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But the candles flickered softly against the walls, where Jimmy’s guitar hung beside his records, some photos, awards, and framed copies of his handwritten music. Beneath this shrine to her father, Laurel lay curled in a lump on her bed, facing the wall and leaving no doubt that Jimmy’s daughter still belonged to the day he died.
Kathryn sank down beside her. “You want to tell me what’s wrong?”
“No.” Laurel gave a sharp, caustic laugh.
She’s too young to be so bitter. It’s by my example. Her mouth was dry when she asked, “Do you want me to leave?”
“No.” It was a while before Laurel spoke. “I want someone to think I’m special and beautiful and wonderful.”
“I think you’re special and beautiful and wonderful.”
Her daughter wasn’t rude enough to say, Big deal, but the words hung there in her silence.
“I don’t know what I can do to make you happy.”
Laurel reached out and touched her hand. “Look, Mom. It’s not your fault. Sometimes, like tonight, you just say the wrong thing.”
“What did I say?”
“It’s a long and miserable story.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I have hours and hours.” She settled back against a couple of those gaudy pillows. It took a moment before Laurel started talking, and once she did, everything spilled out of her in a rush of emotion—the boy on the boat, the kids necking in the theater, the fistfight—all told with that double-edged intensity of youth.
Laurel looked at her. “I feel like I’m completely invisible.”
Kathryn had watched her grow up and felt so proud, and so scared. One day, not that long ago, she turned around and no longer had a child for a daughter. The years had turned into a white blur while her daughter became a beautiful young woman. She wanted to tell her she was far from invisible, but Laurel wouldn’t believe her. Kathryn pointed to a black-and-white photograph of Jimmy onstage with his guitar. To anyone who looked at the shot, it appeared as if he were looking at the audience. “See this photograph of your father?”
Laurel nodded.
“It was taken one night when he was playing in Hollywood, at this club on the Sunset Strip. I can’t remember the name. You were maybe three at the time. This was right after his third record went number one. He was about to start the final song and looked down at us. We were in the front row. He took off his guitar and came down to us, then stepped back on stage with you in his arms, set you down, picked up his guitar, and said, ‘You wanna help me sing, little girl?’
“When you said, ‘Sure, Daddy,’ the place went crazy. They calmed down when he began to play and you stood there in front of hundreds of people, completely fearless. You couldn’t have cared less who watched. You sang with him just like you always did at home. Didn’t miss a single note.”
Kathryn handed the photo to Laurel. “You had no idea, but everyone in that place, including your father, was looking at you and thinking how very wonderful you were.”
Laurel sat cross-legged on the bed with the photo, then curled up with it as Kathryn stood. “Thanks, Mom,” she said in a small voice, already half asleep.
But Kathryn didn’t go to sleep that easily. She tossed and turned, haunted by images of fiery car crashes and slashed canvases, and woke with the sheets twisted around her legs, her pillow damp, and Jimmy’s face in her mind. There were moments over the years when Laurel looked so much like him that Kathryn found herself imagining the worst: a mind-numbing fear that her daughter might follow her father’s path to a fateful, early death. Kathryn had to fight her innate and desperate need to overprotect. She didn’t want to be like Julia, who had taught her what it was like to live inside your child’s life.
None of those fears ever materialized. Still, Kathryn hadn’t had nightmares in years. She put on her robe and left the room, then made cup after cup of tea. When the eastern skies turned purple and gold and the sparrows and robins began to sing, she still stood at her living room window, no better off really than she had been. Laurel was so very young, and she desperately didn’t want to be. She still believed and trusted the world that lay before her. Her daughter had no haunting consequences to keep her from running headlong down the wrong road.
But Kathryn was overwhelmed by an uneasy terror as she watched the day break and sipped tea, which had a sudden, bitter taste. It needed lemon and sugar. She walked into the kitchen, doctored her tea, drank it, and went into her bedroom.
She still tossed and turned, staring at the yellow walls, and told herself she was being silly, overreacting. Of course, fate had better things to do than to follow the Peyton women around, just to create havoc in two small lives.
