by Julia London
“Oh, I’ve forgotten them, trust me,” she said with a coy laugh, and pushed him again. “But my son is in there.”
“Yeah,” he said, and with a heavy sigh, he reluctantly sat up. His tie was crooked, pulled around to his shoulder, and she wondered for a crazy moment if she had done that as she gathered up the sketch pad and pencils.
“Be careful of those blue hairs,” he said, pushing both hands through his hair. “They’re pretty vicious when it comes to bingo.”
“And free brisket,” she added dreamily as she opened the door. She paused, smiled at him once more. “Thanks, Matt.”
“My pleasure,” he said.
She got out, a little shakily, and closed the door. She watched him back out of the parking space. But before he could drive away, a burning question suddenly popped into Rebecca’s mind, and Rebecca waved at him to stop, running to his car as Matt rolled down the window. “What’s your sign?” she blurted breathlessly.
“My what?”
“Your sign. Are you Aries? Taurus?”
He laughed. “Cancer. What’s yours?”
“Umm . . . Pisces,” she muttered.
“Glad we got that out in the open,” he said, and with a final wave, turned the wheel and drove off.
“Ohmigod,” Rebecca whispered as his car turned onto the highway. “Ohmigod.”
Chapter Eighteen
If confusion is the first step to knowledge, I must be a genius . . .
LARRY LEISSNER
Rebecca didn’t sleep at all that night, no thanks to Matt Parrish and his gift of a sketchbook that had gone straight to her heart, or that hot we-aren’t-going-there kiss that had gone straight to her groin.
It was a good thing that at the crack of dawn they were all headed for Dad’s show palace, the family ranch in Comfort, because Rebecca couldn’t think straight. She really needed a diversion.
Fortunately, Robin and Jake, and Jake’s son, Cole, would be there, too, because frankly, there was no better way to see Dad than in the company of many. Her only regret was that Rachel couldn’t come, as she was off in England studying some manuscript or something like that—honestly, the last time Rachel had called, Rebecca had been a little distracted and couldn’t remember what she said. Except, of course, that bit about the Cancer.
Grandma, Grandpa, Rebecca, and Grayson, plus the dogs, piled into Grandpa’s massive RV, and they were off, crawling down the highway as Frank and Tater moved from side to side, pressing their noses against the windows in a desperate attempt to smell the scenery slowly passing them by while Bean slept, sprawled across the floor like it was a porch.
Grandpa seemed to have a hard time fitting the Queen Mary into a lane—even worse, he seemed oblivious to the stark terror on the faces of other drivers as they squeezed past, because he was too busy reliving the glory of having been a bingo announcer at a charity event. At the same time, Grandma was grousing about the unusually low pots and the inability of a certain announcer to call any number on her sheet.
“It was a charity event, Grandma. You couldn’t have kept the money,” Rebecca reminded her from the enormous living area of the RV.
“I know that, honey, but it still would have been fun to win. But nooo we’ve got to have Mr. Saturday Night over here. I bet he called that blasted B-9 in every game!”
“Now, Lil, no one likes a sore loser,” Grandpa said.
“I certainly am not a sore loser, Elmer!” she huffed. “Anyway, I am sick and tired of talking about that stupid bingo bash. It’s just a silly game.” She didn’t say anything else for a moment (and wisely, neither did anyone else). Then suddenly, she pivoted in her big bucket seat and peered at Rebecca. “Now tell me again about that nice young man with you last evening.”
Oh great, here they went. “Ah . . . you mean Senator Masters?”
Grandma was, unfortunately, way too smart for that. “Nooo, I mean the nice man who helped you keep my cards when I had that attack of diverticulitis.”
“Oh. Matt Parrish.”
“Who?”
“MATT!” Grayson shouted helpfully, having discovered that his great-grandparents were hard of hearing. “She means Matt,” Grayson said to Rebecca, as if she didn’t know.
“That Matt was such a nice and handsome young man,” Grandma said, her smile getting a little too pushy with all its brightness.
