by Lori Wilde
What Valerie hadn’t known was that he’d already had his one great love and lost her as surely as she’d lost Jeff. “What we’ve got,” he’d told her and meant it, “is better than soul-mate love. It’s safe and solid and secure.”
She’d look at him so sadly that a cold shiver had shot down his spine in spite of the sultry July heat. She reached up, traced his chin with her finger, and whispered the name he knew everyone in town called him behind his back. “Oh my sweet Steady Sam.”
His aunt’s business, the Sweetest Match, sat on the opposite side of the courthouse. A pair of mockingbirds trilled from the wide-limbed mimosa across from the Funny Farm restaurant on the corner. The scent of sautéing onions and garlic wafted in the air. Sam’s stomach grumbled, reminding him that he’d forgotten to eat lunch. Again. He often got so absorbed in his work he forgot to eat.
He cut across the courthouse lawn thick with heavily watered zoysia grass. At this hour on a Wednesday afternoon the streets were fairly empty. Not late enough to pick the kids up from school, but past the lunch hour. His boots made a scraping noise when he hit the pavement on the other side of the lawn, and he rehearsed in his head what he was going to say to his aunt to put a stop to her infernal matchmaking without hurting her feelings.
The cowbell over her door tinkled gaily when he opened it. All things romantic dominated his aunt Belinda’s world. The walls were painted pastel pink and lined with framed pictures of all the couples she’d successfully matched. The lush pink carpet led to a private area where she ushered clients to fill out forms, be interviewed on camera, and pay their fees. Belinda specialized in hooking up people with their long-lost loves, and she seemed to have a real knack for knowing how to go about igniting those old embers into fresh flames. She made a nice living at it. Enough to support a family of seven after her husband, Harvey, got laid off when Delta Airlines pulled most of its flights out of DFW airport in 2005. Now Harvey worked for the local country club as a greenskeeper, and he kept Belinda supplied with a string of upper-crust gossip.
Belinda peeked her head in from the back room. “Hiya, Sam,” she greeted him with a warmth that went around him as snuggly as a hug.
His aunt was an ebullient woman in her early forties. Everything about her screamed, “Mom.” Just like his mother, she was helpful, kind, generous, loving, and more than a little meddlesome. Belinda wore her hair in a short, practical style and she favored blouses ubiquitously appliquéd with bunnies or ducks or puppies. She smelled like chocolate chip cookies. She had a round cheerful face and a full motherly bosom just right for little heads to rest against. She was the “fun” mom, full of games, laughter, stories, and art projects. Kids congregated at her house.
“Do you need someone to babysit Charlie?” Looking hopeful, she moved from the back room into the main shop, knitting needles and a half-knitted scarf in her hands.
“No.”
“Are your folks leaving later than expected?”
“They left yesterday.” Sam’s father had recently retired at age sixty from Bell Helicopter with a pleasant pension, and he’d bought a recreational vehicle to celebrate. His parents had embarked on a two-month sightseeing odyssey from Labor Day to Halloween.
“Oh.” Belinda sounded disappointed. “So no upcoming dates?”
“We need to talk,” he said flatly.
Belinda set her knitting down on the counter. “Sure, sure. Would you like some iced tea? It’s peach-flavored.”
“No thanks.”
“I’m getting the feeling this isn’t a social call.”
He cleared his throat. “Aunt Belinda—”
“Yes?” She smiled like she had the power of the sun behind her.
“You gotta stop sending women over to the clinic. It’s my place of business.”
“Oh dear,” she said. “Who interrupted you at work? Was it Misty or JoAnna or Caroline? I clearly told them not to bother you—”
“Three of them?” He groaned. “You sicced three of them on me?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure what type you liked. Misty is petite and dark-haired, about your age, and—”
He held up a hand to silence her. “I know you’re just trying to help, but I can get my own dates, thank you.”
Belinda pursed her lips. “No you can’t.”
