“Oh dear.” The attendant took one look at Tara then leaned over the boy, holding out the plastic garbage bag just in time.
Tara bent over it, gagging as she emptied the contents of her stomach.
“Gross.” The kid leaned as far away as possible.
When her spasms finally subsided, Tara squeezed her eyes shut, mortified and miserable. A single tear tracked down the side of her face. There goes my mascara.
“Are you all right now?” the attendant asked.
“I won’t be all right until I’m off this thing.” Tara groaned as she reached for her purse. Once she’d located a tissue and a breath mint, she leaned her head back against the seat.
The flight attendant left; the boy shrank away from her. Good, Tara thought with the tiniest bit of satisfaction as she took over the armrest. It was only fair that he’d be as miserable as she was. Selfish, seat-hogging kid.
Across the aisle a woman wrinkled her nose and turned aside. Tara’s face heated with embarrassment, but she still felt too sick to care much. She reached up, twisting the knobs, turning both fans on high and directing a blast of cool air directly toward her. Her carefully teased and perfected hairstyle blew out of place, but that didn’t really matter now. She wasn’t going to be seeing her friends in Boulder today—wasn’t going to be seeing anyone she knew.
The important thing was surviving until she could get off this plane and then finding someplace to go and some way to travel so she wouldn’t have to get right back on another one.
Two
Benjamin Whitmore pulled his duffel from the luggage carousel.
“Uncle Ben, Uncle Ben!”
He turned in time to hold his hands out for the six-year-old girl running straight for him.
“Cadie.” Ben leaned over, allowing her to throw her arms around his neck, so he could lift her. “Umph.” He staggered backward exaggeratedly. “Wow. You’ve grown a foot or two at least.”
“You should visit more,” his sister Ellen chided.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Ben set Cadie down.
“You are.”
He noticed the moisture in Ellen’s eyes and stepped forward to give her a hug. “Hey, Sis.”
Her arms tightened around him. “I’ve missed you, Benji.”
“I know.” He stepped back, a sheepish look on his face. “At least you’re moving a little closer.”
Ellen rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Denver is so much closer to Ohio. You’re the one who needs to move.”
“Nah. When your kids are older, you’ll be glad I live in the middle of nowhere. You can send them to me for the summer so they get that whole outdoor, farm-type experience.”
A wistful look crossed Ellen’s face. “Like we did.”
“I want to go to the farm,” Cadie said. She tugged on Ben’s hand. “How many horses do you have?”
Ben looked down at her. “None. I’ve got something even better.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Unicorns?”
“Uh—no. I’ve got—”
Someone bumped him from behind, and Ben lurched forward, nearly stepping on Cadie’s foot.
“Sorry,” he said, glancing over his shoulder toward the offender—a woman pushing her way toward the baggage claim, with a man wearing a shirt with an airline logo not far behind.
“I waited here over forty minutes,” she said, pointing a long, polished nail toward the belt where luggage emerged. “I stood here right in front, and my suitcase never arrived.”
“If you’ll go to that office over there—” The man pointed to a window on the far side of the carousels. “They can help you locate—”
“I already did,” the woman said. “And they wanted me to fill out a form. Paperwork isn’t going to do any good. What I need is someone to actually do something to find my suitcase. It’s got to be here somewhere. It didn’t just vanish.”
“I don’t really—” The airline employee broke off as the woman’s expression grew fierce. He ran his fingers through thinning hair. “What flight did you say?”
“Seven-sixty-nine from Los Angeles.”
“Looks like you’ve got the wrong carousel, ma’am.” He nodded toward the board listing flights. “There aren’t any arrivals from California on this one.”
“Of course not,” she huffed. “My plane landed over an hour ago. Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I need my suitcase. And I expect a night’s hotel to be covered, since I’m supposed to be in Denver instead of stuck in—”
“Well, that’s where it is.” The man smiled. “Your luggage must have gone on to Denver. Happens all the time when people miss their connecting flights.”
