Hideaway

by Roberts, Nora

  Using the mirror, she visualized herself as the character, sang it out.

  Then she tried again.

  Better, not best.

  Five takes later, she felt the rhythm click, did two insurance takes. She played all three back, watching the monitor for any misses, decided the first insurance take actually hit the mark best.

  Since she felt she’d found the groove, she worked on the second solo—a kind of anthem, lots of movement, considerable drama.

  Tricky.

  And the trick, Cate reminded herself, was putting herself into the role as much as the song.

  By the time she broke for the day, she had three takes of each song performed, edited, and filtered. She sent the files. No point in going forward until she knew the director—and the actress—gave the thumbs-up.

  Plus, she needed to pick up the order she’d sent Julia that morning. And she could use an hour at the ranch.

  She joined the throng of tourists for the short drive—reminded herself she really wanted a convertible.

  Yes, she thought as she drove up the ranch road, she could use an hour here. As much as she loved Sullivan’s Rest, the ranch always gave her spirit a lift.

  Hay, oats, corn climbed from the fields toward the sky, gold and green carpets waving in the breeze. Cattle and horses grazed in other fields, like a painting against the rise of the Santa Lucias. She heard the distant rumble of a tractor—or some machine—as she walked around to the family door.

  She saw Maggie, a bright orange floppy-brimmed hat shielding her face, baggy overalls, sturdy Birkenstocks, staking tomatoes.

  Bees buzzed in the hives on the far side of the garden. While Cate appreciated the honey, and all the work they did, she was more than happy with the distance.

  “A pretty day to work in the garden,” Cate called out.

  Maggie straightened, stretched her back. “It’s not half-bad.”

  “Everything’s grown so much. I was here barely a week ago, and it’s just running away.”

  “No poop like chicken poop for a garden.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Julia gave me your order. I can go grab it for you now if you’re in a hurry.”

  “No, don’t rush. I have some time. Can I help you?”

  “Do you know how to stake tomatoes?”

  “No.”

  “Well, come on over here and learn.”

  Cate stepped carefully between the rows and got an education.

  “Julia’s out in the fields somewhere, but she’s due back about now. Red took the afternoon off to surf, and I guess he earned it. That’s right, girlie, soft hands. You don’t want to break the stems. If you’re looking for Dillon, he’s out shearing sheep.”

  “Shearing sheep?”

  “We got a man to help him, knows what he’s doing in that area. Better to have four hands than two when it comes to it.”

  “What do you do with the wool?”

  “We used to sell it all, but this shearing, I’m keeping a quarter of it.”

  “For what?”

  “Good job,” Maggie decided after giving Cate’s attempt a critical study. “And that does it. Come on in, and I’ll show you.”

  They went in through the mudroom, where Maggie pulled off her gardening shoes, through to the main kitchen. Maggie signaled come ahead, so Cate followed her into a sitting room.

  And stared.

  “Is that . . .” She’d seen Sleeping Beauty. “A spinning wheel?”

  “It’s not a rocket to the moon.” With obvious affection, Maggie stroked the wheel. “Got it on eBay for a damn good price.”

  “It’s, well, it’s adorable. What are you going to do with it?”

  “What it was made to do. Spin wool.”

  “They shave—shear,” she corrected, “the sheep, and you take the wool—”

  “And wash it—wash it without washing out all the lanolin. Dry it on my old clotheshorse in the sun.”

  “Wash, dry, then put it on here, and it makes . . .”

  “Yarn. Wool yarn for your crafting pleasure. Horizon Ranch Wool,” she added with considerable pride. “Pure. I may experiment some with natural colorings with some, just to see.”

  Like Sleeping Beauty, it struck Cate as something out of a fairy tale. “How do you know how?”

  “YouTube.” She took a hank out of a basket. “That was on a sheep a couple days ago.”

  Cate took it, felt it, marveled. “When the aliens attack, I want to be with you.”

  On a bark of laughter, Maggie led the way back to the kitchen. “We’re having some raspberry sun tea.”

