Talk of the Town

by Lisa Wingate

  Suddenly humbled, I pretended to be busy working the cat claws out of my sweater.

  “I’m not lecturing,” he said softly. “It’s just that this last year has opened my eyes a little, made me realize how easy it is to get … caught up in things.” I imagined his face as he said those words—the subtle play of light and shadow, the earnestness in his eyes. “When something happens like what’s happened to Chris, you don’t have any choice but to quit fighting the sails and let the wind move the boat—drift on faith for a while.”

  I looked up at him, felt myself being drawn in by his closeness, by something else I couldn’t explain. Drift on faith. Amber had rehearsed a song with that line in it for show number eight. It was a metaphorical tune about little boys building leaf-and-twig ships and sending them down the river, dreaming of where the wind and the water would take them. I’d closed my eyes and just listened as Amber’s voice filled the rehearsal room, weaving a story of childhood dreams, of growing up, losing yourself to the world, then searching for the truths of your own soul.

  Amber’s voice coach vetoed the number, saying it was too soft and the judges wouldn’t like it. That week, Amber sang “Wind Beneath My Wings” instead. She dedicated it to her brothers. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, and the judges loved her. Even so, I wished she’d performed the song about the boats.

  “Here,” Carter said, handing me the kitten as it relaxed and released its hold on his T-shirt. “I think it likes you better.” He glanced toward the window as the kitten curled up on my chest and started purring. The vehicle had stopped. Up front, the postman was trying to convince Flash to disembark.

  I stroked the kitten, still thinking about Amber and the song. I realized now that I had wanted Amber to sing that song not because it displayed a particularly outstanding vocal range or ability, but because the lyrics were capable of evoking emotion, of making people think. Amber’s one true advantage in the competition was that despite all of her shortcomings, she had a sense of purpose deeper than just winning a million-dollar recording contract and making herself a star. She wanted to say something to people. She wanted to make a difference.

  I suddenly knew why I’d been pulling for Amber all season, even though her naïveté was such a liability. Once upon a time, I was the girl who believed one person could make a difference. I was going to take the news business by storm, rise to the top, use my power to expose wrongdoing, stamp out hatred, promote understanding, end homelessness, improve education for LA’s inner-city kids. Back then, the list was endless. Every story was personal to me, every job advancement a chance to have a bigger impact, move a step closer to my goal.

  When had the goal become just about advancement and not about changing the world? What had happened to the idealistic schoolgirl who felt an inner calling? When had my life become a quest to prove that I’d left behind the shy, knobby-legged, imperfect little sister with the Coke-bottle glasses and the big ideas? Somewhere during the past few years, I’d forgotten the things that girl dreamed of. I’d convinced myself she and I were not the same person and the sense of inner fulfillment she yearned for didn’t matter.

  I’d let my boat drift into a tiny whirlpool of self—self-need, selfdoubt, self-satisfaction, self-advancement. I’d surrounded myself with an ocean of people who spun in their own little pools, who made me feel all right about my life.

  The truth was that I was drowning in my self-created vortex, and that was why, when Amber had drifted by, I’d grabbed on without wanting to, without meaning to, without even realizing it, really. I wanted someone, something, to pull me out of the pointless spin. Amber was a breath of fresh air, a person motoring along on a direct, if somewhat naïve, and lofty course, following a calling.

  “This segment seemed like a chance to make a difference,” I admitted quietly, focusing on the kitten and not on Carter. “I wanted to come through for Amber and her family because they need the break, because Amber’s music is about more than just hitting the recording-contract jackpot. But the truth is, I also needed it for me. I needed this job to count for something.” It seemed strange to admit something so close to the center, so newly realized and fragile. Carter would probably laugh. He’d think I was kidding, considering that I worked in reality TV. Hardly the place for such idealistic talk.

  He reached across the space between us and scratched the kitten, his hand touching mine. “It’ll work.” As usual, he spoke as though he believed it, believed he could find Amber, defeat a horde of reporters and paparazzi, and make the show turn out all right just because he said so.

