Never Say Never

by Lisa Wingate

  “Imagene!” I yipped, and she jerked back like I’d slapped her. Right then, the last thing I needed was to hear all about what could happen. “Don’t you say a word about this to Frank. He’ll be down here with a rifle and, next thing, we’ll end up on the evening news.”

  Imagene’s eyes snapped to mine, and all at once, we had what coulda only been called a divine inspiration, “The evening news,” we both said at once.

  “I wonder how Betty’d feel about kicking four little old ladies, victims of the hurricane no less, out of their hotel rooms, if the news heard about it?” Imagene added.

  I felt the plan warming up, like a match head running over sandpaper. “Them all bein’ evacuees from the storm, why, that’d look pretty sorry of her, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would,” Imagene agreed.

  “No fire marshal,” Lucy reported, hanging up the phone. “She sayed he gone to Fort Worth till tomorrow.”

  Imagene and me let out air like whoopee cushions under a fat man.

  “We got till tomorrow,” I said.

  Imagene nodded, but she still looked grim. “What’re we gonna do between now and tomorrow?”

  Both of us looked at Lucy, and she lifted both hands in the air. “Don’ want me to say.” What she really meant was, Don’t ask me, which was pretty much how I felt, too.

  “We’re gonna start calling the TV and the newspapers.” I could feel the idea growing in my head, like God was writing it there. “We’re gonna get every reporter we can. Imagene, you give Lucy your mobile phone, and then you go over and use Bob’s phone at the café, and I’ll use the one here. Call every newspaper and TV station you can think of. Imagene, you call Austin, I’ll call Dallas, and Lucy, you call Waco, Killeen, and Temple.”

  The three of us got busy, but landing yourself on TV ain’t as easy as wanting to. After a half hour, Imagene came back with a long face, Lucy’d set the mobile phone down and was just staring at it, and I had my head in my hands. Every news station in Texas was tied up covering the aftermath of Glorietta, or reporting on the troubles of evacuees stuffed in the convention centers, and nobody had any time for one tiny story down in Daily, Texas.

  We all sat at the counter, feeling low. “What are we gonna do now?” Imagene asked finally.

  “I don’t know.” There wasn’t any point lying about it. We were in a fix. “Pray from the foxhole, I guess. This is gonna take a big dose of divine intervention.” I spotted Kemp out on the sidewalk right then, and a idea lit in my brain. “Wait a minute. I just had a thought.”

  “Uh-oh,” Lucy muttered, because sometimes my thoughts ain’t for the fainthearted.

  “Y’all wait here,” I told her, and headed for the door. Kemp was stopped on the sidewalk, and the closer I got to the door, the more I could tell something was wrong. In the first place, he was all by himself, and in the second place, I’d seen that look on his face before. That was the look he got when he’d struck out at the plate.

  I opened the door and asked him to come back in. “Everythin’ all right, hon? Where’s Kai?”

  “Yeah.” He had the big ol’ frown of a kid who’d just lost his trick-or-treat bag. “She took the dog home. She said she’d tie him up so he wouldn’t get away again.”

  “All right.” I looked Kemp over again. Whatever was wrong, he wasn’t talking about it. When a he was in a mood like that, there was no point pushing. “Hon, there’s something I’d like you to help with.” A crafty little idea slipped into my head, and I added, “Well, you and Kai, of course. It’ll probably take two of you.”

  Kemp frowned. “That might be a little tough, Aunt Netta. She’s getting ready to leave town.”

  “She’s … what?” That news flash caught me blindside.

  “She’s flying somewhere to meet a ship. She says she needs to get back to work.”

  I was struck silent, which don’t happen often. “When did that come about, because just this mornin’, she didn’t seem in a hurry to get anywhere. She was chatterin’ on about y’all helping out at the ranch, and how much the calf was growin’, and how y’all two were gonna take some of the evacuee kids down to Caney Creek and she was gonna show you up at bass fishin’. Now all of a sudden, she’s headed off to work?”

