SING ME HOME (Love Finds A Home - Book One)

by Jerri Corgiat

  “Speak up, I can’t hear you.” Mari bent sideways to scrawl on a label.

  Lil yanked down the volume. “I said, he was almost poured into his pants. He had a shirt with yards of ridiculous fringe and some kind of cowboy belt—”

  “I saw all that! What about him?”

  “Honey skin. Straight, honey-blonde hair almost as long as Patsy Lee’s. Eyes the color of peanut brittle or maybe dark toffee or…” Lil slapped the label Mari handed her on the box. “Who cares? They changed color like a cat’s. And he moved like a cat. Sneaky. Full lower lip, ears oversized—”

  Mari frowned.

  “Straight nose—”

  “Regal,” Mari corrected, dreamy gaze directed at the ceiling.

  “White teeth. Not too much taller than me or you and built like a soccer player. You know—compact muscles.”

  “See what I mean? He gets to you, doesn’t he?”

  Lil figured it would be futile to explain she’d studied him carefully so she could identify his mug shot. She hefted the box onto the counter.

  Mari reached for the radio again, but Lil gave her a look and she dropped her hand. “Well, go on. What did he say? What did he buy?”

  “I thought you were supposed to be at work.” A junior at Central Missouri State, Mari majored in graphic design, partied and took a job at the paper every summer to pay school loans.

  Mari waved her hand. “The Cordelia Daily Sun set early today. The ad salesman—me—only brought in two ads to the Sun’s layout artist—me—so we both got done early. Silly old thing only poses as a newspaper anyway. I mean, is Horace Bruell visiting his mother Betty news? Or Joey Beadlesworth placing twelfth in the Tri-State Swim Meet?”

  Lil looked at her watch, her last Christmas present from Robbie. That was another thing she’d almost forgotten. Joey would arrive on Lil’s stoop promptly at four for the piano lesson his mother forced on him. Privately Lil thought the lessons as much of a waste as his participation on the swim team.

  “I stopped by Peg’s for a donut, heard Paddy O’Neill bragging he’d spotted somebody famous. Nosy old coot. He mentioned a pair of purple guitars. Those old geezers didn’t know what that meant, but I did, so I went home and kept an eye out.” That explained more than anything why Mari’s work day had ended early. She’d major in Country Groupie if she could. “Van Castle’s headlining in Sedalia in August—although the State Fair’s really beneath them. It’s their last stop in the states and after that they’ll head to Canada and Europe. This will be my last chance to see them in probably forever. They’re huge. As big as—no, bigger!—than Diamond Rio. Or at least they were before Jon split from his wife and there was a ton of ugly talk including some bull—” She glanced at Lil. “—oney about him sleeping with some teenage tart. I, for one, never believed a word of it. I think Belinda Van Castle is a liar even if she looks like she never farts.”

  “Mari!”

  Mari wrinkled her nose. “Besides I think she’s a porn star or stripper now. The teenage tart, I mean, not Belinda Van Castle. Although she might make a good one.”

  “What are you babbling about?”

  “The Van Castle divorce, of course.” Mari gave her an impatient look. “It was in all the papers a few years ago, but who cares anyway? Van Castle’s still the absolute best, you know.”

  Lil didn’t know. Give her Chopin.

  “Not that I can get tickets to their concert. They’re over forty-five bucks—and those are the cheap seats. I finally got the dough together yesterday and—wouldn’t you know it?—they sold out the day before. The day before!” Mari jabbed her elbows on her knees and dropped her chin on her fists.

  Lil glanced out the window. Holding a bakery bag, her former brother-in-law crossed the square toward Merry-Go-Read in long, powerful strides. She sighed. Seamus checked on her daily, and sometimes she wished he wasn’t quite so solicitous. Shame followed the thought. In the weeks after Robbie’s funeral, he’d performed handyman work around her house and helped untangle her finances.

  Seamus entered the store. “Afternoon, ladies.” With his ever-present black hat, black jeans and silver bolo, she thought of him as Adam Cartwright. Her dad still watched the reruns of Bonanza on TVLand.

  Still lost in self-pity, Mari only grunted. Lil frowned at her, then smiled apologetically at Seamus. “You look good today. Leg not bothering you?”