“He’s just a guy working on Tom’s campaign, Grandma,” Rebecca said. “No one to get excited about.”
Too late. Grandma was a veteran at prying, and almost wrenched her back trying to see Grayson in the captain’s seat directly behind her. “Do you like him, Boo-boo?”
Grayson nodded.
“He’s a very nice man, isn’t he?”
“You have to admire a man who will try and make friends with a five-year-old boy. Probably means he has a great affinity for children. A man who has an affinity for children is a good candidate for being a solid family man.”
“Where’s my peanuts?” Grandpa asked.
Where’s my gun? Rebecca thought, and lay down on the couch, watching the little balls on the ends of the curtains swinging above her as she tried to think of three positive affirmations for the day that might possibly help her endure this excruciatingly slow drive to Comfort:
Positive Affirmations of My Life:
Grandma and Grandpa, notwithstanding how annoying they can be, and what is with this RV anyway?
The Masters Bingo Bash that really did happen, and raised $3,600 for charity, thank you very much.
Sketch pads and sketch pencils. In a purely artistic sense, of course.
At Blue Cross Ranch, Aaron Lear heard the motor home the minute it turned into the gate almost a mile away. From the sound of it, he figured that Elmer was running in too low a gear, which didn’t surprise him in the least. He wasn’t too keen on having the Stantons for the weekend, but as Bonnie’s very own daughters weren’t helping him reconcile with their mother, it seemed prudent to stay on the good side of her folks, as much as that pained him—Elmer drove him nuts.
On the porch, Aaron groaned aloud at the sight of the RV doing a smooth five miles per hour as it wended its way down the caliche road lined with live oak and pecan trees until it lumbered up into the circular drive. The man could be the poster child of the impractical, for who else but Elmer Stanton would drive a huge RV to a ranch house with more bedrooms than the White House? But Aaron plastered a smile on his face nonetheless, walked down the limestone steps and onto the flagstones to greet them. His grandson was the first out of the thing, flying forward with shouts of Grandpa! that warmed Aaron all the way down to his toes. He bent down, let the boy run into his arms, grimacing with the pain of it, but lifted him up all the same, holding him tight, clinging to him “Hey, Ranger,” he said. “I’ve missed you.”
But the pain was quickly unbearable, and he put the boy down, just as Rebecca elegantly disembarked from the RV, an honor guard of three dogs on her heels. Two of them raced immediately into the front lawn, sniffing trees and bushes. Behind them, a big ugly yellow one wandered out and walked right into a tree in his quest to find the perfect spot to relieve himself.
Rebecca seemed to think nothing of it, just kept walking toward Aaron, smiling that deep smile of hers that reminded him so much of Bonnie. “Hey, baby,” he said, reaching for her.
“Hi, Dad.” She hugged him, then held him at arm’s length. “You look good!”
He didn’t look good and he felt like shit. “Thanks. So do you. Except you’re too skinny—”
“Dad.” She released him with a sigh that sounded just like Bonnie did when she was irritated with him. Aaron ignored it, turned toward Lil.
She threw her arms around him in a painful bear hug. “Oh, Aaron, it does my heart good to see you looking well,” she said, grasping his shoulders and squeezing tightly.
“Thanks, Lil,” he said, dragging his hand across the sheen of perspiration on his brow.
“Well, he sure don’t look any worse for th
e wear,” Elmer said behind Lil, squinting up at Aaron. “I always knew you’d beat it,” he said with a broad grin as he extended his hand in greeting. “You’re too damn mean to die.”
Aaron could only smile—he hadn’t found the guts to tell his family that it was back, had crept into him when he wasn’t looking and sunk its tentacles to root in him again. “I had Lucha make some iced tea,” he said, and gestured toward the big porch where several groupings of furniture were placed beneath ceiling fans turning at a lazy spring pace. Aaron followed the others, biting down so no one would see how it pained him.
