by Dana Mentink
He flushed. “Yeah, but I never figured out how to work it.”
“No problem. I’ll use Google Maps.”
Fiona was beginning to kick the back of the driver’s seat by the time they found the tiny structure at the far edge of town. Jellybean was just as eager as Fiona to tumble from the car and scamper up the graveled drive.
Misty stopped and wiped her palms on her thighs.
“Nervous?”
“He’s been my friend for six years, but that’s been over Skype. I come off much better via the screen than in real life. I’m going to blabber. I can feel it.”
Bill wrapped an arm around her shoulders to show support. “We know you’re a Skype screen star. Now it’s time to get up close and personal. He’s going to love you, blabber or no blabber.”
She did not look convinced, but he was dead certain. How could anyone not love her mixture of earnest sincerity and bumbling efforts to do the right thing? How could Bill himself possibly not love her?
He pushed away the pesky thought and rapped on the door. An older man with a puff of white hair that matched his suspenders appeared. His mouth fell open, and his eyes rounded behind the glasses.
“Miss Agnelli?”
“Misty,” she said automatically. “And you have got to be Ernest. I mean, of course you are. Who else could you be?”
“Yes,” he said, pumping her hand while she introduced her fellow travelers. “I can’t believe you’re here. I feel like I’m in a movie or something.”
Bill laughed. “We’ve been having similar thoughts.”
“Why have you come?” Ernest said. “I’ve already rescheduled my lesson.”
Misty smiled. “I’m not here on music business. Ernest, I don’t mean to barge in, but I have an important question to ask you.”
He held up a hand. “Before you ask, please come in and let me make you some tea. I don’t get much company from lovely ladies and their entourages, so this is a tea-worthy moment if there ever was one.” He peered through his glasses at Fiona. “And I think I’ve even got some cookies somewhere. You look like the kind of young lady who likes vanilla wafers, am I right?”
Fiona clung to Bill’s leg and smiled.
“Okay to bring in the dog?” Bill asked. “Or should I secure him outside?”
Ernest laughed. “Oh, he’s welcome here. Always has been. Please come in.”
Bill shot Misty a look. What’s going on?
She answered with a silent, I have no idea.
They trailed Ernest down a sunny hallway with well-worn wooden floors into a sitting room with a faded purple sofa and two overstuffed chairs. Rows of books crammed the room’s shelves, and Bill noticed a black-and-white wedding photo of a dashing Ernest and his shyly smiling bride. Two old Chihuahuas scuttled out from under the sofa and began a merry game of chase with Jellybean.
Fiona chuckled once, a small, happy sound sweeter than a Christmas bell. Bill wanted to pump his fist in the air. Two sounds in one week. Even if he was going to say goodbye to Misty and his business in short order, at least that was a positive sign. Fiona was feeling more comfortable, safer. But what if he had to close the shop and move her again? Where would they go? And how long would it take before he heard the hum and giggle of a secure child once more?
Fiona set about rolling a tennis ball and watching the three dogs set off in hot pursuit, furry planets whizzing around in their own frantic orbits.
“Well, that should keep them busy for a while,” Ernest said, returning from the kitchen with a tray, glasses of iced tea, and a bowl of vanilla wafers.
Misty gestured. “This room is exactly like I’ve seen on Skype every week for the past six years. I feel like I’ve stepped through the looking glass.”
“Me too,” Ernest said. “And may I note that you are even prettier in person?”
“Thank you,” Misty said, spots of pink appearing on her cheeks, like Bill’s perfect candy roses against satiny white chocolate. “It’s…special to meet someone face-to-face, isn’t it?”
Ernest saluted her with his glass of tea. “A toast to face-to-face friends.”
They clinked glasses and sipped.
He went to a shelf in a crammed china cupboard and set out a box of Chocolate Heaven truffles. Bill and Misty exchanged a look.
“Ernest, I have to ask that question now, if you don’t mind.”
He sighed. “Ask away. I think I might have an idea why you’re here.”
Misty set down her glass. “Did you cancel our lesson because you had an unexpected houseguest?”