  The year she’d married Robbie, Seamus had left on the rodeo circuit. When he’d retired to Cordelia on the heels of Robbie’s death, he’d come back with an occasional limp. Some said the leg was the result of a battle with a steer, others said he’d just fallen when he was drunk. Lil didn’t listen to the talk. He’d sobered up in rehab and that’s what counted.

  “Not today.” He set the bag down, and pushed his hat back. “Fact is, I’m ready to do some dancing. There’s a celebration at the Rooster tonight. The Tidwells’ fiftieth.”

  Helen and Elmon Tidwell were the owners of the Cordelia Sleep Inn. Lil had called them this morning to wish them happy—and give her regrets.

  “Came to see if you’d like to go. Brought you something.”

  He nodded at the bag and watched while she opened it. A slice of apple pie served up by the cook at the Rooster Bar and Grill. On the heels of Robbie’s death, Seamus had bought out the Rooster from his parents when they’d decided to retire to a doublewide in Orlando. Odd that a former alcoholic would own a bar but not too odd when you thought about it. Helping out your folks was simply the way things were done in Cordelia.

  “Thank you.” Although she wasn’t really hungry, she forked a small bite and wiped a crumb off her lip, conscious he followed every move. His eyes were the same green as Robbie’s but implacable. “You know I adore the Tidwells, but with the store closing and Patsy Lee needing to spend time with her children since Henry… well, after my piano lessons, I’m coming back here.” She shied from large gatherings, weary of the sympathetic looks still thrown her way. “But maybe I can stop by later.” She knew she wouldn’t.

  She thought annoyance flickered across his features. But he only nudged Mari’s knee until she shifted to allow him some space to lean his long frame against the counter.

  He hooked one boot over the other. “How’s Patsy Lee holding up?”

  To Lil’s secret shame, her recently-widowed sister-in-law was faring better than she was. When Henry had died, he’d not only left his three children without a father but also debt piled higher than St. Andrews church steeple. A bad heart, the doctor had said. Thinking about it, Lil almost snorted. A bad heart? It was just like her brother to bow out when the going got rough. She flushed. Hadn’t she done almost the same thing herself? Henry had just been…Henry.

  Seamus’s gaze sharpened and she busied herself neatening things on the counter. “Patsy Lee is doing pretty well, considering. She’s thinking about working at PicNic.” PicNic was the poultry processing plant outside of town. “And with interviewing, her job at the bank, the children—she can’t handle all that and closing the store, too. So I said I would.” Even though she wasn’t sure she could handle it either. With every box she packed, she felt she stored the last remnants of Henry’s dreams, pie-in-the-sky though they’d been. “And maybe we’ll get enough out of the closing sale to help tide Patsy Lee over until—”

  She broke off. Until what? A miracle? Whatever pittance Patsy Lee salvaged from the store wouldn’t last long, and her sister-in-law still faced a staggering debt to the bank—two mortgages on her home and a loan on this place.

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

  “I haven’t thought about it much,” she lied.

  She’d scanned the want ads and knew she didn’t have many marketable skills. She wished she could trade her three part-time semesters in business school—taken more to fill the hours when she wasn’t working while Robbie went to classes at CMSU— for one solid course in computer software. Finding a job that offered benefits and enough money to pay her own mortgage, not
to mention one that didn’t involve hacking chicken at PicNic, kept her awake nights. But she didn’t want to worry Seamus.

  “I still have some money from the insurance to tide me over while I look for a job, thanks to your advice.” She stacked some labels into a neat square, then laid her hand on the ridged muscles of his forearm. “I’m still grateful for all your help.”

  He looked at her hand, pale gold against his darker skin. When his eyes met hers, their warmth unsettled her. She dropped her hand.

  His mouth crooked in a wry smile and he pushed off the counter. “I won’t bite, Lil.”

  Mari suddenly came to life. “Hey, Seamus—I’ve seen some low-lifes at the Rooster. Know any scalpers? I need tickets to the Van Castle show and I’d be willing to pay… I guess I’d pay sixty buckaroos if I could get a good seat. Who needs to buy an art history book? I’ll just borrow someone’s. Whaddaya say? Know anyone?”

