Mean Season

Mean Season
Heather Cochran

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Zoë

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Heartfelt thanks to all four of my parents for their varied support through this process. To some early and awesome readers, Brangien Davis, Aly Meranze, Dan Daley, Erica Payne, Gabrielle Dudnyk and Gwen Riley. Huge thanks also to Katherine Fausset of Watkins-Loomis and to my editor, Farrin Jacobs. And to David Allen, whose opinion matters.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Day One

Joshua Reed was delivered to our house on Prospect Street in a police car. Lars and Judy followed in their rental, then Momma and I in her station wagon. Momma was humming, like she found it all so amusing. My oldest brother, Tommy, had got into trouble with the law a few times back when he was in high school, and each call from the police station had sparked words between Momma (who wanted to see him punished) and Dad (who thought a good scare was punishment enough). But when it came to Joshua, Momma didn’t seem to care whether he learned anything from his punishment. She said that Joshua not being her son made it seem like a movie, something she might keep her distance from and maybe even enjoy a little.

The policemen who drove Joshua Reed to our house stayed for a couple minutes to make sure that his ankle sensor was working, and also to review the boundaries of our property. In the backyard, Joshua would be allowed to wander to the edge of the lawn, where the trees started, and on the unfenced side of the house, he could go as far as the stand of creepy dead oaks. In front, he could wander to the mailbox at the edge of our driveway.

Once the police drove off (after one of them had asked Joshua for an autograph, for his daughter he made sure to say), the five of us who were left stood a moment in our living room, me and Momma and Judy and Lars and Joshua Reed, newly incarcerated movie star. It was the first time that Judy and Lars and Joshua had actually been inside our house. I caught them looking around, and my cheeks burned. I was suddenly aware of the peeling ceiling paint and the frayed edge of the living room rug and how the fabric on the big couch was worn through, so that Momma had long ago thrown one of her quilts over top of it, like a slipcover that didn’t fit neat around the curves or corners. We’d cleaned—well, I’d cleaned—the house all that previous week. And it looked clean, but it was still nothing like the houses you see in TV shows. And I knew it was nothing like where Joshua Reed usually called home. A year back, there’d been an article about his house in a home decor magazine, so I’d seen pictures. The magazine had called his place an “artist’s cottage,” though it was maybe twice as big as the largest house along all of Prospect Street, maybe in all of Pinecob.

No one looked too comfortable, just standing there. I wasn’t sure what to do besides offer to show Joshua his room, and I noticed him glare at Judy and Lars before he followed me up the stairs.

“I’ll call you soon, J.P.,” Judy said.

He didn’t answer her.

I had put my best sheets on his bed and cleared out some space in the dresser and closet. Vince’s stuff was still all through the room, on the walls and the shelves. After he disappeared, Momma mostly stopped going in there, so it had stayed the same for the past decade. It was only maybe a season before that she’d started to leave Vince’s door open during the day, and I noticed that sometimes, when I got home from work, the shades in his room would be up, letting in a little light.

Vince had always been Momma’s favorite. Maybe I shouldn’t say that—it’s the sort of thing kids aren’t supposed to pick up on, which pretty much ensures that they will. I picked up on it, even when I was little. So when Vince took off, well, I’m sure I won’t get the words right to describe how hard it was on Momma. I can barely describe how hard it was on me. Vince had been my favorite, too.

If you knew Vince, you’d understand. He was the sort of person you’d notice as soon as he entered a room, and the sort of person your eyes would search for, as soon as you entered. He was the guy you always saved a seat for, because sitting beside Vince was like sitting in the sun on a cold day. He could make even church fly by, pointing out who was about to fall asleep, imagining who was daydreaming what, and when it came time to sing, belting out hymns in perfect pitch.

He made up silly games to pass the time, like the one where he’d give you two choices.

“Avocado or banana?” he’d ask, and if you chose differently from him, he’d make you say why. “Orange or green?” he’d ask. “Brother or sister?” he’d always end with. That was the only one we were allowed to disagree on.

Vince was a hair shorter and quite a bit skinnier than both of my other brothers, Beau Ray and Tommy. Still, he’d made varsity football his freshman year of high school, on account of being so fast. No one could catch him, and if someone did manage to get a handful of jersey, they had a hell of a time trying to keep him pinned. That’s what I’d tell myself, whenever I got to thinking about him, that he was one of those people you couldn’t hold down. Maybe he wasn’t made for a town the size of Pinecob. Of course, me being his younger sister surely had something to do with that opinion.

