Word Gets Around Page 9

  She glanced back and forth between Justin and me, waiting for an answer. Justin was preoccupied with something. He checked the hall over his shoulder, not seeming to have heard the question.

  “Oh … uhhh … we’re good,” I said, figuring that, since we were traveling sans-entourage, it was probably my job to extricate The Shay from uncomfortable situations involving social invitations. Aside from that, we really needed to get out of there before they could further stroke Justin’s ego and convince him that The Horseman would be good because it had horses and people in it.

  I held up the plate of sweet rolls. “These look great, though. Thanks.” My stomach growled in a low, primordial voice, saying, Give me sweet roll. Yum …

  Donetta snatched the plate from my hand. “Oh, hon, these were just a snack in case y’all got up early. A growin’ boy needs protein—eggs and bacon and stuff.”

  The Shay was in his own universe, as usual. He studied the room doors, frowned, then asked, “Wasn’t there a girl here a minute ago?”

  “What?” My mind was a little slower changing tracks. It was probably the writer in me, but I tended to stick to one plotline at a time. Right now, we were trying to politely decline a breakfast meeting with fans of The Horseman at the local café. Pay attention.

  “The girl. Where’d she go?”

  “What girl?” It occurred to me that if the girl, Lauren, wanted to be seen, she probably wouldn’t be hiding in the room right now. Interesting, considering that a minute ago, she was in my face, trolling for details about the film plans. Hmmm …

  “The girl that was in your room last night.”

  “Girl?” Donetta gasped.

  “Good heavens!” Imagene scanned the hallway from end to end.

  Surprisingly, Justin felt the need to explain himself. “No … ummm … I mean the girl. When we got here last night she was … umm … sleeping in her car, I guess, and umm … she stayed in the Elvis room … the girl.” He frowned at me. “Where’d she go, Nate?”

  Something crashed inside the room, and all five of us turned to investigate.

  Chapter 7

  Lauren Eldridge

  Why is it you never quite feel grown up in your hometown? Hiding from Aunt Donetta was the most juvenile thing I’d done in years. It wasn’t intentional—it was an instinctive maneuver, like muscle memory. One minute, I heard her coming up the stairwell, and the next, I was bolting into Aunt Beulah’s room like a two-year-old caught stealing cookies. My heart fluttered against my ribs, and I actually caught myself looking for a place to hide and thinking, Just open the window and shinny down the drainpipe to the awning, then climb down the pole. You can do it. The idea was crazy, but for a moment, I considered it. Kemp had used that escape route countless times during childhood games of hide-and-seek. I hated it when he did that, because I never had the guts to try.

  You’ve lost it, Lauren. You’ve absolutely lost it this time.

  I found myself fervently praying, which probably surprised God as much as it surprised me. For the past two years, He and I had been on uncertain terms. Please don’t let them find me. Please, please, please. I’m not ready. I just need a little longer to get it together. …

  In the hall, Justin Shay was telling the story about some strange woman sleeping in her car last night and then stealing one of his hotel rooms.

  Shut up, shut up, shut up. …

  Aunt Donetta and the girls were confused and mortified. They couldn’t imagine who else would be in the hotel.

  Turning to press my ear closer to the door, I knocked a pair of polyresin blue suede shoes off the wall. They clattered to the floor, and I knew that was it. I was had.

  “What in the name’a Pete?” Aunt Donetta’s voice pushed through the spaces around the jam. She was right outside.

  Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the handle, jerked open the door, threw my hands in the air and said, “Surprise!” It was the best thing I could think of on the spur of the moment.

  Aunt Netta screamed so high and so loud wine glasses and punch bowls probably shattered for three blocks. The next thing I knew, she’d tackled me with one of the near-strangulation hugs the guys on Kemp’s high school baseball team always made jokes about. Whenever they won a game, Aunt Netta stood at the exit gate and hugged everyone she could get a hold of.

  She screamed again, then I felt Lucy and Imagene join the hug, and we rocked back and forth in a wiggling, squirming reunion dance. I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to it, remembering all the times when those four-way hugs had comforted scraped knees, nursed failed dreams, and repaired broken hearts. In spite of all the hard-to-answer questions that would inevitably come later, it felt good to be home, to be wrapped in the arms of the three women who had mothered me after my own mother was gone.

