“How’s Dot feeling?” she asked gently. Arthur’s wife was a hometown girl, and everybody liked her.
Arthur’s worries showed in his eyes. “She has good days and bad days,” he said.
Julie bit her lower lip. Nodded. So this was it, she thought. The showcase was out, the musical was in. And somehow she would have to make it all work.
“Thank you,” Arthur replied, distracted again. Once more, he sighed. “I’ll need dates for the production as soon as possible,” he said. “Nelva Jean can make up fliers stressing that we’re going to need more parental help than usual.”
Nelva Jean was the school secretary, a force of nature in her own right, and she’d been eligible for retirement even when Julie and her sisters attended Blue River High. But aged miracle though she was, Nelva Jean couldn’t work magic.
Julie and Arthur went their separate ways then, Julie’s mind tumbling through various unworkable options as she hurried toward her classroom, her thoughts partly on the three playwrights and their own hopes for the showcase.
She’d met with the trio of young authors all summer long, reading and rereading the scripts for their one-act plays, suggesting revisions, helping to polish the pieces until they shone. They’d worked hard, and were counting on the production to buttress their college credentials.
Julie entered her classroom, took her place up front. She had no choice but to put the dilemma out of her mind for the time being.
Class flew by.
“Ms. Remington?” a shy voice asked, when first period was over and most of the students had left.
Julie, who’d been erasing the blackboard, turned to see Rachel Strivens, one of her three young playwrights, standing nearby. Rachel’s dad was often out of work, though he did odd jobs wherever he could find them to put food on the table, and her mother had died in some sort of accident before the teenager and her father and her two younger brothers rolled into Blue River in a beat-up old truck in the middle of the last school year. They’d taken up residence in a rickety trailer, adjoining the junkyard run by Chudley Wilkes and his wife, Minnie, and had kept mostly to themselves ever since.
Rachel’s intelligence, not to mention her affinity for the written word, had been apparent to Julie almost immediately. Over the summer, Rachel had spent her days at the Blue River Public Library, little brothers in tow, or at the community center, composing her play on one of the computers available there.
The other kids seemed to like Rachel, though she didn’t have a lot of time for friends. She was definitely not like the others, buying her clothes at the thrift store and doing without things many of her contemporaries took for granted, like designer jeans, fancy cell phones and MP3 players, but at least she was spared the bullying that sometimes plagued the poor and the different. Julie knew that because she’d taken the time to make sure.
“Yes, Rachel?” she finally replied.
Rachel, though too thin, had elegant bone structure, wide-set brown eyes and a generous mouth. Her waist-length hair, braided into a single plait, was as black as a country night before the new moon, and always clean. “Could—could I talk with you later?”
Julie felt a tingle of alarm. “Is something wrong?”
Rachel tried hard to smile. Second period would begin soon, and students were beginning to drift into the room. “Later?” the girl said. “Please?”
Julie nodded, still thinking about Rachel as she prepared to teach another English class. Probably because she’d had to move around a lot with her dad, rambling from town to town and school to school, Rachel’s grades had been a little on the sketchy side when she’d started at Blue River High. The one-act play she’d written—tellingly titled Trailer Park—was brilliant.
Rachel was brilliant.
But she was also the kind of kid who tended to fall through the cracks unless someone actively championed her and stood up for her.
And Julie was determined to be that someone.
Somehow.
A PHONE WAS RINGING. Insistent, jarring him awake.
With a groan, Garrett dragged the comforter up over his head, but the sound continued.
Cell phone?
Landline?
He couldn’t tell. Didn’t give a damn.
“Shut up,” he pleaded, burrowing down deeper in bed, his voice muffled by the covers.
The phone stopped after twelve rings, then immediately started up again.
Real Life coalesced in Garrett’s sleep-fuddled brain. Memories of the night before began to surface.
He recalled the senator’s announcement.
Saw Nan Cox in his mind’s eye, slipping out by way of the hotel kitchen.
He recollected Brent Brogan providing him with a police escort as far as the ranch gate.
And after all that, Julie Remington, a little boy and a three-legged beagle appearing in the kitchen.
Knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep after Julie had taken her young son and their dog back to bed in the first-floor guest suite—the spacious accommodations next to the maid’s rooms, where the housekeeper, Esperanza, stayed—Garrett had gone to the barn, saddled a horse, and spent what remained of the night and the first part of the morning riding.
Finally, when smoke curled from the bunkhouse chimney and lights came on in the trailers along the creek-side, Garrett had returned home, put up his horse, retired to his private quarters to strip, shower and fall facedown into bed.
The ringing reminded him that he still had a job.
“Shit,” he murmured, sitting up and scrambling for the bedside phone. “Hello?”
A dial tone buzzed in his ear, and the ringing went on.
His cell phone, then.
He grabbed for his jeans, abandoned earlier on the floor next to the bed, and rummaged through a couple of pockets before he found the cell.
“Garrett McKettrick,” he mumbled, after snapping it open.
