“If I have to lose the Valiant, I don’t want to lose you as well.”
“Say it, Katie. Let’s just get it out there.”
I sniffled and wished he had offered the words himself. “Quit working for Thrifty Co. Walk away from them, Charlie.”
He muttered a curse and began to pace a path around the stage. Loretta’s picnic basket of chicken and all the fixings grew cold on their spot by the first row. Dinner would not be happening.
Not while Charlie walked the length of the stage, his face taut with frustration.
Charlie’s temper had always had a long fuse, but tonight it was sizzling to the quick. “You’ve lived your whole life playing it safe,” he said. “Your mom was the wild child. She was the one you couldn’t depend on. But not you. And now you want every thing to be a sure bet before you even consider attempting it. Me. Your career.”
“There is no career.”
“Because you won’t even try! You go out of your way to not be like Bobbie Parker, but you’re living half a life in the process. You’re going to die here in In Between if you stay.”
“I love this town!”
“God gave you this incredible talent to entertain, to act, to bring stories alive, and what are you doing with it?”
“At least I’m not hurting people with my career choice.”
“What are you doing with it?” he demanded.
“I’m not good enough, Charlie.”
“Because Ian said so?”
“College is over. I’m no longer the star of campus, and I have to face that reality.”
“You dumped Ian. He would’ve said anything to hurt you. He knew that was your Achilles heel. You have zero faith in yourself or your ability.” Or me.
He didn’t say it, but it was there.
“My stage career is over.”
“Because you’re scared. What happens when you wake up twenty years from now, and you’re still here in Texas, going through the motions of some job just to pay the bills?”
“You have no inkling what it’s like to stand on that stage every night at the mercy of your audience’s judgment. What it’s like to step into a part so big, it’s survived centuries, and you’re some kid from small town, Texas. You can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to hear all the voices in your head, louder than my own voice delivering my lines. Those voices that say I can’t do it. That I’m on borrowed time, and soon they’re all gonna know I can’t act. And that the only reason I’m there is because I caught the director’s eye. Or what it’s like to finish your scene, high on adrenaline, only for your director to cut you down, tell you every single thing you did wrong. Constantly telling you it’s not good enough.” My mascara had to be black rivulets streaking my face by now, but it felt good to open that festering sore and let it bleed out. “You want to know the truth? I knew from the beginning why I had the part. Maybe I even led Ian on.”
“You wouldn’t have.”
“Yes, Charlie. I would have. Because I was desperate to get that role. . . desperate to be somebody.”
“You are somebody.”
“I flirted with him ’til I got his attention, until he was intrigued enough to give me a shot. I just wanted one chance to show him I had what it takes. One try to be the understudy.” Then the lead.
“He wouldn’t have given you the part if you hadn’t earned it.”
“But I didn’t have enough talent to keep it. And I still don’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Broadway is for the Julliard graduates. Not for the daughter of Bobbie Ann Parker. I tried, I failed. I’m done. You can only fall on your face so many times before you have to be honest with yourself. I don’t want to go to Manhattan and wait tables until I’m sixty because I’m still trying to get my foot in the door at the Gershwin.”
“So you’re gonna wait tables here instead.”
I lifted my chin and dared him to contradict me. “I’m going to run the Valiant.”
“And if it’s not here?”
“Can you tell me for certain it won’t be?”
“I can’t tell you anything. I want to,” he quietly admitted. “But I can’t.”
“You won’t.”
He slammed his hands into his pockets and studied the floor for long, agonizing moments before slowly lifting his head. “I’m not quitting my job right now.”
“Then when?” But I knew the answer now. It was never. It was job first, like his father.
It felt silly to stand on the stage in the midst of this life-altering conversation with the Sound of Music set behind us. How do you solve a problem like. . .me?
“I asked you to trust me.” Charlie yanked on the knot of his tie, loosening it with a few harsh tugs.
“How can I do that when you’re a part of this company? This theater is part of my family. For a time in my life, it was all I had. It saved me. Do you get that? I probably wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t met the Valiant. I’d be in prison or dead. But I sure wouldn’t be where I am now.”
“And where you are is asking me to just quit my job and go do something else. Like it’s that easy.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy. I think I know a little bit about job transitions.”
“Really? Because I don’t see you transitioning to one.”
That icy dagger stabbed right through me. “Not all of us are born with family connections or this genius talent. Some of us have to work our butts off to get even one rung up the ladder.”
“I work very hard. I work day and night, trying to keep my head above water, while dodging hate mail from the neighbors, and attempting not to break your heart.”
“Is that what you’re doing right now? Trying not to break my heart?”
Charlie scrubbed his hands over his face. “I can’t give you what you want.”
“I’m not talking about business.” The pitiful words gathered in my throat and danced on my tongue. I hated them. I hated every one of them, but I spit them out anyway. “I told you I loved you. . .and you said nothing.”
“I can’t be the man you want right now.”
“The one who can leave a job that makes him miserable and do the right thing? You’re not willing to take that risk for us? You, who keeps telling me to get on a plane to New York?”