  Finally the knot loosened, and Aunt Donetta held me at arm’s length, just the way she did in the old days when I came home to visit during college. “You’ve lost weight,” she said, and I couldn’t help it, I laughed. My first time home in two years, and Aunt Donetta was worried that I hadn’t been eating enough. She solicited confirmation from Imagene and Lucy. “Don’t y’all think she’s lost weight? What in the world’ve you been eatin’, hon? We need to get you on down to the café and feed you up a little.”

  “Aunt Netta, I’m fine.” After years of being Aunt Donetta’s favorite food sampler and little chubby bunny, I’d finally realized that diet and exercise do matter. Sometime in college, I’d worked my way down a couple of sizes, which Aunt Donetta still found highly disturbing.

  When Danny and I were married and living in my grandparents’ old house on the ranch, Aunt Netta dropped by at least three times a week with casseroles, desserts, leftover fried chicken, and pecan pie from the Daily Café. “They were throwin’ this out next door,” she’d say, which we knew wasn’t true, because Bob never threw away perfectly good food, especially not pecan pie. Aunt Netta went over there and bought lunches she didn’t want and pies she didn’t need so she could bring them to us. Her greatest fear was that having forgotten to eat for reasons no one could explain, we would inadvertently starve to death. She didn’t want something like that on her conscience.

  “I’m the same size I was when … ” Minor slip. I’d almost said, When I got out of the hospital. If I’d said that it would have cast a pall over everything. “I’ve actually gained a little, I think.”

  Aunt Netta looked skeptical. She stroked my hair and fanned it out over my shoulders. “What’re you doin’ here, anyhow? You said you weren’t gonna be in Daily till this evenin’. I hadn’t even put Mr. Ham in the oven yet. Now, I don’t want to hear any arguments about supper, y’hear? Everybody’s just dyin’ to see ye-ew, darlin’. Does yer daddy know you’re here? What time’d you get in? Why didn’t you call?”

  I didn’t worry about which question to answer first. If you gave Aunt Netta a minute, she’d fill in the blanks with the answers she wanted.

  Her brows rose and knotted in her forehead. “Oh, hon, you shouldn’ta spent your first night back home in this drafty old place.” I guessed she’d forgotten there were customers right behind her. “You shoulda come on by the house. I had the bed cleaned off in the sewin’ room.”

  “I didn’t want to scare everyone to death in the middle of the night,” I told her. It sounded better than I was reserving the right to make a quick getaway, and I almost shinnied down the drain pipe a minute ago. If the blue suede shoes hadn’t foiled me, I might have done it. I could have spawned yet another ghost story for the Daily Hotel—a female companion for the Confederate soldier who roamed the halls, when he wasn’t busy counting gold in the underground tunnel.

  “Lauren Lee, you could get mugged, sleeping in your car like that.” Aunt Netta pointed a finger at me, and Imagene nodded in punctuation. “And out in a back alley, no less. Good gracious! I bet those boys scared you half to death when they came in.”

  Nate caught my eye and laid a splay-fingered hand on his chest, looking offended.


  I laughed, as much at his expression as at the idea that I’d be the first-ever reported mugging in Daily, Texas. “I think I scared them worse than they scared me.”

  Nate nodded. “She did. Something about a red sofa.”

  I blushed, picturing myself half awake, muttering nonsense, with hair like the bride of Frankenstein. “I was having a strange dream when they came in.”

  Aunt Netta’s lips parted in understanding. Sidestepping, she laid a hand on Nate’s arm. “Oh, hon, good thing she wasn’t dreamin’ about something worse. She’s been known to get up and walk all over the place in her sleep. One time, the night before the county fair when she was ten, she pulled her little brother outta bed, wrestled him down, and tried to truss him up with a shoelace. She was dreamin’ about the goat tyin’ contest.”

  Justin Shay gave me a wary look that said, Look out. Crazy woman on the loose.

