Baby, I'll Find You

by Jennifer Skully

  Tonight, she’d make up Leo’s mind for him.

  Chapter Two

  “I hate to say it, sweetie, but no man buys the cow when he can get the milk for free.”

  Jami’s shoulders tensed, then her neck, until finally a mammoth tension headache sprouted like an alien probe inside her head. With her outdated clichés, her mother was an anachronism. She had a misspent youth gorging herself on fifties TV shows like Father Knows Best and Leave it Beaver. Jami had actually caught her mother watching old reruns on TV Land.

  But Mom was right, things with Leo hadn’t gone the way Jami planned.

  “Do not put that bean up your nose, Emily.” Her sister Denise snatched the bean out of the baby’s hand. “And you shouldn’t compare Jami to a cow, Mom”—Denise admonished with a pointed finger—“when she’s just been dumped. We’re supposed to be building up her esteem.”

  Her mother’s kitchen was fragrant with the scent of baking lasagna. Of course, it wasn’t for their lunch, but for the church guild potluck that night. Jami sipped her lemonade. For once it was better to let her sister Denise fight the fight for her. Because really, being compared to a cow...

  “Of course,” Denise went on, wheezing a little. She hadn’t lost all the weight she’d gained with Emily and insisted on wearing body shapers that squeezed the breath out of her. “If you’d listened to me five years ago and told Leo to set a date or you were outta there, you wouldn’t have wasted all this time.”

  Okay, so Jami didn’t need Denise to go to battle for her.

  Seated beside Jami at the table, Nanette poured more lemonade. “She doesn’t need to hear a bunch of I-told-you-so’s.” Nanette was the eldest Baylor daughter. They’d all been tow-heads as little girls, but Nanette was the only one of them who’d remained a blonde when she got older. Her three daughters had the blond hair, too. “It’s her job she’s got to worry about. The Silicon Valley economy is crap right now. She’s never going to find anything that pays as well as that job, especially not after she got f-i-r-e-d.” Nanette spelled it out as if it were a curse word she didn’t want one of her girls to pick up. “It’s been over a week and you haven’t looked for a job.”

  Jami’s sisters had been over every other day since she’d lost her job and Leo had dumped her, forcing her to move in with her mother until she found an apartment. They were supposed to be cheering her up. But...umm...the best intentions had gone awry.

  “She needs time to rethink and regroup, you know.” Thank you, Cathy. Cathy was closest to Jami in age, and that made them closer as sisters. They’d fended for each other when they were younger, and Denise and Nanette ganged up on the babies.

  Jami realized she hadn’t said a word in the last fifteen minutes. She’d let her sisters and mother do all the talking, all the demoralizing.

  God, she was no better than a cow.

  Dick had fired her, then Leo had dumped her, though he’d been polite about it. Leo was always diplomatic.

  I don’t want to get married right now. I’m not ready. I need more time. But if you have to have a decision now, then we should probably rethink our living arrangements.

  With those few, awful, polite words, Leo had ripped away everything she’d dreamed of for seven years. Maybe pushing him to set a date hadn’t been the message the universe was trying to sending her.

  Her mom bent down to check the lasagna. The Formica countertops of Jami’s youth had been replaced by granite, the appliances were all stainless steel, and the oven was convection. Her mom swore by it. “Well, she’s out of the frying pan and into the fire now,” Mom quipped.

  Sometimes she hated her mother’s sayings. Especially when they held a grain of truth. Jami had to admit she didn’t like change. You never knew what you’d get, and half the time, it was worse than what you already had. She didn’t like the fifty-fifty odds. She’d stayed with Dick Head because she was afraid she’d get stuck with an even worse boss. She’d stayed with Leo because...well, had she been afraid she couldn’t catch another man? Or that it was better not to risk rejection?

  Jami had moved out of Leo’s condo that night. He’d looked horrifyingly relieved when she’d packed her meager belongings, as if he’d been waiting for an ultimatum so he could say no, and she’d have no choice but to leave. It was astonishing how little she owned. Scary, actually. The condo was Leo’s. Everything had been his, the 65-inch HDTV, the bed, even the sheets, dishes, and cutlery. Jami had her laptop, her mother’s china, the silver-plated candlesticks, and some tea towels. Seven years and that’s all she had to show for it.

