"Here," she said, waving a hand to indicate the broader here, as in, in the general vicinity at this particular time. "With this whole ... movie thing. Who would want to film a movie in Daily, Texas?"

"Good question." I liked this girl. She was just s.p.u.n.ky enough to be fun, just confusing enough to be a challenge. What was her interest in the film, anyway?

"Why?"

"Why is it a good question, or why does The Shay want to do a film here?"

Her chin tilted emphatically. "Both."

Just to provide a moment of suspense, I pretended to be thinking about it. "No idea."

"How can you have no idea?" She edged up the volume as if to tell me we weren't playing anymore. For whatever reason, Lauren Eldridge, whose aunt owned the hotel, was heavily invested in The Shay's filmmaking plans. But the less information floating around the better. When this harebrained project collapsed, as it inevitably would, and Justin had to renege on whatever promises he'd made to his new friend, Amber Anderson, and the rest of the locals, there would be less fodder for a lawsuit or a media smear campaign. Even now I could imagine the headline-Heartbreak in the Heartland:Superstar Sells Big Plans, Leaves Behind Broken Dreams.

"Is there going to be a movie?" Lauren met my eyes. I had that annoying feeling she was reading me again.

Maybe I didn't like this girl after all. She was ... irritatingly direct, without really revealing her interest in the matter. This was much more than a casual inquiry, more like a grilling, actually.

The door to the Care Bear cottage opened and Justin stumbled out, squinting through one bloodshot eye, sporting a case of bed head, and wearing nothing but those girly-looking silk boxers he thinks make him look hot when the tabloids catch him in his underwear.

Lauren blinked, then turned away, either shocked, appalled, or amused, or some combination of the three.

Licking sleep-jam from his teeth and smacking his lips, The Shay scratched his stomach while trying to focus. "What's with the noise out here?" Funny question, coming from the guy who'd just been shaking the building off its foundation.

"Yeesh, Justin, go put on some clothes. You're in a hotel." Which wasn't to say that ever made much difference. Home, hotel, Malibu house with gla.s.s on all sides ... Justin did pretty much what Justin wanted to do. Being the center of the universe has its privileges.

He shrugged and continued across the hall into what I'd figured out this morning was the bathroom, since there wasn't one in our room. Sort of an old-fashioned concept, but it's not every day you get to shave with a life-sized cardboard John Wayne for company. The Duke was a bit one-dimensional, but we looked great in the mirror together. I took a picture with my cell phone. I thought I'd show it to my landlord when I returned to Mammoth Lakes.

As soon as The Shay was gone, Lauren got back to the question at hand. "So, is all of this for real? There is going to be a movie?"

I knew that by not answering right away, I was answering. It would have been more convenient to just say, Yeah, sure, of course. The Shay said we're going to film The Horseman, and we're going to film The Horseman. Yee-haw. Saddle up there, cowgirl. But in the back of my mind, in the farthest reaches of my memory, there was my grandfather, sitting beside me on the farmhouse steps as my mom's car wheezed up the driveway with Doug, my stepdad to be, in the driver's seat. Be a good boy, Nate, Gramp said, just before I left the farm to move into Doug's house. Remember your Sunday school lessons. Do the right thing, even if it's hard.

The bathroom door opened, and Justin stuck out his head. He answered Lauren's question, saving me from an inconvenient moral dilemma. "You bet there's gonna be a movie." Was it my imagination or had he grown a Texas accent overnight? "Nate's gonna make this thing sing Golden Globe like you wouldn't believe. Aren't ya, Nate?" The door closed, and he popped out of the conversation as quickly as he had popped in.

Lauren turned her back to the bathroom door, waiting for me to answer.

"Hooow-dee!" a high-pitched, yet startlingly robust call echoed up the stairs, and I seized the distraction. "Hey up thay-er, anybuddy hu-u-un-gree this mornin'?" The words stretched in the air, playing a tw.a.n.gy, tinny rhythm, like an old guitar badly out of tune and a little too lively so early in the morning. "Hel-lo-o-oh, every-buddy decent?"

The stairs squeaked, then stopped like someone was waiting just around the corner. When I glanced at Lauren, she was what Mama Louise would have called three shades of pale. She looked like she was considering making a run for the front stairs at the other end of the hall. What was up with that? Maybe all that jazz about this being her aunt's hotel was just a cover. Maybe she was an interloper-a reporter for the entertainment tabs, a mentally disturbed Justin Shay fan, a spy from Randall's office. That would explain all the questions about the film plans. ...

The next thing I knew, she'd bolted through the door into Suite Beulahland, leaving me standing in the hallway, alone with my sweet rolls.

"All-ri-ighty then, last warnin'. Cover up, 'cuz there's ladies comin'." It occurred to me that the proprietors, and anyone else who frequented this hotel, had probably been treated to the startling vision of Justin in his silk boxers before.

There was chatter on the stairway. "Are you sure he's decent?"

"Well, he's up, Imagene, I know that. I heard water goin' down the pipes."

"That don' mean he decent." The third accent was foreign- Chinese, j.a.panese, Thai, something like that. "In Coli-forna they go to beach not decent."

"Oh, Lucy, for heaven's sake. They do not."

"I see it on TV."

"Pppfff! That stuff gives people ideas. Pretty soon it'll be everyone runnin' around in the altogether."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Donetta. Lucy was makin' a observation. People in California do things different."