  Kemp rubbed his eyebrows, like he was trying to smooth out a pain. “You know what, Aunt Netta, you’re going to have to ask her that question.” He bit the words out in a way that made it sound like he didn’t care, but I raised that boy from the time he was two, and that wasn’t I don’t care in his eyes. He’d just got his heart broke.

  “You know, sometimes a gal just wants a fella to say, ‘Don’t go,’ ” I told him. As many gals as Kemp’d always had chasing him around, you’d think he’d know that. “Sometimes she just wants to be sure before she … plants a crop, so to speak. Kai’s got some tough history with her family. She ain’t told me all about it, but she’s told me some. I don’t think they even talk at all.”

  “As far as I can tell, she likes it that way.” Kemp pulled a breath, then let it out. “I asked her if she planned to leave without even going over to McGregor to see if her grandmother still lived there, and she said yes.”

  “She’s got a grandma over in McGregor? She never told me that.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t know her as well as you think.” A muscle in his cheek twitched, and his jaw set hard, and I could feel him shuttin’ me, and Kai, and everything else outside the door. He’d learned to do that when his mama died. Even though he was too little for us to explain it to him then, he knew his mama was gone. He quit talking for months, and just wandered around the house like he was looking for someone. He never fussed or cried. He just kept to himself.

  “I’ll talk to her,” I told him, and just as soon as the words were out, I knew that was the wrong thing to say. Kemp’s eyes got hard as bottle glass.

  “Leave it be.”

  “I just meant that …”

  “Aunt Netta, I said leave it be.”

  “Well, hon, sometimes girl to girl, it’s easier to tal—”

  Pulling his cap back into place with one quick jerk, he pointed a finger at me, which was something I couldn’t remember him doing in his whole life, ever. I got the firm feelin’ I’d finally gone too far.

  Over by the shop counter, Imagene sucked in a breath. She hadn’t ever seen Kemp act that way before, either. Normally, he was cool as a cucumber.

  “It’s finished, all right?” His voice was flat, the words cold as coffin nails. No room for a question there. “Just let it alone. I’m a big boy. I don’t need anyone to run my life for me.”

  I pulled back a little, because that last sentence come out of left field, and it seemed to have to do with more than just a tiff with a girl. “I know that, hon.” Looking at him now, standing six foot three and with his dander up, there wasn’t any denying he was a full-grown man and he could handle himself. But when you raised that man, there’s a part of you that knows the little boy inside and still wants to protect him—even from himself. “I wasn’t tryin’ to run your life, darlin’. I was only tryin’ to help.”

  He softened, like he’d just remembered who he was pointing a finger at. Back in the day, behaving like that woulda got him sent to his room or a smack on the rear, if his daddy saw it. “I just have a lot on my mind, Aunt Netta. What was it you needed me to help you with?”

  “Oh, that …” For a minute there, I’d got so wrapped up in Kemp’s problem, I plumb forgot about the building and the trouble with Betty. “Kemp, we gotta do something about Betty Prine. She knows Sister Mona’s bunch are still here and she’s on the warpath now, for sure, and she won’t stop till there’s a big fat red tag on my door, just like what happened to Bodie Rogers at the theater. We got to come up with a way to stop her.”

  Kemp cast a hard look toward the street. “It’s time somebody went over there and had a talk with the Prines. This is ridiculous.” By somebody, I could tell he meant himself. He had a glare in his eye that was nothing sho
rt of murder.

  “No, now you sound like your daddy.” Good thing Frank was out at the ranch right now, because if he was there, he’da been banging on the Prines’ door already. “Just simmer down.”

  “They think they can run this town.”

  I stepped between him and the door, just in case he got any wild ideas. “Kemp, if you go down there and give the Prines a piece of your mind, the next thing you’ll have is trouble with the school board. You know Harold Prine has four school board members working for him at the bank and the cement company. He’ll lean on the board, and you’ll be out of a job.”

  Kemp snorted under his breath. “I don’t need this job.”