  If she thought too much about it, she’d hyperventilate, or defibrillate, or exsanguinate. Or all of them at once. There was just something bad about words that started with the prefixes hyper-, de- or ex-. God. She was an ex-...ex- what, ex-girlfriend or an ex-almost-fiancé? What did it matter? She was simply an ex. Oh, yeah, ex-employee, too!

  Then again, maybe her mom made her hyperventilate. It was utterly debilitating; thirty-five years old, and she’d moved back into her old room in her mother’s house. Her childhood stuffed animals were still on the bed.

  “I think I need a vacation,” she said, almost to herself, forgetting for the moment that she was seated at her mother’s kitchen table trying to keep baby Emily from sticking yet another bean up her nose.

  “You’ve had a vacation for a week,” Nanette answered. “You can’t live off Mom for the rest of your life. You need a job.”

  “If she wants to be a mother,” Denise argued, “she needs to get busy finding a man.” She patted Jami’s hand. “I know the right guy is out there for you.” Eyeing her critically, Denise added, “Maybe if you spruced up your wardrobe and wore a little more makeup to hide the dark circles.”

  “She only has dark circles because her boss ran her ragged,” Cathy defended her. “Leave her alone.” Then she turned to Jami. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

  “Dear,” her mother said sweetly, “Jami never has anything to say for herself. She’s just not as together as the rest of you.” She smiled. “But we love you anyway, sweetheart.”

  Jami wanted to scream. They all meant well. They did love her. They’d offered as much comfort as they knew how, yet they made her sound like a loser. If she had to listen to her big, beautiful, loving family for one more day...well, she’d be arrested for something, like running naked down the middle of Highway 101 during rush hour or pouring sugar in Leo’s gas tank.

  “I do have something to say.” She shoved her glass aside.

  A hush fell over the kitchen. Even baby Emily, all on her own, put the bean back on her high-chair tray.

  Pushing back from the table, Jami stood. “I’m going on a road trip.”

  “A road trip?” her mother echoed.

  “A road trip,” Jami repeated, more assertively.

  “To where?” Nanette asked.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “How can you not know where you’re going?” Denise wheezed.

  “I’m not going to plan it. I’m just going.”

  Her mother gasped. “Not plan it?” Mom even planned her trips to the grocery store.

  Jami had never in her life not planned things out. It was darn scary. Then again, it was scarier thinking about staying in her mother’s house, as if she’d be sucked in and never get out again. She’d forever be a cow who gave her milk away for free, or a woman who was too afraid to step out of the frying pan because she’d burn her feet in the fire.

  “In fact,” she said, grabbing her purse off the counter, “I’m going for a directionless drive right now, just to see how it feels.” A taste of freedom.

  Or maybe a moment’s escape, but she had to get out. It was a matter of life or death, probably by exsanguination.

  The frantic whispers started before she’d even closed the back door behind her. In the Toyota, she rolled down the windows and turned on the engine, a blast of hot fetid air hitting her face before the fan cleared it out.

 
; Colton Amory’s voice washed over her as she backed out of the driveway. Over the last week, she’d listened to both CDs until the words were actually a part of her. His voice had helped her forget her own problems for a little while. After all those hours of listening pleasure, she had a weird need to know what had happened to him. Looking him up on the Internet, she’d found his website defunct and discovered he hadn’t made another album after Dreaming of You. He’d simply dropped off the face of the planet seven years ago.

  That’s how long she’d been with Leo. Seven years of waiting. Until she’d discovered Colton Amory’s music in a grab bag and found a little courage.

  Only to get dumped.

  Was that the worst thing that could have happened to her? If you didn’t over-think, the universe provided just what you needed. It had given her the music playing right now. It had led to the demise of her relationship with Leo. Maybe the universe was still sending her a message; find Colton Amory.

  That was a darn sight better than sitting in her old room surrounded by her childhood stuffed animals and feeling like a total loser.

  * * * * *

  Her cell phone chirped.

