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“We’re doing Kiss Me Kate next spring,” Julie reminded him.
“Yes,” Arthur agreed, sounding weary, “but perhaps we could produce the musical now, instead of next spring. That way it would be easy to match the McKettricks’ contribution, since our musicals are always so popular.”
Our musicals, Julie thought. As if it would be Arthur who held tryouts every night for a week, and then two months of rehearsals, weekends included. Arthur who dealt with heartbroken teenage girls who hadn’t landed the part of their dreams—not to mention their mothers. Arthur who struggled to round up enough teenage boys to balance out the chorus and play the leads.
No, it would be Julie who did all those things.
Julie alone.
“Gosh, Arthur,” she said, smiling her team-player smile, “that would be hard to pull off. The showcase will be ready to stage within a month. We’d be lucky to get the musical going by Christmas.”
Bob Riza, who coached football, basketball and baseball in their respective seasons, in addition to teaching math, flung a sympathetic glance in Julie’s direction and finally spoke up. “Maybe the foundation would be willing to cut us a check for the full amount,” he said. “Forget the matching requirement, just this once.”
“I don’t think that’s fair,” Julie said.
Arthur folded his arms, still watching her. “I agree,” he said. “The McKettricks have been more than generous. Three years ago, you’ll all remember, when the creeks overflowed and we had all that flood damage and our insurance only covered the basics, the foundation underwrote a new floor for the gymnasium, in full, and replaced the hundreds of books ruined here and in the public library.”
Julie nodded. “Here’s the thing, Arthur,” she said. “The showcase won’t bring in a lot of money, that’s true. But it’s important—the kids involved are trying to get into very good colleges, and there’s a lot of competition. Having their plays produced will make them stand out a little.”
Arthur nodded, listening sympathetically, but Julie knew he’d already made up his mind.
“I’m afraid the showcase will have to be moved to spring,” he said. “The sooner the musical is under way, the better.”
Julie knew she’d lost. So why did she keep fighting? “Spring will be too late for these kids,” she said, straightening her spine, hiking up her chin. “The application deadlines are—”
Arthur shook his head, cutting her off. “I’m sorry, Julie,” he said.
Julie swallowed. Lowered her eyes.
It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate Arthur’s position. She knew how important those new computers were—while most of the students had ready access to the Internet at home, a significant number of kids depended on the computers at the public library and here at the high school. Technology was changing the world at an almost frightening pace, and Blue River High had to keep up.
Still, she was already spending more time at school than was probably good for Calvin. Launching this project would mean her little boy practically lived with Libby and Paige, and while Calvin adored his aunts, she was his mother. Her son’s happiness and well-being were her responsibility; she couldn’t and wouldn’t foist him off and farm him out any more than she was doing now.
The first period bell shrilled then, earsplittingly loud, it seemed to Julie. She was due in her tenth-grade English class.
Riza and the others rose from their chairs, clearly anxious to head for their own classrooms.
Julie remained where she was, facing Arthur Dulles. She felt a little like an animal caught in the headlight beams of an oncoming truck, unable to move in any direction.
He smiled. Arthur was not unkind, merely beleaguered. He served as principal of the town’s elementary and middle schools as well as Blue River High, and his wife, Dot, was just finishing up a round of chemotherapy.
“It would be a shame if we had to turn down the funding for all that state-of-the-art equipment,” Arthur said forthrightly, standing directly in front of Julie now, “wouldn’t it?”
Julie suppressed a deep sigh. Her sister was engaged to Tate McKettrick; in his view, that meant Julie was practically a McKettrick herself. Maybe Arthur expected her to hit up the town’s most important family for an even fatter check.
“Couldn’t we try some other kind of fundraiser?” she asked. “Get the parents to help out, maybe put on some bake sales and a few car washes?”
“You know,” Arthur said quietly, walking her to the door, pulling it open so she could precede him into the hallway, “our most dedicated parents are already doing all they can, volunteering as crossing guards and lunchroom helpers and the like. I know you depend on several women to sew costumes for the musical every year. The vast majority, I needn’t tell you, only seem to show up when they want to complain about Susie’s math grades or Johnny playing second string on the football team.” He straightened his tie. “It isn’t like it used to be.”
“How’s Dot feeling?” she asked gently. Arthur’s wife was a hometown girl, and everybody liked her.
Arthur’s worries showed in his eyes. “She has good days and bad days,” he said.