Ernest sighed. “Yes.”
Bill sat up straighter. They’d actually figured it out? Found the elusive actor? Unbelievable.
“I knew it,” Misty chortled. “Lawrence is here, isn’t he?”
The expression on Ernest’s weathered face put a tinge of doubt over Bill’s optimism.
“No,” Ernest said. “I’m sorry to say he is not.”
Thirteen
Misty’s hope turned to disappointment before Ernest finished his sentence. So much for the detective work.
“Oh, I was sure he was hiding out here.”
“He was, but he left this morning before I got up.” Ernest sighed. “Tuck was always one for the mysterious exit and entrance.”
“So he was here? And you’re friends?” Bill asked.
“Friends,” Ernest agreed. “I’ve known Tuck since he was a sixteen-year-old spotty-faced kid. We lived up north in a small town close to Fresno called Benson. The wife and I owned a convenience store there. Tuck came to live in Benson with a foster family—one of several he’d been in, I gathered.”
“How sad,” Misty said.
“His mom gave birth at age fifteen and tried to raise him as best she could with the help of her grandmother, but after Granny died, she just couldn’t take it.” Ernest shook his head. “She left him at his kindergarten class one day and never came back. Tuck went into foster care at age five.”
An ache started up inside Misty when she imagined Lawrence’s abandonment. At five years old, she was hiding under her father’s bed, praying he wouldn’t die. But there had been others there coaxing her out, reassuring her and reminding her that she was loved dearly by her family and by God. Through all the lonely periods in her life, she’d had her family, and she’d had God. Lawrence had no one to reassure him, no arms waiting to hug him or knees bent in prayer for him. “I didn’t know that, Ernest.”
“He lived up and down the coast with various families, stayed in Albatross for a while too, but he liked me and the missus for some reason. Used to come in when he lived close and read all the movie magazines and gossip rags from cover to cover. We never minded. Even went camping together once. Me and the missus were big-time campers.” Ernest chuckled. “Man, that Tuck could spin some whoppers. He’d tell me one day that his real daddy was a spy for the navy, and the next that his pop was a missionary in Guatemala.”
Misty nodded. “I figured some of his stories had to be made up.”
Ernest’s smile dimmed. “Sad part was, seemed like Tuck didn’t know the difference after a while, like he preferred the lies because they were better than his real life.”
“I can read people, study them, extract their motivations for my own purposes. It’s clinical in a way,” he’d said. He wandered through life reading people as if they were interesting scripts. “You are a woman in hiding,” he’d told her. The comment awakened an uneasy tide.
Did she do the same? Watch people, study them from her safe hidey-hole?
“He was down in the dumps when he showed up at my place two days ago,” Ernest was saying. “Said there was some trouble on the film set, and he was getting too old. His agent was having a hard time finding him jobs.”
The three dogs whizzed through the room, followed by a beaming Fiona.
Ernest eyed them sadly. “Old Tuck said even Jellybean didn’t like him anymore.”
Bill drank some tea. “So your connection to Lawrence—
is that how Misty got involved in the movie?”
Misty gave him a halfhearted frown. “You didn’t tell me you knew the star of the film.”
He laughed. “Yeah. Tuck likes to stick with the lies, so I don’t blab to folks about our connection. When he told me the movie was gonna be shot in Albatross and they were looking for a violin teacher, why, naturally, I supplied Lawrence your name.”
“Naturally,” Misty said. “But I’m afraid that didn’t work out too well.”
Ernest patted her arm. “Sure it did. You got to know Tuck, and you care enough about him to come all this way looking for him. No one else would do that.”
She felt a stab of guilt. “I’m afraid it’s not that altruistic. The film means a lot to the town. If he doesn’t come back, the movie people will pack up and leave along with all the potential visitors.”
“Hmm…I see. I wish I could tell you where he’s gone, but I just don’t know.”
“Did he take a taxi? Or the bus?” Bill asked.
“Dunno. He vamoosed before I got up this morning, leaving this candy behind.”
Misty groaned. “Now how are we going to find him?”