Even with the shades open, it was still Vince’s room. It was still full of his trophies and his football uniform and cleats; and those things, I’d left there. I didn’t know how much shelf space Joshua would need. I didn’t know if he was going to have boxes of clothing sent from California, or whether he planned to spend the whole of his time with us in sweat-pants. I showed him the closet, and the bathroom he would be using.

“I’m going to lie down now,” Joshua said, without looking at me.

As soon as I came back downstairs, Momma left to pick up Beau Ray from the adult care center.

I asked Lars and Judy whether they’d be staying for dinner—I figured they would, to make sure that Joshua was settling in okay—but Lars shook his head.

“Love to, Leanne, but we’ve got a flight back to Los Angeles tonight.”

I nodded. I had seen so much of them in the past weeks, it felt strange to remember that they lived all the way across the country.

“Leanne,” Judy said. “I want to tell you something. Lars and I both do.”

Her tone made me nervous. “Something bad?” I asked.

“Nothing bad,” Lars said, shaking his head.

“You must know how much we appreciate all you’ve done for J.P.,” Judy began. “I’m not talking about the fan club. If it weren’t for you, he’d almost certainly be in jail right now.”

I nodded. “I guess,” I said.

“But I want to say, well, I hope you’re not thinking,” Judy went on, “that the next ninety days are going to be some sort of slumber party.”

“Judy,” I said. I was embarrassed she would think such a thing. “I’m twenty-five. I’m not nine.”

“Oh, I know, dear, I know. It’s just that you’ve only really known J.P. for a week. Maybe it seems like you know him better, because of your work with the fan club. But you don’t. Not really. He’s a stranger. And Lars and I, well, we’d prefer that you keep that in mind.”

“That he’s a stranger?”

“You know, don’t be too accommodating,” Judy said. “Keep your distance.”

“But he’s stuck here,” I said. “For the summer. You’re saying I shouldn’t be nice to him?”

“I’m saying you don’t have to be. He hasn’t earned it,” Judy said. “He got himself into this mess,” she said. “You call me for any reason at all. Okay? You have all my numbers.”

I nodded.

“I’ll be back in the next month or so, as things with the production start to heat up.” She looked at me. “Trust me, someday this will make sense,” she said.

Chapter 2

The Joshua Reed Fan Club

I was fifteen when I first fell in love with Joshua Reed. Okay, so maybe love is a strong word, but it was all I knew at that age. Joshua had just joined the staff of General Hospital—not a real hospital, but the one on the soap General Hospital. He played Colin Ashcroft, a cardiology resident. He ran on-screen in order to save Miranda’s life with mouth-to-mouth, and I sat there, stock-still, staring at him. I called Sandy Wilson, my best friend since third grade, to ask if she’d seen what I’d just seen, but she wasn’t home yet from her job at her family’s service station. I watched him, wishing that I was Miranda or at least that I’d be given the chance to swoon in his general vicinity. Not that such swooning was likely—I lived outside of Charles Town and General Hospital was filmed in Los Angeles, about as far as you can get from West Virginia and still be in the States.

I knew that Joshua Reed wasn’t really a doctor. I knew he was an actor. For one, I’m sharper than that, and for two, he was way dreamier and younger than any doctor I’d ever seen in the town clinic where we went for shots and checkups. Even the night of Beau Ray’s accident, when we went to a real hospital, and even in the weeks that followed, I don’t remember seeing anyone who looked like Joshua Reed. Most of the doctors I knew were older and tired-out-looking, or young and scared-looking. I figured the young ones were scared that their patients were going to die on them. There were always a few drunks and some really gray-looking people in the waiting room at the clinic, so maybe those skittish doctors had reason to be scared. I felt so bad for them that I used to pinch my cheeks before a checkup, to look particularly healthy. When I was twelve, I pinched myself a little too hard and scared one of them into thinking I had scarlet fever. That put an end to such nonsense.

Colin Ashcroft was never scared, but there weren’t any drunks at General Hospital, or old guys up from center state where all the mines are, the ones who were constantly coughing and spitting. And even if there had been, technically speaking, his character wouldn’t have seen them, because he specialized in cardiology. Colin Ashcroft, as written, was a prodigy, in line to become the head of the cardiology unit, and I hoped he would someday, because it meant that Joshua Reed would keep showing up on my television screen.

