Well, we've arrived, I thought. Moment of truth time. "You want me to be honest, or you want me to tell you what you want to hear?"

"Both."

Leave it to Justin to pick C when given a choice of A or B. "I think we're leading a lot of nice people down the yellow brick road, and when it comes right down to it, we won't be able to pull this thing off."

My point, whatever it was, whizzed over Justin's head like a b.u.mble bee on its way to someplace else. "Don't worry, man, Dane's into me. With him on board, Randall and those stuffed shirts'll be falling all over themselves to do this thing."

There was no value in arguing with Justin when he was in a mood like this, and besides, I was tired. I wanted to close my eyes and sink back into that hospitable, homey feeling I'd had when I was enjoying the meat-o-rama and the ensuing horseshoe game at Donetta's house. "How did you convince Dane to come here, anyway?"

He held up his palms as if it were elementary. "Hey, I'm Justin Shay."

Yeah, right. That doesn't count for much when you're practically uninsurable. In Hollywood, you're only as good as your last project.

"Come on, everyone wants Dane. n.o.body's been able to get him to work for how long now ... five years or more? How'd you get him to come all the way to Texas to take a meeting?"

Justin crossed his arms over his chest, displeased with the fact that I'm the Shay didn't work as a pa.s.skey for me. "He owes me. I went to one of his kids' birthday parties."

"You went to a kid's birthday party?" The Shay didn't even like kids. As far as I knew, he'd never even been to his own kids' birthday parties. His personal a.s.sistant sent lavish gifts at the right times of year, but that was it.

"Yeah, his son's a big fan." He said it like it was the most natural thing in the world. "And Dane's interested in the foster shelter project. You know, he's got all those kids adopted from all over the place."

Ahhhh ... now a few things were starting to make sense. Dane and his actress wife were rapidly building a patchwork of family adopted from poverty-stricken orphanages all over the world. The tabloids and TV talk shows loved their mixture of glamour and humanitarianism.

The Shay grinned, seeming pleased with himself. "I told him to bring the kid out to the ranch, and I'd show him the horses and stuff."

"You used Dane's kid to try to get Dane on board for this project? At his birthday party?"

Justin's lip curled indignantly. "No. The kid'll get to see the horses. Willie said he'd even ask Frank to come up with a pony that likes kids." I once again noted Justin's obvious admiration for Willie Wardlaw. Such hero worship was completely uncharacteristic for Justin, as was taking advice-fatherly or otherwise-from anyone. Normally, Justin liked to be the alpha. Period. "He's a cute kid. I think he's about Brody's age. They got him from someplace that used to be the Soviet Union."

I was dumbstruck at the mention of Brody. Justin almost never mentioned either one of his sons. I wondered if he even knew how old Brody was at this point.

Justin's expression turned oddly pensive. He stopped moving and looked me in the eye. "Do you think Stephanie would want to bring Brody and Bryn here to see the ranch and stuff?" Maybe the question seemed more farfetched when he said it out loud, or maybe he saw my mouth dropping open, but he quickly added, "I guess it's a stupid idea."

"I think you ... " I started to restate what we both knew by saying something useless and off-the-cuff like, I think you've burned more bridges than Patton's army, where Stephanie's concerned.

Stephanie had spent thirteen years being lured by Justin's various attempts at rehab and normal family existence. She and the boys had been sucked in and spit out more times than I could count.

After she moved out of LA and took the kids, I figured that was pretty much the end of things, which was probably for the best. Neither Marla nor Randall nor I encouraged Justin to complete the long to-do list required for him to get visitation again. He was mad at Stephanie at that point, and we all knew he wouldn't stick with it. Brody and Bryn needed to be safe, the dirt from the custody battle was slowly burying Justin's career, and aside from that, I remembered what it was like to live with the adults around you at war. No kid deserved that.

I'd always reasoned that some people just weren't meant to be parents. Now, face to face with Justin, and even though I knew this whole foster shelter thing was the brain child of one of his manic states from which he would eventually come down, I couldn't bring myself to tread on his fantasy. I just kept thinking, You know what, Nate, if your mother ditched you in a video arcade, you'd be screwed up, too.

"I think something like that's not going to happen overnight," I said carefully. I didn't want to cut Justin off at the knees, but I didn't want to blow smoke at him, either. "Stephanie's been burned a lot of times, and she's got Brody and Bryn to worry about. I think it's going to take baby steps, and the time to do it isn't when you're on a big high about a project."

