by Melody Mayer
“Moon! Go in the house!” Evelyn thrust a forefinger toward the front door.
“No! Let's have a party!”
“Moon!” Evelyn was furious. Meanwhile, Kiley watched Star slink away toward the back entrance of the house, though she did turn around to give Kiley the finger.
“Party, party!” Moon cried, running in circles. “Kiley's quitting! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!”
“In the house!” Evelyn ordered again, then fixed angry eyes on Kiley “Do you see how upset my child is? Do you see what you've done?”
What I've done? “I appreciate the opportunity you gave me.” During the drive home, Kiley had mentally rehearsed what she would say. “Sometimes these things just don't work out, and—”
“I'm a publicist, Kiley. I make up lines of shit like that. I packed your bags. They're in the garage. Just do me one last favor.”
“Sure, Evelyn, if I can—”
“Oh, you can. Get the hell out of my face!”
With that, Evelyn turned and slammed the door to her house.
“And thank you very much, too,” Kiley muttered. She trudged off to the garage to get her bags, thinking that Evelyn had a lot of nerve to go into her room and pack them up.
What to do now? Call the Paulsons and see if I can start immediately. Then call Tom to see if he can take me over there.
But Tom hadn't called her since their aborted sexcapade in his hotel suite. Who knew if he'd ever call again? She simply didn't have the nerve to call him. She couldn't call Lydia because Lydia didn't drive. And she couldn't call Esme because Esme was in Jamaica.
She'd have to call a cab. Damn.
Esme's breath came in rasps as she tore into the thick crowd in the center of the infield, shouting frantically in Spanish for the twins. “Weston! Easton! ¿Dónde estáis? ¡Ven acá! ¡Ven acá! ¿Dónde estáis?”
She looked left and right, but all she saw were unfamiliar black faces—happy festival-goers drinking beer and smoking the occasional spliff, faces looking at her curiously as she yelled out in Spanish. There was a children's dance troupe performing in the center of the field, and Esme cut through the watching crowd, shouting for the children. Nothing; only puzzled looks from people having a wonderful time.
Then she heard her own name being called, but by an adult's voice instead of a child's. “Esme? What are you looking for? Esme?”
Esme turned. The artist Tarshea, who had painted the girls' faces, was coming toward her at a dead run.
“What's the matter?” Tarshea demanded.
“The girls! They're gone!” Esme heard the hysteria in her own voice. “Oh God!”
“Stop,” Tarshea told her, taking Esme by the shoulders. “Calm yourself. We will do no good finding them if you are a wreck. Now, they are little. They cannot have gone far. Let us— Wait. I know what we should do.” She started pulling Esme toward the stage.
“What are you doing?” Esme demanded.
“We go to the band, we use their microphone and make an announcement to the crowd. The children will come right to us,” Tarshea explained. “You have not been listening, there have been announcements from there the whole afternoon.”
For a brief second, Esme felt a bit of hope instead of abject panic. Then she thought of Steven and Diane Goldhagen, wherever they were at the festival, and what they would hypothetically hear from the stage.
“We have two lost children, Easton and Weston Goldhagen. They are Colombian and have painted faces. If you see Weston and Easton Goldhagen, please bring them to their apparently imcompetent nanny by the left side of the main stage. Kidnappers, please resist the urge to snap up this golden opportunity. Thank you very much.”
Oh my God. She would be so fired.
“No!” Esme said quickly. “No announcement. Not yet.”
“But it is the best way to find the children,” Tarshea protested.
“No. Wait,” Esme pleaded, her voice cracking from the strain.
She knew the right thing to do would be to send Tarshea up to the stage to make the announcement about the girls while she ran over and found Steven and Diane. The longer that she waited to tell them, the worse the consequences would be. It would be bad enough that the girls were lost somewhere in this sunbaked field of sweaty humanity, in a country not their own, where no one spoke their first language. If Steven and Diane figured out that the girls were lost and Esme hadn't told them right away, there'd be no hope, even if Esme threw herself at their mercy.