  Flustered by Seamus’s words, Lil was relieved Mari had shifted his attention. Her eyes slid to the copy of Little House in the Big Woods on the shelf behind the counter. Why not? Somebody had to go. The memory of a crooked smile wafted through her mind. She didn’t want to, that was certain. “You wouldn’t want to help me with a delivery, would you?”

  Mari frowned. “Quiet. Seamus is thinking.” Lil wasn’t the only one of the O’Malley sisters that treated Seamus like Dear Abby.

  “That book—” Lil pointed. “—goes to Jonathan Van Castle.”

  “If I worked some overtime next week, I could maybe even spring for—” Mari swiveled to stare at her. “What?”

  Seamus’s mouth quirked.

  “That book was promised to Jonathan Van Castle. Want to deliver it?”

  “That book? To Jonathan Van Castle? Of course I will. Right now! Where?”

  “I’ll tell you after you help pack all these books. Deal?”

  Mari jumped off the counter. “When do I start?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Mari’s face fell. “I have to wait that long?

  CHAPTER THREE

  TO JON, it seemed a lifetime ago, and not just earlier that day, that he’d had his fun with the bookstore lady. To Zeke’s amusement, he’d diddled with the lyrics on his new creation during the forty-mile drive to Monaco. It wasn’t just a ruse to escape his thoughts of what waited for him there—he just couldn’t shake that blue-eyed gaze.

  Of course, after they’d reached Monaco and picked up his kids, he’d had to put the song aside. In an atmosphere made uneasy by his forced jocularity and their wide-eyed wariness, they’d traveled another ten miles to Lake Kesibwi, a wide swath of water that sparkled through the valleys of the Ozark hills, just south of the larger Lake of the Ozarks. Their journey ended at the Royal Sun Resort, a complex built on a private, gated finger of land jutting out into the most populated part of the lake, Shawnee Bay. None of them could wait to escape the confines of the bus.

  That was eight, tense hours ago. In one of the resort’s massive two-story cabanas that hugged the hillside, Jon paused on the upper landing. Hearing nothing from the bedrooms where his children slept—he hoped—he padded down the stairs to the living room.

  Over his head, beams matching the oak logs that formed the walls crisscrossed the vaulted ceiling, track lights tucked against their sides. Straight ahead was a wall of windows. By day, the vista would encompass a chunk of the lake. Now, somebody had pulled drapes across the lower half, leaving only a gap where sliding doors led to a broad deck. A native stone fireplace dominated the room, its grate a silent, black hole.

  The clock squatting on the mahogany mantelpiece bonged once. Roy and the nanny he’d hired had already turned in. His drummer Three-Ring, manager Peter Price, secretary Lydia and the rest of his road crew had crashed in similar cabanas. Cabanas. Right. More like villas.

  A maple leather sofa and two bulky chairs divided by a coffee table sat on a plush rug in front of the fireplace. His feet riding an ottoman, Zeke lounged in one chair under a pool of lamp light, reading.

  Jon flopped on the sofa. The cushions heaved a sigh. “The next few months will be a real laugh riot if that was any indication.”

  Zeke turned a page. “Things’ll get better, my man. The kids just aren’t used to you.”

  Jon debated between Peanut M&Ms and a Tootsie Roll Pop, finally choosing the latter from his stash on the table. Sugar was a new habit he’d picked up since he’d quit smoking. He laid his head back, willing the tension to drain from his muscles. It didn’t work. Biting off the candy, he pitched the stick toward the table and yawned, a huge, jaw-cracking yawn.

  When the stick hit the bottom of his foot, Zeke looked up. “Hell, man, go to bed.”

  “Can’t sleep.” What was he going to do about his kids?

  Melanie wasn’t a problem—which was a problem since she’d hardly opened her mouth all evening and just sat there staring at him like a scared rabbit—but Michael…

  Jon had practically peeled him off the ceiling to get him into bed. He’d sang every ditty he knew to calm him, including the alphabet song, but the kid didn’t know his ABCs. He could, though, recite verbatim the refrain of every TV commercial ever made. Michael was completely manic and no match for Tina-the-Nanny. She’d come from a reputable agency, but the wispy blonde was young, longer on legs than sense, overawed by his celebrity and not much of a match for Michael. He gave a long sigh.

  Zeke’s brows snapped together and he leveled his eyes at Jon. “Okay, out with it.”