Joshua Reed had also been on The Young and the Restless for a short time, playing Copper Malabar, a drifter who seduced a number of the leading ladies before leaving town. That was his breakout role, but I never watched The Young and the Restless (although back when I was fifteen, I fit the description well enough). Later, of course, I’d learn all his roles, from Copper to Colin to Nate to Stormy, and so on. But that’s because it became my job to know them.

The fan thing was new to me. I’d never been a devoted fan of anyone before, except maybe my brother Beau Ray’s friend Max Campbell, whom I had one doozy of a crush on, pretty much from the word go, which is to say, when I was eight and he was twelve. Sandy always liked Eleanor Roosevelt. And my sister, Susan, had a thing for Bo Duke, the blond one on Dukes of Hazzard, but I was always keener for dark-haired guys. Maybe that’s why I got hooked by Joshua, that day he ran on-screen to save Miranda. Even in green scrubs, he looked like I imagined a prince would—with short dark hair, deep green eyes and the end of a long day, shadow of a beard. He didn’t wear glasses. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t drink. He didn’t swear. And he was a doctor. He saved lives. I mean, it’s all fine and well to bag groceries at the Winn-Dixie (like Max, my longstanding crush), or build houses (like my oldest brother Tommy, who could lift me by his forearms alone), or even sell life insurance (like Dad did, before he died). That’s what normal people do, and it’s fine, but Joshua Reed seemed like so much more.

So there I was, fifteen, then sixteen, then seventeen, grinding through high school in Pinecob, West Virginia, starry-eyed over the actor Joshua Reed. I wasn’t obsessed. I did all the normal things a high-school girl does. I did my homework. I did my makeup. I went on dates. I got to first, then second base with Butch MacAfee, then broke up with him. I got to third with Howard Malkin, then broke up with him.

I didn’t break up with Howard because I was holding out for the likes of Joshua Reed. I’ve always been pretty realistic. You learn to be when you’re the youngest of five, and every day after school, you have to make sure your older brother hasn’t died during the day from a seizure or a clot or something. But I remember that it was around then, around the breakup with Howard, a low time even though I’d called it quits, that Momma found her autographed picture of Pat Boone.

She was being surprisingly nice to me about Howard, saying things like “that Loreen can’t hold a candle to you.” I didn’t expect the sympathy. For a few years after my dad died, Momma held back a lot of her mothering, as if she’d forgotten that I was still mostly a child, one that might need a parental sort of guidance now and again. I don’t mean to say that I suffered from it. Not more than anyone else. Besides, I had Sandy, and I was always welcome at the Wilsons’ house for dinner.

And every so often, Momma would muster her energy, and there’d be all sorts of activity as she hurried to catch up on the months she hadn’t been paying attention. One such time coincided with my breakup with Howard Malkin. Momma was down in the basement, knee-deep in boxes of her and Dad’s old papers, when she looked up and told me that Howard Malkin was a pissant who would never amount to much. A minute later, she found the Pat Boone picture, and rattled off the story behind it: how she’d had a crush on Mr. Boone back when he was first starting out, how she had written to him and been sent a signed photograph in return.

Early on, I had found a picture of Joshua—a really good one in Soap Opera Digest where he was in a tank top—and I stuck it inside my locker door at school. I always kept an eye out for him in Soap Opera Digest and Daytime Drama Weekly and even People magazine, but in those first years, he didn’t get much coverage. He was certainly handsome enough, but that was back when the whole country was obsessed with the Jasper and Helen storyline and whether or not Jasper would come back before Helen married Bart. All that buzz drowned out Joshua for a time. When my mother held up her picture of Mr. Boone, I realized that if all it took was asking nice in a letter, then, sure, I’d like a signed photograph, too. The cutout in my locker was getting a little ratty by then.

So I wrote to General Hospital. I sent my letter to Joshua Reed’s publicist, not to Joshua himself. Momma told me it would get forwarded to the publicist anyhow, so I’d get faster results that way. Besides, I didn’t want Joshua Reed to think that I was the sort of girl who wrote to stars and expected a response. Publicists, they’re supposed to write back. That’s their job. At least, that’s what I thought it was. I wrote about how I was a big fan, ever since the day Colin Ashcroft first saved Miranda. I wrote about how I’d watched the show consistently, how I had Joshua’s picture in my locker and how I would like to know more about him—where he was from, what he liked, what he was like.

