LOW PRESSURE

by BROWN SANDRA

  Their viable options were dwindling, but neither had the heart to say so out loud. “Give him my best,” Steven said.

  “I’ll be sure to. He’s napping now. Bellamy’s sitting with him. I just stepped out to phone you.”

  He could tell she had more to say, although for several seconds a hollow silence was all that came through the line. Then, “We flew down in a private plane.”

  That statement, while seemingly innocuous, vibrated with a portentous note. Steven waited.

  “Bellamy chartered it. Guess who the pilot was.”

  Steven’s gut clenched. “Please tell me you’re not about to say—”

  “Denton Carter.”

  He placed his elbow on the bar, bent his head toward his hand, and rubbed his forehead with the pads of his fingers in an attempt to ward off the migraine this information would no doubt bring on.

  “I tried to dissuade her,” Olivia continued. “She was determined.”

  “For crissake, why?”

  “Something about getting closure, mending the past. You know how your stepsister is.”

  “Ever the mediator.”

  “She wants everything to be . . . nice.”

  “Was he?”

  “Nice? No. No happier to see us than we were to see him.”

  “Then why did he agree to fly you?”

  “That old man who owns the airfield—”

  “He’s still alive?”

  “He arranged it, apparently without telling Dent who’d booked the charter. When he realized who we were, he was as unpleasant and arrogant as ever. There’s no love lost on either side.”

  “Did he know about Bellamy’s book?”

  “According to her, no. But he might have been pretending, or being obtuse. Who knows? We have to fly back with him when we’re finished here.” Steven heard a sniff and realized just how upset his mother was. “I never wanted to see that boy again.”

  She continued to bemoan what an untenable situation it was. Steven understood how she felt. His emotions ran the gamut from dismay to alarm to anger, as they’d been doing since the day Low Pressure was published. His anxiety had worsened when Bellamy’s identity and the biographical nature of the book became public knowledge.

  William Stroud, his business partner, tapped him on the shoulder and signaled that it was time to open. The receptionist had moved into place inside the door. Wait-staff were scattered throughout the dining room, putting finishing touches on the table settings. The sommelier was standing by to answer questions about the extensive wine list.

  “Mother,” Steven said, cutting in, “I’m sorry, but I must go. We’re about to open for dinner.”

  “I’m sorry, I should have realized—”

  “No need to apologize. Naturally you’re upset. Bellamy shouldn’t have subjected you to seeing Denton Carter, not on top of everything else.”

  “She’s apologized a thousand times, Steven. She never intended for anyone to know that her book was based on . . . fact.”

  “I’m sure her apologies are sincere, but what good are they? She chose to write the book. She risked her identity becoming known. But she also risked exposing the rest of us. That was very unfair.”

  “She realizes that now,” Olivia said around a heavy sigh. “But in any case, it’s done.”

  “Yes, it’s done. But the last thing you needed was another reminder in the form of Dent Carter. Put it out of your mind and focus on Howard. Don’t forget to give him my regards.”

  He hung up before more could be said, then moved to the end of the bar to make room for eager first arrivals. Unobtrusively, he asked one of the bartenders to pour him a vodka on the rocks. He watched the dining room fill, watched the bar become three people deep. After the initial flurry of activity, William joined him and must have discerned from the drink and his broodiness that the recent telephone call had rattled him.

  “Your stepfather took a downward turn?”

  Steven related the latest about Howard’s condition. “That’s bad, but there’s more. Denton Carter has now entered the picture.” William knew the history, so there was no need to explain or elaborate on why that was disturbing. “At Bellamy’s invitation, no less.”

  Steven told him how the reunion had come about. William shook his head in disbelief. “Why on earth would she contact him now? Since leaving New York and returning to Texas, she’s suspended all the publicity for her book and virtually disappeared from the public eye. Why is she stirring things up again?”

  “For the life of me, I don’t know.”

  Concerned, William asked, “What are you going to do?”

  “What I’ve been doing most all my life.” Steven tossed back the remainder of his drink. “Damage control.”

  Bellamy guessed Dent had been watching for the limo from inside the building. Even before the car glided to a halt, he was there, beating the chauffeur to open the rear door. As soon as she alighted, he brandished the copy of Low Pressure in her face.

  “I want to know why in the name of God you wrote this damn thing.”

  She wondered if his bristling anger was a good sign, or bad. Good, she supposed, because it indicated that he’d told her the truth when he claimed not to know anything about her novel, which made it unlikely that he was the one who’d sent her a rat wrapped in silver tissue paper.

  But he was irate, and she needed to defuse him before attention was drawn to them and someone recognized her. She’d returned to Texas to get out of the spotlight. So far she’d succeeded.

  She walked around him and entered the terminal. “I apologize for not calling you as I left the hospital. It slipped my mind.” Noticing the tables near the snack bar, she said, “I’ll wait over there while you do whatever it is you have to do before takeoff. Let me know when you’re ready.”

  She started in that direction, but this time he sidestepped, blocking her path. “Don’t brush me off. I want to know why you wrote this.”

  She glanced around self-consciously. “Will you please lower your voice?”

