Black Ember

by Ruby Laska

  But as time went on, the inevitable happened: their lunches became less frequent, and she was not invited to be part of her stepfather’s children’s lives. Any dreams Caryn secretly had of siblings and big family Thanksgiving dinners dried up. When Georgia moved to New York, Caryn moved too, and by the time she had designed her first collection, her stepfather sent flowers and a note apologizing that he couldn’t attend in person. After that, they got together once or twice a year, usually when Randall was in New York, and when Georgia remarried five years ago—this time to a wealthy New York assemblyman with an eye on a senate run—Caryn promised herself that she’d never again allow herself to be lured into believing she might someday have a real dad.

  All of that changed last week when Georgia called from the assemblyman’s retreat in the Hamptons.

  “How’s Harry?” Caryn had asked politely. Her mother’s second husband, Harold Billings, could kindly be described as interesting, while the crueler wags had dubbed him Homely Harry. If he had a sense of humor, Caryn had missed it, but her mother seemed fond of him and he’d opened up entire new avenues for Georgia to enjoy the limelight. She’d even wondered out loud if she might not be perfectly suited to be the next First Lady of New York.

  “Fine, fine,” Georgia said. She sounded distracted, but maybe it was due to the hour: she’d called Caryn just as she was emerging from her morning yoga class. Caryn was walking to her office through Central Park, enjoying the morning sun filtering through the trees along the paths.

  “I’m looking forward to the gala,” Caryn said guiltily. “I’m sorry I’ve been putting off choosing a dress.”

  “That’s nice, dear, but that’s not why I’m calling. I’m afraid I have bad news. Your father is dying.”

  “Oh, no,” Caryn gasped, twenty years of memories of Randall surging in her heart. “I just spoke to him a month ago. He and Cleo were taking the kids to Bermuda. What happened?”

  “No, no, not Randall. Your real father. Buddy Travers.”

  The silence stretched on the phone line as Caryn absorbed the news. “Oh,” she finally said. “Well, thank God Randall is okay.”

  “Caryn Louise,” Georgia chided.

  “I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t mean it like that,” Caryn said, wincing. “It’s just, Buddy has never been a part of my life. I’ve never even met him. You always said he wasn’t worth my time.”

  Georgia had actually said a lot more than that: when Caryn was old enough to notice that other children had two parents, Georgia had breezily replied that she was busy finding Caryn a much better daddy than all the other kids had, to make up for the fact that the first one wasn’t any good—just as the week before, she had returned a faulty toaster to the store and replaced it with a fancier model.

  Georgia’s explanation had seemed perfectly reasonable to Caryn. By the time she was old enough to question what exactly had been wrong with the man her mother had chosen to have a baby with, she had also learned that when Georgia didn’t want to talk about a subject, wild horses weren’t going to change her mind. The few details she managed to get out of her—Buddy Travers was a womanizing charmer who ended up being a no-account drifter and was probably either dead or in jail by now—hadn’t exactly encouraged her to go looking for him.

  “Well.” Georgia’s voice sounded funny. “The thing is…I would hate for you to lose the opportunity to get to know him.”

  “Get to know him? But Mom, he’s a cheat and a liar and a drunk. He never once tried to contact me. He doesn’t even care that I’m alive. You always said it was his loss, not mine.”

  This time, the silence stretched even longer, until finally Caryn said “Mom? Are you still there?”

  “Caryn, darling, there are maybe one or two little insignificant things I didn’t tell you about your father.”

  Caryn braced herself, ready to hear that he was a convicted killer or a heroin dealer or any of a thousand other worst-case scenarios she had imagined whenever her curiosity got the better of her.

  “He, um…well, he did actually send you several letters. In the past. The very distant past.”

  “He what?” Caryn stopped so abruptly that a jogger nearly ran into her. She was standing on a little stone bridge over one of the paths, and she reached for the handrail for support. “Buddy tried to get in touch with me? And you never told me?”

  “He gave up all rights to you after your birth,” Georgia said defensively. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed all over again. Most of the letters I threw away without even reading.”