That’s what started it all. It was the second semester of my senior year in high school when I sent the letter. A couple weeks later, a woman called me at home. She said that she did publicity for all of General Hospital, which was a huge job and growing (especially with the Jasper and Helen affair). She said that one of her duties was to organize the official fan clubs for every General Hospital cast member who had one. Of course Joshua Reed had a fan club, but it had been slow to get off the ground—not because he wasn’t popular, but because the woman who then ran it had gotten pregnant and wasn’t getting the newsletter out like she was supposed to. Judy—that was the publicist’s name—said that my letter hit her desk right when she was trying to decide what to do. She asked whether I had any interest in heading up the club, at least as a trial—then before I could answer, she asked how old I was. I said seventeen, almost eighteen at that point, and I could hear her start to backpedal. I could tell she thought I was too young, so real quick I explained how I was a mature seventeen, maybe not in the bra and hips way, but in the way I took care of Beau Ray a lot and did most of the grocery shopping and made sure Momma got presents out for Susan’s kids’ birthdays.

“It doesn’t pay anything,” Judy said. “You’ve got to really want to do it. I’m looking for someone who really wants to do it. I don’t have time to train and retrain and retrain,” she said.

I swore up and down that I wanted to do it, even before I knew for sure that I did. I was old enough to recognize that such an opportunity didn’t often show up in Pinecob.

She told me what I would have to do. I would have to keep the membership list current, forward membership dues and send out a welcome kit. I would have to organize and send out the newsletter four times a year. I would be expected to answer some of the basic fan mail and forward on to her anything that I couldn’t figure out or anything at all threatening. And, Judy said, she would expect me to keep her informed if I heard any rumors about Joshua, good or bad. Did I want to try it, she asked me.

Would I get to meet him, I asked her. Judy said maybe, someday, and surely that could be arranged if I ever found myself in Los Angeles. Judy said that she didn’t know how often J.P. (she called him J.P.) got to West Virginia. But if such a trip ever got planned, she would let me know. Judy seemed really nice—really busy, like one of those New York people you see in the movies talking on two phones at once, but really nice. I was seventeen, almost eighteen, and Joshua Reed was twenty-four. I said yes. I mean, what girl wouldn’t have?

I learned right away that you have to be organized. Judy sent me all the information I needed to get started, which included the membership list and copies of his biography and a whole stack of autographed 8x10 photographs. There were only two hundred and seventy-three paying members back then, with a lot in Texas (where Joshua was originally from) and Iowa and Washington state. From West Virginia there were just two—me and Sandy.

Dues were ten dollars a year, and for that, members got (and I had to assemble) a package that included Joshua’s biography and list of credits, an autographed picture, the quarterly newsletter and a membership card—Judy gave me a whole box of blank ones, and it was my job to type in the member’s name. All of that was mailed out in an envelope that had a picture of Joshua (dressed in scrubs, as Colin Ashcroft) printed across the front.

At first, all my supplies fit into a milk crate that Tommy had years back stolen from behind the Winn-Dixie, but once Joshua started getting movie work, I moved into a filing cabinet. I filled it with the clippings that Judy would send to me and the clippings that I came across, and all the normal fan mail. And I kept old photographs whenever a stack of new ones would arrive, in case I needed them some day.

Being president of the fan club made me stand out a bit in Pinecob. It’s not like I was an actress or anything, but people knew that I had connections to General Hospital, and that I could get them 8x10 glossies of just about any soap star, even those on other shows. Once you’re president of a fan club, you learn how those things work. But the fact was—and I knew it—I was still Leanne Gitlin, living at home with Momma and Beau Ray, working at the county clerk’s office over in Charles Town, going out on the weekends with Sandy or whatever guys would occasionally ask, and buying groceries at the Winn-Dixie each Sunday.