  “That sounds incredible.”

  She heard the mudroom door open.

  “Mom?”

  “Right here.”

  “We need to call the farrier. Aladdin threw a shoe, and while we’re at it—Oh, hi, Cate. Sorry, I thought I’d be back before this, have your order ready.”

  “There’s no hurry.”

  “I’ve got it put together back in the order fridge.” Maggie handed her daughter a glass of iced tea.

  “Thanks.” She had her hair in a braid, wore jeans and a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows. Her skin, dewy from the heat, carried the glow of summer. “Thirsty work out there. And I’m ready to sit on something that isn’t moving.”

  She dropped down, stretched out her legs.

  After giving Cate a glass, Maggie skimmed her hand over Julia’s hair, a gesture so casually affectionate it stung the back of Cate’s eyes. “How about some apple slices and cheddar?”

  Smiling, Julia tipped her head toward her mother’s arm. “I wouldn’t say no. My favorite after-school snack as a kid,” Julia began, then saw the tear spill over onto Cate’s cheek.

  “Oh, honey.”

  She started to get up, but Cate waved her back down. “No, I’m sorry. That came out of nowhere.”

  “No, it didn’t.” Maggie got an apple, took it to the sink to scrub it nearly hard enough to remove the peel. “We get TV up here like everybody else. I didn’t bring it up. I figured if you wanted to talk about it, you’d talk about it.”

  “It’s not that. Or maybe that flipped a switch I didn’t realize I hadn’t shut all the way off again. It’s—I see the two of you together, and it’s so . . . the way it should be. You love each other, and show love in the simplest ways. I have that with my grandmother, with Consuela, with my aunts, so I know what it is.”

  “And she keeps finding ways to hurt you again.”

  “It doesn’t hurt, not the way it used to.”

  “Keeps pushing it right back in your face.” Maggie began to slice the apple as if hoping to see blood spill from its core.

  “That.” A relief to be so quickly understood. “Just exactly that. In all of our faces, not just mine. I’ll probably have to change my phone number again because somebody always manages to dig it out, and the calls start. The stories will run, and I know they’ll run their course, but for a while, it’s front and center all over again.”

  She drew breath in, let it out. “I know how privileged I am because a song-and-dance man—boy, really—who could act got on a boat in Cobh and made his way to Hollywood. He met a woman—a girl—who was his match in every single way. Together they created a dynasty. Not just of fame and fortune.”

  “Of family, and ethics, and good work, good works,” Julia said. “We’ve met a lot of your family.”

  “You had them over for a barbecue. I’m sorry I missed it.”

  “There’ll be others. You’re young, beautiful, white, wealthy, and talented, so yes, privileged. Being privileged doesn’t negate trauma. Your mother doesn’t see past the fame and fortune. Even though she has her own—”

  “Infamous isn’t the same as famous,” Maggie pointed out as she sliced a cube of cheddar.

  “True enough. She still wants a piece of yours, your father’s, your family’s. She still covets what you have, what you are. I’d like to kick her ass.”

  “That
’s nice of you,” Cate said as Maggie cackled.

  “Nothing nice about it. That’s been top of my wish list since we found out she was part of what happened to you.”

  Fascinated, Cate studied the face she knew so well. “You always seem so calm, so level.”

  At that Maggie threw back her head, literally hooted before she set the plate of apple and cheese slices on the table. “Go after one of her chicks, my girl will kick a dozen asses, and won’t bother to take names.”

  “Names wouldn’t matter. She’s not going to stop, Cate. I honestly believe she’s not capable of genuine emotions, but only greed and envy. You have to face that. And still, the bottom line is she’ll never have it. She’ll never have any piece of you or your family.”

  “In fewer words, fuck her.”

  Julia shifted her gaze to her mother. “Well, those are fewer words.”

  “Why not be succinct?” And she touched Cate’s heart when she skimmed a hand down her hair just as she had to Julia before she sat. “Now, put the cheddar on the apple, and eat something happy.”

