Seems Like Old Times

by Joanne Pence

  Seems Like Old Times

  by Joanne Pence

  Copyright 2012 Joanne Pence

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. This book may not be resold or uploaded for distribution to others.

  This is a work of fiction. Any referenced to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Table Of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The low-lying redwood and glass buildings of Miwok High stood on the opposite side of the creek. As Lee Reynolds, news anchor on a national cable television network, pulled into the parking lot she saw that the school was empty, the gates shut. She hadn't been back here since she'd left town during the summer following her high school graduation, seventeen years earlier.

  She got out of the car. The door slamming shut was like a rifle crack in the quiet. A wooden, Japanese-style, arced footbridge crossed over the creek to the school buildings, and along its banks, weeping willows bowed their branches.

  Lee stepped toward the bridge, then stopped. A part of her wanted to hurry away, warned her that being here was playing Russian roulette with her memories. But another, stronger part, pushed her closer to the school, and she crossed over the rippling waters of the creek.

  The air was unnaturally still as if, could she but listen hard enough, she'd hear the bustling and laughter of students past and present, hear whispers of secrets shared and promises broken.

  A lone bicycle rider cut in front of her, dropped his blue bike off at the bicycle rack, climbed over the cyclone fence surrounding the school and disappeared between the buildings. Amused, Lee watched his every movement, wondering what could possibly cause a teen age boy to break into his school grounds on a Saturday afternoon. Thoughts of burglary and vandalism came to mind because of stories she heard every day living in Manhattan, but she quickly dismissed them. This was Miwok, California, after all, a small rural town forty miles north of San Francisco. The boy had probably forgotten a homework assignment.

  She wasn’t about to hop a fence. As she turned to leave, her gaze caught the blue bicycle.

  Tony Santos had a bike that color....

  She shuddered, then slid her hands into the pockets of her linen jacket and began to stroll along the dirt path that circled the outside perimeter of the school.

  She glanced back at the bike once more, wistful yet surprised at how sharply her memories had returned. The first time she'd ever seen Tony he was standing beside his bike, right about where the boy left his. Lee had been waiting for her best friend, Cheryl McConnell. She was fifteen, a sophomore, and Tony was the same. He'd been bending over the bicycle rack working the combination lock. As he yanked the lock and chain off his bike, he noticed her watching him and straightened, allowing the chain to hang against his long legs. Then he smiled.

  She shook her head slightly at the memory. He'd burst into her quiet world with all the charged energy and motion of a sonic boom. He had charm. She'd never forget his charm. 0r his independence. Or his knowledge of the world beyond Miwok. She'd envied that knowledge with all her heart, and had ached to see that world, away from Miwok, away from her widowed mother, and to become a part of it.

  She'd heard about Tony since the first day he showed up in class, which wasn't surprising in a school of only three hundred students. He was Mexican and no other Mexican kids went to Miwok High. Most lived inside the town limits on the other side of the valley and went to Drake, an older, far larger school. But Tony Santos' father worked and lived out at the Circle Z Ranch, so he was in Miwok's school district.

  The other kids said he was quiet. Maybe he didn't know English, they snickered, and he didn't seem to have any money. They decided his father probably cleaned the stables and that Tony Santos was, in short, a nobody.

  How pompous those kids were. And she was one of the worst. How rudely she'd stared at him there, at the school's entrance.

  Thin and lanky, he seemed to be all arms, legs and feet. His black hair was straight and shiny, and the forelock that fell as he bent over the bike, reached past his eyes. A high, narrow nose flared slightly at the nostrils; deep set brown eyes peered under arched brows; and a finely shaped mouth curved upward. His skin was a light olive tone, yet shades darker than her own. As her stare continued, his smile faded, and he stared back, his chin lifting arrogantly.

  He took a step toward her. The bicycle chain still hung from his fingers. She stiffened. She'd heard Mexican kids were always fighting and getting into trouble with the law. At his next step she jumped back, ready to run.

  He froze, then turned his back to her as he lifted his book bag onto his shoulders. Sliding the bike off the rack, he swung one leg over it in a smooth, graceful motion, then, standing as he pedaled, he rode right past her through the open gate, never meeting her gaze. He reached the street and sped down it.

  Tony Santos...

  She felt a chill. Ghosts of the past really must dwell here, she thought. Either that or she was getting cold walking around out here.

  She couldn't believe how far she'd walked. She'd reach the backside of the school, past the classrooms and in view of the playing fields. The grounds were enormous, almost like those of a private, rural college or university. Swathed in lawns they included a field for football and another for baseball.

  When had she stopped going to baseball games?

  The chain linked backstop, shaped like a giant bustle, jutted into the sky and drew her toward it.

  Her gaze drifted from the pitcher's mound, to the diamond, the outfield fence, then back to the stands and the announcer's booth. Something about a baseball field, even when it was empty, echoed the crack of a bat, the roaring cheers of a crowd--her crowd, her old friends--filling the bench seats.