  “You—but—” A rush of emotion seemed to be taking the breath from Caryn’s chest. “How many times was this? How many letters did you throw away?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Caryn, don’t be dramatic. He stopped writing by the time you were in middle school. It’s not like he ever made anything of himself, either. He’s had the same stupid run-down bar for the last twenty years.” Georgia sounded cross, as though Caryn had been the one who’d interrupted her morning with a bombshell.

  “Wait a minute, Mom. You knew where he was all along?”

  “Well, yes, I’m sure I told you he was from a little dinky town in North Dakota. After he finally gave up on Hollywood, he went back home and bought a bar. I’ll text you the address and phone number, and you can give him a call. Only, sweetheart, please don’t let on that you know about his illness. I’m quite certain he doesn’t wish to talk about it.”

  “Have you talked to him?” Caryn snapped.

  “Mmm,” Georgia said. “Honey, I really have to run. Check your texts, okay? Love you.”

  Then the connection went dead and Caryn was left with a lot of unanswered questions.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As the bar slowly emptied out, Caryn mopped up spills and carried away empty glasses and tossed beer bottles in the recycling bin. She swept up spilled popcorn and nearly fell on a puddle, barking her shin on a chair, too tired even to stop and check to see if she was bleeding.

  Finally, after what felt like eight days rather than eight hours, Turk announced last call and the last few customers started heading out.

  “Opal,” Caryn said with a shaking voice. She had come here to learn about the man who’d given her life, but now that she was here—wearing the disguise of her alter ego, and a made-up name—she realized that she was here to learn about herself, too. And if she were ever going to find out what she was made of, she couldn’t quit now. “I know I didn’t do very well tonight, but please give me another chance. I’ll—I’ll do all the cleanup, and I’ll be back here tomorrow when it opens, and I’ll stay until it closes.”

  Opal frowned. The lines around her eyes looked deeper than they had earlier; her eyeliner had settled into the nest of wrinkles and her lipstick was worn away. “Tomorrow’s Friday,” she said. “And we’re bound to be busy again. But I’m not sure you’ve got another night in you. You know they’re hiring over at the Black Swan. Probably half a dozen other places, too—and for a lot more than you’ll make here.” She eyed Caryn’s pocket significantly, where the embarrassingly paltry tips were.

  “I…” Caryn’s voice wobbled and she realized she was on the verge of tears. Which wouldn’t do at all, especially since Turk was watching them with a smirk on his face. She cleared her throat and stood up taller. “I would prefer to work here. If you’ll just let me try one more time. You don’t have to pay me, I’ll be a—an apprentice—”

  “Are you crazy?” Opal scolded. “No wait, honey, don’t answer that, because clearly you are. Okay. You can try again tomorrow. If we get a few minutes, I’ll teach you some tricks. Only, you got to promise me that if you don’t get the knack of it, you’ll go apply at the Black Swan. I know the owner, I can put in a good word for you. Okay?”

  Caryn was overwhelmed by the older waitress’s kindness. After all, she’d done nothing but screw up tonight, probably losing money and customers. She’d always heard that people between the coasts were nicer, more trusting, than people in the bi
g cities. Well, maybe it was true. “Okay,” she said. “Thank you so much, Opal, for giving me a chance.”

  Opal chucked her gently on the shoulder. “You know, you’re not half as tough as you’re trying to be, girl. With all your metal and your ink and your….” Her voice trailed off as her gaze took in the cheap clothes and the studded accessories, stopping at her hair.

  “Listen, can I ask you a question? Did you just dye your hair recently? Maybe a home job?”

  Caryn touched her head defensively. To think that she’d actually thought she’d done a passable job with the scissors, standing in front of her mirror just last night. She could feel herself blushing. “Uh, well…”

  Opal dug in her apron, whose many pockets apparently held more than just her tips, and came out with a little compact which she flipped open. She held it for Caryn to see.

  Caryn gasped: her forehead and cheeks were streaked with brown rivulets. The dye must have leaked when she was perspiring, and now she looked like a tattooed Maori warrior. “Oh, no,” she moaned.