"Folks hadn't oughta run around the beach in the altogether. The other day I was showin' the Sunday school kids them websites about our cruise, and there was a woman in a thong bathing suit in the picture. Looked like a plucked turkey in a smokehouse hangar."

The stairway broke into a raucous chorus of giggles. I'd concluded there were three people around the corner-Donetta and Imagene, whose first language was Texan, and Lucy, whose first language was something other than English. "Oh, mercy, if that ain't a picture," Imagene said finally. "I think you need one of them swimsuits for the cruise, Netta."

"That'd clear the beach!"

"How'd we get to talkin' about the beach?"

"I can't recall, actually."

"We talk about Mit-ter Shay. He don'a look like pluck turkey. He look like Yoga With Yahani show."

The bathroom door opened, and Justin came out with a Jimmy Stewart towel wrapped around his waist. He was just in time to hear himself being lauded from the stairway.

He slicked his hair back and posed. "Good mornin', ladies," he called, then checked the towel. I guess he figured that was decent enough. "What's for breakfast?" Leaning close to me, he grinned. "I love this place. Isn't it great?"

"Are ya decent?" A nest of tall, red-really red-hair peeked around the corner, followed by a face that was a cross between Carol Burnett and Miss Kitty from Gunsmoke. "Well, mornin', mornin', morning!" Donetta topped the stairs followed by, presumably, Imagene and Lucy. Imagene, with roller-curled gray hair, round cheeks, and thick gla.s.ses hanging partway down her nose, awakened some memory of my grandmother I couldn't quite put a finger on. My grandmother walked like that, for one thing, sort of shuffling from one foot to the other with her head poked cautiously out in front.

Lucy reminded me of the lady who used to run the convenience store down the block from Mama Louise's. She was a nice lady-from someplace in the Philippines. When we tried to lift candy bars, or drink part of a soda, then top it off again, she ran us out of her store, cussing in a language we couldn't understand and wielding a broom, but she was kind enough not to call the police. She just wrote it down and charged us for it the next time we came in with money. "No flee-bie," she'd say and shake a finger at us. "No flee-bie. You owe, you pay." Good life lesson. I wondered if Justin remembered No flee-bie. I'd have to ask him the next time he was yammering on in the middle of the night about things that didn't matter.

Donetta (Miss Kitty) gave Justin a big smile. "Well hay thay-er. Ya brought yer friend. You two have a good ni-ight? Were the rooms all ri-ight and everythin'?" The trio proceeded up the hall. Donetta stuck out her hand and introduced herself to me. "Hi, hon, I'm Donetta."

"Nate Heath," I said, and she yanked me into a hug, then let me go, and held me by the shoulders.

"Aren't ye-ew just as cute as a speckled pup! Justin's just told us all about ye-ew. He says yer the best movie writer there ever was. He said you was gonna write the script for The Horseman, and when you get done with it, why, it'll be a sure-fire bet for the Academy A-ward. We sat right down there in the beauty shop and talked all about it, not ... when was that, hon?" She glanced at Justin, who shrugged helplessly. For Justin, most things were a blur. "Well, not more'n a month or two ago, anyhow," Donetta went on. "Willie Wardlaw sent that script to my brother, Frank. Two of them are old friends. Willie's been tryin' to get it made into a movie for a while, and he thought maybe since Frank's helpin' with some of the work out at Justin's ranch, well, maybe he could get Justin to look at it. Frank ain't much of a reader, and he ain't the pushy type, either, but I don't have a problem with either thang, so when Justin called and said he was comin' last time, I had the script ready and a'waitin in the room, and the rest is history. It's a real good story, and the movie bein' made'll mean a lot to Willie, and to Daily. It's a real good story, don't you tha-ank?" She ended with a definitive nod, and I had the feeling I was being sold something-a bill of goods, deep fried with sugar on top. A script fritter, so to speak.

All three women stood with their hands clasped expectantly, waiting for me to say something.

No comment. "I haven't ... read it ... all ... yet."

"Well, it's got horses, and a cowboy, and a lonely little boy with no daddy. He's autistic. And a love story, and a big horse race all in one. Picture shows don't get much better'n that. I got some ideas for ya, too, when yer ready, a'course. I spent a lot of hours lookin' in the shop window and thinkin' about some ways the movie write-up is different from the book, and I had a ... well, sort of a revelation. Sometimes, when I'm lookin' in the shop window I have ... well, I guess you'd call 'em visions."

Imagene nudged Donetta, knocking her off balance. "Donetta, for heaven's sake, you're gonna make him think we're all one biscuit short of a panful. I bet he knows how to write a movie, anyhow. That's what he does for a livin'."

"I was just bein' conversational, Imagene. He might like to hear my idea." Swiveling my way, she raised penciled-on brows, waiting for confirmation, or an invitation. "Now, I got a big table all reserved down at the cafe. Frank's downstairs, and Willie Wardlaw and his girlfriend, Mimi, are on the way here. I thought we could go on over and get us a real breakfast before I open up the shop- have one of them Hollywood meetin's just like on that Studio 20 TV show."

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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 cafe. 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 G.o.d 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 s.p.a.ces 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 gla.s.ses 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 cafe 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 ca.s.seroles, desserts, leftover fried chicken, and pecan pie from the Daily Cafe. "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 sp.a.w.ned 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 a.s.sured 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 ma.s.ses.

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 a.s.sociation, and pa.s.sive-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 embarra.s.sing 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 Sat.u.r.days 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 pa.s.sed 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 cafe 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.