CHAPTER 9 (#u72d2fca6-1860-5aae-a9ac-956cb623ea69)
It was two in the afternoon when Cale unlocked the door to the Catalina house. “Hey! I’m here! Jud?” He dropped his bag on the floor and headed for the kitchen, tossing the newspaper and some magazines on the dining table as he beelined for the refrigerator. Leaning on the open door, he guzzled half a carton of milk—one of four inside. Jud had done the shopping: eggs, bread, lunch meat, cheese, steaks, potatoes, salad stuff, and fruit, even a jug of orange juice. There were probably new boxes of cereal lined up neatly in the overhead cabinet. Cale counted off Cheerios, shredded wheat, and corn flakes, pancake mix, syrup, coffee, creamer, sugar. The kitchen had everything needed for three squares a day. His brother—the poster boy for good nutrition. Hell, he even ate perfectly.
Cale tossed the lid from a container of spaghetti toward the sink like a Frisbee, missed, and grabbed a fork. Shoveling cold spaghetti into his mouth, he headed for the sliding glass doors to the deck. The beach lay a hundred feet away, and beyond, the glassy water of a slumbering cove. At the edge of the deck, hanging off the end of a lounge chair, were two really big and bony bare feet.
Jud lay in the sun, his arm slung over his face. He was snoring. Cale kicked his brother’s feet. “Wake up, you lazy bastard, and say hello to your little brother.”
Jud groaned, then mumbled into his arm, “Little my ass. You’re two inches taller than I am.”
“And twice as good-looking, too.”
“Normally I’d argue that point, but I don’t think I can today.” Jud pulled his arm away. His face was a black-and-blue mess.
“I hope the other guy looks worse than you do.”
“Got away without a cut.” Jud tried to sit up and winced. “Damn, that hurts. Everything hurts.”
“You look like everything should hurt. What happened?”
Jud rested his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging loosely between them, and he looked at him—at least, it looked as if he were looking at him. He wasn’t too sure. Jud’s eyes were so swollen it was more of a squint, like being stared at by a bruised pig.
“I tried to play Galahad and save some sweet young thing from a bunch of drunks.”
Cale straddled a lounge chair and sat down. “I hope you won some reward for sacrificing your face. Is your nose broken?”
“Only swollen and hurting like hell.”
“Tell me she gave you her phone number for your trouble.”
“Nope. Not even her name.” Jud shook his head, winced, and buried his head in his hands. “Remind me not to do that again.”
“What? Try to get lucky? Get into a fight? Or shake your head?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, big brother, you ended up battered and bruised and without a date.”
“I’m not sure I looked very impressive passed out facedown and bloodying up the sidewalk. Stop laughing, asshole.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“I can hear it in your voice.”
“Okay. I’m laughing.”
“Hell, I didn’t get in a single solid punch.”
“Looks like it.”
“Go to hell.”
“I don’t want to go home. Victor’s there.” Cale lifted the spaghetti container in a salute and with his mouth full said, “Good stuff.”
“I made it last night.”
“Before or after you ran into Joe Frazier?”
“Before.”
“Here. Catch.” Cale tossed him his napkin. “Your nose is bleeding.”
“Again?” Jud blotted his nose. “Damn.” He started to get up.
“Stay there. I’ll get you something.” Cale came back with two steaks from the freezer. “Here, put these on your face.”
Jud frowned at the steaks. “They’re frozen.”
“Yeah, but steak is good for the black eye and ice for swelling. Two remedies in one.”
“The best I can get is frozen steak from the future Dr. Banning?”
“Shut up and put ’em on your face. After they thaw, we can barbecue them.”
“And I heard premed was hard.”
That cut deeply, but Cale said nothing. He had studied five nights straight to get a low B on his last test in anatomy. He held up a magazine, centerfold open. “Here’s a cure. Look at this.”
Jud pulled the steaks off his face and lifted his head up. “Nice.”
“Nice? That’s all you can say?” Cale studied the centerfold again. “More than nice. I’d to like to meet a girl like her.”
“You did last year and your grades went in the toilet.”
Cale’s big mistake now hung in the air between them. His brother lay there with meat on his face, yet Cale felt as if he’d just taken a punch.
Jud crossed his feet. “How’s school going?”
“Okay.”
“You keeping your grades up?”
“Jesus … You sound like Victor. It’s bad enough I have to get flak from the old man. I don’t need it from you, too.” When Jud didn’t say anything, Cale added bitterly, “I don’t need you judging me.”
“I’m not judging you.” Jud pulled the steaks off again. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Something’s wrong. You’re way too touchy. Come clean.”
Cale tossed the magazine on the deck. “Med school. Almost all of them have turned me down. Not even my Medical school admission tests—which I aced—are helping my apps.”