  Doing what she was told, Cate ate the happy.

  It didn’t take long for a few enterprising reporters to dig their way to her phone number, her email. She blocked and ignored.

  But the call she’d dreaded most came through.

  Voice over voice—her mother’s, her own singing a happy song from her first movie role, the horror movie laugh, whispers. Digitized, she knew, jerky. Layered together, inexpertly but effectively, into a clear message.

  “You didn’t do what you were told. Now people are dead.”

  “Blood is on your hands. More will die. Your fault. It’s always been your fault.”

  She made a copy for herself before handing her phone over to Michaela. She’d buy a new one, again. Change her number, again.

  It would be, she knew, the same as always. Bits and pieces from recorded interviews pieced together, layered together into a new recording, and sent from a prepaid cell.

  “That’s the best they can do?” Dillon demanded.

  Cate bent down to pet the dogs who now had beds and toys at the cottage. “It’s the reality of it. It’s a crappy voice-over hack. Record a recording, pull out specific words or phrases, layer, merge, send. I could do a better job in my sleep, so it’s an amateur. The recordings are always full of noise—static, vibrations, the echo of the room,” she explained.

  “I don’t much give a damn about the quality.”

  “It probably lets my mother off the hook. She’d be able to pay for better. And as for Sparks, where’s he going to get the equipment in prison?”

  “These calls are threats, Cate. You need to take them seriously.”

  “It’s a scare tactic, Dillon, and it’s lost its ability to scare me. I’m taking Gram’s advice on my mother, applying it here.”

  “Which is?”

  “Fuck them.”

  It felt damn good to say it, to mean it.

  “I’ve got a big, strong rancher and a couple of fierce guard dogs looking out for me. Lily’s coming home tomorrow. I’m not letting anything spoil that.”

  “You didn’t tell Hugh about this latest call.”

  “I will, just not right this minute.” She got him a beer, poured herself a glass of wine. “Let’s take the fierce guard dogs for a romp on the beach before dinner.”

  “Rain’s coming.”

  Lips pursed, she looked out at the pretty summer sky. “I don’t see rain.”

  “You will, but we’ve got a couple hours first.”

  Dillon didn’t push—what was the point? But he cornered Red the next morning.

  They stood on rain-soft ground in air fresh as a spring daisy pouring feed mixed with raw milk into the pig troughs.

  “I never thought I’d get a charge out of feeding pigs, but here I am. Milk-fed pigs at that.” He scratched his ear. “Nice soaker we had last night.”

  “We needed it. What do you know about these calls, these recordings Cate gets?”

  Red glanced over where one of the seasonal hands fed the chickens. Since it was baking day, both women manned the kitchen.

  He’d checked the daily work list, so he knew Julia had assigned others to muck out the stalls, but the horses had to be fed, watered, rubbed down with insect repellant before going out to pasture.

  “Let’s talk about this in my office. How’s she handling this one?” he asked as they walked.

  “Like it’s no big deal, and it damn well is.”

  “You know she’s been getting these calls for years now, so the impact’s bound to fade.”

  “That doesn’t make this one nothing.”

  When Dillon opened the stable doors, the air filled with horses, grain, leather, manure. All combined into a perfume he’d loved all his life.

  Knowing the routine, Red took the first stall on the left, Dillon went right.

  “Mic will do what she can, plus she’s got the cop in New York. The FBI’s on it, too. There’s an agent who follows through on these whenever she gets one.”

  “How come they can’t trace it back?”

  “A lot of reasons.” They both scooped out grain. “Recording’s not long enough, it’s from a drop phone. Whoever’s sending it destroys the phone and battery right after—from what I’m told they figure. It’s always recordings of recorded interviews or movie clips. They’ve actually been able to match some of those. Not the same message every time.”

  “Threatening her, scaring her.”

  “Yeah, same sentiment, you could say. One of the theories was some nutcase obsessed with Cate wanted attention. But that’s thin now considering it’s gone on for years.”