“It’s about time you picked up the phone,” Nan Cox answered. She sounded pretty chipper, considering that her husband had stood up at the previous evening’s fundraiser and essentially told the world that he and Mandy Chante were meant to be together. “I’m at the office, and you’re not. You’re not at your condo, either, because I sent Troy over to check. Where are you, Garrett?”
He sat up in bed, self-conscious because he was talking to his employer’s wife, one of his late mother’s closest friends, naked. Of course, Nan couldn’t see him, but still.
“I’m on the Silver Spur,” he said, grabbing his watch off the bedside table and squinting at it.
Seeing the time—past noon—he swore again.
“The senator needs you. The press has him and the little pole dancer cornered in their hotel suite.”
Garrett tossed the comforter aside, sat up, retrieved his jeans from the floor and pulled them on, standing up to work the zipper and the snap. “I can understand why you think this might be my problem,” he replied, imagining Morgan and Mandy hiding out from reporters in the spacious room he’d rented for them the night before, “but I’m not sure I get why it would be yours. Some women would be angry. They’d be talking to divorce lawyers.”
“Morgan,” Nan said quietly, and with conviction, “is not himself. He’s ill. We still have five children at home. I’m not about to turn my back on him now.”
“Mrs. Cox—”
“Nan,” she broke in. “Your mother and I were like sisters.”
“Nan,” Garrett corrected himself, his tone grave. “Surely you understand that your husband’s career can’t be saved. He won’t get the presidential nomination. In fact, he will probably be asked to relinquish his seat in the Senate.”
“I don’t give a damn about his career,” Nan said fiercely, and Garrett knew she was fighting back tears. “I just want Morgan back. I want him examined by his doctor. He’s not in his right mind, Garrett. He needs my help. He needs our help.”
Although the senator was probably going through some kind of delayed midlife crisis, Garr
ett wasn’t convinced that his boss was out of his mind. Morgan Cox wouldn’t be the first politician to throw over his wife, family and career in some fit of eroticized egotism, nor, unfortunately, would he be the last.
“Look,” Garrett said quietly, “I’ve given this whole situation some thought, and from where I stand, resignation is looking pretty good.”
“Morgan’s?”
“Mine,” Garrett replied, after unclamping his jaw.
“You would resign?” Nan asked, sounding only slightly more horrified than stunned. “Morgan has been your mentor, Garrett. He’s shown you the ropes, introduced you to all the right people in Washington, prepared the way for you to run for office when the time comes….”
Her voice fell away.
Garrett thrust out a sigh. Would he resign?
He wasn’t sure. All he knew for certain right then was that he needed more of what his dad would have called range time—hours and hours on the back of a horse—in order to figure out what to do next.
In the meanwhile, though, Morgan and the barracuda were pinned down in a hotel suite in Austin, two hours away. The senator was obviously a loose cannon, and if he got desperate enough, he might make things even worse with some off-the-wall statement meant to appease the reporters lying in wait for him in the corridor.
“Garrett?” Nan prompted, when he didn’t speak.
“I’m here,” he said.
“You’ve got to do something.”
Like what? Garrett wondered. But it wasn’t the sort of thing you said to Nan Cox, especially not when she was in her take-on-the-world mode. “I’ll call his cell,” he told her.
“Good,” Nan said, and hung up hard.
Garrett winced slightly, then speed-dialed his boss.
“McKettrick?” Cox snapped. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” Garrett said.
“Where the hell are you?”
Garrett let the question pass. The senator wasn’t asking for his actual whereabouts, after all. He was letting Garrett know he was pissed.
“You haven’t spoken to the press, have you?” Garrett asked.
“No,” Cox said. “But they’re all over the hotel—in the hallway outside our suite, and probably downstairs in the lobby—”
“Probably,” Garrett agreed quietly. “First thing, Senator. It is very important that you don’t issue any statements or answer any questions before we have a chance to make plans. None at all. I’ll get back to Austin as soon as I can, but in the meantime, you’ve got to stay put and speak to no one.” A pause. “Do you understand me, Senator?”
Cox’s temper flared. “What do you mean, you’ll get back to Austin as soon as you can? Dammit, Garrett, where are you?”
This time, Garrett figured, the man really wanted to know. Of course, that didn’t mean he had to be told.
“That doesn’t matter,” Garrett replied, his tone measured.
“If I didn’t need your help so badly,” the senator shot back, “I’d fire you right now!”
If it hadn’t been for Nan and the kids and the golden retrievers—hell, if it hadn’t been for the people of Texas, who’d elected this man to the U.S. Senate three times—Garrett would have told Morgan Cox what he could do with the job.
“Sit tight,” he replied instead. “I’ll call off the dogs and send Troy to pick you up. You’re still going to need to lie low for a while, though.”
“I want you here, Garrett,” Cox all but exploded. “You’re my right-hand man—Troy is just a driver.” Another pause followed, and then, “You’re on that damn ranch, aren’t you? You’re two hours from Austin!”
Garrett had recently bought a small airplane, a Cessna he kept in the ramshackle hangar out on the ranch’s private airstrip. He’d fire it up and fly back to the city.
“I’ll be there right away,” Garrett said.
“Is there a next step?” Cox asked, mellowing out a little.