  “Out with what?”

  “Whatever has you sounding like a bellows. Is it Belinda?”

  When Jon had arrived in Monaco, he’d had the pleasure of reliving any number of scenes they’d enacted during their marriage. Fortunately, though, before the blow-out, they’d hustled Mel and Michael out to the bus in a Jeep Roy had rented in Cordelia.

  Equally fortunately, no media had arrived on the scene. Peter Price had thrown them off the scent with rumors of a trip back to Nashville during this semi-hiatus between the last two U.S. venues on Van Castle’s Country Comeback Tour. The reporters would figure it out, they always did. But for the moment, he and the kids could live without looking over their shoulders.

  “Let’s just say it wasn’t a reunion made in heaven.” Unless heaven included artillery ranging from cigarette packs that had bounced harmlessly off his chest to a heavy butter crock that had put a dent in her mother’s floor but, fortunately, not his head.

  “Ah, so our Miss Belinda hasn’t changed, has she?”

  “Hardly. Still looks like Gidget, talks like a longshoreman and has one messed-up head. I don’t know how long she’s been using this time.”

  “But you’re sure she’s back at it?”

  “Yeah.” He dipped into thought. Zeke let him. It was one of the nice things about Zeke. He never pressed.

  Sometime back in grade school, when Monaco still had a cinema, he’d scrounged up a few bucks to go to a Saturday matinee featuring Sally Field. Smokey and the Bandit, maybe. That was where he’d met Belinda. She’d sat a couple rows behind him and pelted him with popcorn; he’d yanked her hair afterwards, and she’d punched him. He should have known then a relationship would never work.

  It hadn’t. Three years ago, after they’d split, she’d parked the kids with her mother, Dodo, in Dodo’s neat, but sparse, frame house and whirled off around the world, headlining tabloids with a succession of boyfriends at the Cannes Festival, Aspen, and the casinos at Monte Carlo. From Nashville, where he immersed himself in rebuilding the career she’d almost wrecked, he followed her antics, wondering why none of her admiring press guessed how close she lived to the edge. They loved her. The cameras ate up that innocent face—and the reporters ate up whatever garbage she fed them.

  He was concerned about his kids, sure. But scrambling to keep his band from going under, he let her convince him again she’d stayed clean, and he buried his qualms under the thought Mel and Michael were safe with Dodo who, after all, had once been his own surrogate moth
er.

  Before he felt compelled to act, the publicity stopped. Probably because the money was gone—every last red penny of the fifty percent he’d handed her without a fight as a sop to his conscience. Debts and creditors followed. He knew because no way would Belinda return to Monaco unless she had to. The media had followed but not for long. There wasn’t much to film at Dodo’s nor would Belinda have wanted them there.

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he repeated, “I’m sure she’s using again. Coke probably, since she always claims she and the kids can’t get by on the insane amount of child support I send her every month.”

  The money went to dealers. He knew it but couldn’t prove it. To dealers and to the toe rings, high-heeled sandals, inch-wide gold bangles, and white leather shorts that had molded her ass when he’d seen her earlier today. A late model, red Camaro, front headlight smashed, had been parked in Dodo’s driveway. When he’d asked about the car, she’d said it was a repo, gotten cheap. He didn’t believe her.

  He drummed on his knees for a minute. He sent Belinda money, gave in to her demands every time and still remorse ate up his insides.

  Zeke guessed his thoughts. “It isn’t your fault, my man. She always liked things fast. Fast food, fast cars, fast living. What happened at Dodo’s?”

  “She screamed and swore and threw things, but she finally went with that guy from Serenity Gardens.” His hands stilled. He still wondered about the drug rehab’s choice of a counselor. The guy—Neil—was youngish, soft-bodied with a pasty complexion, weak chin, and didn’t look like any contest for Belinda. “It was already a done deal, but you know Belinda, she put on a show. Our lawyers worked out a deal. If she goes to rehab for sixty days, then stays clean another six months, I’ll foot the bill and her attorney fees.” Plus some extra, under the table. The extra was more than the bill for the rest. Belinda always charged a high price. “We filed, citing exhaustion or something on her part, and the judge granted me temporary sole custody for the duration. Thank God for Judge Dougherty. He did what he could to keep it all low profile.”