  “Are you there yet?” were the first words out of her mother’s mouth when Jami answered her cell phone.

  She’d lost her job over a week ago. On Wednesday, she’d told her family she was taking a road trip. By Friday, her car was packed, and she was on her way by noon.

  To put it mildly, her mother thought Jami had been kidnapped by aliens and a sophisticated alien robot plopped down in her place. Since Wednesday’s announcement, Mom had been poking Jami in the arm and asking if she was sure she was completely herself.

  “Well, hello, Mom, good to hear your voice. It’s been so long”—twenty minutes— “and yes, I’m here.” The day was wearing down to night, and Jami had barely arrived, just having hit the outskirts of the small town of Masterson, California, about twenty-five miles west of the Yosemite National Park entrance. Population: 10,013. Masterson wasn’t big by San Francisco Bay Area standards, but it was large compared to the dotting of towns she’d passed through.

  It was also Colton Amory’s last known address. She’d used all the free people-searches, but that was the latest 411 on the man. She could have done a paid search, even a background check, but that felt like violating his privacy. Using free info wasn’t quite so intrusive. All right, she was rationalizing.

  Looking for Colton Amory was insane—or the act of an alien robot—and she certainly hadn’t told her mother or her sisters that’s why she’d headed for Masterson. God forbid. Despite the way his lyrics touched her and wormed their way inside her, she wasn’t crazy enough to think she’d fallen in love with a man she didn’t know, and she certainly didn’t envision him as the father of her children. Yet somehow, in some weird cosmic way, because she’d found his CD and it changed her life, she had to find Colton Amory before she could decide where to go from here. She had to find out why such a talented musician threw everything away seven years ago. While she was looking for him, her subconscious would be working on how to fix her life. At least that’s what Jami hoped.

  In the meantime, the trip got her out of her mother’s house before one of them did permanent damage to their relationship.

  “The place looks nice,” she told her mom. A little weather-beaten around the edges, but quiet. One four-lane main road with strip malls along each side. A few motels, some of them well kept, others having seen better days, and rows of chain restaurants with a few quaint, homegrown eateries sprinkled in, hand-painted signs advertising their menus. The cars along the road had the same ratio of old clunker to late model as there were in the Bay Area. This place was different, though, the mountains, forested with ponderosa pine and black oak, rising in the near distance, and the sky was bluer, the clouds whiter and puffier than back home.

  “Are you sure about this?” her mother asked for the millionth time. “You should come home. I don’t like the idea of you being out there all by yourself.”

  “Mom, it’s not the Siberian wilderness.” She’d never done anything impulsive in her life. It had taken six months to make up her mind about moving in with Leo. She wasn’t at all sure of what she was doing, but her mom’s constant poking had forced her to stick to her guns.

  “But what about those people who got stuck in the mountains and had to eat their dead to survive the winter?”

  Good grief. “That was the Donner party, and it was a hundred and fifty years ago.” She paused, rolling her eyes since her mother couldn’t see. “And it was Tahoe, not Yosemite.”

  Jami had to laugh. She was the youngest in a long line of drama queens. Which made her a drama-queen-in-waiting. Or something. Around her family, she wasn’t her own person, merely an extension of her sisters’ and her mother’s drama. Come to think of it, this was the first time she’d ever created drama herself, and her mom and sisters simply didn’t know how to handle it.

  “Promise you’ll call as soon as you get a hotel room.”

  “I will.”

  “I know you’re watching your money, but don’t get a flea bag in some hellhole part of town.”

  “I won’t, Mom.”

  “And call every day so I know you’re okay.”

  Jeez. With the way her family was acting, you’d think Jami was the tender age of eighteen and moving out for the first time. “It’s just a vacation. I’ll be fine.”

  “And don’t eat a bunch of fast food. Have some salads and vegetables, too.”

  Jami shook her head and smiled. Ya just had to love her mom. What else were you gonna do with her? “I promise.”

  “Okay, honey, bye then.”

  “Bye, Mom. Love you.” After a couple of seconds, Jami could still hear her mother breathing. “I’m hanging up, Mom.”