“I don’t know what to tell you about the detective stuff, but I suspect he may call me, and I’ll do my best to send him in your direction. I promise.”
They stood, and Bill collected Fiona.
Misty grasped Ernest’s arthritic hands in hers. They were warm and soft, these hands that labored to pluck at the strings. She knew the visit had altered things between them, deepened their friendship and knitted a tighter connection between them. The power of it amazed her. How could such a simple thing as a quick talk and a grasping of hands change so much?
“Thank you, Ernest.”
“Anytime, Miss Agnelli. Say, maybe if you’re in town a while, we could do a real lesson in the same room. Whaddaya say?” His eyes sparkled.
The idea tickled inside her, urging her to step up, step out. But at what cost? People brought disappointment and heartache, broken hearts and battered emotions. People left you in kindergarten classes and under beds and with newly purchased dresses that would never be worn, invited to weddings for people for whom couplehood was natural and right. She felt Bill’s gaze searching her face.
“I’m going home in the next week, as soon as I can get Lawrence back to the set,” she said firmly, “but we can continue our lessons over Skype.”
“Sure, okay,” Ernest said, letting go of her fingers, some of the animation draining from his face.
Let your light shine…the phrase beat inside her heart like the insistent tapping of a snare drum. But surely Jesus meant that for brilliant preachers thundering in the pulpit or stalwart missionaries tending to the masses. Could it be that Misty’s light was a little flicker meant to show love to an elderly man? Was that what God wanted her to do with her musical passion? Could it be that small and that immense?
“But I will probably come back every couple months,” she blurted out. “I mean, to visit Bill and bring Nana Bett. She loves Albatross. Maybe we could get together then and do a lesson.”
Ernest’s face dawned in a smile that rivaled the most beautiful sunrise. His warmth seeped right into her as he gave her hands another squeeze. “That would be wonderful,” he said, blinking. “Just wonderful.”
His two dogs yapped and scrambled over his feet.
“Gummy, you’re a menace,” Ernest said when he managed to catch the nearest one. “And you’re no better, Juju.”
“Unusual names,” Bill said.
Ernest smiled. “The missus always named our pets after candies. She had a ferocious sweet tooth. Doc said she wasn’t to be eating treats, but I’d find her candy wrappers stuffed down in the recliner cushions. I didn’t say anything. Sweets made her happy, and that made me happy.” He scratched the captured dog behind the ears. “This is Gumdrop, and that one licking your shoe is Jujube.”
Bill and Misty locked eyes.
“Ernest,” Misty said, “Jellybean used to be your dog, didn’t he?”
“Never really anyone’s dog,” Ernest said. “He has too much independence for that. Showed up in our tent one time when we were camping, and we took him in even though Jeannie was getting ready to start treatments at the time. She never could turn away an animal in need, and I never could say no to anything she had her heart set on. Jelly made her laugh like crazy.” A mixture of joy and pain was written on Ernest’s face. “Tuck visited at Jeannie’s funeral, and he offered to take Jellybean. It was okay by me, as three dogs was a lot for an old man.”
Misty sighed. “I should have known the story about saving the dog from a frozen lake was not the truth.”
Ernest kissed Gummy on the top of his head and smoothed a wrinkled hand over his back. “It’s truth enough to make Tuck feel special, and that’s all he’s really ever wanted. To be special to someone.”
To be special to someone. It was a tune with which Misty was all too familiar.
She hugged Ernest and kissed his stubbly cheek.
“We’ll make arrangements to see each other soon. It really was good to meet you, Ernest.”
He grinned. “Likewise.”
Bill was not able to glean anything from the bus station or the cabdrivers, so there was nothing to be done but head back to Albatross. After they settled at home and spent a quiet afternoon and dinner hour, and Fiona had drifted off to sleep, he wandered the tiny shop, tidying up and ignoring the pile of bills accumulating near the phone. They would not be denied much longer. Doing an extra set of push-ups enabled him to put the bills out of his mind and fall into a restless slumber.
And then, quite suddenly, it was Monday.
He let Fiona sleep and crept downstairs to find the message light beeping on his answering machine. The call must have come sometime in the night.
