His brow furrowed as he read, “U.S. Department of Forestry.”
Brenna’s heart sped up at the slow-building smile, finally laughing when he burst out, “I’m going to co-op with the Forestry Service!”
“What?” James asked.
“Yeah. Mom? How did you do this?”
“I had a talk with your counselor about how interested you were in hiking and climbing and how much fun you have with the LAKE kids. He looked up the contact information and the requirements.”
“I’ve got enough credits to do this?”
“You’ll get two credits, as well as get paid. Mr. Thierry can tell you more, but I’ve already set up an account for you on the bus line.” She gestured to the tube. Tho-
mas looked inside and when he shook it, the credit card bus pass dropped out into his palm. The magnetic strip would debit the account, allowing him to not always have to travel with change for the bus. “After lunch you take the bus to the forestry office and get home around eight o’clock.” She hesitated. “I was just thinking it might make getting to some of your Dodgers games a little tough.”
“Don’t worry about that! This is fantastic!”
He skimmed the letter again, and she registered with pleasure the wonderment on his face. “I’m glad then that I thought to talk to your counselor.”
“I can’t believe Thierry didn’t tell me about this opportunity himself.”
“Apparently it’s not a widely publicized program,” Brenna explained. “I guess that my asking if there was something along those lines caused him to go looking in the right places.”
Thank you, Cassidy. Cassidy had mentioned the idea of Thomas being a camp counselor in the first place. The Forestry Service co-op would give him a chance to see all the related outdoors careers and let him find his own place, if he chose. She would have to tell Cassidy how well the gift had been received. Actually, I would like to tell Cassidy a lot of things. She suddenly missed her very much.
“More coffee, Mom?”
At Thomas’ question she looked up, only then realizing that she had been starŹing into her empty mug. “Thank you.” She passed it to him for a refill.
James stood up and retrieved a present from under the tree. It was square about a foot long on a side and an inch deep. He passed it to her. “For you.”
“James?”
“Just a little something.” He shrugged and sat down, looking nervous as she took it carefully onto her lap.
It was quite heavy. She tore through the plain navy blue paper. Inside was a framed piece of art, a portrait, she realized, identifying a shoulder before she removed the last of the paper and revealed the face. Her face.
Awestruck, she looked at a portrait of herself rendered in pastels. The figure was in three-quarter profile, from the shoulders up, and the skin tone was flawless, shadowed well enough to suggest the muscles in her throat and face as she smiled. He really sees me this way? “It’s…beautiful,” she whispered.
“I had a good subject,” James said, smiling. “I did it in art class.”
Still studying the portrait, Brenna realized the shadows above the figure’s left shoulder were not just random swirls. “There’s another face in here.”
“It’s you…as Jakes,” he said.
She picked out the shadowy face and shoulders of an almost ethereal rendering of her onscreen alter ego. It was…“Truly amazing,” she breathed. “Thank you.” Looking at the picture, she said, “I didn’t know you could do anything like this.” She traced the swirled ‘JL,’ signed in the lower left corner.
“We had a portrait unit in class. Mrs. Vetter thought this was good enough to enter in the district art fair.”
“Did you?” When he nodded but remained silent, she patted his arm. “Well? Are you going to tell me, or make me drag it out of you syllable by syllable?”
“I won second place in the pastel category.”
He grinned at her, and she squeezed his hand. “That’s wonderful!”
“Thanks.”
“Thank you.” She pulled him down for a kiss. “Let me know when you do another show.” James looked surprised. “I’d really like to go.”
“Uh. Sure.” He blushed and stepped back.
Thomas appeared over her shoulder with her coffee. “Here you go, MOM.” He caught a glimpse of the portrait. “Man, James, that’s nice.” James accepted the praise with a nod. Thomas looked at his mother. “You might not want mine now.”
“Of course I will.” She reached up and patted Thomas’ cheek. “Go on.” As ThoŹmas retrieved a package from under the tree, she noted the similar dimensions; it looked suspiciously like another picture.
