Catch a Falling Star (8 page)

Richard was standing on the sidewalk, looking up at the house.

She turned her shoulder on him, locked the door behind her, and decided what to do. She would just pretend he wasn’t there. She stepped around him without acknowledging him and went to her car. Piece of cake. He just wasn’t there.

“Brianna,” he said. “You’re right.”

That made her stop, which was stupid, because there was nothing her father could say to her that she would ever want to hear.

“What am I right about?” And wished she had just shut up.

“You’re right that I owe you more than an apology.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” she said, and got into the car.

“I’ve got a job,” he said. “Remember how you used to tell me, ‘Dad, get a job’?” and she slammed the door.

• • •

A dog barked at him. Richard turned around to see the little black mutt race down the porch steps and come in his direction. It was the same little dog that had barked at him the first time he’d been here. He took a step back. He didn’t think he was in any danger from the mutt but he wasn’t really a dog person. It was hard to know what a dog was likely to do.

The blonde girl came out, shutting the door behind her. “Oh, good grief, Jasmine, what’s — ” And then she saw him and said more sharply, “That’s enough, Jasmine,” and the dog went over to where she was standing and flopped down by her feet.

She had a cup of yogurt in her hand, and she had obviously intended to come outside to eat her lunch, even though the October afternoon was a little cool for a picnic. He had no idea how long he had been standing here on the front walk, watching down the street in the direction where Brianna’s car had gone.

The little blonde — Natalie, right? — sat down on the porch swing. He could hear the squeak of the chain as she rocked. The dog got up and went to join her, leaping nimbly up onto the seat and resting her head in Natalie’s lap.

“Brianna always wanted a dog,” he said to no one.

“She got her wish,” Natalie said. “She’s got this crazy malamute now. That dog is completely nuts. They’re like soul mates. Dakota’s out back now. She’s not allowed out front without a leash.”

“She dangerous?”

“No, Dakota is the sweetest dog ever. Loves everyone, even the thieves, long as they rub her tummy. We rely on Jasmine here to be the guard dog. Dakota just has a lot of, you know,
joie de vivre
. And an extremely short attention span.”

“She’ll go chase after a squirrel for the fun of it and never listen when you tell her to cut it out,” Richard guessed.

“Exactly.”

“Pretty dog, a malamute, isn’t it?” He was glad Brianna had gotten her dog. What he wished, he wished —

“Gorgeous. You want to meet her?”

Richard tried to figure out how he’d ended up in this conversation. “No, thanks. I’m not a dog person.”

“How do you know?”

Richard blinked. “What?”

“People are always saying stuff like that but I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean. Like, did a dog bite you so you hate all dogs? Or you’re allergic to dogs? Or what?”

Richard shook his head. “I never had a dog, not even as a boy. I guess I never got used to having them around. Don’t rightly know what a dog is like.”

“Come here,” Natalie said, and patted the porch swing on the other side of the dog. Jasmine, she’d called the dog. Pretty name for a sorry-looking mutt.

Richard wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but so far he wasn’t getting anywhere, so he climbed the three steps up to the porch and gingerly sat on the edge of the swing, next to the dog. The dog gave him a look and edged closer to Natalie.

“Jasmine, you be good,” Natalie said. Then, to Richard, “Go ahead and give her a pat.”

Richard reached out and gave the dog a pat. It wasn’t the first time he’d given a dog a pat, but it was the first time he’d ever put any thought into it.

The dog flapped her tail a time or two.

“There you go,” Natalie said. “She liked that.”

Richard reached for a floppy ear and stroked it. Her fur was a little curly but it was soft and sleek, not rough like he expected. Then he scratched her head, which made her flap her tail some more. She didn’t move from Natalie’s side but she gave him what he thought was an encouraging look from dark brown eyes. “She’s a good dog.”

“She’s a great dog,” Natalie said. She took a bite of her yogurt. “We need to go to the grocery store, ’cause yogurt’s about all there is for lunch. But you can have some if you want. Or there’s tea or water if you’d like.”