Momma was inconsistent when it came to my hobby. On the one hand, she was glad to see me focused on something that wouldn’t get me pregnant. Momma had some professional hopes for me, and I think she realized that my fan club responsibilities provided organizational practice, the sort that you might someday be able to coax into an actual occupation. Much as Momma loved Susan’s kids, Susan had been just sixteen when Kevin came along, eighteen with Kathy, and twenty-one with Kenny. Taking care of three kids when your husband is on the road all day takes skill, but not the sort you can easily turn into a job that pays well.

My oldest brother Tommy had his trade but never seemed to save a dime, and he’d taken to sometimes living out of his truck while he worked different construction jobs up and down the Shenandoah Valley. Vince—well, no one knew where he was, and it was one of those things that even my friends had learned not to mention when Momma was anywhere near. And no one ever talked about Beau Ray getting a job even though he’d had one before his fall. For a while, I’d tried to get Beau Ray to help me with my fan club duties—but even putting things into an envelope was hard for him to focus on, and he’d grow frustrated within five minutes.

But I knew that Momma also worried that the fan club would mess me up somehow, since it was different from what everyone else was doing, and different to her meant abnormal. Somehow she was fine with letting me take care of Beau Ray, and she didn’t mind expecting me to do most of the housecleaning from the time I was fourteen on—but the fan club thing threw her. She worried (I overheard her say so) that I would start to think I was someone I wasn’t, or want to be something I couldn’t be, or decide to move to Los Angeles to be a star and end up in porno movies. Of all us kids, I’m the one who never offered her any reason to worry, and maybe that felt strange, so she made up the hows and whys. I probably stayed in the county clerk job for as long as I did because she harped on me a lot less after I took it. I guess it seemed to her along the road to somewhere called normal.

But I wasn’t going to end up in pornos. Being president of Joshua Reed’s fan club gave me something to look forward to, was all. I liked that it was different. Still, life on Prospect Street got easier once I learned to manage most of my fan club chores from the basement in a couple hours on Saturday afternoons. That’s when Beau Ray went to his “Move Your Body, Move Your Mind” class at the Y and Mom went to her ages-old quilting bee, so I had a little quiet time. To tell the truth, by two years in, the fan club had become almost as routine as everything else.

Of course, it’s old news by now that Joshua Reed’s career really took off after he played Nate, the hero in Villains Can’t Be Choosers. It’s easy to see why. The costume people dressed him all in white and he grew his hair out, and he looked like Jesus come to life. Only sexy.

The fan club membership had been growing since I took the job, but it really jumped—it tripled in size—after that movie came out, and again when Villains hit video. Judy had to send a whole new batch of membership cards and glossies. By then, she wasn’t working for all the General Hospital staff—she only had a few clients, Joshua being one of them. By then, Joshua had made it into People a few times. I cut out the pictures and photocopied them for the newsletter.

I know people wondered about it—what my real deal with Joshua was. Mostly, I let them guess, although it was obvious to me that I wasn’t flying off to Los Angeles for weekends, and no limos were ever parked along Prospect Street. Fact is, I knew a lot about Joshua, and I could answer almost all of the questions that club members would send in. (For example, Judy called him J.P. because his real name was Joshua Polichuk. He started going by Joshua Reed when he moved to L.A.) But I never talked to him on the phone or anything. Once, when I was talking to Judy, she said that Joshua said to say hi, but I didn’t hear him say it, so I don’t know whether he was even in the room with her. He did write—a couple of times. Not really letters, but he would scrawl a note at the end of something Judy was sending off. He had messy, uneven handwriting, but his signature was polished. Probably from signing all those photographs. The first time, he wrote: Leanne, Judy tells me you’re my biggest fan. You’re the best! xoxo, Joshua Reed.

The second time, he wrote: Leanne, you’re the best for keeping all this together!

The third time, it was: Leanne, Be sure to tell all your friends about Villains, and also about Celebrity Jeopardy! That was right before Villains Can’t Be Choosers came out, and Judy was keeping him busy with all sorts of special events and appearances, mostly in California, but also in New York.

Sure, it would have been nice if he’d written more or even called on the phone once or twice. That way I might have known him in a personal way, different from the facts and stories that were out there for everyone. But it’s impossible to know where a thread starts when you’re looking back on things. Maybe if I had known Joshua better, I would have quit the fan club long before I did, and Judy probably figured that. Still, it was fun seeing my name in his handwriting, and he spelled it right, too. A lot of people spell it Leeanne, or Leann, or some other way. But Joshua always spelled it right.