  Nate didn’t seem worried. “Good thing there weren’t any goats in last night’s dream, huh?” His gaze caught mine, and his eyes reflected the light, turning the soft color of melted chocolate with a little caramel in the middle. A tiny jingle bell shivered in my chest as Aunt Netta assured Justin Shay that I’d outgrown the sleepwalking, and he didn’t need to worry about hotel security. I was family, after all. I could be trusted not to attack him with a camera or a shoelace, or to reveal his presence to the masses.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Imagene glance back and forth between Nate and me. She nudged Lucy, and Lucy looked at us, too, rubbing the locket around her neck speculatively.

  I moved so that I was farther away from Nate. No sense giving Aunt Netta, Lucy, and Imagene any ideas. Between the three of them, there was always some ongoing plot, which they understood and the rest of us suffered through. They were known for matchmaking, letters to the editor of the local paper, attempts to even the odds in the Daily Little League association, and passive-aggressive acts of civil disobedience when they didn’t agree with the latest resolutions adopted by the city council or the school board. Once or twice, they’d even gone after the county commission and the state senate, with a fair degree of success.

  It occurred to me that if I could convince the three of them to help my father get out of this movie deal, we would probably pull it off. When the girls of the Daily Hair and Body made up their minds about something, you could pretty much bank on it happening.

  Aunt Netta went on talking about me. “Anyhow, sorry for all the confusion. Lauren’s harmless, though, I promise ye-ew. Although, one time when she was sleep walkin’, she did fill up this pail of water, and … ”

  “Aunt Netta,” I preempted. “Isn’t it time for breakfast?” With my family, the best means of self-defense is usually redirection. “Everyone looks hungry.” Aunt Donetta could never resist people in need of food. Feeding people trumped even sharing embarrassing family stories with strangers.

  “Oh goodness, of course y’all are.” She addressed Nate and Justin Shay again. “Y’all just go on and git ready. We’ll take Lauren out of your way, then Elena can just slip on in here, change the sheets, and move Lauren’s things out.” She herded me toward the stairway as if I were an escaped piglet rooting up the neighbor’s flowerbeds. “Come on, darlin’. Your dad is gonna be so excited to see ye-ew. You hadn’t ought to of sneaked in like that, though. He’s not gonna be happy when he finds out I got the first hug. You know how he is about that kind of thang.”

  I grimaced. Always, there was the simmering brother-sister rivalry between my father and Aunt Donetta. Over the years, Kemp and I had been wishbones in their silent tug-of-war. Aunt Donetta wanted a quiet, stable upbringing for us in which we went to bed by nine on school nights and nine-thirty on Saturdays so we could be bright-eyed for church on Sunday. At ten o’clock on any given night, Dad was apt to have us bedded down in the pickup, on the floor of the announcer’s box at the rodeo arena, at the auction barn—wherever he happened to be. There was no telling where we’d end up on Sunday mornings. If we passed a church, we might stop in for the service, we might not. It depended on what mood he was in. If he was thinking about Mom, he’d stop because he knew she would have wanted it that way.

  Imagene stepped into the middle of the latest potential argument, as she so often had in the past. “Just don’t say a word about it, Donetta. Frank’s probably down at the café by now. Lauren, honey, you go on down there and surprise him, and he won’t know a thing.” She cleverly rescued me from Aunt Netta by asking for a hug. “Go see your daddy,” she whispered before letting me go.

  Aunt Netta looked a little disappointed as I headed for the stairs. Fortunately, Nate distracted her by telling her not to worry about the Elvis room—I could have it, and he’d take one of the others. “Oh, good heavens no, darlin’. Justin wanted you to have that room. He asked for it special ’cause he thought you’d like it. You gotta have plenty of space to get that script ready before them producers and directors and camera people and all the rest come in, right?”

  “That’s right,” Justin Shay confirmed.

  Nate remained mute, as if the question had skewered him like an arrow.