“I’m fine,” he said. He scratched the dog’s head one more time. The dog was busy watching Natalie eat. “Brianna probably won’t want you to sit here talking to me — ”

“Brianna’s already chewed me out for that,” Natalie said. She didn’t sound concerned. “But I disagreed with her assessment. I don’t think I’m a traitor for talking to you.”

A traitor. Christ, Brianna still saw the world in harsh black-and-white. Or maybe it was just him she saw that way. He could hardly blame her.

“I guess … I mean, there are some things, if you’d done them, I wouldn’t sit here with you, you know? Like if you had smacked her around, then, you know, that’s that. But she says you weren’t like that, you just liked to drink. You did some really shitty stuff because of it, but I guess that you have a disease. Brianna knows that, too, but that’s in her head, not in her heart. In her heart you abandoned her because you didn’t love her.”

Christ
. He should have turned down the damned invitation to come sit on the front porch swing. She
looked
like a nice kid. But hell —

“I always loved Brianna,” he said. “
Always
. I just sometimes couldn’t — ”

“Be there. I get it, you know. Spirit is willing and all that.”

The flesh is weak.
Christ, if that wasn’t the truth.

“Been sober five years,” he said.

“That’s good,” she said.

He patted the dog. She flapped her tail. “Not soon enough.”

“Better than not at all.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But it was easier being a drunk.”

“I doubt that,” she said. She finished the last of the yogurt and let the dog lick the container and then the spoon. She set the yogurt and spoon on the porch floor.

“What’s your story?” he said.

“Mine?” She looked startled.

“You’ve been sick,” he said. “I’ve seen what it looks like. You’re real little, like you didn’t get the chance to grow right.”

She tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and didn’t seem offended by the directness of his question. Made sense, considering how direct
she
could be. A little like Brianna that way, though a lot less angry.

“I was diagnosed with leukemia when I was five,” she said. “My mom was still alive then. I don’t remember that much about her but I remember she was always at the hospital with me.”

He sucked a breath in. “Tough times.” He had a hazy idea that she meant she’d had some kind of cancer, blood cancer, he thought, which meant drugs and maybe surgery. A lot of suffering for a long time. Not like getting your appendix out, over quick and you got back on your feet. Richard had been in the hospital once to get his appendix out.

“But that’s not all,” he guessed.

She shook her head. “I had a relapse when I was nine. That was just after my dad married your … Chrissy. And that time, it was Brianna who was always at the hospital with me.”

“Brianna?” he said. Not that he was surprised. Brianna was solid. But she would only have been a kid herself at the time.

“Chrissy never got sober,” Natalie said, relentless about the truth in away he suspected she’d learned from Brianna. “And neither did my dad.”

Christ
. He’d known he had to leave to save his own life but he’d left Brianna behind in the care of an alcoholic who had immediately hooked up with another alcoholic. And yet he still didn’t know what he could have done differently.
Not be a drunk, Dick
. Lotta help that line of thinking was.

“Then I relapsed when I was fifteen,” Natalie said, reciting a fact like it had come out of a history book, and not that there had been pain and blood and tears. Which he was sure there had been.

“They were both dead by then,” he said, remembering their earlier conversation, doing the math. “Chrissy and your dad.”

“Yes.”

“So Brianna … I hope Brianna … ” Listen to him. Hoping a kid had held another kid’s hand.

“She did,” Natalie said. “‘We’re sisters,’ she used to say. ‘Not by accident but by choice.’ Still says it. I always knew I was going to be okay because Brianna was there.”

Brianna had always been a good kid. He had no idea where she’d gotten it from.

Monday morning Brianna was late to work because Dakota had gotten into something and had vomited all over her shoes, so there had been cleaning up, and a phone call to the vet, and then a mad dash out the door only to find that Mrs. Curtin wasn’t in anyway. Out at a breakfast meeting, which meant Brianna could have driven Natalie to class instead of making her take the bus. Natalie had looked beyond exhausted this morning.

Brianna was worried, but Natalie would bite her head off if she said so. So she was just shutting up these days. She hoped Natalie appreciated it.

Heidi peeked around the wall of Brianna’s cubicle. “Mr. G called earlier. I said you’d call him back.”