“What?” Startled, he stared at her.
“Okay, maybe you can, but you won’t. You haven’t been on a single date since Valerie died. You’re thirty years old, Sam, but you act like you’re sixty. When was the last time you went out and had a good time?”
“That’s my business, Belinda.”
“This isn’t all about you, you know,” she said softly.
Sam’s spine stiffened. “What do you mean?”
Belinda pressed her lips together and shifted her eyes as if casting about for a gentle way to say what was on her mind. “You weren’t the only one affected by Valerie’s death.”
He lowered his voice. “Don’t you think I know that?”
“Charlie has lost so much. To be in the car with his father when they got T-boned and then just a scant eighteen months later to see his mother get on that army plane and fly away, only to come home in a casket. That’s a lot for a six-year-old to absorb.”
Sam clenched his jaw and bit down on the tip of his tongue to stay his anger. None of this was his aunt’s concern. She had five kids of her own to fret over. He wanted to lash out at her, but he knew she really was worried about Charlie, so he said nothing, just stood there feeling the muscle at his temple jump.
“That boy needs a mother. Whenever he comes over for playdates with my kids he…” Aunt Belinda trailed off. “Well, as you say, it’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s not.”
“But it’s not right, him not speaking a single word since Valerie died.”
“I know,” Sam said hoarsely. The pain he tried to keep at bay every time he looked at the boy he’d swiftly grown to love, as surely as if he’d been his biological child, squeezed his heart. “I’ve taken him to doctors, therapists. I’ve been patient. My folks help in every way they know how. I’ve tried everything I know.”
“You haven’t tried everything,” Belinda braved.
He fisted his hands at his side, took a deep breath, and responded with as much measured control as he could muster. “He’s not ready for someone to replace his mother.”
She folded her arms over her chest and held his gaze. “Are you sure it’s Charlie who’s not ready?”
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but please stop sending women over to meet me. When and if I decide to remarry it will be under my own power. I don’t want or need a matchmaker mucking around in my love life. Got it?”
Belinda swallowed visibly. “I never meant any harm and I don’t want to overstep my bounds, but Sam, have you thought about what it means for your boy if he never speaks again? What kind of future is he going to have?”
Sam had thought about it far more often than Belinda could imagine, but he’d decided that his approach to just give Charlie his space and not pressure him was the best one. The boy would talk eventually.
“And then there’s this,” Belinda said.
“What?”
She opened up a drawer and pulled out several sheets of notebook paper covered with drawings and pushed it across the counter toward him. “Charlie drew these on Saturday when he spent the night with his cousins.”
Sam picked up the pictures and flipped through them. Page after page of crayon drawings featured a stick figure in a skirt being killed in various ways. In each picture her eyes were X’s and her mouth was a wide open O of distress. There were bombs and knives and guns. Looking at the pictures his son had drawn weakened Sam’s knees, made his stomach lurch drunkenly.
“I’m really worried about Charlie,” Belinda murmured.
“All little boys draw images of war. I did. Ben and Joe and Mac did too. Are you telling me your boys don’t?”
“Excl
usively?”
Sam blew out his breath.
“With women as the battle victims?”
He shook his head and suddenly realized Charlie was feeling as dead inside as he was. Sam had trouble talking about his thoughts and feelings, and his boy couldn’t talk at all. Belinda was right. He’d been setting a terrible example for the child.
“So what am I supposed to do?” he asked.
His aunt drew in her breath. “It’s time to find that boy a new mother.”
“Valerie is irreplaceable.”
“I know that, but it doesn’t mean you both don’t deserve some happiness in your lives. You need to feel normal again.”
“And you think the aging Cyndi Lauper wannabe you sent to my office is the answer to my problems?”
“No, of course not. It’s just time you tried again. Not just for your own sake but for your son. He needs to see how people move forward after a tragedy. Right now you’re both in a holding pattern.”