  It bothered me to hear him say that. “Kemp, you’re the best thing to happen to those kids at Daily High in a long time, and you know it. You’re the only one that cares enough to make them act right and do their work in their classes, and not just win ball games but be good Christian boys, inside and out. If you leave, things’ll go back to the way they were, and those boys’ll be the losers.”

  Kemp just kept looking down the road, his chin a hard line. I’d seen that look before. “You can’t get into it with Betty and Harold Prine,” I said, but he didn’t answer, so I figured the best thing was to head in another direction. Kemp had something on his mind, but he was locked up tight as widow’s wallet. “So, listen, we gals got a plan anyway. What we need is some reporters. Let’s see how Betty feels about bein’ in the news while she’s runnin’ people out of town—old ladies and little children who’ve evacuated from the hurricane, no less. Let’s see her do that with everyone watchin’. You still got that little friend who does the news up in Dallas?”

  “Ashley?”

  “Mm-hmm. Her. You and her still on speaking terms? You think you could get in touch with her? We tried calling the TV stations ourselves, but we hadn’t been havin’ any luck.” Kemp and Ashley’d dated for a while when she was doing publicity for the Rangers. She was a cute little thing, but she had quick, sly eyes like a cat. She and Kemp’d parted ways when he was on the road and she came back to Dallas for the news anchor job. I wasn’t sorry to hear about it. “You think you could get her to send a reporter and a camera here in the morning? Even just one little reporter and one little camera? As a favor to you, so to speak?” I knew Ashley still called Kemp sometimes. Just the other day, I’d heard him answer the cell phone, and it was her.

  Kemp sucked air through his teeth, like I’d just slugged him in the belly. “That might be a little tough, Aunt Netta. When Ashley called the other day, she wasn’t getting in touch to be social. She wanted a scoop.”

  Now I really was confused. “A scoop about what?”

  Kemp’s head bent forward, and he rubbed the back of his neck, letting out a long sigh. “I didn’t want to say anything until I knew for sure. I didn’t want my ballplayers to hear about it on the sports report.” He kept his voice low so no one but me could catch what he was saying.

  “Hear what?” From the corner of my eye, I could see Imagene and Lucy inching closer. My stomach twisted up my throat like a constrictor snake. Whatever Kemp was about to say, I wasn’t gonna like it.

  “Nothing’s decided yet.”

  “Kempner Rollins, you better spit it …” Out. But he didn’t need to. All of a sudden, my mind whip-stitched the strings together, all on its own. Ashley, a scoop, the news, something Kemp didn’t want to tell his kids, or me. He was talking to the team. He was thinking about going back. “Oh, Kemp. Not again.”

  “It’s a clear MRI, and the big club needs pitching, that’s all,” he said, but I could tell that wasn’t all. He had that gleam in his eye, and I’d known him long enough to know exactly what that look meant.

  Chapter 24

  Kai Miller

  At Donetta’s house, I sat for a long time on a swing in the backyard. Overhead, the oak tree groaned under the burden of the chains, causing the dogs to twitch in their sleep as the day fell into a hush, the sky blushing in shades of crimson and rose.

  I thought of Kemp, of the day we rode up the hill behind the ranch and watched the sun go down. The moment replayed in my mind, awakening remembered sensations—the warm summer breeze, the scent of drying grass and cedar, the softness of his touch, the tingle of excitement on my skin as his fingers trailed over my shoulder, slid into my hair, drew me closer until his lips touched mine, until I couldn’t think of anything but him. Even now, I yearned for that moment, for his touch, for his laughter, for the heady feeling he awakened in me, for the sense of desiring and being desired until it was hard to say where desire ended and something deeper began. I longed for that feeling the way you long for one more taste of something wonderful after the plate is empty. It was as if all my life, without even realizing it, I’d been waiting to feel that way.

  But that was the problem. The need in me was so strong, it eclipsed all sense of logic. I was willing to believe that I’d found the real thing in someone I barely knew, in someone who held a large part of himself in secret. Who was just, as Jen put it, passing time.