I didn’t stick with the fan club because I thought that we were meant for each other, Joshua and me. I’m not going to say that a seventeen-year-old girl doesn’t imagine things, and I’ll admit that I imagined plenty in my early days with the club. But that was before Beau Ray suffered the first of his bad seizures and before Momma went through the months she’d come to call her “unraveleds.” I referred to those months as her mean seasons, since it seemed like she was pissed at everything and everyone in the world. Of course, folks in such a state never realize how ornery and off-putting they’re being, so when you find yourself in the midst of someone’s mean season, the best you can hope for is to stay out of their line of fire. Back in Momma’s worst times, I’d call Tommy or Susan for help, but neither ever offered to head home for even a week to make dinner and check which bills were least overdue. (That was around the same time that the idea of me going off to a full-time college stopped being talked about like it was a good thing, something that might really happen.)

But whenever I thought maybe I ought to give up the club and focus on getting my own life in order, I’d feel a heaviness, almost like family, like I’d be letting Judy down. Judy, who always said “thank you” to me. Judy, who asked “would you please.” Judy, who sent cards on my birthday and told me when she would be unavailable (like during her honeymoon) and called whenever she was going to send a new set of photos or an updated credits sheet or a rewritten biography—so I’d know it was coming. Part of me wanted to be like her. Even more of me wanted to be her, out there in California, seeing Joshua close up and making dinner for myself, just myself.

At the beginning of my seventh year with the club, membership reached 10,000. That’s paying fans, and dues by then were fifteen dollars a year. A year earlier, when it hit 5,000, Judy bought me a computer. I think she was exaggerating, but she said that she couldn’t have done any of it without me—that my help and organization and the way I always sent her the rumors that people wrote in about had helped Joshua’s career immensely. That’s why he’s only doing movies now. And good ones, big ones.

But like I said, it had long grown routine by the time Judy called one Saturday.

“Leanne?” she said. “Judy Masterson here.” She always told me her last name, although I didn’t know any other Judys so she didn’t have to. “I’ve got some wonderful news.”

“What’s that?” I asked. Joshua had been dating this Belgian supermodel named Elise, and I thought maybe Judy was going to tell me that they were getting married. But she didn’t even mention Elise.

“J.P. just signed to do a Civil War epic called Musket Fire. Think Taming of the Shrew meets Gone with the Wind. He’s not the lead—well, he’s the romantic lead, but not the historic lead, you know. We’re going to be filming back east, in Virginia, for about three months. Starting next month. Isn’t that exciting?”

“I guess I should include that in the Summer newsletter.” I must have been tired when I said that. I wasn’t thinking that it’s only forty minutes from Pinecob to the Virginia border—and that once you hit Virginia where the mountains ease up, the roads run a lot quicker.

“That would be great, but mostly, I called to say that I wanted to arrange dinner with you and me and Joshua. You’ve been working on the fan club for so long, and I swear, J.P.’s club runs so much more smoothly than any of my other clients’—I thought it would be nice…”

“Oh—of course,” I said. “That would be great. I wasn’t thinking. When?”

Judy said that she and Joshua would be arriving three weeks from that Sunday, but that the movie studio had already sent casting and location people to set things up. A lot of the filming would be taking place around Winchester and Front Royal, which were only an hour and a half or so from Pinecob. Judy asked whether I wanted to be an extra in the film. She said that Sandy and I could probably both be extras. It might require getting out of work for a few days, she said, but no one was a bigger movie buff than Mr. Bellevue, my boss in the county clerk’s office, so I knew he’d let me do it.

I couldn’t believe it: Joshua Reed, coming to Pinecob—well, not exactly to Pinecob. He and Judy were going to stay across the Potomac in Virginia for a few days, in part because there are nicer places to stay around there than in Charles Town (and there’s no place to stay in Pinecob if you’re not at someone’s house), and in part because Joshua’s character (the fiery lieutenant Josiah Whitcomb) was from that area of Virginia, and Joshua wanted to get a sense of Josiah’s history.

I told everyone, of course. How could I not? I told Beau Ray when he got back from “Move Your Body” class. I told Momma when she got back from her bee. I called Sandy and she screamed when I said how we could be extras, and she wondered whether she should try to get extra tan at the beach when she went. I even went to the Winn-Dixie a day earlier than usual, and when I saw Max, I told him.