It was true. He didn’t want to admit it because he didn’t want to date, but it was true.
“Okay,” he relented. “You can fix me up. But I’m only doing this for Charlie’s sake.”
“Oh yes.” Belinda clapped. “Your mom is going to be so excited.”
“Yeah, well, you and she are the only ones.”
“We gotta talk.”
Emma met the determined stares of her two roommates and knew they’d reached the end of their rope. Two weeks had passed since that awful day in Scott Miller’s office. Two weeks of being hounded by the tabloid media. Two weeks of being ridiculed on morning radio. Two weeks of eating too much chocolate and reading romance novels because it was the only thing that kept her mind off her dire straits. Yes, Miller had had it coming, but she couldn’t help feeling bad about what she had done.
The nightmare of that day had not ended with her sprinting from the theater. Before she’d gone two blocks, she heard the wail of sirens, but it wasn’t until a few hours later, when the paparazzi showed up on her doorstep, that she learned what had happened. It turned out Miller had a preexisting condition that caused his testicle to torque when she’d kicked him in the groin.
By the time they got him to the hospital it was too late to save the damaged testicle. She was feeling pretty damn guilty about that until Miller released a statement to the press claiming she’d assaulted him because he’d refused her advances when she’d tried to have sex with him in order to procure a part in his new play. After that bullshit, she let go of the guilt and daydreamed about hacking off his remaining testicle.
Her roommates, Cara and Lauren, circled her futon, their sleeves rolled up, looking like people who were about to stage an intervention or deprogram someone who’d been kidnapped by a cult. Emma swallowed the Tootsie Roll she’d been chewing and laid down Rachel Gibson’s latest novel. Cara sat at Emma’s feet. Lauren took the chair at the head of her bed.
“We’re sorry, Em,” Cara said, “but we just can’t take this anymore.”
“We can’t step out of the apartment without stepping over the paparazzi. It was fun at first, until we realized they only want to take pictures of you.” Lauren shook her head. “We don’t like it.”
Hey, she understood. She didn’t want this kind of attention either, although Myron kept assuring her that any publicity was good publicity. It certainly didn’t feel that way. Her stomach hurt whenever she peered out the window and saw reporters skulking on the street below, although their numbers had started to dwindle over the last few days as fresh news stories pulled them away to more gossip-worthy pastures. Her goal had been to outlast them. Stay holed up in the apartment until they got bored or a bigger celebrity did something more shocking. The plan had worked.
Until now.
Cara folded her hand on her hip and took a deep breath. “We have someone else who wants to move in with us.”
“Someone who’s got cash,” Lauren added. “You gotta go.”
Cara glared at Lauren. “She doesn’t mean to be so blunt.”
“Yes she does,” Emma said, “and she’s right. You have to do what you have to do. I appreciate you letting me hang on as long as you did.”
“You’re welcome.”
“When do you need me gone?”
“Meg’s moving in tomorrow.” Lauren leaned one shoulder against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest, a look of bored patience on her patrician features. She was a fashion model, obligatorily tall, underweight, and petulant.
“You want me out now?” Emma cringed to hear her voice come out high and reedy and desperate. God, she was pathetic.
Lauren and Cara nodded in unison.
“Okay, great.” She forced a smile. “I’ll get packing.”
Cara hovered, wringing her hands, her lips pursed. “Do you have someplace to go?”
Emma almost preferred Lauren’s blunt disinterest to Cara’s false concern, but she wasn’t going to play the victim, so she lied through her teeth. “Yes, sure, no problem. I’ve got lots of friends.”
The real answer was no, she had nowhere else to go. The man she’d grown up thinking was her father now lived in Seattle with a new wife and ten-year-old daughter. They would not be happy to see her, even if she could scare up the money for a plane ticket—which she couldn’t. She’d be lucky to afford a bed for the night at the YWCA. Most of her acquaintances were aspiring actresses living with multiple roommates in apartments as cramped as this one. She had no idea where her mother was or if she was even alive. She had no siblings. No grandparents. No boyfriends. No fallback plan. No soft place to land.