“I—didn’t—miss—my—flight,” the woman said, clearly enunciating each word.
Ben turned his body slightly so he had a better view of the unfolding drama. The redhead’s face was brighter than her hair, and her hazel eyes flashed angrily. He was glad he wasn’t the recipient of her wrath.
“The Denver airport is closed,” she said, drawing even more attention to the scene. “I’m stuck here, and I need my luggage!”
The employee stepped away from her, hands held out, palms toward the woman, as if to hold her back. “Lady, I haven’t heard that. I just barely started my shift when you caught me, but I’ll check it out. Yelling isn’t going to help anyone, though. It’s Christmastime. We all gotta be patient. And there’s a lot of kids around—” His gaze slid sideways toward Cadie, eyes large as she stared at the woman. “So let’s be nice.”
“It would be nice to have my belongings.” Her voice was like acid, and Ben noticed her flexing her fingers with those dagger nails.
Yikes. Weirdos all over—even here in good old Utah. He felt a sudden longing to get on the next plane and head back home to the peace he’d found on his own green acres in the rolling hills of Ohio.
“Let’s see what we can find out.” Without inviting her to come along or waiting to see if she did, the employee turned and walked away, flashing an apologetic look toward Ben as he passed by.
“Do you have any other suitcases?” Ellen asked, eyeing the duffel near Ben’s feet.
“Nope.” He took a step back as the woman strode past once more. He watched a second longer than he should have, noticing she wore one of the tightest, ugliest skirts—a fuchsia leopard print—he’d ever seen in his life.
Ellen noticed too—or at least where his gaze ended up. “Thought you’d sworn off women,” she said, a slight smirk on her face.
“I did. And that is exactly why.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later they finally made their way toward the central elevator. Cadie had needed to use the bathroom. Then she’d wanted a drink. Ben bought her an orange soda and was sorry three minutes later when she spilled it all down the front of her dress—the new dress, Ellen informed him, that she’d worn especially to greet him. It had taken another five minutes for Ellen to clean Cadie up in the bathroom and dry her tears.
“I left the difficult kids at home,” Ellen reminded him as they skirted the large floor map beneath the security entrance. Cadie lagged behind, dodging beneath the ropes into the mostly vacant lanes, hopping from country to country.
“You’re telling me we’re in for a long trip.”
Ellen nodded. “Though if you’ll trade off taking Cadie and Sam with you in the moving truck, I’ll keep Chloe with me. She’s going to be the hard one.”
“How big’s the U-Haul you rented?” Ben asked.
Ellen gave him a blank look. “No clue. Dallin took care of that his last trip home. That was his job, whereas I’ve had the minuscule task of getting the house sold and packing all our worldly goods into boxes—while being a single parent to three of the most active kids on the planet.”
“Hasn’t been a lot of fun?” Ben guessed.
“None at all.” Ellen sighed. “Though I’ve sure gained a new appreciation for parents who really are single. I cannot wait for Dallin to be a
round for dinners, tuck-ins, middle-of-the-night episodes, church—”
“I get the idea,” Ben said, grinning at his sister.
“South America. North America,” Cadie called, running from one to the other on the floor map. “Want to hear my song about continents and oceans?”
“At home,” Ellen said. “We’re going out to eat now and to see the lights, remember?”
Cadie frowned, and Ben was afraid she’d start to cry again. He knelt beside her, intending to listen before any tears could appear, but another sound interrupted them. He turned around and was surprised to see the woman from the luggage carousel. She sat at one of a few scattered tables near the elevator, her elbow on the table, head held in one hand as she spoke into her cell phone—much louder than necessary, Ben thought.
“No. I don’t have the fraud protection plan.” Her lips pressed together in an angry line as she listened to the person on the other end of the call. “I see it would have been a good idea, but now I just need to cancel the card.” The nails of her free hand drummed impatiently on the table. “Twenty-four hours? Do you have any idea the charges that could be racked up in that amount of time?”