“Loving you has always been a risk,” Charlie said. “But you don’t trust me right now, and I don’t trust tonight’s declaration. Twice you’ve told me you’ve loved me, and both times in a moment of desperation. What about on the average day when you have nothing to gain? Let’s say I was able to stop the Valiant from going down. Would you still be there when it was over? Because anytime someone gets too close, you take off.”
“That’s not true. I was with Ian for nearly a year.”
“He’s got temporary written all over him. I have no doubt you knew that from the first date. You knew he wasn’t the type to put a ring on your finger, so less risk for you. What about our freshman year of college? I told you I loved you, and you disappeared. I didn’t hear from you again until . . . when was it? When was it, Katie?”
On a plane ride from Chicago to Houston.
“It took you four years to say you loved me back, and only then under the threat of death. So you wonder why I haven’t said the words to you? Because you can’t take them.” His booming voice echoed throughout the theater. “And because I don’t want you to leave again.”
Tears fell unchecked down my cheeks. “I didn’t run from you.”
“Why don’t we finally talk about that last night I saw you.”
“Just stop.” It was old history. Dark ghosts of memories that haunted me when I was too worn down to lock those doors.
“Freshman year. February.”
“I don’t need to hear this story again.”
“You didn’t even bother calling me with the news. Frances did.”
My mother had died.
She was gone.
And I had spent two days throwing up
until there was nothing left but bile.
Bobbie Ann Parker had always made a game of leaving me, but that time, she’d really outdone herself. She wasn’t coming back. I’d known her life was one big walk on the ice pond, and it was only a matter of time before it would crack and she’d fall in. But when the police had come to our door and given me the news, I’d dropped to the floor, tearless. Numb. Emptied of all words. My mom had chosen heroin over me.
“You were in Chicago,” I said. “It wasn’t like you were a few hours away.”
“I would’ve traveled across the globe to get to you.”
I swallowed back tears. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
“You didn’t need me.”
“No.” I shook my head, my vision blurring. “I needed you more than I could stand. It was all just too much. My mom, the funeral. . .you.”
“Two a.m., and I’m driving through town, and whose car do I see at the Valiant?” Charlie’s voice tendered. “When I walked inside, I found you sitting in that front row seat, holding your head in your hands.”
I was right back there. Loss. Unbearable loss that I hadn’t expected to feel.
“I could hear you praying.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, desperate to shut off this memory. I never wanted to think about those days again. I tried not to think about her.
I hadn’t shed one tear for my mom. Hadn’t seen her in years, but the guilt had eaten at me all the same. What if I could’ve helped her? And what if I grew up to be her?
I’d sat in the Valiant for hours that night. Alone.
And then Charlie appeared like an angel of mercy.
He’d hugged me, wrapped his arms around me just like he’d done on the plane, covering my body as if to keep away any more harm.
Then I’d lost it.
My heart exploded and I convulsed in sobs, sinking to the floor of the Valiant, taking Charlie with me. Sitting there, he’d held me, murmuring soft words, praying, and giving me moments of silence with my own terrible thoughts.
And saying the one thing I hadn’t been prepared to hear.
“Do you remember what I told you?” Charlie now asked.
“Yes.” He’d said he loved me.
“And what did you do?”
It had been a stupid mistake. I had been young, shattered.
“You pulled away from me,” Charlie said. “Ran out of the theater like I had struck you. And you never looked back. So you want to know why I haven’t said the words, Katie?” His question was a land mine, and I was about to step right on it. “Because I’m afraid you’ll run again. That’s what you do.”
“I’m not running this time.”
“And what if I don’t quit Thrifty Co.? Will you still love me then? Because tonight it seems like it has to be a package deal.”
I wanted both—Charlie and my theater. Was that asking too much? “You’re going to choose this job over us?”
“You don’t know what you’re asking right now.”
“Then tell me!”
“I can’t.”
“If you truly cared for me, you’d do something. Anything to save my Valiant.” I clamped my hands over my mouth, appalled those words had just taken on a life of their own. “I didn’t—”
“There it is. That condition.” I hated that acidic laugh that came from Charlie’s lips. “Well, that’s not how love works. It’s not something you earn or work for to keep. It doesn’t come with conditions and hoops to jump through. I’m not my dad, and you’re sure not you’re mother. And I’m not playing this game. But you want the words, Parker? Because I wouldn’t want to leave you hanging.”
Suddenly I didn’t think I did. I couldn’t bear to hear his disappointment.
His regret.
“I’m done with conversation,” I said.
But Charlie wasn’t.
“I’ve always loved you.” He said it like the admission was a crime that would lead him to the gallows. “When I held you the night of your mom’s funeral, I knew that as long as I lived, I would never feel for anyone else what I felt for you. Whether you’d ever admit it, you needed me. I wanted to protect you from every hurt, every tear. And when I saw you in the Houston airport, last month, I think I stopped breathing.”