He introduced it as he passed it over. “I know you’ve seen some of the pictures I took on the camping trip. I thought you’d like this one to remember it best, though.”
Brenna tore aside the paper and found another framed image, this one a photoŹgraph, blown up to 8 x 10. It was a picture of the mountain they had climbed, shot from above. Framed centrally between golden brown rocks and the green forest, Brenna and Cassidy had their arms wrapped around their ropes, resting in the granŹdeur. The sunlight seemed to beam on them both, illuminating them against the tan of the craggy surface. Looking up at Thomas, she said, “But you were on the mounŹtain with us.”
“That was taken on my second stop at the top. I pulled out the camera and capŹtured it, then rappelled down to meet you.” He dropped his chin, swallowed hard, then returned his gaze to her. “I’m giving Cassidy a duplicate of the shot.”
“She’ll love it.” Knowing he was concerned she would be upset with him, Brenna reached out a hand. When he leaned past his brother and took it, she assured him, “It’s an appropriate gift.” He smiled with pleasure, and she let him go.
“Thanks, Mom.”
She looked to James, then at the pictures. “I’m going to have to build on a galŹlery room,” she said with a chuckle. “Both of these deserve more of a display than the living room wall.” She squeezed their hands. “Thank you. And, you know, I love you.”
Predictably, her younger son sidestepped the mush. “If we’re finished, how about some lunch?”
“A snack,” she suggested. “Dinner is early today.” She stood. “You two get someŹthing together, and I’ll hang these.”
It was two in the afternoon when the Hockman family began to wind down the opening of presents. The last ones around the tree were being distributed by Steph and Jimmy. Ryan was playing with a new race car. Cassidy looked up from unwrapŹping a sweater from her parents to see Jimmy carrying a familiar-looking box. “Jimmy, what have you got there?”
“It looks like it’s for Brenda.” He crossed to Travis, who was giving his daughter a toy he had just unwrapped.
Cassidy reached for it, but Travis got his hands on it first. Brenda, having heard her name, pulled it from him.
Travis looked at the card, “To Bren, love Cass.”
She cleared her throat. “That’s not for Brenda. I’m sorry, Travis. It got mixed in by mistake.”
“That’s the present I brought out, Mommy,” Ryan said proudly.
“Thank you, Ryan, but it’s for Brenna back home.”
“Oh.” He brightened. “Is it pretty?”
At that moment Brenda tore into the paper, and the box was opened. Gerry reached over the back of the couch and pulled the box with the scarf and pin from
Brenna’s hands., “It certainly is pretty.” He fingered the silk. “Who is this for?”
Cassidy was unnerved by his tone. After last night’s very one-sided exchange, she could not them know she was involved with Bren. “Brenna Lanigan, a woman I work with.” She stood up to take it from him. As he plucked out the note, she remembered what she had written. Everyone else found out, too.
Obviously surprised by what he read, her father read it aloud, as if asking her to confirm it. ” ‘A silken embrace to remember me.’ ” His eyes darkened in plain anger and disgust as he continued
reading silently. He looked at her with suspicion. “Rather intimate for an office gift.”
Her heart beginning to hammer, Cassidy saw the terrifying glint of steel in her father’s blue eyes. She reclaimed her property. “I’ll just go put this back in my bag.”
“You’ll explain who this woman is to you.” His voice was deep and dark.
“Cassidy, what kind of trouble have you gotten into?” Her mother’s tone was anxious.
“What trouble?” Cassidy exhaled. “Yes, it’s a present for my friend on Time Trails. We work together sixteen hours a day!”
Her father’s voice exploded through the room. “It looks like a note to a lover!”
Little Brenda wailed at Gerry’s shout. Travis bent to soothe her even as he was rising to stand between Cassidy and her parents. Cassidy had also taken a quick step backward at her father’s loud exclamation, almost tripping over Ryan. She righted herself as her mother exclaimed, “Gerry!”