  She'd sat untold hours in those stands watching Tony. She could almost see him once again, looking slender but strong in his blue and white uniform, standing at home plate his knees slightly bent, leaning forward at the waist, elbows out, a powerful grip on the baseball bat held high over his right shoulder. A royal blue cap, a big, white "M" on its crown shaded eyes that stared unflinchingly at the pitcher.

  She turned to go home. The image faded, but the memory of the boy lingered. She bowed her head, her pulse drumming, not believing that after so many years the remembrance could be so sharp. Or so painful.

  Chapter 2

  The small, northern California town of Miwok was abuzz with the news that its most famous daughter, TV newscaster Lee Reynolds, was back. People sat on their front porches or walked along the si
dewalks and peered hard into any unfamiliar car that passed by, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elegant blonde.

  The town lay nestled in a valley, separated from the Pacific by the coast range mountains. The May air was crisp, as if the ocean winds had whipped over the mountains to brush away any soot or grime and leave the homes, gardens, businesses and parks clean and sparkling.

  This was how Lee remembered Miwok--small, one and two-story clapboard houses, ringed with land, and a horse or two in a nearby pasture.

  On CABN-TV Lee shared the anchor position of the primetime news program, Evening Newscene, with Rick Archer. She had cut her teeth studying Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, and other top women journalists’ interviewing techniques. The years of hard work and study were paying off. Her latest contract, plus the chauffeur and car the network sent to pick her up and take her home to her Park Avenue condo each day, proved it. Behind the scenes, she was working to topple Archer. She gave him another year, max.

  She would never have returned to Miwok at all except that four months ago her mother, Judith, had passed away from a sudden heart attack. Now, the time had come to do the job she’d been putting off ever since: to clear out and sell the house.

  Her original plan had been to simply hire someone to go through the place, fix what needed fixing, donate whatever was useful, and throw the rest away. By also hiring a realtor to sell it, she wouldn’t have had to set foot outside New York City. Her aunt Miriam, however, had insisted that Lee personally go through her mother’s belongings to see if there weren’t keepsakes or other things she wanted.

  Lee doubted it. She and her mother hadn’t had a civilized conversation since she'd left home at age eighteen. Truth be told, they had never talked much before that, either. The possibility that there was anything in Judith Reynolds’s house for Lee other than bad memories was remote to nonexistent. But she loved her aunt. Miriam Dailey was the only person in the world who could still tell her what to do.

  o0o

  Miriam descended the beige-carpeted steps from the guest room to the first floor of her dead sister-in-law’s house. Her brother Jack’s house, truth be told. But Jack had died so many years before, thirty come next winter, that she’d almost forgotten what it was like when he lived here. When it was a happy home. No, that wasn't quite right. When Jack was alive, there was nothing happy about his and Judith's marriage.

  Miriam had arrived from San Diego two days earlier to freshen up the house a bit before Lisa--or Lee, as her niece insisted on calling herself now--arrived. Also, she wasn't exactly sure what she'd find here, even though, immediately after Judith's death, Lee had paid a cleaning service to shut down the house, throw away all open food containers, garbage, and the like.

  Miriam understood well how hard it was for Lee to come back home--and how very necessary. Last night, Miriam had braced herself for Lee's reaction to being here--tears, anger, or simply sadness. But Lee showed none of that. Whatever she felt walking through the cold, silent house filled with too many memories, she'd kept hidden. Claiming jet lag, she'd soon retired to her old room. Miriam decided not to press her. Lee was the most self-contained person she knew.

  This morning, Lee was collected and business-like. Only a too-bright look to her eyes, and darkness beneath them, gave a hint as to the kind of night she'd spent. After hours of sorting through her mother's paperwork, insurance forms, bank statements, real estate, and stock certificates, she had to get away for awhile, and had taken a drive. Miriam let her go alone. There were times when company wasn't called for.

  "Did you have a nice ride, Lisa?" Miriam sang out as cheerfully as possible when her foot reached the bottom step.

  Lee was standing in the living room by the front windows. The afternoon sun, beaming in through half-open aluminum once-white mini-blinds, cast a warm glow on her. Even Miriam was struck by Lee’s classic beauty, and how she’d learned, in New York City, to enhance it. Her wheat blond hair was streaked with platinum and flax now, and she wore it pulled back from her face in a fancy bun--what Lee called a "chignon." Her hair that way reminded Miriam of a young Grace Kelly.

  "I was going to surprise you," Miriam continued, forcing a jovial tone, "with a big dinner, but now you’re just going to have to help--"

  Lee turned around so that her aunt could see the iPhone against her ear. She smiled and went on talking.

  "New York already?" Miriam mouthed, then rolled her eyes and made her way into the kitchen.