The Shay frowned, rammed his hands into his pockets, and snorted sardonically to let me know that wasn't the correct answer.

"I knew that's what you'd say. You're always so stinkin' careful, Nate. You're so worried about flying under the radar, you don't ever take off. It's like you're still afraid if you stick your head up, the old man's gonna knock it off."

The observation bit in a way I was completely unprepared for, and I couldn't think of anything to say at first. The Shay was standing here telling me I was a screw-up? It doesn't get any more warped than that. "We're not talking about me." Was he right? Did it sting because it was true? Was I living my life in the safe zone, doing what was easy, always opting for the sure thing rather than going after what I really wanted? Deep down, in some disgusting, twisted, Freudian way, was I afraid that if I tried something big, if I reached for the bra.s.s ring and failed, a deeply buried, subliminal Doug would pop up and say, What'd you think was gonna happen, you little screw-up? Now go out to the garage and get me a beer. ...

"You know what, Nate?" The Shay gave me a fierce look. I'd rained on his parade with the Stephanie comment, and now he was going to thank me by laying on the guilt and manipulation with the old, You're my brother, man. If you don't believe in me, man, I might as well cash it in right now. ...

Every time I fell for that line, I got sucked into some form of near disaster.

"Maybe we should be," he said, and I had to re-track, because the conversation had veered off unexpectedly. "Maybe we oughta talk about you. Maybe we oughta talk about why you're not on board with this project. You're just here hangin' out, giving it lip service, waiting for it to crash and burn."

"I think I've been pretty honest about that," I said, and he snorted again.

"I could make one phone call and have ten writers here to take your place." Now there was The Shay I remembered-the narcissistic, dictatorial, self-important action superdude who made no apologies for occupying the gravitational center of the universe.

"Why haven't you, then?" I remained calm only because I knew it would annoy him. Justin hated it when the sycophants didn't quiver in fear. "You could get someone who knows about all this horse stuff, someone who's into emoting all over the page."

"I don't want someone who emotes! I want you!" he exploded.

"I want this project for me and you, Nate. I want everybody to see we can do something more than another knife and gun car-chase flick. I want people to take us ... seriously. I'm tired of walking into parties and knowing they're all thumbing their noses at us behind our backs. I want us to get respect. A man isn't anything if he doesn't have respect." The last part had an inflection that came straight from Willie Wardlaw.

Some long-ago comment from my grandfather about respect being something you earn came to mind, but I didn't say it. The Shay and I were in new territory here, and I wasn't sure where to go next. Maybe he was finally growing up. Maybe we both were.

"I'll do the best I can with the script." The words were out of my mouth before I had time to rea.s.sess the commitment I was making or the level of involvement required. Working with Justin on this project, particularly working in the disorganized, piecemeal, sc.r.a.p-at-a-time way Justin operated, would tie me up for months.

There would be no more long, lazy days in Mammoth Lakes. No quiet, contemplative walks in the woods. No afternoons with Oprah while the laptop quietly purred in snooze mode. Dr. Phil would miss me. ... "I'll give it everything I've got, but you have to come through on your end. You've got to stay off the stuff, and I don't just mean the hooch, I mean the prescription stuff, too.

After we finish this meeting with Dane, you need to do rehab- for real, this time. If you want to make a go of this project, if you want to get Stephanie to let you see the kids, you've got to keep your head clear and stay focused. This can't be another screw-up like Morocco. I'm not taking another ride to the bottom with you, Justin." I realized we were about as close to the bone as The Shay and I had ever been. Another road trip into unfamiliar territory.

He looked at me narrowly, and whatever he wanted to say- probably some form of stock denial of his addiction and the fact that he'd almost killed us both the last time he went off the deep end-went unspoken. "I get it," he said flatly. "You just hook up with the horse trainer and give me a good proposal. She's hot, by the way. You should go for it. She's into you, dude." Without another word, he headed off toward his room, leaving me with a strange combination of lofty promises, relationship advice, and Elvis memorabilia.

A short time later, he was bored with rattling around the hotel, and he wanted me to, of all things, go down to the VFW hall and try to get in the poker game with the sheriff and some local guys, who apparently played at night. Picturing something like The Dukes of Hazzard, I politely declined. By then, I'd pulled out the screenplay and was looking it over again. Justin's feeling was that our Oscar run could wait until tomorrow. Right now, he wanted a poker buddy. In his room down the hall, Frederico was sacked out and unwakeable. Justin wasn't happy when I didn't cooperate, either.

