by Tracy South
He was going through her bookshelves when Claire came back into the room, hauling one, two, three suitcases behind her.
“You’re only going to be gone three nights,” he said. “You wear a suitcase full of clothes everyday?”
“I was a Girl Scout,” she said. “I’m always prepared.”
He grabbed two of the suitcases and took them to his car, Claire following him with the last one. “It’s the Boy Scouts who are prepared, remember? Of which I was one. I only have one suitcase and the bag my computer gear is in.”
She didn’t answer him, simply walked back into the house. “I have to make sure I didn’t forget anything,” she told him. She peered at the on/off switches of each appliance. “So, anyway, you never told me what you were doing in my tree.”
This was something he had only recently noticed about Claire. When she asked something, she never let it rest until she got the answer she wanted, like that thing about whether or not XYZ corporation was doing whatever in south Ridgeville. Normally, he would have said such persistence was the sign of a good reporter. In her case, he chalked it up to Claire’s being stubborn.
“I was…uh…looking to see if your house was on the lake. I noticed there was a lake out here. Umm…Boy, that must be fun for you, huh?” Was it his imagination, or was he stammering? He had never heard caution or unease in his voice before. He’d only been in Claire’s house five minutes, and he was already acting like her.
“Why didn’t you ask me if I lived on the lake? Or even walk down the hill and see?”
“I was being sort of…well, not secretive, but…” His voice trailed off.
Her remark was almost too quiet to hear. “Yeah, you were real inconspicuous up in that oak.”
“I’m sorry. What did you say?” He pointed to his right ear. “I played guitar in a band in college, and it left me with a slight hearing problem.”
“That’s too bad,” Claire said. “If you need any help eavesdropping this weekend, let me know.” She cut off the drip in her sink faucet, and closed and locked the kitchen window. “I’ve got to make sure I turned off the TV in my room,” she said. “Be right back.”
When she returned, carrying her purse, he said, “I guess you get really tired of people telling you how much money you could make by selling this land.”
She fished an earring out of her purse and put it on, then found the other one. “Everyone who knows me knows that’s a useless conversation.”
“I bet your neighbors don’t think so.” He hadn’t meant to get into this topic at all, but her amused expression spurred him on. “I’d say they think that since the demographics of this area have changed, that it really isn’t fair for one person to be able to buck that tide.”
“Wait a minute,” she said. As soon as he heard the indignation in her voice, he remembered the passion she’d brought to her argument about going to Miranda’s. “My grandparents, and their grandparents, lived out here way before it was fashionable. They were farmers, and this was considered the sticks. No one wanted to drive out this far. But now that people are so accustomed to zipping along the interstate in their BMWs and—” she looked out the window at his car “—Hondas, they think they should have all the prime real estate. Well, I think it’s okay if I hold on to this land.”
“Where would the country be if everyone had that attitude about progress?” he asked her. As soon as he’d said it, he knew he’d lost.
“I guess it would still be in the hands of the Native Americans, wouldn’t it?” she said sweetly.
He looked at his watch. “Miss Hollywood’s going to think you chickened out on bringing your fiancé. We’d better get moving.” He watched as she turned the key in the dead bolt and gave the door a good hard shake.
“I guess that’s it,” she said. She looked all too confident and cheery. He stopped her as she got into the car. “By the way, Claire. That tree in your backyard? It’s a maple. If I were you, I’d call your old Girl Scout leader. I don’t think your parents got their money’s worth out of the organization.”
“DAY ONE WITHOUT our leader. Will we be able to pull together as a team? Or will we give in to laxness and ennui? The heart and soul of the newspaper depend on the two writers seated here,” Hank said as he stood in front of Lissa’s desk looking down at her.
Lissa scanned her desk for the nearest unbreakable, nonlethal object to toss at Hank. It was a pencil. “Will you quit it already with the bad Twilight Zone’ imitation? I have a lot on my mind today without being plagued by you.”
Catching the pencil in one hand, Hank went back to work, and Lissa curled up in her seat, trying to make herself comfortable.
She was lost in her daydreams, this close to drifting off into a tempting catnap when Hank asked, “Like what?”
Lissa jerked her head up. “Like a lot on my mind.”
“For instance.”
“For instance, I’m wondering how to cover that barbecue cook-off tonight. I’m now a vegetarian.”
“Since when?” Hank asked.
Lissa crumpled up the bag that had held that morning’s grilled chicken and biscuit. “Since breakfast.”
“Since you’ve already broken your vows today, you should become one tomorrow, after the story’s done.”
Hank sounded too much like Alec when he said things like that. This was something Lissa was going to have to nip in the bud, or today and Monday were going to be unbearable. “To borrow a quaint phrase you may remember from your childhood, you are not the boss of me. This just came to me, right after breakfast, as something I had to do. I’m not the kind of woman who puts idealism on hold.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s Claire’s influence. She’s a vegetarian.”
Hank busied himself looking for something on his desk. “Yes, but Claire lacks a lot of your more carnivorous aspects.”
“Well, her life would be a lot different if she knew how to get her claws out every once in a while.”