“I thought Dorsey was just horsing around on the phone yesterday.”
“He was and wasn’t.”
“All of them turned you down?” Jud sounded as if a college turning someone down was as unrealistic as Martian landings or statues of the Virgin Mary that cried real tears.
Right then, Cale wanted to hit Jud himself. “I’ve still got three schools left. University of Texas, UCSD, and USC.”
“I’m sorry, bud.”
“Yeah, well, there’s not much I can do about it now.” Odd, how it was harder for him to swallow his big brother’s pity than his judgments. He felt like the wrong half of a man talking to the right half. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t get into one of these last three.”
“They can’t all turn you down.” Jud lay back down. “You’ll get in.”
His brother’s world was so easy. Just that easy. The spaghetti turned over in Cale’s stomach and felt as if he’d eaten a pound of it. He sagged back in the chair, looking out at the water because he felt like nothing when he looked at his brother.
There was no breeze and a light haze in the sky, almost like earthquake weather, but seagulls were flying all over the place. In the moments before an earthquake, all wildlife vanished. Utter and complete silence ruled, as if the world were holding its breath.
Cale listened to the seagulls whining overhead, and a few feet away, the quiet lap of the water against the sand. In the distance was the mainland. A wildfire burned in Malibu. A cloud of purplish gray smoke hovered over the hills, and Santa Monica had disappeared from sight. He followed the outline of the coast, the minuscule silver glint of planes in the sky over LAX—and the white clusters of beach towns, their piers, marinas, and homes staggered in the coastal hillsides.
Jud snored louder, lying there deep in sleep—something Cale hadn’t had much of lately. You’ll get in. His brother said it with such assurance.
“Yeah, Jud,” Cale said quietly. “Easy as taking your next breath.” He felt like his stomach was going to explode. Too much spaghetti. His next breath was as shallow as his confidence. Jud didn’t have a clue what his life was like. Cale closed his eyes and the thought hit him that maybe the lump in his stomach wasn’t from the mouthfuls of spaghetti he’d swallowed whole. Maybe it was his pride.
Jud woke up late in the afternoon with melted meat on his face. He heard Cale shooting baskets out front. Once inside, he put the steaks on a plate in the fridge and strolled out the front door. “Hey. Let me show you how the game’s played.”
Cale stopped, holding the ball in one big hand. “Yeah, right. Who just took a nap, Pops?” He casually tossed a hook shot over his head high into the air. It dropped through the net without ever touching metal. Crowing, Cale grabbed the ball, then faced him, dribbling it and shuffling back and forth.
“You cocky ass.” Jud laughed.
“We’ll see who’s the ass, big brother. I’ll give you six points. Two for old age, and four for your beat-up face. Remind me to teach you how to duck. Or throw a punch.”
“I don’t need your points, hotshot. Give me the ball and I’ll show you old.”
Cale gave him a shit-eating grin and shoved the ball right at his face.
Jud moved fast, twisted around, and went right under his little brother’s long arms to score. “Two to zip! Screw your points.”
They played one-on-one for forty-five minutes straight, faces red, hair stringy, sweat-soaked T-shirts stuck to their skin, legs and arms gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight. At the hour mark, bent eye to eye, they were like two dogs facing off in an alley, both panting so hard neither could speak. Jud had the ball, his face burning up and his eyes stinging from salty sweat. He rasped out the word “water.”
Cale gave him a slight nod. At the same instant they looked at the garden hose. Whoever got there first won the water, and the added luxury of a few extra breaths while he waited for the other one to finish. It was a footrace. Cale stuck out his leg. Jud jumped it, sidestepped quickly, spun, and dove for the hose. He drank for a full two minutes while Cale stood there, hands on his knees, panting.
Sun-warmed water ran through the nozzle and he took a long time to drink, then let the cold water spill over his sweating head until it stopped throbbing. He shook like a wet spaniel and tossed the hose to Cale.
Jud walked over and picked up the ball, dribbling. “You gonna cry uncle?”
“Me?” Cale looked up from the hose and swiped his mouth. “No way. I’m just getting warmed up.”
“Good,” Jud lied and threw the ball right into Cale’s stomach.
For just an instant his little brother looked as if he was going to heave, then they went at it again for another savage half hour. Jud bounced the ball through his brother’s legs and jammed his elbow hard into Cale’s gut. “Ooh, college boy. You’re getting soft.”