Ben tried to look away but was too entertained by the exasperated redhead clenching her teeth and rolling her eyes. Beside him, Cadie stared openly too. Only Ellen had made it to the elevator and stood waiting for them.
“I told you I don’t have the protection plan. So twenty-four hours is a problem for me.” The woman stood and began pacing back and forth in front of the table.
Ben turned back to Cadie. “Sing me your oceans song.”
“It’s continents and oceans,” she said brightly. “Did you know there are seven—”
“Fine. Wait the twenty-four hours,” the woman behind them shouted. “But I need another card within the hour. I’m starving and tired. My luggage is lost, and I’m in an unfamiliar airport in a strange city.”
Not my problem, Ben thought. She looks old enough that she ought to be able to keep track of her purse. He forced his attention to Cadie, singing her way through the oceans of the world.
“What other option would that be? That rotten kid on the plane stole my wallet, so you tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
Wouldn’t ask that question quite that way if I were you.
Cadie finished her song.
“Ben?” Ellen called. Behind her the empty elevator closed. “On the way over I stopped at the Garden and put our name on the list, so we should probably get going.”
“I want to speak to someone else—someone in this country,” the woman raged on.
Ben stood just as she stopped pacing. “Hello. Hello?” Her voice escalated to a frantic pitch. “How dare you—” Holding her cell phone out in front of her, she began punching numbers then stopped, holding the phone to her ear. A second passed. Her voice plummeted to a whisper. “Dead.” Looking utterly defeated, she walked to the table and sank into the chair again. Leaning forward, she rested her head in both hands.
Ben started to walk past but hesitated as he saw her back tremble. Cadie slipped her hand into his.
“We should help her,” his niece whispered. “Mom says we should help everyone—even if they aren’t nice.”
Ben’s lip curved up at this bit of information. “Ellen always was a goody two-shoes.”
Cadie’s brow wrinkled as she looked up at him. “Doesn’t everyone have two shoes?”
“Yep. They sure do.” Nearly too late Ben remembered he had to watch what he said for the next few days. “What I meant was, your mom’s always been a good girl. When we were kids, she was always nice to everyone, while most of the time, I was in trouble.”
“Mom told me,” Cadie said, sounding much older than her six years.
“Really?” Ben’s eyebrows rose. He wondered if he was the bad example used every time Ellen’s kids did something wrong. Don’t do that, Sam. You’ll end up like Uncle Benji. He tried but couldn’t imagine Ellen saying that. She was too nice.
Raising his hand, Ben looked over at his sister and motioned for her to wait another minute. “Your mom’s right,” he reluctantly admitted to Cadie. “We should probably follow her example.” But he wanted nothing more than to walk away and pretend he’d never seen this woman, never overheard her plight.
That’s whatcha get for eavesdropping Benji, he could hear his mother saying.
This one’s for you, Mom. He remembered one of the many oft-told tales his mother had shared during his growing-up years. It was about President Spencer W. Kimball helping a woman and her young child at an airport when others looked on and were annoyed instead of compassionate. Years later, President Kimball had received a letter from the woman’s son—the son she’d been pregnant with during that difficult day—explaining how his mother had investigated and eventually joined the Church because of President Kimball’s kindness.
Not likely that’ll happen today. Ben looked at the mop of red hair slumped over the table. He glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed she seemed upset. Several people looked her way as they passed then looked away, hurrying by with uncomfortable expressions on their faces. Typical. And he was no better if he ignored her too.
With an inward sigh, Ben gathered his courage and stepped toward her table.
Three
“Excuse me, but I couldn’t help overhearing . . .”
Sure, you couldn’t, Tara thought. Just like you couldn’t help staring when I walked past you by the baggage claim.
“Yes?” She raised her head and looked at him, though she was already well aware of her would-be rescuer. Probably in his early thirties, sort of tall, brownish hair, faded loose-fit jeans, and a plaid flannel shirt. He reminded her a little of the loggers she’d seen on occasion in Washington. Lumberjack man. My hero.