“Yes. I’m calling a press conference for this afternoon, Senator. You might want to be thinking about what you’re going to tell your constituents.”
“I’ll tell them the same thing I told the group last night,” Cox blustered, “that I’ve fallen in love.”
Garrett couldn’t make himself answer that time.
“Are you still there?” Cox asked.
“Yes, sir,” Garrett replied, his voice gruff with the effort. “I’m still here.”
But damned if I know why.
HELEN MARCUS DUCKED INTO JULIE’S OFFICE just as she was pulling a sandwich from her uneaten brown-bag lunch. Having spent her lunch hour grading compositions, she was ravenous.
At last, a chance to eat.
“Big news,” Helen chimed, rolling the TV set Julie used to play videos and DVDs for the drama club into the tiny office and switching it on. Helen was Julie’s age, dark-haired, plump and happily married, and the two of them had grown up together. “There is a God!”
Puzzled, and with a headache beginning at the base of her skull, Julie frowned. “What are you talking—?”
Before she could finish the question, though, Garrett McKettrick’s handsome face filled the screen. Commanding in a blue cotton shirt, without a coat or a tie, he sat behind a cluster of padded microphones, earnestly addressing a room full of reporters.
“That sum-bitch Morgan Cox is finally going to resign,” Helen crowed. “I feel it in my bones!”
While Julie shared Helen’s low opinion of the senator—she actually mistrusted all politicians—she couldn’t help being struck by the expression in Garrett’s eyes. The one he probably thought he was hiding.
Whatever the front he was putting on for the press, Garrett was stunned. Maybe even demoralized.
Julie watched and listened as the man she’d encountered in the ranch-house kitchen early that morning fielded questions—the senator, apparently, had elected to remain in the background.
Helen had been wrong about the resignation. Senator Cox was not prepared to step down, but he needed some “personal time” with his family, according to Garrett. Colleagues would cover for him in the meantime.
“So where’s the pole dancer?” Helen demanded.
“Pole dancer?” Julie echoed.
Garrett, the senator and the reporters faded to black, and Helen switched off the TV. “The pole dancer,” she repeated. “Some blonde the senator picked up in a seedy girlie club. He wants to marry her—I saw it on the eleven o’clock news last night and again this morning.” The math teacher rolled her eyes. “It’s true love. He and the bimbette have been together in other lives. And there’s our own Garrett McKettrick, defending the man.” A sad shake of the head. “Jim and Sally raised those three boys of theirs right. Garrett ought to know better than to throw in with a crook like that.”
Just then, Rachel Strivens appeared in the doorway of Julie’s office. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, seeing that Julie wasn’t alone, and started to leave.
“Wait,” Julie said.
Helen was already turning off the TV set, unplugging it, rolling it back out into the hallway on its noisy cart. If Helen had planned on staying to talk, she’d clearly changed her mind.
Blushing a little, Rachel slipped reluctantly into the room.
“Rachel,” Julie said quietly, “sit down, please.”
Rachel sat.
“What is it?” Julie finally asked, though of course she knew. She’d announced the suspension of plans to produce the showcase—it was only temporary, she’d insisted, she’d think of something—in all her English classes that day.
Rachel looked up, her brown eyes glistening with tears. “I just wanted to let you know that it’s okay, about the showcase probably not happening and everything,” she said. The girl made a visible effort to gather herself up, straightening her shoulders, raising her chin. “I can’t do any extracurricular activities anyway—Dad says I need to start working after school, so I can help out with the bills. His friend Dennis manages the bowling alley, and with the fall leag
ues starting up, they can use some extra people.”
Julie took a moment to absorb all the implications of that.
Rachel hadn’t said she wanted to save for college, or buy clothes or a car or a laptop, like most teenagers in search of employment. She’d said she had to “help out with the bills.”
She wasn’t planning to go to college.
“I understand,” Julie said, at some length, wishing she didn’t.
Rachel bit her lower lip, threw her long braid back over one shoulder. “Dad tries,” she said, her voice barely audible. “Everything is so hard, without my mom around anymore.”
Julie nodded, holding back tears. In five years, in ten years, in twenty, Rachel might still be working at the bowling alley—if she had a job at all. Julie had seen the phenomenon half a dozen times. “I’m sure that’s true,” she said.
Rachel was on her feet. Ready to go.
Julie leaned forward in her chair. “Have you actually been hired, Rachel, or is the job at the bowling alley just a possibility?”
Rachel stood on the threshold, poised to flee, but clearly wanting to stay. “It’s pretty definite,” she answered. “I just have to say yes, and it’s mine.”
Things like this happened, Julie reminded herself. The world was an imperfect place.
Kids tabled their dreams, thinking they’d get back to them later.
Except that they so rarely did, in Julie’s experience. One thing led to another. They met somebody and got married. Then there were children and rent to pay and car loans.
Rachel was so bright and talented, and she was standing at an important crossroads. In one direction lay a fine education and every hope of success. In the other…
The prospects made Julie want to cover her face with her hands.
After Rachel had gone, she sat very still for a long time, wondering what she could do to help.
Only one course of action came to mind, and that was probably a long shot.
She would speak to Rachel’s father.
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