Max didn’t seem that excited, but he’s a guy and Joshua Reed is one of those rare people who’s better-looking than Max is. Least, I always thought Max was that good-looking. I spent way too many hours of junior high and high school embarrassing myself by hanging around when he and Beau Ray played football, just so I could see Max wipe the sweat off his brow or lean into his knees to catch his breath. He was Beau Ray’s best friend up until the fall, and I think he tried to be afterward, before it became clear how different everything was.

After the fall, you couldn’t talk to Beau Ray in the same way—you had to keep to simpler, shorter conversations, and even then, he might not follow. Max would turn to me, since I was often around, to ask if I thought Beau Ray had understood something, or to try to figure out where my brother was taking a thought.

They were talking about airplanes once, I remember. This was a few years after the accident. The three of us were sitting in the backyard when Beau Ray had suddenly looked up and pointed.

“What’s that?” Max had asked, as Beau Ray traced his finger across something in the sky.

I looked up. “That airplane? Is that what you’re looking at?”

Beau Ray nodded.

“Where do you think they’re going?” I asked him.

“Hawaii,” Beau Ray said. He had watched a travel program a few days before with a piece on the various Hawaiian islands and the tourists who were flocking to them.

“I don’t think that’s headed in the right direction for Hawaii,” Max had said, squinting upward. “I think it looks to be headed east of here. Maybe D.C. or even Europe or something.”

“Hawaii,” Beau Ray said, sounding certain.

Max looked at the plane again, before it disappeared beyond the trees. He gave a little shiver, the kind you’d miss if you weren’t watching closely.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“I’m not much on planes,” he said.

“You ever been on one?” I asked him. I hadn’t.

“I don’t think flying’s for me. I like sticking nearer to the ground.”

“Max is taking the bus,” Beau Ray said.

“The bus?” Max asked. “What bus?” He looked at me, lost.

“To Hawaii,” Beau Ray said. “Everyone is going to Hawaii.”

“I don’t get it.” Max still looked confused, but I smiled.

“That’s one long bus ride,” I said to him. “Be sure to pack a lunch.”

Some folks might have viewed Max Campbell’s fear of flying as a weakness, but not me. I liked him just as much for his fear, and counted myself lucky to have been sitting nearby when he’d admitted it. I liked knowing that he wasn’t about to go flying off somewhere, that I could count on him being around. Sure, maybe someday he’d disappear down the road in a car, like Vince had, but at least it would take him longer to pull away from Pinecob. Hop on a plane, and you could end up anywhere.

Not that Max was going anywhere. By the time of Judy’s phone call, it seemed like he was almost always at the Winn-Dixie (he was an associate manager by then), and I would stop to talk with him whenever I went in. Max had been married for a little while, to a girl named Charlene who had once won the title of Miss Junior West Virginia in a beauty pageant. She’d blown in from the Northern Panhandle, and then blew out again, only a year after their wedding. It shook him something wicked. Judy’s phone call about Joshua Reed came maybe a year after Charlene had up and left, when everyone was still whispering about the torch Max carried, not dating and holding out hope she’d one day come back.

As I said, Max didn’t seem too excited about my news, but Martha, the weekend manager was beyond ecstatic. She told everyone. I was surprised she didn’t announce it over the loudspeaker. By the end of the weekend, it seemed that everyone in Pinecob knew that I was going to have dinner with Joshua Reed—and maybe even be in the movie!

Chapter 3

Dinner in Virginia

“What do you look like, Leanne?” Judy asked me. “It seems so funny to have to ask that, but I’m sure that the mental picture I’ve got is wrong. You live in L.A. long enough, and your sense of what people look like and what people are like gets all screwy.”

So I told her how I’m pretty tall for a girl and on the skinnier side of average and about my hair being halfway between red and brown, and that it was sort of feathering past my shoulders those days. I said I was white, since I realized that she might not know, except that Leanne Gitlin always sounded like a white girl’s name to me.

“But if I’m meeting you at the restaurant, won’t I recognize Joshua?”

“Oh, of course. I just wanted to try to get a picture of you in my mind. Why did I have you as a bottle blonde, I wonder? I’ve got to run. I’ve asked that the driver be at your house at six forty-five. We’ll see you at the restaurant.”

And then I was there.