Hank’s disdain for gossip was notorious, so Lissa was surprised when he said, “How so?”
“How so what?”
“How would her life be different?”
She wanted to comment about his new interest in his coworkers’ personal lives, but the office was a barren and empty place today, and she couldn’t afford to alienate her one hope for conversation. She began to share her theories about Claire.
“If she had gone up to New York to try to get Scott back from Miranda, he would have come back. Just from reading between the lines in that book, I can tell that Scott and Miranda knew they’d made a mistake. They were probably praying for Claire to give them an excuse to break up. But because she gave up, she lost him.”
Hank had been typing away at his computer while she talked, but when she finished, he looked up and said, “Maybe she was relieved.”
Lissa shook her head. “Didn’t you see that faraway look in her eyes when his name came up the other day? Then she practically burst into tears when she talked to Miranda’s mother about him.”
“I wasn’t paying attention.”
He was a promising student, Lissa thought, but he was going to have to have a lot more practice at this. “She still loves him. I’ve been trying to think of a way to help her get on with her life, but I’m clueless. Short of getting Scott back, I don’t know what’s going to do it.”
As soon as she’d said it, she looked at Hank, who met her gaze with some alarm. “I can’t believe I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “But no, you can’t. It’s impossible, immoral and it will ruin Alec’s story.”
“It isn’t impossible. I bet I could find Scott without much trouble at all. And it would make Claire happy. Anyway, by the time he gets there, Alec should have his story already.”
“What about Alec and Claire?” Hank asked.
Lissa waved a hand at him. “We can work around this phony engagement thing. Don’t worry about that.”
“What if it isn’t as phony as we think? Not the engagement, I mean, but the two of
them. You know.”
Let a man think he understands a little bit about human behavior, and all of the sudden he’s declaring himself an expert on the subject. “There is nothing going on between them,” Lissa said.
“What makes you so sure?”
Slowly, patiently, as though she were explaining the birds and the bees to someone very young, Lissa tried to tell him why Claire and Alec could never be a couple. “There are two kinds of people in this world. Fling people, and commitment people. Commitment people are the kind who wind up getting engaged to almost everyone they date—like Claire. Fling people can go out a lot, but never have a serious relationship—like Alec.”
“You don’t think the two can ever be happy?”
“Rarely,” Lissa said. “And certainly not in the case of Claire and Alec, all other differences aside. That would be like you and…” She started to say, “and me,” but she didn’t want to give him any ideas. Instead she said, “Miranda.”
“Don’t ask me for help,” Hank said, turning back to his work.
“I won’t need it,” Lissa said. She got straight to work, took a sheet of paper out of her desk and wrote “Find Scott” on it. There, that was a start. She underlined the phrase. Scott…Scott who? She opened up her desk drawer, hoping Alec had replaced her copy of the Miranda Craig biography, but it wasn’t there. She went to his desk and rifled through the drawers, but didn’t see it there, either. Now how was she supposed to find out Scott’s last name?
“I need your help,” she told Hank.
“I’m not aiding and abetting this crime you’re trying to pass off as an act of friendship,” he said.
“Don’t be melodramatic.” Lissa relished being able to say that to someone else. “You know that seminar we were supposed to go to, the one where we learned how to do research from data bases? Remember how I met that cute stockbroker at registration and never quite made it there? Well, now I need to know how to find something.”
Everyone had a weak spot. As she’d hoped, Hank wasn’t able to resist an appeal to his skills and his knowledge, and he turned over his terminal. Caught up in the challenge of tracking down the information, he seemed to forget his concerns about the wisdom of what she was doing. Fortunately, Lissa remembered the year Miranda dropped Scott, and they were able to locate stories about her using that date and Scott’s first name.
Hank called up a full-text version of one of the stories. Lissa, reading over his shoulder, stopped when she came to the flagged term “Scott.”
“Scott Granville,” she read. “I remember that now.”
With a few expert maneuvers, Hank got out of the data base. “Of course you remember, now that we’ve spent all this time on a fifty-dollar-an-hour data base.”
“It’s for a good cause,” Lissa said. “Now what do I do?”
Hank sighed. “Do you think he still lives in New York City?” At her nod, he suggested she try directory assistance. “I doubt he’ll be listed, though. If I were Miranda Craig’s ex, I wouldn’t be.”
“Don’t you see? That’s exactly the reason I’m going to find him waiting by the phone.”
And he was. Picking up after one and a half rings, Scott seemed eager to listen to Lissa’s spiel. Quickly she explained who she was and how she knew Claire. Then she went for the zinger, telling him how glad she was she caught him before he left for the retreat.
“Claire and our editor are going to be interviewing the attendees there, but I’m trying to get a few comments from people before they go, you know, in case they can’t talk freely once they arrive,” she said.
He was quiet for a second. “Retreat? This is the first I’ve heard about it.”
Lissa feigned shock. “You aren’t invited? But you’re such an integral part of Miranda’s history. You’re the authority on that whole struggling actress era of her life.” She sighed. “Please say you aren’t mad at me for calling you and unearthing all this painful old history. I never dreamed you weren’t invited.” She went for the clincher. “I know for a fact that Claire expected you to be there.”