Julie bit her lower lip. Nodded. So this was it, she thought. The showcase was out, the musical was in. And somehow she would have to make it all work.
“Thank you,” Arthur replied, distracted again. Once more, he sighed. “I’ll need dates for the production as soon as possible,” he said. “Nelva Jean can make up fliers stressing that we’re going to need more parental help than usual.”
Nelva Jean was the school secretary, a force of nature in her own right, and she’d been eligible for retirement even when Julie and her sisters attended Blue River High. But aged miracle though she was, Nelva Jean couldn’t work magic.
Julie and Arthur went their separate ways then, Julie’s mind tumbling through various unworkable options as she hurried toward her classroom, her thoughts partly on the three playwrights and their own hopes for the showcase.
She’d met with the trio of young authors all summer long, reading and rereading the scripts for their one-act plays, suggesting revisions, helping to polish the pieces until they shone. They’d worked hard, and were counting on the production to buttress their college credentials.
Julie entered her classroom, took her place up front. She had no choice but to put the dilemma out of her mind for the time being.
Class flew by.
“Ms. Remington?” a shy voice asked, when first period was over and most of the students had left.
Julie, who’d been erasing the blackboard, turned to see Rachel Strivens, one of her three young playwrights, standing nearby. Rachel’s dad was often out of work, though he did odd jobs wherever he could find them to put food on the table, and her mother had died in some sort of accident before the teenager and her father and her two younger brothers rolled into Blue River in a beat-up old truck in the middle of the last school year. They’d taken up residence in a rickety trailer, adjoining the junkyard run by Chudley Wilkes and his wife, Minnie, and had kept mostly to themselves ever since.
Rachel’s intelligence, not to mention her affinity for the written word, had been apparent to Julie almost immediately. Over the summer, Rachel had spent her days at the Blue River Public Library, little brothers in tow, or at the community center, composing her play on one of the computers available there.
The other kids seemed to like Rachel, though she didn’t have a lot of time for friends. She was definitely not like the others, buying her clothes at the thrift store and doing without things many of her contemporaries took for granted, like designer jeans, fancy cell phones and MP3 players, but at least she was spared the bullying that sometimes plagued the poor and the different. Julie knew that because she’d taken the time to make sure.
“Yes, Rachel?” she finally replied.
Rachel, though too thin, had elegant bone structure, wide-set brown eyes and a generous mouth. Her waist-length hair, braided into a single plait, was as black as a country night before the new moon, and always clean. “Could—could I talk with you later?”
Julie felt a tingle of alarm. “Is something wrong?”
Rachel tried hard to smile. Second period would begin soon, and students were beginning to drift into the room. “Later?” the girl said. “Please?”
Julie nodded, still thinking about Rachel as she prepared to teach another English class. Probably because she’d had to move around a lot with her dad, rambling from town to town and school to school, Rachel’s grades had been a little on the sketchy side when she’d started at Blue River High. The one-act play she’d written—tellingly titled Trailer Park—was brilliant.
Rachel was brilliant.
But she was also the kind of kid who tended to fall through the cracks unless someone actively championed her and stood up for her.
And Julie was determined to be that someone. Somehow.
APHONE WAS RINGING. Insistent, jarring him awake.
With a groan, Garrett dragged the comforter up over his head, but the sound continued.
Cell phone?
Landline?
He couldn’t tell. Didn’t give a damn.
“Shut up,” he pleaded, burrowing down deeper in bed, his voice muffled by the covers.
The phone stopped after twelve rings, then immediately started up again.
Real Life coalesced in Garrett’s sleep-fuddled brain. Memories of the night before began to surface.
He recalled the senator’s announcement.
Saw Nan Cox in his mind’s eye, slipping out by way of the hotel kitchen.
He recollected Brent Brogan providing him with a police escort as far as the ranch gate.
And after all that, Julie Remington, a little boy and a three-legged beagle appearing in the kitchen.
Knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep after Julie had taken her young son and their dog back to bed in the first-floor guest suite—the spacious accommodations next to the maid’s rooms, where the housekeeper, Esperanza, stayed—Garrett had gone to the barn, saddled a horse, and spent what remained of the night and the first part of the morning riding.
Finally, when smoke curled from the bunkhouse chimney and lights came on in the trailers along the creek-side, Garrett had returned home, put up his horse, retired to his private quarters to strip, shower and fall facedown into bed.
The ringing reminded him that he still had a job.
“Shit,” he murmured, sitting up and scrambling for the bedside phone. “Hello?”
