The Last Chance Matinee

by Mariah Stewart

  “Yeah, but I have the most fun with her. But I’d rather be here than home even if Court didn’t go away. I get to spend some time with you, Mom.” Nikki stood behind Allie’s chair and wrapped her arms around her mother. “I missed you. And I got to meet all my aunts and see your theater and I get to be part of it. I’m so happy to be here with you guys.”

  Cara watched as Allie’s expression completely changed. In less than a few seconds, she went from being totally pissed off to near tears as her daughter embraced her. In the glow of Nikki’s simple declaration, Allie’s façade dropped, and for just a few moments, she was a mother feeling the pure love of her child. The hard edges, the sarcasm, the snarkiness all fell away, replaced with a gentleness, a tenderness Cara had never suspected was there.

  She knew it wouldn’t last, but for those few seconds, it was a lovely sight to see. Cara’s oldest sister was human, after all.

  Another storm blew through that night, but the power held. Des was searching the town ordinances online to see what was on the books as far as keeping animals was concerned. Allie and Nikki were at the kitchen table, shopping online for books about the Art Deco period and searching for a pair of boots or hiking shoes for Nikki that’d be more suitable for trekking up to the falls than her pretty pink sneakers. Once Barney told Nikki that there were indeed hidden falls, and that they were on Hudson property, Nikki had to see them firsthand. It would take two days for her purchase to arrive, but she assured her mother she could find other things to do. Barney had offered to call a friend of hers who had a granddaughter Nikki’s age who was also on break that week, but Nikki declined.

  “I’m only here for a week,” Nikki reminded her. “I want to spend time with my family. I want to know everything I can about the Hudsons. Did my great-great-grandfather really own coal mines? We read about the Molly Maguires in history. Are the mines still here? Can we go? Who are all those people whose portraits are hanging in the front hall? Am I related to them . . . ?”

  There was seemingly no limit to Nikki’s curiosity, or her questions.

  Cara found Barney in her favorite chair in the library, with her glasses perched on the end of her nose, and that nose in a book.

  “Barney, do you have a minute?” Cara asked as she tapped lightly on the door.

  Barney looked up and smiled. “Of course I do. Come on in, Cara. You don’t have to knock.”

  “You looked so engrossed, I hated to disturb you.”

  Barney held up the book. “I can read anytime. I don’t have forever with you.” She closed the book and with characteristic directness asked, “Something on your mind?”

  “A couple of things, actually. I guess I’m confused about some things that Joe told me.”

  “What was it he said?” Barney put the book aside.

  “Stuff about my dad and Pete and Pete’s brother.”

  “Start with what bothers you the most.” Barney sat back in her chair, her legs crossed, a wary look in her eyes. “I’ll tell you whatever I know. If I know.”

  Cara repeated what Joe had said about Fritz leaving with Nora right after Gil died.

  “Are you wondering why I didn’t tell you Pete’s brother and I were going to be married?”

  “No. That’s your business. It’s not like I have a right to know everything about your life.”

  “It’s not a matter of it being ‘my business.’ It was a long time ago, Cara. I don’t dwell on what was or what might have been. You can’t change the past.” Barney stared out the window at the rain. “Gil asked me to marry him right after I graduated from college. We’d always been a couple, from the time we were kids. We both knew that we were meant for each other.” She smiled wryly. “Of course, we thought it would be in this life, not the next.”

  “You must have loved him very much.”

  “I did. He was the love of my life. There never was anyone who even came close to being the man he was in my eyes. I tried dating sometime after he died, but it was a big fat waste of my time. He was the only man I ever wanted, and he was gone. Why should I settle for second best? I’ve had a very good life, child. I loved a good man who truly loved me. I’ve lived exactly the way I wanted. I had a wonderful career, one that permitted me to help people, to really be there when the people in this town needed me. I have no real regrets.” That wry smile returned to her lips. “Other than Gil dying, of course.”

  “Did you ever talk to my dad about it? Joe said Dad and Pete were with Gil when he fell.”

  Barney shook her head very slowly. “I couldn’t. For the first couple of weeks after Gil passed, I was in shock. I couldn’t believe he was gone. For so long, I had a hard time believing that he was really gone for good. He was so full of life, you see—smart and funny and such wonderful company. Oh, the times we had together.” For a moment, a tiny bit of lost joy danced in her eyes—then it was gone. “I knew that Fritz and Pete had been up at the falls with him, I knew they said he got too close to the edge of the rock and fell, but I never asked for details. By the time I started to come around, Pete was away at law school and Fritz had headed to California.”

  “Eddie said he knew Dad in school and that he used to watch him in plays. He said Dad was a really, really good actor—that he was better than Nora would ever be.”

  “All that’s true. Fritz could’ve been a star. Everyone knew it. What’s your question?”

  “Why would he give up something he loved that much? Was he so crazy in love with Nora that he’d give up everything for her, and why would he have to?”

  “I don’t have all the answers, but I know he loved her more than he loved anything else, and that he believed she was the one destined to have the career. He didn’t think he could be her manager and promote himself at the same time, and felt he needed to devote his focus and energy to making her a star. Did I think that was strange?” She nodded. “For one thing, I’d watched my brother come alive on the stage. I could feel what it meant to him.”