"You act like you're old, dude. It's not even midnight," the bored, fun-seeking Justin complained, then he headed off to find the small-town party life. By the time I went to bed, he hadn't reappeared. I didn't worry about him. I figured available trouble in Daily, Texas, was limited, especially when your poker buddies included local law enforcement.

I woke up early in the morning listening to Justin snore on the other side of the adjoining door. Lauren was on my mind and I had the strange sense that I'd been dreaming about something, but I couldn't quite pull it out of the mist. The dream had something to do with Lauren-I remembered that much.

It had been a long time since I'd waken up in the morning thinking about a girl-since high school, probably, when Jennifer Pope told me she'd go to homecoming with me next Friday. I woke up with her on my mind every morning from Monday until Thursday, when she canceled the date and broke my heart. She was nice about it. She made some excuse about her family having plans, but the truth was that her dad didn't want her hanging out with some foster kid from Mama Louise's.

After that, I joined the youth group at Jennifer's church. When her father figured out I was showing up there-mostly to see Jennifer-they moved to another congregation. That nixed my church career, except on Sunday mornings, when Mama Louise mustered us out of bed and dragged us three blocks down the road to the Victory Lane Fellowship, where the music was loud and you never knew who might get the Holy Ghost and dance in the aisles on any given Sunday. Justin used to make fun of that place when we lay in our bunk beds at night, but I didn't mind it so much. The preacher was high volume, but he said some things that made sense. He made me think of my dad. Even though by then I couldn't remember for sure, I suspected that my father had been a religious man. I had vague recollections of waking late at night and finding him praying over my bed. I liked the way it felt when he did that-as if he were weaving a net around me, and I could float away on it until morning.

Sometimes, after we were living with Doug, when the fights and the TV were at their max in the other room, I'd curl up in my bed and try to pull that net over me. I'd pray the only prayer I could remember-one my grandfather had taught me when I was sure there were elephants under the bed and monsters in the closet. I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. Then I'd pull the pillow over my head so I couldn't hear anything. I'd try to remember the farm. In the morning, Doug's house would be quiet, so you'd have to say the prayer worked.

I checked once to see where it was in the Bible. Psalm 4:8. When they asked us to name our most important Bible verse in Jennifer's youth group, I used that one because it was the only thing I knew off the top of my head, and I didn't want to look stupid in front of all the churchy kids. Besides, it had made a believer out of me. It always kept me safe until morning, and in Doug's house, that was a minor miracle in itself. At some point, I concluded that G.o.d was more powerful than Doug, which was good to know.

My mother didn't want to hear talk like that. She said all those church ladies sneering at her was the biggest reason she hated living at the farm. She never really complained about my father, just the family, and the farm, and the people in town. Maybe she even believed it was bad luck to speak ill of the dead.

I had the strangest urge to tell Lauren that story, but I couldn't fathom why. Perhaps just because she was in my thoughts as I woke up and took in anew the wonders of Suite Beulahland. Even Elvis watching me in all forms of Plasticine (and several colors of velvet) couldn't chase away the warm, slightly romantic notion that last night had been ... well ... special. Normally, I wasn't one to make a move when a woman appeared hesitant-after something like the Jennifer Pope affair, one never quite recovers-but with Lauren, it seemed worth the risk.

I had the urge to go knocking on her door, but I knew it was too early. The sky was just gaining a blush outside. I paced the room for a while, picked up the script and tried to concentrate on it, walked out into the hall with it, thought if there was a light under Lauren's door, I'd knock and say something suave and un.o.btrusive like, "I thought you might want to take a look at this before breakfast." Something that wouldn't indicate I'd been stalking her door.

The light was on and I almost knocked, but then I decided it was stupid. Of course she'd know I was stalking her door. It was six-thirty in the morning. She'd think I was one of those creepy obsessive types who called to phone-smooch ten minutes after dropping a girl off from a date. Women don't like men like that.

I hung around the hall waiting for it to get later, until finally the light came on in Frederico's room, and I figured I'd better head out before Fred drafted me into his morning celebrity boot camp.

Last night at the barbecue, as Justin was slogging down coconut cream pie, Frederico had pointed out that tomorrow they must get back on regimen.

I heard Fred pa.s.s by in the hall as I laid the script on the table in my room and got dressed to go out for a jog. With any luck, I could get through the back door without Fred detection. A morning jog with Fred was like signing up for a challenge on Survivor.