Brianna’s heart gave an unsteady lurch. She’d missed a call by Mr. G! She had hardly heard a word from him last week, since the movie. She tried to think if he had called even once since then. Before, he’d been calling a couple of times a week because … well, she didn’t really know why he’d been calling. But he had been and then he’d stopped, which was depressing because it seemed like maybe he’d been calling her because he liked talking to her but now that he’d gotten to know her better he was so over that.

She picked up the phone and dialed his number, which she had memorized. Not because she called it so much — she didn’t — but because … maybe some day she’d be stranded somewhere and she would need someone to call, and he was the most reliable person she knew. He was her just-in-case phone number. Her two-o’clock-in-the-morning-and-I’m-calling-from-the-county-jail number. She doubted he knew that.

The phone was answered by someone who was not Mr. G, probably that awful housekeeper Beverly who looked like she drank vinegar for breakfast to get her started for the day. Then he came on the line a moment later and said, “Good morning, Brianna,” and that made her feel good.

“Good morning, Mr. G. I had a message you called earlier? I was running a little late this morning.”

“Car wouldn’t start?” That had happened before.

“Dakota this time. She ate something that disagreed with her.”

“Sounds messy.”

“It was fairly disgusting.”

“I called because I know you’ve been working on your event-planning business. I’m wondering if you would be available to help me with something?”

Yes yes yes. Anything you want.
She reined herself in. “I’d be glad to discuss how Once in a Lifetime could help arrange an event,” she said. “What did you have in mind?”

“It would be something for the spring,” he said.

“That’s good. We usually need at least four to six months lead time to plan anything really big,” she said. “Locations get booked way in advance and so do the best caterers and such. What did you have in mind?”

“It will probably be something fairly small. And probably at my house, so location is not a problem. Maybe we could discuss the details over coffee?”

“I’d love to!” she said, and then realized she was acting like he had just asked her out on a date, which he had not. “I could do something first thing tomorrow.” Great, now she sounded desperate and overeager. “Or Thursday may be better.”

“Sure, Thursday is fine.”

“Let’s see … Paradise Diner is on my way to work and I don’t think it’s too far from your place. We could meet there.”

“Paradise Diner?”

Of course he had never heard of the place; it was so far beneath his radar he could be standing right in front of it and never see it.

“They have great coffee. Or you suggest a place.” He’d say The Intercontinental and then she’d have to eat crackers for lunch for a week because coffee would have to be on her. He was the client and the client never paid for the coffee. Geez, the things they didn’t warn you about in all those books on starting your own business.

“Paradise Diner is fine,” he said, and sounded amused, just like a fat-cat capitalist would. She supposed he was accustomed to people coming to him but she found it hard to concentrate in the middle of all that opulence he called home. “Eight?”

She hoped coffee wouldn’t run on too long or she’d be late for work again and she couldn’t count on Mrs. Curtin not noticing twice in one week. “Eight’s fine.”

“Then it’s a date.” A pause. “Well, a business date.”

“Either way,” Brianna said, and then turned bright red and hung up the phone.

• • •

Either way.
Matthias hung up the phone, feeling cheerful. Halfway through the conversation, he’d realized he was an idiot, with no graceful way to escape. He still had no graceful way to escape, but now he didn’t feel so bad about it. The things Donald’s wife drove him to do in self-defense.

He looked at the Maltese Falcon. Beverly had tried losing it but he’d found it in the trash. He liked the Maltese Falcon. It was the Maltese Falcon’s fault, in a way. Every time he saw it, he thought of Brianna. And so his brain had presented him with the bright idea of calling Brianna to arrange some sort of festivity for him. She needed the business, and he enjoyed being with her. And this empty house needed something to fill it up. Maybe if he started entertaining, the walls wouldn’t echo so much.

Obviously he hadn’t thought it all the way through because he had no idea what kind of event he wanted planned for spring. He guessed he’d have to figure that out before Thursday.

Brianna was on time — Dakota hadn’t lost her breakfast, Jasmine hadn’t accidentally peed all over the kitchen floor, the car had started, the stars aligned.