  “Did she love him as much?”

  “You know, when you see two people who are truly in love, you can feel it. It infects you, and it’s a happy thing. I never felt that love coming from her the way it came from him. I think he was dazzled by her. She was very beautiful, you know. I also thought she was manipulative and self-centered, but maybe that was just me. Though the self-centered part certainly was true when it came to her children.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think she had them because it softened her image with the public. I’m not saying she didn’t love them—she did. At least, I want to believe she did. I know Fritz loved those girls till his dying day, though he wasn’t always the best at showing them. I understand your experience with him was different, but I suspect that could’ve been because his relationship with your mother was so different from his relationship with Nora.”

  “I guess I’m puzzled by the fact that he left Hidden Falls with her when you needed him. It seems so uncharacteristic of a man who always seemed so caring.”

  “The bottom had fallen out of my life. My brother couldn’t fix that.” Barney shook her head. “I was glad he left. I wanted to be alone.”

  “I can’t imagine how painful that time was for you.”

  “It was. Sometimes it still is.”

  “Barney, I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  Barney shrugged. “It is what it is. Now, as far as your father quitting acting is concerned, my own personal feeling? I believe Nora couldn’t stand the thought of the competition. He was always going to be better than her, more successful. If he kept acting, might he not get the bigger roles, the lion’s share of the attention? Awards that she could only dream about winning?”

  “But they wouldn’t have competed for the same roles.”

  “No, but he’d have been a much bigger star than she could ever hope to be. I don’t think Nora’s ego could’ve handled that. I could be wrong. As I said, I always thought he loved her more than she loved him.”

  “Why cou
ldn’t he see that?” Cara wondered aloud.

  “Ahhh, well, you know, love is blind, Cara. Nora just didn’t seem his type to me. For one thing, she wasn’t a very warm person—please don’t repeat that to Des and Allie, but it’s true. First I heard she was taking off to Hollywood on her own, and the next thing I knew, Fritz was going with her to be her agent and manager. They got married as soon as they got to California, and that was that. I’m not saying I didn’t care, but it was right after Gil died, and I was a lot more upset about that than about my brother’s elopement. I’ve always felt there was more to the story, but I’ve never been able to figure it out. Too bad there’s no one left alive who might have the answer.”

  “Did you ever talk to Pete about all this?”

  “Not really. I’ve tried, but he either ignores me or says something like, ‘It’s all in the past, and bringing it up now will serve no purpose except to make you sad.’ As if I’m not sad about it unless I’m talking about it. But I don’t push him too much. Remember, he lost his only brother that day, and very soon after, his best friend eloped with a woman he couldn’t stand.”

  “Pete didn’t like Nora?”

  “He never did. I asked him once and all he said was that she wasn’t good enough for Fritz. I think it might have been more that she took his best friend to the opposite side of the country and Pete had to find someone else to hang out with.”

  “How did your parents take my dad’s elopement?”

  Barney grimaced. “My father was apoplectic over the whole thing. Fritz was our generation’s designated bank president, and here he’d taken off with a girl my parents didn’t really know. My mother was just starting to show the first signs of Alzheimer’s, and she was mostly concerned about who Nora was in terms of Hidden Falls. She kept asking, ‘Tell me again who her people are?’ ” Barney shook her head. “As if that mattered at that point.”

  Cara sat quietly, mulling over all she’d heard.

  “Cara, I can see something is bothering you. What is it?”

  “I guess it’s just that the main reason I decided to come here and to do what my dad asked was to understand why he did the things he did. I thought I’d find something of him here that would help me know the real Fritz Hudson.”

  Barney met Cara’s eyes straight on and said, “I’m not so sure that any of us ever saw all of Fritz. I think he showed a different side of himself to you than he did to Allie and Des, but both sides were the real man, if you follow. I guess the three of you are going to have to piece all that together if you want to know the whole man.” Barney smiled. “God knows you’ll have plenty of time to do that before your work on the theater is done.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Cara’s phone pinged with an incoming text.

  Can we change our meet-up time to two? read the text from Joe.

  Sure—see you then, she replied.

  The house was quiet. Barney was off at one of her committee meetings, Des was upstairs making phone calls, and Allie and Nikki had taken Cara’s car to go into Wilkes-Barre to tour the old Comerford Theater, which had, at one time, rivaled the Sugarhouse for first-run films. Through her research, Nikki had found that the old Art Deco theater had been damaged during Hurricane Agnes, then renovated, and its name changed to the F. M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts.

  “It’s not far from here,” Nikki had pointed out over breakfast that morning, “and it’d be good to see firsthand what someone else has done. Of course, the Comerford was so much larger than the Sugarhouse, but I’ll bet a lot of the detailing inside is similar since it’s from the same era. Maybe we’ll get lucky and we can talk to someone who actually worked on the renovation. How cool would that be?”

  Even Allie agreed that could be worthwhile. When Cara offered her car for the trip and Nikki had let out a whoop, Allie had no choice but to go.

