It looks like I’m going to have to work with a reorganized shooting schedule. There were problems with another script being ready in time.”

  “Problems?”

  “I don’t know. Cassidy said that the changes were going over well. She had more work to do last night, but the turnaround on these things is never fast enough for the production team.” She watched Thomas shift in his chair, signaling a change in topic.