  A queasy sensation started in my throat and slid slowly downward. Even I, who knew almost nothing about the movie business, knew you didn’t start working on the script one day and fill up the hotel with cast and crew the next. Something here didn’t add up, and I had a feeling Nate knew exactly what it was. If he was the one working on the script, how could he not? Behind the red sofa jokes and the laid-back California attitude, he was hiding secrets, and in order to get my father out of this mess, I needed to know what they were. I planned to begin ferreting out information at breakfast.

  I was oddly nervous about seeing my father again, but when I walked into the café, he was so preoccupied with Willie Wardlaw that he barely noticed me. They were deep in conversation about Willie’s washed-up racehorse, Lucky Strike, and how they would make him a star. Willie’s bikini babe girlfriend, Mimi, lounged in a chair at the end of the table, looking like a bored beauty queen in her designer cutoff denim shorts and a tight-fitting bandanna halter top. Her long blond hair fell over her shoulder, silky and straight like the hair I’d always wished I had. Frowning, she gave the café a disdainful surveillance sweep as I walked in.

  The old men of the Countertop Coffee Club sat a little straighter and smiled as her gaze passed by. She didn’t seem to notice. Outside the window, three adolescent boys on bicycles stopped to peer in like they’d stumbled on a real-life episode of Baywatch. Mimi smiled at them and gave a little twinkle-twinkle finger wave, and their mouths dropped open. Passing by with the coffee pot and a breakfast platter, Imagene motioned for them to move on. Mimi was disappointed when her audience picked up the bikes and skulked away.

  Her attention shifted to me as I crossed the room and stood by the table, waiting for a break in the intense conversation between my father and Willie Wardlaw.

  “How’s Lucky Strike doin’?”

  “Flighty, still. Mostly just paces the stall—back and forth, all day long.” Willie Wardlaw looked exactly the way I remembered him, except that now his hair and his thick mustache were gray instead of brown, and time had drawn deep, yet dignified, lines around the corners of his mouth and eyes. He was still tall and slim, a commanding presence making the café chair seem undersized, his broad shoulders and straw cowboy hat towering several inches over my father’s, his long gray ponytail making him appear younger than he was.

  “You turn him out in that round pen by the barn?” My father rubbed his chin, perhaps considering the difficulty of settling a young race-bred horse in a new environment.

  “Yeah, but he ain’t takin’ to it too well. Hope he don’t try to jump the fence.”

  “Aw, he’ll be all right. He ain’t stupid.”

  “I hope he ain’t. … ”

  For some reason, they both glanced at Mimi, who’d just been served coffee by Imagene. Mimi was frowning into the cup. Willie passed the little plastic boat with the cr
eam and sugar packets inside, saying, “Here, darlin’.”

  Mimi peered into the cream and sugar holder, the side of her lip curling almost imperceptibly. No telling what was in there— probably bits of dried-up French fries, salt and pepper, a dead fly or two lying belly up after having gorged on spilled sugar and ending up trapped. On a rainy day, when insects lounged by the hundreds under the awning outside, Mimi would have been treated to a flyswatter right along with her meal so she could protect her food, or have a little sport, or both.

  Pushing the coffee away, she gave me a cat-eyed look. No doubt, she wondered what I was doing, standing there over my father’s shoulder.

  Willie paused in the conversation and tipped his head up so he could take me in from under the brim of his hat. His eyes were still the startling blue I remembered from years of watching him in bit parts on TV. “Well, butter my backside and call me a biscuit, is that little Lauren? Good gravy, if you didn’t grow up into a dandy. Your dad and I was just talkin’ about you.” He stood and hugged me across the table as my father was unfolding from his chair. Something tipped and clattered against the tabletop, and I felt the warm splash of coffee splattering my jeans. Mimi squealed indignantly.

  My father hugged me when Willie got through. He held on while Imagene mopped up the mess. I was filled with a warmth that had nothing to do with the coffee. “Hey, Dad,” I whispered.

  “Hey, yerself.” His mustache scratched my cheek as he headlocked me and gave me a kiss before letting go. The feeling was so familiar, I could have been any age from eight to thirty-one.

  By the time we all sat down again, Mimi was pouting in her chair with her arms crossed.

  “Sorry about the spill,” I said, then introduced myself to her.