  “I should have said something earlier,” Opal said delicately, dipping into the apron again and coming up with a pack of tissues. She took one out and dunked it into her club soda before handing it over. Caryn accepted it gratefully and scrubbed at her face. Thankfully, the dye came off with a little elbow grease. “I just didn’t know if…I mean, nowadays, you girls, you got all these trends us older gals don’t know about.”

  Caryn let out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “That’s very nice of you, but I can’t imagine anyone doing this to themselves on purpose. I mean, I did dye my hair, but…”

  “I could take you to my hairdresser,” Opal said, touching her tall, teased updo. “She does wonders.”

  “Thanks, I’ll let you know,” Caryn said hastily.

  Right now, all she wanted was to sink into a bath at the first motel she could find. She handed back Opal’s mirror and returned to cleaning with renewed vigor. All the customers were gone now, except for the bachelor party boys, who’d thoughtfully collected all their empties on a tray and seemed just about ready to leave.

  As Caryn stacked the chairs on the tables and mopped the floors, Turk added up receipts and Opal loaded glasses into the dishwasher. Finally, the guys in back got up, stacked their own chairs—a bit unsteadily—and headed for the door.

  “See you tomorrow, Barracuda,” Turk called.

  “You need a lift, honey?” Opal asked.

  “No thanks,” Caryn said hastily. She would call for a cab and, with any luck, would be in bed within an hour. She went to the little staff alcove that served as an office to get her things.

  Her duffle bag was gone.

  Frantically, she searched the small space, which was jammed with file cabinets and fishing trophies and an ancient computer. The bag was nowhere to be found. Caryn chastised herself for not hiding it better, or asking to lock it up—she’d just assumed that everyone in North Dakota was as trustworthy as Opal.

  Her phone and wallet were in the duffle bag. There was almost a thousand dollars in cash, plus all her credit cards—and, worst of all, her driver’s license that identified her as the celebrity she’d never wanted to be. Caryn’s panic mounted as she realized just how much trouble she might be in: in the wrong hands, exposure was just a phone call away. She knew from experience just how fast the tabloids moved on a good tip, and her little adventure—her tawdry makeover, her stint as a waitress—would make for great press. If she were lucky, it would be reported as just another celebrity crack-up, like bald Britney or Lindsay’s underwear adventures—but tabloid reporters were notorious for scenting out stories, and it would be a miracle if none of them figured out her connection to Buddy.

  She couldn’t do that to her mother, or to Randall. And…though she hated admitting it, she couldn’t do that to Buddy. He might have been a terrible father, but the statute of limitations had probably run out sometime before her thirtieth birthday. He’d never sought fame, and she had no right to consign him to infamy.

  She ran back to the bar. “Did you guys happen to see my duffle bag?”

  “That pink thing you had back in the office?” Turk asked. “Not since you got here.”

  “Oh no, honey, you didn’t leave it out in the open, did you?” Opal asked, and Caryn felt embarrassed on top of her panic. “Sugar, you just can’t do that in a city like Conway. There’s all kinds of folks passing through here, and some are bound to be bad seeds.”

  With a start, Caryn realized that Opal thought she was from a place even more rural than this, that she was chalking her mistake up to inexperience and trust. A stab of guilt added to her dismay as she wondered what the kind older woman would think if she knew how Caryn had deluded her.

  “All my stuff was in there,” she said miserably. Which meant that all she had was her tips, and even in the middle of nowhere, she doubted she could get a motel room for thirty-two dollars.

  At the door, the bachelor party was laughing and jostling each other. But the tall, lanky one named Zane turned and studied her. Maybe it was her imagination, but he didn’t look nearly as drunk as the rest of them. He stared at her for a long moment, frowning as if he was having an argument with himself.

  “’Scuse me,” he finally said with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. But it sounds like you’ve got yourself in a little jam.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  He’d almost escaped. Two minutes earlier, and he’d be walking back to the ranch with the rest of them, enjoying a sky full of stars and a summer night breeze.