  I turned my hand over and his fingers interlaced with mine. It felt natural, as if my hand were created to fit perfectly in his. I looked into his eyes and felt myself falling. The whirlwind of thoughts in my mind, the shifting packages, the gentle rumble of the engine idling, even the purring kitten seemed far away. “Thanks for coming,” I whispered.

  “I wouldn’t have missed it.” The words seemed intimate. His face grew contemplative, as if something were on his mind and he was trying to decide whether to say it.

  I wanted to know what he was thinking.

  Up front, the truck door slammed. Carter and I jerked upright like a couple of teenagers caught making out. The window slid open and the postman poked his head through. “All righty, now we’re on our own. Y’all dig in your spurs and hang on, because we’re runnin’ late and I’m gonna take the back way. It’ll be a bumpy ride down about five miles of dirt road.” Closing the window, he revved the engine and we left town behind in a squeal of burning rubber, the jeep whipping around corners and up and down hills like a San Francisco taxicab, while Carter, the cat, and I bounced and rattled around in the back.

  By the time we reached our destination, I was starting to feel sick, the package compartment was filled with a fine haze of dust, and the kitten was stuck to my sweater again. When the postman opened the door, Carter and I tumbled out unceremoniously. The kitten jumped for solid ground and made a break for it, bolting through a newly planted flower bed and disappearing under a white two-story farmhouse that was just as I’d hoped it would be. Blinking in the sunlight, I took in the old red barn, the aged whitewashed fence around the yard, the towering, twisted live oaks with their long branches starting high on the trunks and bending toward the ground. I suddenly felt better about the day. If we could find Amber, my plans just might work out after all. So far, I hadn’t heard from Ursula, which meant she was still en route somewhere. With any luck, we could have this thing bagged before she found her way here.

  Overhead, the cloudless April sky seemed to promise that everything would turn out all right.

  The cell phone rang in my purse, and I rushed to dig it out as Harlan headed toward the front porch, looking for Imagene. Carter wandered a few steps away to study an old iron-wheeled tractor that was sitting like a rusty statue outside the barnyard.

  I checked the number on the phone. “Butch … hello?” Static obscured the line, and I moved away from the house to see if it would improve. “Butch, are you there? Did you find Amber? Butch?”

  “Hey … Ms. Florentino? This connection’s not … ery good.” Butch’s voice was a thin ribbon of sound, a tiny ray of hope. I grabbed it like a lifeline.

  “Butch, have you found Amber?”

  Static, and then “… thing yet. I just went by Amber’s house, and there’s photographers camped out front, but I’ve …”—Butch faded into the ether again—“… more places to look. Is Rodney there with the crew yet?”

  “No, no one’s here yet. Butch, you have to find Amber,” I hollered into the phone, as if that would make the connection more viable. “Butch? Butch?” He was gone again. The line didn’t disconnect, so I waited. “Butch?”

  “… ere’s a car out here.” Snatches of Butch’s voice floated through the static. “… see anybody … climb over and walk … believe this place. Oh man, there’s …”

  Butch was gone. I hollered his name into the phone, even after the line discon
nected. My stomach twirled and clenched, and I pressed a hand over it. The reality of the situation, the one I had been trying to avoid all morning, seeped through me like a gallon of ice water. Everything here was beyond my control. There was nothing I could do to make it turn out all right. I was as helpless as a little leaf-and-twig sailboat, drifting at the mercy of currents and the wind.

  I looked at Carter, busy investigating the old tractor, and the full understanding of what he’d said in the mail wagon poured over me with an intensity that raised gooseflesh on my skin. “Quit fighting the sails and let the wind move the boat—drift on faith for a while.” It’s hard to drift on something you don’t acknowledge. Over the years of my adulthood, I’d strayed so far from a childlike confidence in God’s ability to guide the tide of human events that there was nothing left to buoy me when the storms blew in. I’d treaded water to the point of exhaustion, and now I could either sink below the surface or stop swimming, let go, and allow the current to carry me along.

  Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and abandoned myself to the belief that there were no accidents. Everything that had happened, from my being put in charge of Amber’s segment, to Amber’s disappearing with Justin Shay, to Carter’s being in the hotel room next to mine, had happened for a reason. I was here for a reason. Just because I didn’t create the plan didn’t mean a plan didn’t exist.

  The idea wrapped around me like a warm, soft blanket—something old and well used, pulled from the abandoned storage spaces of childhood, a little too small to cover me now, but a good start. I remembered how it felt to put my trust in something larger than myself. I wanted to feel that way again.

  “Doesn’t look like there’s anybody here,” the postman said, startling me from my reverie as he came down the steps. “I reckon they went on over to the neighbor’s to see about the horse trailer. I better git back down the road before Doyle blocks it off with the gravel truck. Gotta finish my route. Y’all just make yourselves to home. I’m sure they’ll all be here directly.” He climbed into his truck as I thanked him for the ride.

  “Well, that was purely my pleasure, ma’am.” Sticking an arm out the window, he shook my hand. “I’ll call later and apologize to Imagene about the kitten. I reckon he’s probably made hisself at home under there already.” He nodded toward the house. “She needed a little somethin’ around here to keep her company anyhow.” Firing up the engine, he put the jeep in gear, waved out the window while making a loop in the yard, then careened down the driveway.

  Carter watched the jeep disappear as he walked back from the tractor. “Guess we’re on our own.”

  “Guess so.”

  We wandered toward the house and sat down on the steps next to a freshly planted flower bed. The air was heavy with the honey-sweet scent of flowers. A gentle breeze stirred the freshly mowed grass and combed the leaves of the live oaks, causing the shadows to shift and dance. All around, there was a sense of spring, of old things giving way to new beginnings. Anything seemed possible today.

  “It’s nice here,” I said.

  “That it is,” Carter agreed. “Kind of makes you realize a day that didn’t start out looking too good can still turn out all right. It looked like it might rain first thing this morning.”

  “It did?” How could I have slept through an oncoming storm, on top of everything else?

  Chuckling, Carter braced his long legs on the steps, rested his elbows on his knees, and sat twirling a purple wild flower he’d picked somewhere. “The clouds put on a pretty convincing show earlier. Sent the reporters running for cover, and the fry cook in the café was worried the rodeo might be a washout.”

  I groaned under my breath. “Good thing I slept through it. I don’t think I could have handled one more unexpected contingency today.”

  “Nah, don’t worry.” He watched the flower petals move. “Donetta foretold a perfect day for the rodeo. She sees things in the beauty shop window, you know. Visions.” Glancing sideways at me, he raised an eyebrow with an exaggerated air of mystery.

  His expression made me laugh. “Did she happen to tell you how Amber’s location shoot would turn out?” Even though I was joking, a little voice inside me whispered, The last time you got mixed up with the soothsaying shop owner, Mandalay, it did not go well. Leave this one alone.

  “Didn’t say,” Carter admitted. “She told me I shouldn’t pack up and go so soon.”

  Actually, maybe Donetta’s prognostications weren’t so bad after all. “Why were you leaving?”

  Glancing sideways, Carter studied me for a moment, then said noncommittally, “It seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “Why?”

  He turned his attention back to the flower. “Hanging around flirting with someone else’s fiancée probably isn’t the best use of time, for one thing. Last night when I didn’t see you around the hotel, I figured you were, well … pointing that out, in a nice way. I’d finished what I came here to do, so I thought I’d do the gentlemanly thing—pack up and leave you to your work.” He grinned and held the flower out to me, his eyes catching a dash of passing sunlight. “The guy on the phone is an idiot, by the way.”

  “The … guy … ?” I stammered, dumbfounded as he slipped the flower into my fingers. “What …”

  “The guy on the phone this morning,” he said again. “The online Romeo.”