His leather dress shoes clicked on the hardwood floor as he walked to the edge of the stage and looked out into rows of empty seats. “The plane was going down, and I had you beneath me. Safe. Then we hit another air pocket, and I lost my hold. That’s when you were hit. . .and for a few blinding seconds, I thought you were gone. You were completely out, and there was all this . . . blood.” It was an anguished man who turned back to face me. “We were dropping fast, and it was just chaos. But I grabbed you, pulled you to me. And when I felt your chest rise and fall . . . I started breathing again. Because I didn’t care if we were both going down on that plane, Katie.” Charlie pressed his hand to his breast pocket, as if the heart beating beneath it ached. “I just didn’t want to go without you.”
For every tear I dashed away, five more took its place.
I wanted out of here now. I had to get out of this building. The urge to run—that black, hissing presence in my head—screamed for me to bolt.
Get out of here.
Leave him.
You will never have what you want.
You’re unsafe here. I’ll keep you sheltered.
But run!
“I know I’m asking for the impossible,” Charlie said. “I’m asking you to trust me through this buyout. But I need to know you’re going to be there when the dust settles, no matter what’s left in the end. I’m asking you to take that risk. Whether it makes sense, whether it looks like you will get your happy ending or not—take that risk. Love me, Katie Parker.”
There weren’t a thousand uncertainties.
Only two.
Either Charlie was enough. . .or he wasn’t.
I could put my hand in his forever and step over that precipice, not knowing where we’d land.
Or I could walk away.
From a man who couldn’t give me any guarantees. Couldn’t even give me all the answers.
And spend the rest of my life searching for someone who could.
On weak, shaking legs, I walked to Charlie, stopping mere inches before him. I took one good hard look at my theater, the place that had been my life support. God’s mercy breathed into every nail and surface.
“I’m sorry.” Reaching out my hand, I caressed his stubbled cheek one final time. “It’s just not enough.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I’m as nervous as the day I first took the stage at Circus Circus.”
Maxine sat in the backseat of Loretta’s minivan and powdered her nose for the third time. “What do you think that judge will say?”
A light mist peppered our vehicle as we drove to Mills Creek, the county seat and home of the dreaded courthouse. I traced a finger across the window, chasing the path of a raindrop caught in the wind. Conversation had been flying around me for a good half hour, but I hadn’t caught a word. My eyes stung from crying in sporadic fits all night, and all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep for a thousand days.
Maxine nudged me with her bony elbow. “I said, what do you think the judge will have to say?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Would you like to borrow some lipstick?” Maxine dug into her trendy leather bag and offered one of her favorites.
“No.” I hadn’t bothered with makeup this morning, and my eyelids were as swollen and fluffy as one of Loretta’s omelets. Eyeliner would’ve been impossible to apply, eye shadow had been more effort than I could expend, and mascara would’ve just been something smeared on my pillow when I returned to my bed.
Maxine patted my knee and rested her head on my shoulder. I sat to her right, squeezed in between her and Dana Lou Tanner, who was taking up more than her fair share of seat space, while Betty McAnally of Betty’s Hair Salon, rode shotgun. Behind our van, Mr. and M
rs. Foster drove in the pink Cadillac Seville she’d won thirty years ago selling makeup. Mr. Gleason and three other townsfolk rode in his dusty Ford pickup, with Mr. Henry and Mrs. Virgie Higgins bringing up the rear. We were a caravan of misfits, each of our vehicles stocked with an abundant supply of Loretta’s coffee, fear, and anger.
Unable to face an empty, lonely house last night after dropping Charlie off at his home, I’d gone to Maxine’s. She’d taken one look at me standing beneath her porch light and hugged me ’til my body warmed and the jagged sobs had abated.
She’d put on a pot of coffee, and we sat at her kitchen bar talking until I was all wrung out. Then we’d adjourned to her living room, huddled together on the couch beneath one blanket and binge watched some Golden Girls. Maxine had fallen asleep four episodes in, but I had stayed awake, alternately crying and trying in vain to get some rest.
Because I knew I needed it for this day. I needed to be sharp, on my guard, with a fully functional brain.
I was definitely on my guard, but the other things weren’t even in the realm of possibility.
“You’re going to be okay,” Maxine whispered. “It’s not over ’til it’s over.”
How wrong she was. Charlie and I were beyond done.
And I wasn’t too sure about the fate of the Valiant as well. And if there was no Valiant, what in the world was I going to do about a job?
“Sure you don’t want my lipstick? It’s called Revenge Red.”
“No, thank you.” But if she had any Boys Are Stupid or Not Enough Ice Cream To Fix This, then I’d paint it all over my face.
With a shrug of defeat, Maxine retrieved her mirror and applied another coat herself. “Well.” She shut her compact with a snap. “I didn’t want to put this out there, but these are desperate times. If things go south, I am not above seducing that judge with my feminine wiles.” She pushed up her girls and sniffed. “Let’s be honest, I just have a way with men. I don’t question it; it just is.”
Loretta caught my eye in the rearview. “Aren’t we lucky to have you and your hooters in our arsenal.”
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