  My cell phone rang beside me, but I ignored it. It would only be the cruise line calling to leave the final details about the flight that would take me to meet up with the Liberation—sooner, rather than later, since the crew members who hadn’t made ship the morning of the hurricane were still scattered due to the storm. The ship needed staff before leaving Tampa. In less than a day, I would be a thousand miles from here. It would be that simple.

  The arrangements had fallen into place as if it were meant to be. I’d catch a flight from Dallas to Tampa in the morning. The vet clinic would board the dogs. Maggie and Meredith would be flying from Kansas to Dallas as soon as the roads to the coast were open. They’d pick up my Microbus from airport parking, then swing by Daily and retrieve Don’s dogs. Meanwhile, Don was holding down the fort in Perdida, trapped with other stragglers, getting occasional messages out on a shortwave radio, while protecting the surf shop building and M&M’s coffee bar.

  Until Maggie and Meredith could fly in, Jen, Jenny, Jennifer would take good care of Radar and Hawkeye at the vet clinic. She’d probably take good care of Kemp, too. They’d get together, break up, and keep in touch until the next time he was on hiatus from the team. Someday, maybe when the dreams ran out, and he was finished with the game for good, they’d settle down in Daily together.

  The idea wounded me in a place I’d thought was closed to everyone. How was that possible? How could he have found the way through a door I thought I’d sealed up long ago? Behind that was the obvious question—Why had I let him? Why had I allowed this to happen when I knew what a painful word good-bye was? When I knew how it felt to know that someone you loved, someone you needed to love you back, was really just marking time with you while making other plans? My mother had other plans, my father’s interest was focused elsewhere, and even Gil, as much as he tried to hang on, had to leave me behind.

  Relationships ended painfully, every time. Which was why, all these years, I’d kept relationships on the surface—like clothes you could change when they weren’t working anymore. Nobody hurt, just an exchange of one outfit for another. This storm had made me vulnerable, sentimental, needy, weak.

  It was time to get back to normal.

  Even as I tried to convince myself, I wanted to pick up the phone and call Kemp. I wanted to tell him I’d been lying when I stood outside Donetta’s shop with him after Radar treed Miss Peach’s cat on Main Street. He’d tried to pin me down about why I was leaving, why the sudden change of plans. I’d played it cool, told him I had a job to do, a business to put back together, and of course those things had to come first. There wasn’t room in my life for anything more. “There’s really no point in keeping in touch,” I’d said. “It’s just too complicated. We live so far apart, after all. You’ve got your life, I’ve got mine.”

  He’d looked surprised, even a little wounded, maybe. “So you’re leaving without ever driving over to McGregor?” He asked again. Th
e look in his eyes seemed to drill right through me, nail me to the wall.

  “I don’t really see the point.” I tried to sound casual, detached. “That’s ancient history. With everything that’s happening in Perdida, the immediate future’s full already.” That much was true. The future was full. Full of my own plans.

  In spite of my hastily prepared rhetoric, I stood there feeling empty, Kemp and me at a stalemate, a painful haze in the air. I glanced through the beauty shop window to keep from looking at him. A verse written above one of the mirrors caught my eye. For I know the plans I have for you …

  The phrase came back to me now, repeated in my head as I rocked on Donetta’s swing. Closing my eyes, I tried to shake it away, force it into a corner and close the door.

  I know the plans I have for myself. My plans.

  Even Kemp, when it came right down to it, had to realize that this was for the best. He was free to keep his focus on the prize, on the big dream that consumed him, that didn’t leave room for anything else, just like my father’s dream of making it in the music business.

  It must have broken my mother’s heart when she finally realized that she, and all the rest of us, would always come second to my father’s aspirations, to his need to prove himself to the world, to have everyone know his name, to be famous. The problem between my parents wasn’t lack of love, or absence of passion. She loved him so much, she wasted half of her life following him from one dive to the next. So often, she wanted him to just stop, stay where he was, build a life that was somewhere close to normal. Every time, he talked her into the dream again, until she believed it, too, and off we went, blowing what little money we had on one more shot at the big time. Eventually, she couldn’t live that way anymore, and after Gil was gone, she figured she didn’t have to. She broke free while there was still time for a life of her own.