  “To make money? Daddy’s fortune isn’t enough for you? Or did your husband blow through your inheritance?”

  “I’m not going to talk to you about this, not in a public place, and not with you yelling in my face.”

  “I want to know—”

  “Now isn’t the time, Dent.”

  Maybe it was her raised voice and sharp tone, or perhaps the use of his name, or he could have seen the tears start in her eyes and that made him realize that she was upset and had returned alone.

  He backed away, shot a glance out the window toward the departing limo, then came back to her and stated the obvious. “Your parents aren’t with you.”

  “Daddy was checked into the hospital. Olivia stayed with him.” He said nothing to that and she took advantage of his momentary calm. “I’ll be waiting over there.”

  She went around him and didn’t even look back to see if he was following. Angry as he was, he might take off without her, leaving her stranded and forced to return to Austin on a commercial flight. That would be all right, too. In fact, it would probably be best.

  As Olivia had remarked several times throughout the day, reconnecting with him after all these years had been a mistake. Bellamy had thought it necessary to her peace of mind, but now she regretted not having taken Olivia’s advice to leave well enough alone. She’d made another enemy.

  At the dispensing machines, she filled a paper cup with ice and Diet Coke and sat down at one of the tables, relieved that no one else was currently in the snack bar area. The day had been emotionally draining. Her nerves and emotions were raw. She needed a few moments of quiet in order to reinforce herself before the inevitable clash with Dent.

  Through the large windows, she watched as he went through his preflight check with her book tucked under his arm. She knew nothing about airplanes, but his was white with blue trim and had two engines, one on each wing. He oversaw the fueling of it and checked something on the left wing.
He squatted down to inspect the tires and landing gear. Standing, he dusted off his hands and walked around the wing to the tail section. All his motions were practiced and efficient.

  How old was he now? Thirty-six? Thirty-seven?

  Two years older than Susan would have been.

  Bellamy had been curious to see how the years had treated him, if he had developed a paunch, if he’d gone bald, if he was letting himself settle comfortably into middle age. But he bore no drastic signs of aging.

  His light brown hair was still thick and unruly. At the corners of his eyes were squint lines from staring into the sun through cockpit windshields for the better part of his life. Maturity—and no doubt years of hard living and late hours—had made his face thinner and more angular. But he was no less attractive now than he’d been at eighteen, when he’d made her tongue-tied and self-conscious of her acne and braces.

  Check complete, he gave the ground crew a thumbs-up, then, in a long and purposeful stride, walked toward the building. A gust of wind accompanied him inside, causing the young women behind the reception counter to stop what they were doing and watch appreciatively as he impatiently jerked his necktie back into place and smoothed it down over a torso that was still trim and flat. He removed his sunglasses, carelessly raked his fingers through his windblown hair, then made his way over to where Bellamy was waiting.

  He got himself a cup of coffee and brought it with him to the table. As he sat down across from her, he dropped the book onto the table. It had the heft of an anvil when it landed.

  For a momentous amount of time, he just stared at her, still seething. His gray-green eyes she remembered. Flecked with brown spots, they were the color of moss. Those qualities were familiar. The anger in them was new.

  At last, he said, “He’s bad off?”

  “Daddy? Very. His oncologist prescribed another round of chemotherapy, but it’s so debilitating he and Olivia are wondering if it’s worth it. Either way, the doctor thought he was too weak to return home tonight.”

  “More chemo might help.”

  “No,” she said softly. “It won’t. With or without it, he’s going to die soon.”

  He looked away and shifted uneasily in his chair. “I’m sorry.”

  She took a sip of her Coke and waited until he was looking at her again before saying, “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”

  He ran his hand over his mouth and down his chin. “Gloves off? Okay. It’s a shame anybody has to go out like that, but your daddy never did me any favors.”

  “And vice versa.”

  “What did I ever do to him? Oh, wait. If I need to know, I can just read your book. It will enlighten me.” He gave the book an angry poke.

  “If you read it through—”

  “I read enough.”

  “—you know that the character patterned after you—”

  “Patterned after? You did all but use my name.”

  “—comes across as a victim, too.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He’d been leaning across the table toward her, but after that succinct statement, he flung himself against the back of his chair and stretched out his legs, not even apologizing when his foot bumped hers beneath the table.

  “Why’d you dredge it up?”

  “Why do you care?” she fired back.

  “You have to ask?”

  “It happened a long time ago, Dent. It impacted your life for what, a few weeks? A couple of months? You moved on, went on with your life.”

  He made a scoffing sound.

  “Do you have a family?”

  “No.”

  “You never married?”

  “No.”

  “You own your own airplane.”

  “Working toward owning it.”

  “You’re obviously still close with Mr. Hathaway.”

  “Yeah. Until today. Gall is currently every name on my shit list.”

  “He didn’t tell you it was us?”

  “No. Not even when he gave me your check.”

  “The name Bellamy Price didn’t mean anything to you?”

  “I only looked to see if the amount was right.”

  “I thought you might have seen me on TV.”

  “You’ve been on TV?”

  She gave a small nod.

  “Talking about that?” He hitched his chin toward the book on the table.