They sat awhile, Elmer and Lil boring him to tears with the intimate details of the bingo something-or-other Rebecca had thrown the night before. He wanted desperately to ask about Bonnie, wanted to know what she was doing, if she was happy, if there was anything he could do or say to make her listen to him one last time. But he couldn’t find his opening in Lil’s endless chatter, and idly watched Grayson on the lawn, playing with the dogs. The boy looked so much like him (he’d always thought that—Bonnie said he looked like Bud, but the kid looked like his grandpa), and now Aaron wondered if Grayson would remember him at all. Would any of them really remember him? Or would their memories of him fade away over time, like the wallpaper in his mother’s kitchen, fade so badly that no one would remember his original color?
After a dinner of prime rib—Dad always insisted on the best—they all went their separate ways while waiting for Robin and Jake to arrive from Houston. Grayson was upstairs with Grandpa, hunkered down over a video game. Grandma had gone in to take a “soaking” bath, and Dad had disappeared into his office with the excuse that he needed to make a few calls.
Finally free of what was feeling a little like an ever- present family, Rebecca escaped outside, to the east side of the huge, six-thousand-square-foot ranch house, sat on a porch swing with Frank, Bean, and Tater forming a living, but exhausted, dog shield around her feet.
It was the first clear moment she’d had all day to think, and to try to make sense of all the thoughts about Matt that were jumbling around and crowding her mind. Unfortunately, she didn’t get very far—she heard the screen door open behind her and glanced over her shoulder; it was Dad walking slowly toward her, a newspaper beneath his arm. He motioned for her to scoot over, then stepped over the dogs to sit next to her. Bean instantly adjusted so that he could prop his head against Dad’s leg.
“What the hell is wrong with that dog?” Dad asked, pushing him off his leg. Unfazed, Bean patiently resumed his position.
“Who knows?” Rebecca said. “Old and warped, I think.”
Dad smiled a little. “That ol’ dog doesn’t know old and warped.” He dropped the paper onto his lap, lifted his baseball cap, and ran his palm over the top of his head. His hair had come back coarse and gray and thin after the chemo. He’d been in remission for six months now, so she was surprised it hadn’t grown in more than it had.
Dad put his cap back on, smiled at her. “So how’s that campaign going for you? What’s he running for, again?”
“Lieutenant governor.”
“Ah,” Dad said, nodding thoughtfully. “A big gun. Too bad he’s a Democrat. I might actually be interested otherwise. So how’s it going?”
“Pretty well,” she said cautiously. “I’m learning a lot and meeting new people.”
“Learning anything useful? Or is this all about meeting new people?”
The tone in his voice quashed her hope for a pleasant conversation—she knew damn well questions like that never had a correct response. “I’m doing this for a lot of reasons. Mostly to experience new things and learn where my talents lie.”
“Your talents lie in raising my grandson,” Dad said, and in the dark, Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Don’t forget he’s been through a lot.”
Like she hadn’t? “I know he has been through a lot,” she said wearily, feeling like she’d had this conversation a million times before. “But so have I, Dad.”
“I know you have, and I’m not criticizing. But you’re my daughter and I have been trying to get through to all you girls that you need to learn what’s important—”
“Yes, Dad, I know—that’s what I am trying to do.”
“Come on,” he scoffed. “You’re trying to find a feel-good fix. But these are precious years for Grayson, Rebecca. Don’t do what I did and squander them, because trust me, you can’t get them back.”
“I am not squandering them,” she said, with equal exasperation. “Just because I don’t do it your way—”
“You think you aren’t, but I know that of all my girls, you are the one afraid of . . . of life. So afraid that you won’t stand out there on your own. You think you have to have a man do it for you—”
“What in God’s name are you talking about?” Rebecca exploded. “I am standing out there on my own. I am living alone with my son—”
“You got another nanny.”
“She’s not a nanny! She helps me out a few hours each week so I have a little free time to explore who I am. You may not care, but I sort of lost me in all that mess!”
“So you’re just doing all this to find Rebecca?” he asked, taunting her, then opened the paper, turned several pages. “So you’re not looking for some man to take care of you, is that right?” Rebecca jerked her gaze to him Dad pointed at the paper. “Because you sure look like you’re involved with this clown.”