  Suddenly, everything was humiliatingly clear. I wanted to sink into the steps and disappear, hide somewhere underneath the house with the cat. “You heard that? You … you heard me talking to David?”

  He shrugged apologetically. “The walls in that old place aren’t very well insulated. I think they probably heard it downstairs in the café.” At my look of utter mortification, he softened and added, “Just kidding, but yes, I heard it. For what it’s worth, the guy’s a fool.” Our gazes caught and held, and I was suddenly aware of the smallest things—the shallow breath in my lungs, the slow, steady beat of my heart, the heat of a blush in my cheeks, the color of his eyes, sky blue, but darker near the centers, his fingers touching mine, the velvety leaf of the flower brushing my wrist, the realization that he was going to kiss me, and I wanted him to, and then he did.

  Every other thought turned to mist in my mind. There was only an awareness of him, of us, an explosion of sensations like nothing I’d ever felt before.

  Skyrockets.

  Chapter 20

  Imagene Doll

  The last thing I expected to see when we drove up to the house was Amanda-Lee and Carter kissing on the porch steps. It must have been some kiss, because they didn’t even notice my car pulling in. It wasn’t until my neighbor’s old truck and trailer rattled through the barnyard that the two of them broke away, and then they looked a little dazed, like they couldn’t figure out where they were or what’d happened.

  I waited a minute to leave the car, pretending to be busy gathering my purse. Avery opened the door and popped out of the back seat, then ran to the barnyard to open the gate for the horse trailer. It’d been against my good judgment to let Andy drive the truck over from the neighbor’s place, since he only had his learner’s permit, but he’d promised he could do it just fine. I’d finally said maybe it’d be all right, if they went slow across the tractor lane through the pasture.

  Verl, pickled as he was, had offered to drive, but I’d told him not a chance. He did turn out to be a help with getting old Magnolia loaded in the trailer, though.

  “Here, let me try,” he said after the boys and I had all tried and Magnolia wouldn’t go anywhere near the trailer.

  Being frustrated and in a hurry to get back to the house before Brother Harve and O.C. came back with my potatoes and bagged ice from town, I wasn’t in the best humor. “Verl Anderson, what in the world do you know about horses?”

  He had the nerve to look offended. “Mrs. Doll, for fifteen years I was a cowboy on the Four Corners Ranch out in the panhandle.” The food and coffee had started to clear up Verl’s speech, finally. “But I broke my
back, and we moved here because I couldn’t ride no more.” Taking the lead rope from my hands, he stroked Magnolia’s muzzle. “I may not be good for much, but I still know how to get on with a horse.” Verl talked to that old mare, and darned if she didn’t put her head right in Verl’s chest. The two of them just stood there for a minute, like they belonged together.

  That was exactly the way Carter and Amanda-Lee looked on my porch—like they’d just found a powerful connection and were more than a little surprised by it. It was nice to know my ability to spot a good match hadn’t gone south along with my memory and my figure. Amanda-Lee had the glow of a woman who’d just seen fireworks go off in broad daylight. I knew that feeling. I had it the first time Jack kissed me.

  Amanda-Lee blushed and got embarrassed when she saw me walking up, probably because she was supposed to be engaged and all. When we got a minute alone, I’d have to tell her the story about Jack and me, and then she’d see that some things are meant to be.

  “Well, we got the trailer here,” I said, just to start a conversation. Neither of them came back down to earth and answered me, so I tried again. “Carter, are you our driver?” I knew he was because Donetta’d already called and told me so, but I thought I’d give Carter a question that would be easy to answer, since he looked a little dazed.

  “Yeah,” he said finally, and blinked twice. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, that’s real fine.” I patted him on the shoulder and sort of pointed him toward the barnyard. “Why don’t you go on and help Verl and the boys unload the horse and put her in the corral until we’re ready to head to the fairgrounds after lunch? One of the trailer tires is pretty soft. I think it needs some air.”