Leaving my room, I moved down the stairs quietly, stopping at the bottom to listen for the hum and clink of exercise equipment in the lobby. The place was strangely silent, except for the moaning ghost in the dumbwaiter. Even the pecan rolls hadn't arrived yet.

Maybe Fred had left for a jog on his own.

Then again, maybe he was in the storeroom, with all the Styrofoam wig heads and the refrigerator where we'd stashed the leftovers last night.

Aluminum foil? Was that crinkling aluminum foil I heard?

I stepped down the hall and saw a fan of light coming from the storeroom door, warm and silent on the cool wood floor. A shadow moved in, materializing in the doorway inch by inch-a foot stretching to a leg, a leg stretching to a torso, a torso stretching to an arm.

The shadow lengthened and came forward. I slid into the darkness by the wall, waited, watched Fred back toward the door. He moved carefully, hunched over like a cat burglar, his body shielding something. I had a feeling I knew what it was.

I smelled coconut cream ...

And the unmistakable tw.a.n.g of barbecue ...

I waited until he'd almost reached me, then I stepped out of the shadows and said, "G'mornin', Fred!"

Fred jumped three feet, squealed like a teenage girl at a slumber party, and threw his hands in the air. The pie flew skyward, did a double flip, and landed on one of the wig heads, giving it a pie in the face. "Mama mia!" Fred gasped, pounding a fist against his chest. "You surprise me!" Fred's eyes cut to the evidence, dripping wet and fluffy down the Styrofoam face as the pie pan slid free and clattered to the floor. It landed at Fred's feet, but he pretended not to notice.

"What'cha doin' there, Fred?" I asked. There was barbecue sauce on his chin, and he still had a fork tucked between his fingers. He held it up, as if he were considering offing the witness to cover the crime, then he shrugged helplessly and sighed out a long string of Italian that had something to do with nectar of the G.o.ds. With a quick swipe of the fork, he snagged a falling dollop of ambrosia, popped it into his mouth, and swilled it around, his eyes falling closed in a carbohydrate stupor. "Ahhhh, succulento ... squisito, incredibile ... "

"Enjoy there, big guy," I said, and left him to contemplate multilingual adjectives for the pie as he reached for another bite. In a way, it was nice to know that even Frederico Calderone wasn't immune to Imagene Doll's confectionary temptations.

The morning air was crisp and pure as I headed out for my run. One thing about life in Daily, Texas-traffic wasn't a problem. The streets were especially dead this morning. Pa.s.sing by a church in the predawn haze, I saw a preacher unlocking the doors and had the vague thought that it was Sunday already. The preacher watched me jog by like he was surprised to see anyone afoot this early, and as I continued on, the sheriff's deputy honked at me from his cruiser, but then he waved, so I think he was being friendly.

On my way past the local law enforcement headquarters, I stopped to admire the new cement culvert that had been erected in Marla's honor. Then I moved on, because I didn't want to think about Marla. By now, she and Randall were probably popping Valium like baby aspirin and calling out the National Guard. I was actually surprised they hadn't used some kind of satellite technology to beam the cell phones and track Justin down. He must have done an especially good job of leaving behind clues to lead them in another direction. Over the years, Justin had figured out how to disappear, when he wanted to. He usually surfaced among the high-priced party spots of Brazil, Mexico, Bali-anyplace he could get away with hanging out for a while and blowing some cash on mindless entertainment while Marla and Randall went nuts trying to discern where he was. I had to give him credit for having come up with a unique hideout this time. A quiet country town on Sunday morning was the last place anyone would expect to find him.

When I got back to the hotel, I found Lauren in the alley in her sweats, stretching like she was about to go for a jog.

"Headed out?" I asked, and she jumped.

"Looks like you've already been."

Was it just my male ego, or did I detect a note of disappointment in that observation? "Nah, I just got warmed up," I said, even though I'd been three miles around town, past the feed mill and the convenience store, through the park, and back. Undoubtedly, it showed. "Want some company?" I caught myself giving her the hopeful yet pathetic smile of a middle school nerd asking a cute girl if he could sit next to her in a cafeteria. What was wrong with me? "I mean, I'd like to do another mile or two." What? My knees protested. Come again? You have got to be kidding.

She glanced reluctantly toward the door, and I felt like an idiot. She probably liked her alone time in the morning. Maybe she was embarra.s.sed about last night and didn't want to see me at all. Maybe she was on the warpath about The Horseman project again. Maybe she'd headed out the door so early because she was hoping she wouldn't run into me. ...

I shut down the unproductive train of thought before it could get to the section of track where my manly self-confidence lay bound and gagged.