“Okay, five minutes,” Tarshea reluctantly agreed. “You go to the left, I go to the right. We will meet back here—so that way, we cover everything twice. Five minutes. I'll see you then.”
Esme headed to the left. The good news was that it was the opposite direction from where the Goldhagens were— presumably, although her heart pounded even more when she realized that Steven and Diane could be anywhere in this crowd, and there was no reason to believe that they would have stayed in the place with the white tablecloths. The bad news was, there had to be at least ten thousand people crowded into the cricket grounds, the reggae band was wailing, people were partying and dancing everywhere. How in the world was she going to find five-year-old twins?
She sent up a quick prayer: Please, at least let them be together out there. Somewhere.
In the five minutes it took her to orbit the cricket grounds, she looked everywhere she could think of, putting herself in the mind of the girls: What would they be interested in? What would keep their attention? So when she came to an area where kids could ride on the backs of goats, she lingered for a few moments; lots of kids, none of them hers. At a game contest that was a variation on ringtoss, except the game was designed to allow kids to win and let them throw hula hoops over full bottles of soda—if the kid won, the kid got the soda. But no Weston or Easton.
Time was running out; she was breathing so hard she was afraid she might hyperventilate. Looking this way and that, wiping the sweat from her brow with a forearm, cutting and dodging around people without saying excuse me, practically knocking over an elderly gentleman with a cane who was eating a plateful of oxtail and roast potatoes.
“Weston!” Esme shouted. “Easton?”
No response, just the roar of the crowd answering something that the reggae band's lead singer had shouted into his microphone. She realized she'd worked her way all around the field. As she did, Tarshea came running from the opposite direction.
“No children?” she asked.
Esme shook her head.
“You need to make the announcement, now,” Tarshea urged.
“Fine,” Esme agreed. It no longer mattered to her if she lost her job; all that mattered to her was those two little girls. What if someone found out they were the children of a very rich, very famous American? They could be held for ransom, or worse.
Please, God; please, God; please, God, she prayed as she sprinted for the stage behind Tarshea, who was boldly yelling at people to get out of the way, this was an emergency, she had to get to the stage. Though the area in front of the stage was wall-to-wall dancers, Tarshea's insistent voice was undeniable. Everyone stepped aside so that Esme and Tarshea could pass. Then Tarshea ducked under a thick rope and helped Esme under it, and the two of them were backstage.
“We wait for the song to finish, then we talk to the stage manager,” Tarshea decreed.
Esme nodded. It was all she could manage. The prayer kept repeating itself in her brain: Please, God.
And then, as if she was divinely inspired, she got an idea.
The song ended, and Esme stood by while Tarshea had a quick consultation with the guy who was in charge, a huge man with a huge belly, who was sweating profusely under a black, yellow, and green wool cap. When they were done talking, the big man motioned to Esme.
“You go up there and take the center mike, say what you need to say,” he instructed.
It was now or never.
Esme edged out onto the stage, hoping against hope both that the girls were within earshot and t
hat her bosses were otherwise engaged. She reached the center of the stage, where the lead singer of the reggae band—a skinny guy with huge dreads— looked at her quizzically.
“Okay?” She pointed to the mike. “I've got to make a quick announcement.”
The singer shrugged. “Yah mon, you do what you need to do.”
“Escúchame, por favor. Si tú, Weston, y tú, Easton, puedes oir mi voz, escuches por favor mí. Llévese por las manos y la caminata a través de la muchedumbre a dónde la venda musical está jugando. Tú me verás en la etapa. Ahora ven. ¡Por favor!”
Basically she begged—in Spanish, so that there was a vague chance that the Goldhagens wouldn't understand her—for Weston and Easton to come to the stage if they could hear the sound of her voice. Unless the Goldhagens were listening closely, their daughters' names in the midst of the rapid-fire Spanish might not even register with them. That was her hope, anyway.
Esme scanned the crowd, praying for a response to her announcement, praying that little two girls with painted faces would run up to her and throw their arms around her, and the Goldhagens would be none the wiser.