A dial tone buzzed in his ear, and the ringing went on.
His cell phone, then.
He grabbed for his jeans, abandoned earlier on the floor next to the bed, and rummaged through a couple of pockets before he found the cell.
“Garrett McKettrick,” he mumbled, after snapping it open.
“It’s about time you picked up the phone,” Nan Cox answered. She sounded pretty chipper, considering that her husband had stood up at the previous evening’s fundraiser and essentially told the world that he and Mandy Chante were meant to be together. “I’m at the office, and you’re not. You’re not at your condo, either, because I sent Troy over to check. Where are you, Garrett?”
He sat up in bed, self-conscious because he was talking to his employer’s wife, one of his late mother’s closest friends, naked. Of course, Nan couldn’t see him, but still.
“I’m on the Silver Spur,” he said, grabbing his watch off the bedside table and squinting at it.
Seeing the time—past noon—he swore again.
“The senator needs you. The press has him and the little pole dancer cornered in their hotel suite.”
Garrett tossed the comforter aside, sat up, retrieved his jeans from the floor and pulled them on, standing up to work the zipper and the snap. “I can understand why you think this might be my problem,” he replied, imagining Morgan and Mandy hiding out from reporters in the spacious room he’d rented for them the night before, “but I’m not sure I get why it would be yours. Some women would be angry. They’d be talking to divorce lawyers.”
“Morgan,” Nan said quietly, and with conviction, “is not himself. He’s ill. We still have five children at home. I’m not about to turn my back on him now.”
“Mrs. Cox—”
“Nan,” she broke in. “Your mother and I were like sisters.”
“Nan,” Garrett corrected himself, his tone grave. “Surely you understand that your husband’s career can’t be saved. He won’t get the presidential nomination. In fact, he will probably be asked to relinquish his seat in the Senate.”
“I don’t give a damn about his career,” Nan said fiercely, and Garrett knew she was fighting back tears. “I just want Morgan back. I want him examined by his doctor. He’s not in his right mind, Garrett. He needs my help. He needs our help.”
Although the senator was probably going through some kind of delayed midlife crisis, Garrett wasn’t convinced that his boss was out of his mind. Morgan Cox wouldn’t be the first politician to throw over his wife, family and career in some fit of eroticized egotism, nor, unfortunately, would he be the last.
“Look,” Garrett said quietly, “I’ve given this whole situation some thought, and from where I stand, resignation is looking pretty good.”
“Morgan’s?”
“Mine,” Garrett replied, after unclamping his jaw.
“You would resign?” Nan asked, sounding only slightly more horrified than stunned. “Morgan has been your mentor, Garrett. He’s shown you the ropes, introduced you to all the right people in Washington, prepared the way for you to run for office when the time comes….”
Her voice fell away.
Garrett thrust out a sigh. Would he resign?
He wasn’t sure. All he knew for certain right then was that he needed more of what his dad would have called range time—hours and hours on the back of a horse—in order to figure out what to do next.
In the meanwhile, though, Morgan and the barracuda were pinned down in a hotel suite in Austin, two hours away. The senator was obviously a loose cannon, and if he got desperate enough, he might make things even worse with some off-the-wall statement meant to appease the reporters lying in wait for him in the corridor.
“Garrett?” Nan prompted, when he didn’t speak.
“I’m here,” he said.
“You’ve got to do something.”
Like what? Garrett wondered. But it wasn’t the sort of thing you said to Nan Cox, especially not when she was in her take-on-the-world mode. “I’ll call his cell,” he told her.
“Good,” Nan said, and hung up hard.
Garrett winced slightly, then speed-dialed his boss.
“McKettrick?” Cox snapped. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” Garrett said.
“Where the hell are you?”
Garrett let the question pass. The senator wasn’t asking for his actual whereabouts, after all. He was letting Garrett know he was pissed.
“You haven’t spoken to the press, have you?” Garrett asked.
“No,” Cox said. “But they’re all over the hotel—in the hallway outside our suite, and probably downstairs in the lobby—”
“Probably,” Garrett agreed quietly. “First thing, Senator. It is very important that you don’t issue any statements or answer any questions before we have a chance to make plans. None at all. I’ll get back to Austin as soon as I can, but in the meantime, you’ve got to stay put and speak to no one.” A pause. “Do you understand me, Senator?”
Cox’s temper flared. “What do you mean, you’ll get back to Austin as soon as you can? Dammit, Garrett, where are you?”