Maybe she was up early, like me, thinking about last night. ...

"Sure," she said, and I let out an audible sigh of relief which I then cleverly covered up with a cough. "I'm more of a power walker, though."

My knees gave each other an invisible high-five. "Great," I answered, and we started down the alley.

Lauren's form of power walking turned out to be especially nontaxing. We strolled out of town to a trail by the river, listening as the water hummed a morning song beneath the crown of pecan trees and sycamores. High above, a summer sky burned red, then cooled to aqua. We stopped to tour the bluffs along the sh.o.r.e, where Tonkawa Indians had left a pictorial history of their pa.s.sing, hundreds of years before.

"I guess it's a natural human thing," I observed as we knelt, shoulder to shoulder, by the drawings. "To want to leave behind something that lasts, I mean."

"I guess so." Her voice was soft, intimate. "I guess as a writer, you'd have that chance. I doubt anatomy teachers leave behind much of a legacy."

"Without anatomy teachers, there wouldn't be any doctors,"

I pointed out.

She frowned in a self-effacing way. "I teach pre-vet. My students are headed to vet school."

"Any veterinarians," I corrected, but she didn't laugh. Instead, she looked away, seeming a little sad. I slipped a finger under her chin, turned her face so that she was looking at me again.

"Someone with your kind of talent shouldn't be just teaching anatomy," I whispered, and then I kissed her, because sitting this close, looking into her eyes, I couldn't help myself.

She didn't seem to mind at all.

Chapter 17.

Lauren Eldridge Just as Nate kissed me, the postman, Harlan Hanson, happened to be driving over the bridge. Somewhere beyond the swirl of wild abandon in my head, I heard the unmistakable rumble-cough-cough of the remodeled army jeep he lovingly called Bessie. Nate's lips parted from mine, and I looked up just in time to see Bessie creeping along the shoulder near the guardrail.

The fluttery feeling fell to the pit of my stomach like a lead b.u.t.terfly. Harlan and Bessie were the Daily equivalent of an AP ticker tape. Harlan dropped the news at all the Daily hot spots, and then it multiplied exponentially, like jackrabbits. The area below the bridge, lovingly known as Camp Nikyneck, was one of Harlan's favorite targets of surveillance, because teenagers liked to hang out there doing ... well, what teenagers do. When I was a kid, I thought Nikyneck was an Indian word, but once I hit middle school, I, like all Dailyians, learned the true meaning of the word.

I experienced an instant of panic as Nate and I climbed the hill to street level. We made small talk, but I couldn't focus and finally the conversation ran out. I was left alone in a tempest of thought to which Nate was, fortunately, oblivious.

What would people say? What would they think? I imagined them sitting in the cafe, whispering, bringing up the past, talking about whether it had been long enough since Danny's death. Betty Prine and the literary ladies would say two years wasn't enough time, considering. They'd turn up their noses, make snide comments that would embarra.s.s my father, and bait Aunt Netta into an argument.

In Daily, even under the most normal circ.u.mstances, a budding romance was the meat of speculation, and my circ.u.mstances were hardly normal.

Budding romance? Had I said that to myself? Had I thought it? This is not a budding anything. It's not. Nate and I were working together on The Horseman. That was it. Period. End of story.

I repeated that mantra in my head as we walked back to town. There's no place in my life for this. I'm not ready. It's too soon. However painful, it was the truth. So much of my soul was still a watery wash of grief and guilt. It was all I could do to maintain a steady course. I couldn't allow anyone to jump into the pool-not Marsh and his daughter, Bella, and certainly not some slightly loony flip-flop wearing California guy, who had a convoluted past and questionable motives, even if he was drop-dead gorgeous and a great kisser.

Oddly enough, the fact that I liked Nate was exactly what made me want to push him away. I was already floundering in an ocean of issues, and it wasn't a pleasant place to spend time. I wouldn't wish myself on anybody, at least not the way I was now. Maybe someday.

When? a small, lonely voice inside me asked as we crossed Main Street and angled toward the alley in back of the hotel. How much longer? How long is long enough to erase those final angry words, to atone for Harvard's death?

"Everything all right?" Nate's question was filled with deeper implications, of which he was completely unaware.

"It's fine," I said. "Nate, I didn't mean to ... " lead you on sounded like a line from a pulp novel. "There's not ... I'm not ... " I realized we'd stopped walking. Nate was standing by the back door to the Daily Chamber of Commerce, studying me, seeming confused.