  “Her mother could be behind it. Cate doesn’t think so because it’s shitty quality, and the woman has plenty of money. But that could be a cover, something to make it seem like it’s just some nutcase.”

  Red moved to the next stall. Every horse in the stables had its head out, watching. Like, Hurry up, man, I’m starving here.

  It never failed to amuse Red.

  “That’s been my thought,” he told Dillon. “Cate usually gets one around the time some story hits or Dupont gives some interview that gets a splash. It could be her way, her sick-fuck way, of taking an extra shot at Cate.”

  Dillon walked back to get the prenatals for the pregnant mare in the next stall. Once dispensed, he marked the clipboard outside the stall.

  “If that holds true,” he said, “it’s not a real threat. Just petty and mean.”

  “Charlotte Dupont’s got petty and mean to spare. I wouldn’t put it past her to find someone to cause Cate real harm, but without Cate, she loses the easy lift.”

  Red frowned at the clipboard, turned. Dillon already had the horse pill punched into a quartered apple. “He won’t take his med otherwise.”

  “I remember.”

  “Be sure he doesn’t just spit it out. He’s sneaky about it. What do you mean, ‘easy lift’?”

  “When she wants a publicity boost, she plays the sad, repentant mother with the unforgiving daughter. Some quarters buy that act.”

  “Because some quarters are idiots.”

  Red and the apple/pill-chewing horse eyed each other. “Plenty of idiots in this old world. And I got another on that. I think she likes it, likes thinking she’s tormenting Cate, and the rest of them, too. I don’t see her giving that up.”

  Dillon thought it over while they fed, watered, medicated.

  “What if it’s not her? Could Sparks pull this off?”

  “I don’t underestimate what Sparks could pull off.” And Red believed wholeheartedly he had the scar to prove it. “I don’t know what it gains him, but if there’s an angle to it for him, I think he’d find a way.”

  They started the rubdowns, adding the scent of insect repellant to the mix in the air.

  “He has reason to want to hurt her, just like it said on the phone. She didn’t do what she was told, and he got caught.”

  “Then I guess w
e’ll keep looking out for her.”

  Red glanced over, watched Dillon run his hands down a gelding’s foreleg.

  “You’re what I’d call more conventional in some areas than your grandmother and me.”

  The statement brought out a grin as Dillon worked. “About everyone of my acquaintance is more conventional than Gram and you.”

  “That’s why I’ve been crazy about her for going on twenty-five years now. You know she’s got me rolling the yarn she’s making. I’m trying to watch the ball game last night, and I’m rolling yarn like some pigtailed little girl in a pinafore.”

  “Well, that’s a look,” Dillon murmured.

  “Listen, Dil, I’m not your father, your grandfather, but—”

  Turning his head, Dillon met Red’s eyes directly. “You’ve been the next best thing on both of those scores most of my life.”

  “Well then, I’m going to ask you straight out. Are you going to ask Caitlyn to marry you?”

  Dillon coated a hind leg, moved around the back of the horse to the next side in a way Red never felt quite easy about doing himself.

  “In due time.”

  “You’ve been in love with her for a while now.”

  “I more than half believe since I was twelve.”

  Red walked around his horse on the front side. “I think you’re right about that. Any reason you’re waiting now?”

  “She’d say no now. She’d feel bad about it, but she’d say no. I don’t see any reason to make her feel bad, so I can wait until she’ll say yes.”

  “And you’ll know when that is.”

  “Pretty sure I will. She’s got tells.”

  “I never could beat you at poker, even when you were a kid. What tells?”

  Dillon moved on to the next horse. “She’s got a few. One’s the bracelet—the one she wears a lot. She rubs on it when she’s anxious.”

  “I’ve seen that.”

  “If she thinks she’ll be anxious or nervous, she makes sure to wear it. She curses under her breath in foreign languages when she’s frustrated. I don’t know the language, but I know a curse when I hear it. When she’s going to take a big step, she’ll have that bracelet on. She might mumble under her breath something I don’t understand, but it’s not curses. It’s more like I’d say a mantra.”