Hank went into a hysterical coughing fit. Scowling, Lissa put her fingers on her lips and mimed cutting her throat.
“She did? And she was still going to go?” Scott said after a long pause.
“Yes,” Lissa lied. “I think she was looking forward to seeing how you’d changed.”
“I’ve changed for the better,” he said. She found herself kind of touched by his boyish tone. “I’m not the same guy who ran off with Miranda.”
“I’m sure Claire would like to hear that. If only you were going to be there.”
Across the telephone wires, she could practically see the little cogs in his brain whirling. “You know, there’s got to be some way I can go. If I crash the thing, the worst Miranda can do is throw me out. And that’s going to look kind of bad for her, especially if she knows there’s a reporter there.”
“There you go,” Lissa said. “I don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve been back here, but if you’re serious about coming, they have one-stop flights from New York City to Ridgeville. Getting here would be no trouble at all. I’d be more than happy to pick you up at the airport and give you a ride out there, so you don’t have to rent a car.” She remembered that she was supposed to be a part of the paper’s story. “That would give me a chance to get some quotes from you along the way.”
“Lissa, you’re great,” he said in a warm voice.
They agreed that he would call her when he’d made arrangements for his flight, and she reeled off her home number to him. They said their goodbyes and, satisfied, she hung up the phone and beamed at Hank.
He was plainly less than impressed. “Rhetorical question,” he said. “What kind of man flies hundreds of miles to crash a party?”
“One who’s desperate for revenge or hopelessly in love.” Lissa got her purse from the bottom drawer of her desk. “Both, I bet.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to pick up Scott.”
“He hasn’t even booked a flight yet,” Hank said.
“I want to be ready when he calls.” She pointed to her rayon skirt and casual blouse. “I’m not driving to the Craig home looking like this.”
“What about your stories?”
“I’m sure I’ll be back in plenty of time to finish them. But just in case, let me tell you where some of this stuff is.” She pointed to a stack of press releases on her desk. “The information about the barbecue contest is somewhere in the pile. It’s at seven, but don’t feel like you have to stay for very long. You don’t even have to hang around for the end of the contest—just ask one of the judges to call you.” She dug in her purse for a piece of paper. “Here’s the rough draft of that wedding story I was supposed to be writing. Mick was there, since he’s friends of the bride’s parents, but don’t expect him to remember anything about it. I seem to remember there was some ruckus by the punch bowl with the mother of the groom.” Pointing to an engagement picture on top of the pile she said, “That’s the bride.”
It was the first time she’d seen Hank with his jaw hanging open. “I can’t believe you have the nerve to do this.”
Just because he didn’t have any big ambitions didn’t mean no one else did. “Hank,” she said, giving him a hurt look over her shoulder as she hurried out the door. “I’m doing it for Claire.”
4
IT WAS THE FIRST TIME she’d seen him without a suit, and during the first few miles of their trip, Claire was wholly engrossed in her struggle not to ask Alec whether he felt naked without it. Theirs was a casual office, even by newspaper standards, and there was no dress code, per se, but Alec came to work each morning decked out in the uniform of corporate America. Claire suspected it was his way of showing he was at the top of the journalistic food chain.
The khakis and white polo he’d donned for this trip didn’t subtract from the aura of power he wielded around the office. In fact, his casual clothes highlighted
the fact that he had a body far more muscular than that of the stereotypical pencil jockey. She tried to ignore the sinewy muscles of his arm as he reached for the tape player, and the definition of his thigh as he braked and shifted gears. Claire resolved to stare at the scenery until they reached Loudon.
“How did you come to live in that house? Did you say it belonged to your grandparents?”
Damn. For months, the man had made it clear to her that she was no more worthy of his attention than a common housefly, and now, just when she needed for him to ignore her, he was trying to make small talk.
“Sort of,” she said, her voice coming out as a croak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “They lived in a house on the same land, and they built that one for my parents when they first married. Years later, their own house started falling down around them, so they razed it and moved into the smaller one. After they died, my family could only justify keeping the land if someone wanted to live there.”
“So if not for you, your family would have made a killing with that property? Just asking.”
She stared at him, exasperated. “I’m glad you aren’t a real-estate agent. I can see you, calling me every morning at 8:00 a.m. sharp. Miss Morgan, have you changed your mind yet about selling?’ Miss Morgan, I have it on good authority that your property taxes are about to skyrocket’.”
“I’m only trying to get to know you,” Alec said. “Don’t forget that I’m supposed to be your fiancé. I have to at least pretend I understand you.”
So Alec thought he should try to understand her? He didn’t know that not understanding her was what had made her so appealing to the guys who’d immediately started thinking about marriage at the first sight of her. They’d never looked beyond her girl you could take home to mama persona. But Claire knew that mama and her boy would probably faint if they ever caught a glimpse of the real inner her.
Sarcastic, a bit goofy, with thoughts that ran a hundred miles an hour. Scott was the only man with whom she’d shared that side of herself. When he’d rejected her, he’d rejected the real her. That was what made it so hard to accept.