  Her mom snorted and disconnected just as Jami pulled into a fast-food restaurant. She’d think about salads and vegetables later. Much. Fifty years ago, Easy Cheesy Burgers was probably one of those drive-ins where the waitresses rolled to your car on skates. It had been painted fairly recently, and the parking lot repaved. Beneath a red and white striped awning, three round picnic tables with attached seats dotted a concrete pad at the far end. There was no inside dining, which seemed odd in a town where the snow season started in late fall and continued into early spring. The line at the order register was four deep, and several people loitered around the pickup window. As she opened her door, her olfactory senses went wild with the scent of deliciously greasy burgers, and her stomach rumbled.

  First, sustenance, then Colton Amory.

  Chapter Three

  Cole flipped a row of burgers on the grill. Easy Cheesy burgers were flame-broiled, not fried on a griddle. The tomatoes were fresh, the lettuce crisp, and the sauce his own special recipe.

  “Cole, what the hell are you doing back there? Sitting on your butt?” Frank Fetterman ran Easy Cheesy and right now he manned the pickup window, where, incidentally, the natives were getting restless.

  A stocky guy in his midforties, with a bald head, a gravel voice to match, and a huge heart he tried to hide behind a big bellow, Frank knew how to knock heads when the natives got testy, especially when someone was giving one of his high-school trainees a rash of crap. Frank claimed he’d ridden with the Hells Angels in his younger days, and he had the tattoos to prove it. Cole had to admit the intricate designs were damn near a work of art, especially when Frank bent his arm at the elbow and the lady on his forearm met the man on his biceps. As Frank pumped his muscles...well, that tattoo started doing the most extraordinary things.

  Tonight’s crowd was far from rowdy. Families, teenagers on a Friday night date, a motorcycle mama and her man, the usual. For Frank’s benefit, Cole smiled. “Tell them my burgers are worth waiting for.”

  Cole welcomed the lunch and dinner rush. When it was busy, there was little time to think of anything else. While he was working his ass off, Easy Cheesy’s heavy, grease-laden atmosphere drowned out his memo
ries. When he got home, he fell into an exhausted sleep, which meant less chance for bad dreams. If he hadn’t had Easy Cheesy, he’d have been dead seven years ago.

  Nah, that wasn’t the truth. If it hadn’t been for Frank, he’d never have made it these last seven years. Frank had been one of his roadies when he was on tour, back before Stephie was born. They’d remained friends, even when Frank lost his way with drugs and alcohol. But Frank had gotten clean, and Cole had provided the money to buy Easy Cheesy. The burger joint remained the most important thing in both their lives. Well, except for Frank’s Ruby.

  Wrapping assembled burgers, Cole shoved the bags down the line, where Frank scooped fries, muttering to himself. They were short two employees tonight, and Frank was filling in.

  With a new line of burgers on the grill, Cole glanced at Andrea Bagotti, Frank’s latest protégé. As people stacked up at the order window, her nervousness rose. She leaned down to study the keys on the cash register and counted out the change twice to make sure she hadn’t made a mistake. Cole wished he could have said something wise to her, like “don’t sweat the small stuff.” But he had a hard time looking at her for very long and an even worse time talking to her. Sometimes it hurt just to be around her for an entire shift. She made him think of Stephie. Andrea was all long dark hair, tall and lanky, like a colt who hadn’t quite grown into its legs, but she’d be a beauty soon. The way he imagined Stephie. She would have been sixteen this year, too, like Andrea. Sweet sixteen.

  His head started to pound suddenly, the way it always did when he thought about his daughter.

  It wasn’t the looks; it was the sweet air of innocence. Eventually, he’d stop seeing Stephie in Andrea Bagotti’s moves, and he’d be fine again. Then he could offer sage advice on how to deal with restless natives while keeping her cool.

  He glanced out at the growing queue at the window. Third in line, the woman was taller than the three people in front of her, otherwise he would have missed her. Instead, he did a double-take. Brunette hair, slightly curly, that fluttered over her shoulders. There was something about a woman’s hair that used to turn him on, the fine, silky texture between his fingers, the scent of it. No matter the shampoo she used, every woman’s hair smelled unique when a man buried his face in it.