“It’s Yolanda, Mr. Wilson’s assistant.” The woman leaving a message sounded harried and breathless. “Sorry to call on late notice, but can you deliver six dozen chocolates to the set Monday at noon? Mr. Wilson has to put on a dog and pony…I mean, entertain a private investor who’s coming to tour the set. We’ll pay whatever you want as long as it’s not over a hundred bucks, but be here at noon, okay?” There was a pause. “Please?”
Bill checked the time. Seven thirty. If he got cracking immediately, with Gunther’s help, he would just make it. Tying on an apron, he whistled a barnyard boogie tune. Business. Money in the till. Providing for Fiona. Succeeding.
He set to work on tempering the chocolate, and by seven forty-five, the caramel was in progress. Next would be a nice light strawberry filling that would pair beautifully with a dark chocolate shell.
Time ticked on, and he heard the bell on the door jingle. He exhaled in relief. Fiona would be awakening soon, and he desperately needed the help of his surly employee.
Gunther pushed on in. “Stoppin’ in to tell you I cain’t come in, least until later.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Ah, somethin’ with Lunk. He’s in the truck waiting. Got out again last night and didn’t drag his sorry self home until after midnight. Ain’t eating this morning. Never passed up a meal in all the time I known him. Gotta take him to the doctor.”
As much as Bill wanted to protest, he knew that Lunk was family to Gunther, a man with no wife or children. Gunther consistently declined Bill’s invitations to join him and Fiona for church, dinner, and even an early morning cup of coffee, so Lunk was his life. “Sure. Come on in when you can. I’ll say a prayer for Lunk.”
Gunther raised a grizzled eyebrow. “Pray?” He shifted uneasily. “People pray for dogs?”
“I don’t know about other people,” Bill said with a smile. “But I do.”
Gunther looked at his shoes. “Oh…well, okay then.” He took off his hat and rubbed a circle on the top of his speckled scalp. “That’s nice of you.”
Bill nodded. “I know how important Lunk is to you.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a lazy lout and he do
n’t know any tricks at all, but I got a soft spot for him, which shows I ain’t got no sense at all.” More head scratching. “Hey, by the way, your mum called with that toffee recipe. I wrote it all down for you.” He paused. “But, uh, you know, my, er, handwriting is terrible, so I’ll probably just have to tell you what it says.”
Bill could not quite look at his friend. Humiliation, gratitude, affection all swirled together in his gut, but most prominent was the ever-present mountain of shame. When he finally raised his gaze again, Gunther was gone. Bill silenced the anxiety building inside and said a prayer for Lunk and Gunther. He’d gotten to “Amen” when another peal of bells ushered in Misty, holding tight to Jellybean.
“I wondered if I can leave Jelly here for a few hours. I’m going to drive back to Twin Pines and ask the neighbors on Ernest’s street if they saw Lawrence leave.” Her mouth crimped. “Frankly, I’m not sure if that info will help me find him or not, but I don’t know what else to do.”
Bill smiled.
“What? Why are you smiling?”
“Because on behalf of the town of Albatross and myself, I’m grateful.”
“Why? Why would you be grateful? I caused the whole ‘Lawrence flees town’ scenario when I called in Phyllis the dog trainer.”
“But now you’re doing your best to fix it, and even though you don’t like people or small towns, you’re hauling yourself right out in the middle of both.”
She grimaced. “Don’t remind me. If there was a way to fix this through Skype, I’d be all over it. My palms are already sweaty.” As if to confirm, Jellybean licked her fingers. She looked around. “Expecting some customers today?”
Bill explained about the order, gratified to see a smile light her face.
“Oh, that’s great. Is Gunther coming in to help?”
He continued to stir the chocolate. “Lunk’s sick. Gunther’s going to be gone for a while.”
Misty opened the side door and let Jellybean outside. “Don’t eat anything or dig an escape tunnel, do you hear me?” she called as Jellybean scampered away. Then she returned, washed her hands, grabbed Gunther’s apron, tying it around her slender middle, and tucked her hair into a white paper hat.