  When the phone call ended, Lee headed for the kitchen to find her aunt. She stopped short at the doorway. Everything was eerily familiar, as if she'd last been here ten weeks ago, not ten years ago. The green Formica countertops, the white and green striped wallpaper, the antiquated avocado Frigadaire, the matching Magic Chef electric range. All the same, yet somehow smaller, shabbier.

  "I'm making some coffee," Miriam said with a pleasant smile. Tall and big-boned, with a nose too long and a mouth too wide, Miriam had lively hazel eyes and dyed red hair that she wore short and spiked. She regularly jogged to keep her weight down, and was darkly tanned from spending so much time on the beach or hiking the hills around San Diego. She had a vibrant personality that made those who knew her come, over time, to regard her as nothing less than beautiful. "Want to join me?"

  "Sure," Lee replied. Bracing herself, she entered the room.

  An odd feeling enveloped her as she watched her aunt retrieve two cups from the cabinet and wash them. The figure in this small kitchen could have been another: her mother seated at the table, smoking, drinking coffee, or simply staring out the window at the oak laden hills beyond.

  The bitterness the image evoked didn’t surprise her, but the nostalgia that came with it did. That wasn’t what she was here for.

  As Miriam filled a carafe with water and poured it into the Mr. Coffee, Lee found the coffee filters and slid the coffee canister closer to her on the counter. She opened it. "There must be two pounds of coffee in here." She sniffed. "It still smells good. I wonder how old it is?"

  "One day. I bought it yesterday," Miriam replied.

  "You bought all this for a seven-day visit?"

  "I was thinking," Miriam paused, "since it was so hard for you to take some time off work to come here, now that you’re finally free, how about staying two-weeks instead of one? I know you can get a two-week vacation if you want it."

  Lee wasn’t about to argue. She knew Miriam would never understand. "I can’t stretch my time away anymore than I have." Especially not when special promos were being run for her vacation replacement, the backstabbing Edie Canham.

  "Do you feel so badly about being here?" Miriam asked gently. "Is it too much?"

  "It's preferable to a root canal, but that's all," Lee said.

  Miriam put mugs on the table, an orange floral one for herself, and a tall blue one on a pedestal for Lisa. Her voice, when she spoke, was soft. "Once this house is sold, all your ties to Miwok will be gone. Mine, too. For old times sake, I think both of us should spend some time getting to know it again."

  Lee turned her back on the small kitchen to look out the window at the wild oaks on the hillside. She tucked her hands into the side pockets of her skirt. Thick gold bracelets clanged together as they slid downward onto her wrist.

  "My memories of Miwok ended seventeen years ago when I left home. I came back one time since--and learned it was a mistake within ten minutes of walking in the front door. My mother didn’t like me, Miriam, and I sure as hell didn’t care for her."

  "Lisa--"

  "Old times for me means nothing but bad memories. Most of which took place right within this very house."

  "You hate it so very much?" Miriam asked.

  "I'll be ecstatic to see the last of it."

  Miriam drew a heavy breath. "I know you're too old to listen to your aunt anymore, but I'd advise that you give Miwok a chance. It just might surprise you."

  Lee's tongue held words of derision and mockery, but with a glance at her aunt, she simply said, "
You left it, Miriam."

  "We all have reasons for foolish or thoughtless actions when we’re young. And with age, we sometimes learn to regret them." She had heard Miriam’s reason for leaving many times--that she’d gotten tired of the small town, the chill in the night air from the too-close Pacific, and how she’d longed for the sunshine and city activities of San Diego. Lee had always felt there was more to it than that.

  As soon as the coffee was ready, Lee poured them each a cup, then picked up hers. "Excuse me, Miriam, but I’ve got to make a few more calls now."

  "Of course, dear."

  As Lee turned to leave the kitchen she noticed a look of sadness and concern on her aunt’s face. She didn't need that! She hadn't asked Miriam to drive all the way up to Miwok to help her go through her mother’s things. Lee's step slowed as she neared the lamp table with her cell phone.

  Miriam had offered to come here out of kindness and, Lee realized, as a way for the two of them to spend time together once more, just as they had in the past. Lee would never forget that, once she'd realized she couldn’t stay another moment in this house, it was to Miriam she had run. Miriam, who had stood beside her and helped her through the most terrible days of her life...

  What would it matter if she remained here a couple of extra days?

  She placed her coffee cup on a coaster and picked up the iPhone. They’d seen little of each other over the last few years. Ever since "Lisa Marie" became "Lee" Reynolds, television news anchor, her life had become fuller and busier. She was doing everything from reporting on Presidential campaigns to interviewing movie stars, and she loved every bit of it. More than a job or even a career, being a news anchor was her life.

  But Miriam was her aunt, her father’s sister, and now her only living relative. Although Miriam was healthy and vivacious, she was sixty-one, and would surely be slowing down before too many more years.

  Lee tossed the phone aside, picked up the cup and returned to the kitchen. Miriam, her coffee untouched, looked up at her.