It’s what happens when you spend your life chasing stardom instead of building relationships.
New York had a way of making people feel anonymous. It was not the best city for a girl bent on standing out and being special. Emma had been down. She’d been low. But she’d never been this up against it. Two hundred dollars in her bank account, another fifty in her wallet, a credit card that was rapidly approaching maxed-out status.
Feeling like her limbs were made of sticks, Emma swung her legs off the futon and got to her feet. She kept smiling idiotically and tamping down the hysteria pushing against her rib cage.
Don’t break. You won’t break. You’re Scarlett O’Hara plucking that damn radish from the hard, dry soil. You’re Ripley battling chest-ripping aliens. You’re Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
Okay, maybe not Dorothy because Dorothy’s theme was “There’s no place like home” and Emma had no home, but she was strong. She could handle this. It was always darkest before the dawn, right? Can’t go up until you’ve hit rock bottom. Well, if that was true, then, baby, she was primed to be a shooting star.
“You want us to help you pack?” Cara offered.
Emma drew on every ounce of pluck she possessed. “You know, why don’t you guys go grab a cup of coffee at the Daily Grind, I’ll be gone by the time you get back.”
“Are you sure?” Cara knitted her brow.
“Absolutely.”
Lauren already had hold of Cara’s arm. “Come on, let’s give her some space.”
After the door shut behind them, Emma fought the urge to sink to her knees and burst into tears. Instead, she recited the names of every strong woman of film she could think of as she pulled her suitcase from the closet and tossed it on the futon. “Lara Croft, Ilsa Lund, Elizabeth Bennet, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
She stuffed her clothes into the suitcase and switched to strong-minded actresses. “Susan Sarandon, Glenn Close, Bette Davis, Uma Thurman,” she said, raising her voice against the undulating waves tightening her stomach with spasms of dread. “Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Collins, Demi Moore.”
But even as she uttered the names of determined women who’d taken rejection and turned it into success, Emma feared that no matter what her mother had told her, she simply didn’t have what it took to be a star. She didn’t even have her mother’s star brooch to wish upon. Her touchstone was gone. She had nothing to keep her ground
ed.
Once her bags were packed, she looked around the dingy apartment they’d tried so hard to spruce up—bringing in braided rugs to hide the deep gouges in the ugly hardwood floors, caulking and painting over a bullet hole in one wall, hanging festive curtains over a window that looked out over a debris-filled alley, but it had been like putting lipstick on a pig, and the attempt came off looking sad and desperate. Emma hitched in a breath. God, she was going to miss this place.
She stepped to the door, bracing herself for any media types who might still be camped out, ready to duck her head and let loose a string of “no comments.” She unlocked the three deadbolts, and just as her hand touched the knob, a knock sounded.
Startled, she jumped back.
“NYPD, open up.”
The police? Emma stood on tiptoes to peer out the peephole. Sure enough, there was an NYPD badge being held up to it.
She opened the door.
Two burly, dark-haired cops in uniform stared at her, expressions neutral. “You Emma Parks?” the taller one asked.
“I am.”
“You’re under arrest.” The shorter cop dangled handcuffs. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
Alarm spread through her. What had she done? “What’s this all about, Officer?”
“Sexual assault charges, ma’am, brought against you by one Scott Miller. Now if you’ll turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
Not knowing what else to do, she complied. A chill of fear squeezed her heart as he clamped the cold metal handcuffs around her wrists and intoned, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights?”
“I do,” she whimpered.
They hauled her down the steps of the third-floor walkup, and when they hit the ground floor, the media converged on them at once, microphones thrust in her face, cameras rolling, dozens of people clamoring to speak to her.
And as the policemen stuffed her into the back of their squad car, Emma couldn’t help thinking that this was the most attention she’d ever received.