  Instead, he was stuck here with a hysterical female who looked like she’d escaped from a fantasy role-play online game. She wasn’t quite as young as she’d first appeared, with all that thick eyeliner and those ridiculous clothes, so she probably wasn’t a runaway. Which did nothing to explain why she was so clumsy as a waitress.

  But she was clearly in trouble, and as much as Zane wanted to walk away, he couldn’t. He’d done that too often in his old life—and when he left Arkansas to come to North Dakota, he had promised himself it was the last time he would run—ever.

  After helping the girl search every inch of the bar, he’d agreed to take care of her so Turk could drive Opal home. Turk had shot him a grateful look; Zane knew that the bartender was concerned for the older woman. In the eleven months that he’d lived at the ranch, he’d come to know quite a few details about the lives of the staff at Buddy’s—so he knew that Opal’s ankles swelled if she was on her feet too long, and that her husband needed help with his diabetes and Opal hated to leave him any longer than she had to. He also knew that Turk had a soft spot the size of Texas, despite being a decorated veteran and Harley rider, but he wisely kept that to himself.

  Now the bar was locked up tight, and he and Carrie were standing in the dirt parking lot with only the moon to reveal just how upset she was trying not to be.

  “I’ll be fine,” she insisted for the third or fourth time. “I’ll just walk back to town.”

  “It’s nearly two miles,” Zane protested.

  “You’re walking,” Carrie pointed out stubbornly.

  “Yeah, but my place is less than half a mile from here. Besides, what are you going to do when you get there? You don’t have any money, or phone, or anything.”

  “I’ll call someone collect. I’ll get money wired. I’ll stay in a—a hostel or something.”

  “A hostel?” Zane rolled his eyes, his frustration increasing. “Do you have any idea where you are? This isn’t Europe, and unless I’m mistaken, you’re not some spoiled rich girl on a lark, so let’s cut the crap and figure out how to actually solve this, okay?”

  She shot him a look that was hard to interpret—surprise and, interestingly, fear. Zane adjusted his impression: maybe she actually was on the run; maybe she had done something and was trying to escape the consequences. That would explain why she’d refused his offer to call the police.

  “Look, I’ve got a friend on the force,” he tried
again. “One of my roommates, actually. He’s a cop here in town. If you’re worried about—I mean, I’m sure I can try to get Cal to help. Discreetly, if you see what I’m saying. He got off work less than an hour ago, I could call him right now.”

  “No police!” Carrie said, looking panicked. “Please. I can’t—just don’t, okay?”

  “All right.” Zane didn’t like it, but the girl looked like she was ready to bolt if he pressed the point. There’d be time to get to the bottom of that later—or, better yet, someone else could get to the bottom of it if he could just talk some sense into her.

  For now, though, it wouldn’t solve anything to stand here in an empty parking lot arguing.

  “Look,” he sighed. “You might as well come back to my place.”

  Her expression turned part frightened and part wary. No doubt she was afraid he was going to take advantage of her vulnerability; their rowdiness back at the bar had probably convinced her that he and the others were a bunch of Neanderthals.

  “Look, I’m just trying to help. If it makes you feel better, you won’t be the only woman there. I’ve got two female roommates.”

  She seemed to relax fractionally, but she shook her head. “I don’t want to be a bother. It’s almost midnight. And besides, I’m sure your, um, roommates wouldn’t appreciate it.”

  He could see the skepticism in her voice when she said the word roommate. It wasn’t the first time someone had been surprised to find that seven adults were living together in a single building, but then again, they hadn’t seen the bunkhouse. Besides, given the housing crunch since Conway became a boomtown, there were people living in far more cramped conditions than they were—but wherever his little runaway had come from, apparently she didn’t know that.

  “Look, if you really care about being a bother, you’ll shut your mouth and start walking, or I’m going to have to spend my entire night trying to talk some sense into you.”

  When he saw her mouth tremble, he regretted his tone. In a gentler voice, he added, “You’ll feel better after you have a cup of coffee. And did you eat anything tonight?”