“I’m sorry . . . about your flight . . . and your wallet,” Flannel Shirt stammered. He pulled out his own wallet. “If you need a place to stay I could—”
“You can sleep on our couch. It’s bouncy. We jump on it all the time. I’m Cadie.” The little girl standing beside Flannel Shirt stepped forward, her hand held out.
“Benji?” A woman joined them.
Benji? He’s named after a dog? Tara nearly jumped when the little girl grabbed her hand, pulling it up and down. Sticky—great. As quickly as possible she pulled away.
“This is my sister Ellen,” Flannel Shirt said, introducing the woman who’d joined them. “And I’m Ben.” He turned to his sister. “This lady’s wallet was stolen, and she’s sort of stranded here.”
Sort of? There’s nothing sort of about it, Tara thought. Who talks like that anyway? And “stranded” seems a little mild for the day I’ve had. More like sucked into the very jaws of he—
“She’s gonna sleep on our couch, Mommy,” Cadie said, jumping up and down. “And we can feed her pancakes for breakfast.”
Tara fully expected the woman to refute her daughter’s invitation, but to her surprise she—Ellen—turned to Tara with a smile on her face. “Of course we’d love to have you stay with us. Anything we can do to help.”
Flannel Shirt—Ben—suddenly looked uneasy.
“Maybe she’d be more comfortable at a hotel nearby,” he said. “After all, she’s going to have to catch another plane to get home.”
The thought of another plane ride made Tara feel as if she might be sick—again. But a hotel did sound better than sleeping on a bouncy couch in a stranger’s house. And she was already annoyed with the way the guy talked about her—as if she wasn’t right in front of him. She stood up as a reminder.
“I’m Tara.” From somewhere she dug up a smile for the trio. “I appreciate your offer,” she said, meaning it. After all, what else was she supposed to do at this point? She grabbed a pen and one of her business cards from her purse. “If you’ll write down your name and address, I’ll mail you a check for the hotel as soon as I get home.”
The tightness left Ben’s face, replaced by relief. Tara felt slightly insu
lted. Though she wasn’t as young as she used to be, she still prided herself on looking good, and it was a rare man who didn’t enjoy her company.
“Where is home?” Ellen asked.
“LA,” Tara said as Ben leaned over the table, scribbling his information on her card.
Ben nodded his head as if that explained something. “Ah . . . Big city girl.” He returned the card and pen to Tara.
Ellen shot him a look that said she thought he was an idiot. Despite her weariness and earlier irritation, Tara found herself starting to be amused by these two.
“Is this your first time in Salt Lake?” Ellen asked.
“Yes,” Tara said. First and last. “I was going to Denver, but a storm shut down the airport, and we were rerouted here. Only my luggage appears to have gone on to Colorado—or possibly Alaska. No one seems to know.”
“We’re going to Denver,” Cadie said, beginning a new round of jumping. “Our dad’s already there, and we got a new house. We have to move ’cause Grandpa died, and Daddy’s got to do his work for him now. Uncle Ben’s gonna drive our big truck with all our stuff in it.”
“I’m sure that’s more than Tara wanted to know,” Ben said. His wallet was still in his hand, his fingers on a credit card. He glanced around. “Maybe the easiest thing would be to find an ATM and give you the cash—”
“There’s really no need for you to stay at a hotel,” Ellen said. “Our house isn’t that far from here. And if you’re missing all your luggage too, you’ll need some clothes, a toothbrush, dinner.”
“Leave it to the Relief Society to bring a casserole into this.” Ben rolled his eyes at his sister.
“Benji!” Ellen looked shocked. “I’m just trying to—”
“Help. I know,” Ben said. “So am I, and clearly Tara would prefer a restful night’s sleep at a hotel to the craziness at your house. I mean, you’re moving the day after tomorrow.”
“So?” Ellen asked. “Sure it’s a little chaotic at our place, but that doesn’t matter. I know I’d sure hate to be by myself in a strange city.” She grinned at Tara. “Men. What do they know about what a woman wants?”
My Lucky Stars Page 2