“I told you she’d get perverted ideas out there!” Gerry accused. He threw the scarf box down on the couch.
Cassidy quickly retrieved it, tucking the contents gently back inside, holding it tightly. “Get ideas?” Cassidy was jolted by his patronizing tone. “I’ve been in L.A. eighteen months working on my job. I’ve been on my own working since I was twenty. I’m thirty-two, not ten or twelve.”
Her father shot back, “We sent you to college to get an education.”
“And I earned my way all by myself.” Her scholarships for academics had paid the bulk of her tuition, and the money from a few small beauty pageants and comŹmercials as she was cutting her teeth in acting paid for the rest of the fees at the state university. She hadn’t asked her parents for anything. Apparently they rememŹbered things differently.
“I told your mother that place would corrupt you. First you take up with that playboy and get a divorce!”
“Playboy? Cameron? He’s just a writer.”
“We’ve heard all about casting couches,” her father retorted.
“Well, I’ve never auditioned on one,” Cassidy replied evenly. “I got the job on Time Trails through hard work, and I’ve kept it the same”
Her father’s hand landed hard against her cheek. “You don’t talk to me like that.”
Cassidy’s eyes watered as she gingerly touched the stinging hot skin of her face. Biting the inside of her cheek, she kept the tears at bay. Silence blanketed the room. Taking a step back, she looked for Ryan, finding him being held by his grandmother.
“Mommy?” he said, anxious eyes on her.
“I’m all right, Ryan. Just” She gestured for him to relax. “Stay still.” She stared at her father, angry at him for instigating this display in front of Ryan. “I didn’t think you were the same as Mitch,” she said with cold fury.
“It’s your own fault. He wouldn’t have done anything to you if you hadn’t made him jealous,” her father retorted.
“My fault?” Cassidy shook her head. “Not my fault,”
“You get it in your head that you want to act instead of being a mother to your son and you claim that your husband getting tired and jealous isn’t your fault?”
“And so it’s okay that he hit me? For you to hit me? Something you’ve never done before, I might add,” Cassidy retorted. “Why are we discussing this?”
“If I’d been less lenient with you as a child, maybe you would-‘ve paid more attention to how things are supposed to be.”
“You’re talking nonsense.”
“I should’ve beat all those fool ideas of acting out of you in high school, but your mother thought it was ‘harmless’.” He turned to Sylvia again. “Harmless, hmm?” He jabbed at the note.
“I’m not a little girl.”
“No. But damn well you’re my daughter and I won’t have it.” Gerry turned his back abruptly.
Cassidy had never heard her father spew such vitriol. “I’m no different than I was just yesterday when I came home to spend some time with my family for ChristŹmas.”
“Christmas?” He tried to grab Cassidy, but she backed away and he stumbled forward, knocking around the furniture noisily. “You are no Christian, behaving like this! No respect for your parents, all we’ve done for you! Sleeping with a man while you were married!”
Travis stood. “Gerry, please. Shh. You’re scaring the baby.” Gerry shook off his brother’s hand on his arm.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Travis.” Cassidy apologized though she had not been the one yelling. Her father said nothing. She looked from her father to her mother and back again at her father’s sternly set jaw. She set her own jaw and then exhaled. “It would be better, I think, if we went home. This obviously isn’t the best time to talk about this.”
“I don’t want to hear you say anything but that you’re giving up all these damn fool notions,” her father retorted.
“You’ve made that perfectly clear.” Shaking inside, Cassidy drew on her acting skills to maintain an outward appearance of calm. “Which is why we have to leave.” She reached out for Ryan, who pulled away from his grandmother. “Time to go,” she told her son with forced lightness, though she couldn’t bring herself to smile.
Her mother’s voice stopped her. “You can’t leave now, we haven’t had dinner,” her mother protested. The request made Cassidy stare at her a moment in disbelief.