Esme stood there and waited. And waited. But no two little faces appeared.
Steven and Diane Goldhagen raced through the crowd at a dead run. Steven's face was contorted with anger and concern; Diane had tears running down her cheeks. The reggae band's lead singer was in the process of moving Esme off the stage in order to start a new song, so Esme didn't see her bosses until Steven slammed his hand down on the wooden stage with all his might.
So much for hoping that they wouldn't understand the Spanish.
“Esme, what the hell is going on here?” Steven bellowed.
“I—I—” Esme stammered.
“Where are the children?” Diane demanded, her voice rising an octave in fear. “Where are my children?”
Her panicky voice made Esme's stomach lurch. “I don't exactly—”
“Goddammit, Esme.” Steven jumped up onto the stage to grab her by the arms. “Tell me you didn't lose the children out there in that… mess!”
Diane wrapped her arms around herself. “Oh God, oh God …”
Steven pointed at the Jamaican in the wool cap. “Call security. Now!” he bellowed.
“Esme!”
They all turned. There stood Tarshea, holding Easton's and Weston's hands.
“I'm so sorry, Esme,” Tarshea said, “I should have told you that I was taking them to another spot to finish their face painting. There was a color I wanted. You must be the most responsible nanny in history to come up here and make that announcement.”
Weston and Easton smiled, and Esme realized that they didn't understand enough of what Tarshea was saying to refute her big fat lie.
Diane rushed over and swept the girls up in her arms. “Who are you?” she asked Tarshea. “And what are you doing with my girls?”
“I think I can explain,” Esme told Diane, who looked only marginally less upset than when she'd arrived.
“I am an artist and I painted their faces,” Tarshea explained. “This is entirely my fault. There's an ice cream place and kids' play area at the other end of the field. Maybe we could go there?”
“¿Helado para los dos?” Esme asked the twins without waiting for Steven and Diane to respond. “Ice cream?”
You could hear the twins' cheer all the way back in Los Angeles.
Ten minutes later, the twins were happily eating ice cream and playing on a merry-go-round with about a dozen Jamaican kids. They couldn't really understand one another, because the girls' English was still limited and the Jamaican children had very thick accents, but they were laughing and spinning around like crazy tops just the same.
Esme and Tarshea sat directly across from Steven and Diane at a small redwood picnic table. The Goldhagens were in a dark mood as Tarshea tried to defend Esme.
“I asked Esme to get something out of one of my makeup bags,” Tarshea invented. “Then a friend of mine came over and distracted me. I called to Esme to follow me through the crowd, but I forgot that I was speaking in patois and she couldn't understand me. So you see, it really is my fault entirely.”
“But Esme should have been watching them the whole time,” Diane pointed out to Steven. “That's her job.”
Esme didn't know what to say. Mostly, she was grateful to Tarshea for covering for her, because Diane was right. It was Esme's job to watch the children, and she shouldn't have taken her eyes off them.
Steven sighed and turned to his wife. “You know, Diane, there was no harm done. We've got our girls. They look happy. And I think Esme's done a hell of a job here, especially with Peter and Erin's kids. They've been murder on her. Tell me you wanted to take care of them. Look at Esme. She's exhausted!”
Thank you, God.
“Why did you make the announcment in Spanish?” Diane asked sharply. “What were you afraid of, Esme?”
Shit. “I didn't want everyone to know the girls were missing,” Esme improvised. “I thought someone bad might find them and decide to hold them for ransom. Or something.”
“I'd say that was pretty damn smart.” Steven nodded admiringly, and then looked at Tarshea. “I want to thank you, too. For helping out. But also for taking responsibility for what you did. You don't know us. But you did it anyway.”
Esme turned to Tarshea. “I can't thank you enough.”
Hint-hint. Esme had only twenty dollars in her pocket. She could give it to Tarshea, sure. But Steven Goldhagen could peel ten—hell, a hundred—times that off his money wad and never know it was missing.
Esme looked over at the girls. Weston was rubbing her eyes—a sure sign that she was tired. And why shouldn't she be tired? It had been a huge day, and they still had the big drive across the island back to Northern Look.