  Again, she answered with a nod.

  “Great. That’s just great.” He raised the cup of coffee to his mouth, but set it back on the table without drinking from it and pushed it aside so hard that coffee sloshed out.

  “For several weeks, there was a lot of media coverage.” In a murmur, she added, “I don’t know how you missed it.”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  Nothing was said for a full minute. People drifting through the lobby for one reason or another moved on without coming into the snack area, as though sensing the hostility between them and affording them privacy to sort it out. Each time Bellamy glanced toward the women working the counter, she caught them watching her and Dent with ill-concealed curiosity.

  It was he who finally broke the charged silence. “So why’d you book a charter with me? You could have got your daddy down here some other way. Private jet. You didn’t need me and my lowly little Cessna.”

  “I wanted to see how you’d fared. I hadn’t heard anything about you since the airline . . . thing.”

  “Ah! So you know about that?”

  “It made news.”

  “I know,” he said drily. “You gonna write a book about that, too?”

  She gave him a look.

  “I can supply you with lots of material, A.k.a. Let’s see.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “How about the time the young widow chartered me to fly her to Nantucket? Long way from here. By the time we got to the Massachusetts coast, it was a dark and stormy night. Nobody got murdered, but the lady tried her best to fuck me to death.”

  Bellamy flinched at the word, but refused to let him rile her, which she knew was his intention. Keeping her features schooled, and with deliberate patience, she said, “I hired you because I wanted to learn if you’d read my book and, if you had, what your reaction to it was.”

  “Well, now you know. Cost you two-point-five grand plus fuel costs to find out. Was it worth it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I want my passengers to feel like they get their money’s worth. The widow sure as hell did.” He gave her a goading grin, which she ignored. Then his grin reversed itself and he swore under his breath. “If Gall thinks he’s getting his broker’s fee off this charter, he’s sadly mistaken.”

  “Maybe he didn’t tell you because—”

  “Because he knew I’d say no.”

  “Because he thought it would be good for you to see us.”

  “How could it possibly have been good for me?”

  “It gave us all an opportunity to mend fences.”

  “Mend fences.”

  “Yes. To put it behind us. To forget—”

  “Forget?” He leaned forward again, this time with such angry impetus he made the table rock. “That’s what I’ve been doing for the past eighteen years. At least it’s what I’ve been trying to do. You said it happened a long time ago. Well, not long enough, lady. Not long enough for me to put it behind me. To forget it. To have everybody else forget it. And now you, you come along and write your freaking book about that Memorial Day—”

  “Which was published as fiction. I never intended—”

  “—and the whole ugly business is out there again for everybody in the world to gnaw on. If you wanted to write a story, fine. Why didn’t you make one up?” He thumped his fist on the book. “Why did you have to write this story?”

  She resented having to account to him and let him know it by matching his anger. “Because I want to forget it, too.”

  He gave a bark of humorless laughter. “Funny way of forgetting, writing it all down.”

  “
I was twelve years old when it happened. It had a dramatic effect on me. I overcame a lot of it, but I needed to expunge it.”

  “Expunge?” He raised a brow. “That’s a five-dollar word. Did you use it in your book?”

  “I needed to write it all down so it would become something tangible, something I could then wad up and throw away.”

  “Now you’re talking. Be my guest.” He gave the book another shove closer to her. “You can start with this copy. Pitch it in the nearest trash can.” He stood up and turned toward the door, saying over his shoulder, “Let’s go.”

  “Do you see . . .? Dent? Are we okay?”

  Those were the first words his passenger had uttered since she’d climbed aboard. In case she needed to talk to him during the flight, he’d instructed her on the use of the headset. “All you gotta do is plug this into here, and this into here.” He demonstrated with the cords attached to the headset. “Put the mike near your mouth, like this.” He moved it to where it was almost touching her lower lip. “And talk. Got it?”

  She nodded, but he figured it didn’t matter if she understood or not; she wouldn’t have anything to say. Which was fine with him.

  But now, about twenty minutes into their forty-minute flight, they had encountered some light turbulence and she was speaking to him in an anxious voice. He turned so he could see into the cabin. She was gripping the arms of her seat and staring anxiously out the window. Heat lightning was showing up on the western horizon, revealing a bank of thunderclouds. They were flying parallel to them, but she was on edge.

  He was well aware of the weather system, knew from consulting the radar where it was and the direction and speed at which it was moving. He had filed his flight plan accordingly. “Nothing to worry about,” he said into his mike. “Those storms are miles away and won’t amount to much anyway.”

  “I just thought . . . maybe we could take another route?”

  “I filed a flight plan.”

  “I know but . . . Couldn’t we fly farther away from the storms?”

  “We could. But I’d rather dodge a thunderstorm than have an MD80 that doesn’t know I’m there fly up my ass.” He turned around so she could see his face instead of the back of his head. “But that’s just me.”

  She gave him a drop-dead look, yanked the cords from the outlets on the wall near her chair, and removed her headset. He focused his attention on the job at hand, but when the turbulence became even rougher, he looked back to check on her. Her eyes were closed and her lips were moving. She was either praying or chanting. Or maybe cursing him.