She considered responding, but caught sight of her father, who gave every appearance of not relenting. He stood with his back to her, his arms over his chest. He seemed proud of himself as he walked away and settled in what Cassidy could only characterize as a “king-like” manner on his recliner, his arms splayed outŹward over the padded arms, hands wrapped around the ends. He looked like he was waiting.
Abruptly Cassidy recalled how he would do the same thing to her when she was younger, his silence conveying disapproval of something she had done. She would buckle under that look and apologize, promising profusely not to do whatever it was again. Though today was the first time he had struck her, the rest of the situation made her feel like she was twelve again, being grounded for some unspoken infracŹtion.
Only now she wasn’t twelve. She was not going to be cowed into apologizing for
doing something wrong when she felt she hadn’t. She had learned a great deal in the last year about herself, particularly when it came to making her own choices and directing her own life. Mostly from Brenna. She smiled at that, and her spine straightened with resolve.
“Maybe I’ll see you in the spring after Time Trails finishes up.” She saw her father’s eyes narrow and felt vindicated that she had surprised him by not capitulatŹing. She tried to lean in and kiss her mother’s cheek, but the bewildered woman pulled away, eyes wide. Stepping away, Cassidy took Ryan and went to pack.
“Cassie?” Her Uncle Travis stepped out of the doorway of the second bedroom, where he’d just put his daughter down for a nap.
She stopped, gauging his expression but finding nothing but the question…and love. “I’m going home,” she said quietly, continuing past him.
Travis followed her into her bedroom. “Do you need a ride?”
“I can call a cab.” She pulled out the luggage and set it on the bed, haphazardly repacking what she had unpacked only the night before.
“Most likely double the price today.”
Cassidy automatically went through the process of changing Ryan’s clothes while she responded. “I can handle it.”
“I could see you safely on the plane.”
“I’ve got to change my flight. It’ll probably be a few hours before we can find space to L.A.”
“I wouldn’t mind waiting with you and Ryan.”
“Dad wouldn’t take it kindly.”
“Doesn’t seem right you leaving on Christmas Day.”
“I won’t let them continue to treat me as if I’m a child. Besides I’ve got someone who will be happy to see me back in L.A. just as I am.”
Cassidy finished securi
ng the lock, and Travis grabbed the luggage. “You can tell me about her on the way.” She exhaled and felt a single knot of tension release in the back of her neck; she smiled at him gratefully.
The tension thickened as Cassidy, leading Ryan by the hand, followed Travis out through the living room. Her father stood, and they regarded one another warily, Cassidy not moving a muscle and keeping her face expressionless and her father frowning deeply. Her mother stood beside him, a hand on his arm, not restraining him, but the gesture suggested that she was holding him in place nonetheless.
“Cassie, please don’t go. Let us help you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want, or need, the help you want to give.”
“We’re your parents. We know what’s best for you.”
“When I was ten, maybe. You seem to have forgotten I grew up.”
Her father took exception to her tone. “Don’t talk to your mother like that,” he growled.
Cassidy nodded. “Goodbye.”
Uncle Floyd and Aunt Lydia, each with a hand on a shoulder of their two chilŹdren, remained seated on the couch. Cassidy directed a “Goodbye” to them. Travis said nothing, but the suitcases in his hands spoke volumes. She followed him to the hallway, put Ryan in his warm coat, and pulled on her own long winter coat. Sylvia followed them but didn’t say anything more.
Travis addressed himself to her. “I’ll be back when I’ve seen her safely off. Maybe after dinner. See to Brenda, will you?”
Sylvia nodded, and Cassidy watched her close the door, leaving them outside standing on the porch. The silence was oppressive, and Cassidy felt suddenly as
heavy as the door barring her from her parents’ home. She exhaled. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going, Mommy?”
“Home.”
“Christinas is over?”
Cassidy nodded. Ryan took her hand as they walked down the snowy wet front steps. She belted Ryan into the back seat of Travis’ large four-door gray sedan. The car rocked a little as he closed the trunk lid.
“Got everything?” he asked as he entered the front seat.
Turning Point Page 44