Confused, she leaned over to see what Dad was seeing in the paper, and he was more than happy to show her—he held it up, pointed to the three pictures. They were all of Tom at the bingo bash, with the whole crew in the background. But there was one of Tom, holding up a bingo sheet, and directly behind him were her and Matt, looking at each other. No—gazing at each other. Rebecca grabbed the paper from his hand and stared at it. Impossible. Impossible! That picture looked like there was something between them, something—
“I don’t care what it looks like,” she said angrily.
“I don’t care, either,” Dad said, and uncharacteristically patted her knee. “I don’t care if you get yourself a boyfriend, Rebecca. You’re only human, and a woman like you? I imagine you can’t beat ‘em off with a stick. All I am trying to say is, don’t make the same mistakes again.”
She lowered the paper and glared at him. “You think I want to make mistakes? You think I haven’t learned a thing or two?”
“I don’t want you to latch on to some guy you think is going to save you. Or keep you. I never really understood what it was with Bud, frankly.”
“Give me a little credit, Dad. I don’t latch on to men who are going to save me or keep me. I was with Bud because in the beginning I loved him.”
“I give you more credit than you could possibly know.” he said, infuriatingly calm. “But I know you, honey, and I know you married Bud out of some perverse fear. It was obvious to the entire state of Texas what he was after, but you just couldn’t or wouldn’t see it. ‘Oh no, we’re in love,’ you said.” Dad shook his head. “The sad truth is men are dogs. And there are a whole lot of them out there who see a woman like you and they want only one thing, whatever the cost. But only you can decide what the price is.”
This was nothing new, really. What was new was that she was sick to death of his criticism and visualized stuffing a sock down his throat. “Is that all you think anyone sees? Just the outside of me?”
“I think that’s all you let them see.”
The remark stunned her; she should have been incensed, should have marched off the ranch like Robin did the time Dad had told her to quit seeing Jake, but honestly, she heard a hard clang of truth in his statement that left her feeling numb. She abruptly stood up, stepped over the dogs, and walked to the porch railing.
“I’m just trying to help,” Dad added.
“You have a strange way of helping,” she said sorrowfully. “You could be a lot more helpful if you would ask about what I was doing on the campaign and tell me how I might use it to find a job,” s
he said. “It would be helpful if you would think about what I want, what I feel, what I think instead of what you think I should do. And it would be a whole lot healthier if you saw me as an adult, not a twelve-year-old girl, maybe took some interest in what I’ve been doing. You could not have been less interested in the bingo bash, but that was a fund-raiser that I put together. I did it.”
“Tell you what,” Dad said through clenched teeth. “The next time you have something you want to show me, you just give me a call. Did you ever think to do that? Pick up the phone and call your old man? Show him what you’re so proud of?”
“Oh, I will, Dad, you can count—”
“What’s that?” he abruptly asked, interrupting her. “Was that a car? I think Robbie’s here,” he said, coming to his feet and tripping over Bean. “Goddamn dog!” he snapped as he began walking for the front of the house, leaving Rebecca to stare at his back. He hadn’t heard a word she’d said.
She and Dad never really talked again that weekend; after all, his advice was dispensed, and he seemed more interested in what Robin and Jake were doing, what Grayson and Cole were doing. Where Mom was, what Rachel was doing in the UK again.
It was, strangely enough, as if that weekend was meant to point up a few fundamental facts to Rebecca, like what was wrong and had been wrong about her relationship with her father since she could remember. He had never cared what was going on inside of her. For all of his philosophical bullshit, the bottom line was about appearances. Her looks, her marriage, her son . . .
This business about not wanting her to make mistakes was a lie—the truth was that he didn’t want her to embarrass him. She was so sick of appearances.
When Dad and Jake took Grayson and Cole fishing, and Grandma and Grandpa were out on the porch having lemonade one afternoon, Rebecca asked Robin, “Have you ever noticed that Dad is more concerned with appearances than he is the real us?”