Diane noticed too. “Steven, I think the girls have had enough. It's probably time to drive back.”
“Definitely.” Steven stood up. So did Diane, Esme, and Tarshea.
Damn. No reward. But maybe there's something I can do.
“I couldn't have found the girls without Tarshea,” Esme said quickly. “She … got the band to stop playing so I could get up there.”
Steven smiled. “A go-getter. Maybe you have a future in Hollywood.”
Esme jumped on the comment, though not necessarily in the way that Steven was thinking. “I totally agree with you,” she told him. “Which is why I was wondering if maybe you've got some friends who might need a nanny like Tarshea? Someone really caring and responsible, who cared about Easton and Weston when she didn't even have to.”
Steven fixed his eyes on Tarshea. “What I would ask is, is Tarshea interested?”
Tarshea nodded emphatically. “I could provide excellent references, sir. But what I really want to do is go to art school in America.”
“Well then.” Steven took out a business card, gave it to her, and then dug around for a pen. “What's your address? Phone number?”
Tarshea's face fell. “We have an address, but I don't trust the mail to get there. We don't have a telephone. We cannot afford a telephone.”
“No phone?” Diane was incredulous. “How do you communicate?”
“We manage,” Tarshea told her, a little embarrassed. “It's different here in Jamaica.”
“Do you have someone else who the Goldhagens can contact?” Esme urged.
“How about… my minister?” Tarshea suggested. “He has a phone. I'll give you the number.” She took the pen and quickly jotted some information. “Thank you,” Tarshea told Steven. “I appreciate it very much.”
Esme looked at her closely. She was grateful that the Goldhagens had offered to help, but there was also … what was the emotion in her eyes? Skepticism. Like, not wanting to be disappointed if these Americans went back to their country and never gave another thought to Tarshea the artist.
“They'll be in touch,” Esme declared. This kind girl had saved her ass; the least she could do was to try and return the favo
r.
“Dang!” Lydia exclaimed as she admired Kiley's new digs—a bungalow guesthouse beside the hillside mansion that belonged to Dirk and Beth Paulson and their daughter, Grace. Kiley had called Lydia as soon as she'd settled into her new home; after all, Lydia lived only two doors away.
“You, Kiley McCann, have hit the jackpot. Wanna trade jobs?” As she stood in the center of her guesthouse, Kiley indeed felt as though she'd hit the jackpot. The place was amazing, even nicer than the guesthouse she'd had at Platinum's. There were not one, not two, but three full bedrooms. The master bedroom was on the ground floor; it was paneled in oak, and had an oak king-sized bed, and featured an enormous picture window that looked out onto a formal garden with a koi fish-pond and a gazebo that Beth had explained was used only for meditation. Upstairs were two other bedrooms, half the size of hers, each decorated in a different theme. One was Japanese, with a futon on the floor, Japanese art on the walls, and a single perfect rose in a clear glass bud vase. The other was a bit odd, decorated like a cheap motel room—colorless rug, basic nature-themed prints on the walls, two matching no-name lamps on nightstands, and a tiny dresser. There was an upstairs bathroom with shower, while the downstairs bathroom—Kiley's main one—was black marble and enormous, and featured a Jacuzzi big enough to hold six adults comfortably. The golden Moen fixtures probably cost more than a mortgage payment back in La Crosse.
It was two hours or so after Kiley's unpleasant ending to her experience with Evelyn Bowers. Of course, it wasn't entirely over—she realized that she would probably run into Evelyn and her charming children at the country club.
The Paulsons had been extremely nice and extremely thoughtful—just as they'd been at the country club, but even more so. They said they would treat Kiley like an adult, and treat Kiley's guesthouse as though it belonged to her. If she wanted to have friends there—even to stay over, Beth said without any embarrassment—that was up to Kiley. Of course, it couldn't interfere with her work. The only other thing that she needed to be aware of was that the family home gym was attached to the guesthouse. Both Dirk and Beth were pretty fanatical about staying in shape.