  At one forty-five, Cara walked the block to the theater. Joe was already out front talking to two men dressed in work clothes. His attention was diverted from them as he watched her walk across the street.

  “Cara, meet Larry Masters and Rick Sennett. They just finished their inspection of the roof. Cara,” he told them, “is one of the owners of the theater and is working with me on the renovation.”

  She shook hands with both men.

  “How’d it look up there?” she asked.

  “Not so good. You have shingles over shingles over badly broken tile,” Larry told her.

  “Tile? On the roof?” Cara’s only experience with roofs was limited to shingles or cedar shakes.

  “The style of the building is what some called Hollywood Moroccan,” he explained. “They put red clay tiles up there. I can’t believe anyone expected them to last for more than a few years. Then, instead of removing them, they simply put shingles over the tiles, and later, when that began to leak, they shingled over the whole thing.”

  “So in other words, it’s a hot mess,” she said.

  Rick nodded. “And some of the wood under the tile has to be replaced as well.”

  “So if the roof leaked, where did the water go once it got inside the building?” Cara asked.

  “Judging from the condition of the roof, I’d say the point of entry was the back wall of the building. The water would have run down between the exterior and the interior walls.”

  Cara turned to Joe. “You can handle that, if the wall needs to be replaced?”

  He nodded. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Larry, when can we expect your estimate for the replacement of the roof?”

  “Friday at the earliest,” the roofer told him. “But remember, it’s going to be a tear-off of three layers and off the top of my head, I don’t know how many Dumpsters it’ll take.”

  “Let us know. We’ll wait to hear from you.” Joe watched the two men head for their truck.

  “This isn’t encouraging,” Cara said after the roofers had left. “Ripping off three layers of roof, water damage to the back of the building . . .”

  “Yesterday the engineer said he thought there might be some damage behind that back wall, but he didn’t think it was structural. That’s the good news. If we have to take a wall down, we take it down. There’s lath underneath the plaster, and if water seeped into it, we’ll have to replace it. Then we’ll replaster. All very doable.”

  “But a lot of money, right?”

  “Well, you knew you were going to have to spend it. The roof will be one of the big tickets. There’s no getting around that, so let’s accept it and move on.”

  “Move on to what?”

  “Move on to what I had planned for the afternoon.” He took her by the elbow, walked her to his truck, and opened the passenger door.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “You’ll see.” He slammed her door and went around to the driver’s side.

  “You said you had something for me,” Cara said after Joe got behind the wheel and started the truck.

  “I do. Let’s just get to where we’re going.”

  He looked across the seat and smiled at her, and the only thought in her mind was, to quote Nikki, OMG. He wore a burgundy waffle-knit henley, khaki pants, and dimples.

  If I were looking for someone, if I were ready for someone, if I were in a better place . . . if I . . .

  “Hey. You look cold.” He turned on the heater, then grabbed her hand. “You are cold. There are these things you wear on your hands when it’s cold out. They’re called gloves. You might look into getting a pair.”

  “I left them in my car, which right now is somewhere between here and Wilkes-Barre.” She stretched her legs in front of her, hoping to reach the heat that blasted from under the dashboard, and told him about Allie and Nikki’s excursion.

  “That’s a great idea.” Joe put the truck in gear and pulled away from the curb. “I might want to talk to some of their contractors myself.”

  “It was Nikki’s idea. I swear, no one has more enthusiasm for this project than that girl. She wants t
o know everything about the place, wants in on everything we say or do that has anything to do with the Sugarhouse.”

  “It’s great to see the next generation show some interest. If the young people around here don’t start to do the same, this town is going to curl up and die.”

  “I didn’t say she was staying. I only said she’s thrilled we have the theater. By Sunday night, she’ll be back in California, and we probably won’t see her again until the summer.”

  “Allie’s all right with that?”

  “I don’t think so. You know, she’s such an odd duck. She plays such hardball sometimes with people. Like she’s sarcastic and smart-mouthed—then you see her with her daughter and you see who she really is.”

  “Who do you think she is?”

  “A woman who desperately loves her kid and would do anything for her. I think Nikki is the only real thing in her life. The rest of it strikes me as being superficial. Nothing means anything to Allie, except Nik.”

  Cara looked out the window. “I probably shouldn’t say that. I don’t really know her well enough to pass judgment.”

  “That wasn’t passing judgment. That was making an observation.”

  “One of my goals before I leave Hidden Falls is to get to know my sisters. Whether or not they want to know me is not the same thing, but that’s my goal.”

  “What are your others? Besides getting the theater renovated.”

  “I want to get to know my dad better.”

  “I would think that might’ve been easier while he was still alive.”

  “I know everything he wanted me to know, everything he wanted me to see, but there was so much he kept hidden. So much I know nothing about. That’s what I want to learn.”

  “Maybe he kept things hidden for a reason.”

  “There’s no reason good enough, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Now who’s playing hardball?”

  “I talked to Barney about Gil Wheeler and the day he fell, and about my dad and his first wife and why he gave up acting. Something doesn’t add up. So another of my goals while I’m here is to figure it out.”