Before then, I was in the car that came to pick me up, which was a lot nicer than any car I’d ever ridden in, even the one my ex, Lionel, bought new from the dealership. And before the car came, I was getting ready, and trying to figure out what to wear. Sandy had left for the beach the day before, so she couldn’t help me, but we’d pretty much decided on a sundress that I thought looked like one on the cover of the Vogue I saw in the salon where I got my hair cut. Except that my dress had red flowers on a white background, not yellow, and mine was cotton and faded a little and I think the one in the magazine was silk and was surely brand-new.

I looked in the mirror as I waited for my nail polish to dry. I’m pretty enough—people always say I’ve got good bones—but I’d never been pretty in the way of my sister, Susan. Even after she had three kids, strangers would still tell Susan how beautiful she was—like she might not have known, like they were the first to notice. People had never done that to me, although guys did cross bars to talk. Or at least, they crossed to talk to me and Sandy, but Sandy usually rolled her eyes and turned away, so I was the one who ended up in discussions about rebuilt car engines or Judas Priest vs. Motley Crüe. I’d nod and smile, and by the end of their talking, they’d look at me and say, “you know, you’re real pretty.” But by then, I was always unsure if it was because I’d been listening to them yammer on, or because they were tired of talking and wanted to make out, or because maybe, just maybe, I was pretty in the first place. Girls like Susan and Sandy and Max’s ex-wife Charlene didn’t have that to contend with.

I stared into the bathroom mirror. I dug through my makeup bag and wondered whether blue or green eyeshadow would look better against brown eyes. I put on a kiss of lipstick, then wiped it off.

I wore a lot more makeup in my teens than I was wearing at twenty-five. At thirteen or fifteen, makeup felt like magic. Wave the mascara wand, and suddenly I’d look older, more like the senior girls with their long, polished nails and cigarettes. Add lipstick, and I could imagine being the sort of girl that boys in my class whispered about, with her curvy way of walking by that would make even a football star press against the wall to let her pass. Add blush, and I might even start to resemble Brennie Critchett, who was prom queen back when I was a sophomore.

Of course, when I got older, I realized that there were a lot of things mascara couldn’t change or fix. Maybe if I’d been the prom queen, I’d have felt differently.

I blinked at my reflection in the mirror of the narrow upstairs bathroom. At the same age, Joshua Reed had a publicist and a fan club and a fan club president. Of course, not everyone can have such a life, or there’d be no one to run the registers at the Winn-Dixie. But I worried a little about the discrepancy between the girl in the mirror and the folks she’d meet in a few hours time.

I put the lipstick back on, and chose green eyeshadow. I thought the night might call for a little magic. It was Joshua Reed, after all. I wondered what Judy would be wearing. I wondered if I would get to call Joshua “J.P.”

And then I was there. The car ride took less time than I’d expected. Even though I was twenty-five, I’d only been to Harper’s Ferry maybe five times, and then, not to the Virginia side. I’d never even heard of the resort where Judy and Joshua were staying, where we were having dinner. It seemed so far from Pinecob that I expected to be sitting on that leather car seat for hours.

I walked in and gave the host my name and he took me to a table where a woman was sitting.

She stood up and said, “Oh Leanne, Leanne, Leanne. It’s a real pleasure.”

Judy was shorter than I was, but she was in heels, so it was hard to tell by just how much. She had short hair, too, in a sort of blond, businesswoman cut. She was younger than I expected, older than me but somewhere in her mid-thirties. And she seemed as nice in person as on the phone. Just as nice and just as busy. Right as I walked up, her cell phone rang. She glanced at it, then turned it off without answering, which I took as a compliment.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “Finally.”

“J.P. and Lars will be down soon enough, I’m guessing,” Judy said. I must have looked confused because she said, “Lars is my husband,” and then I remembered the name. “He decided to come with me, last minute. You know he’s J.P.’s agent, right? That’s how we met.”

“I don’t think you ever told me that,” I said.

“It’s not much of a story. Lars makes it his business to know everyone. So when he signed Joshua, he had to meet with me. The rest is history,” Judy said. “Listen, Leanne, before the boys show up and people start drinking, I want to thank you for your time and effort, all these years. You really keep the fan club rolling. I want to tell you that. J.P. certainly won’t,” she added.

“What? Why?” I asked.

“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way,” Judy said. “There are no complaints from his corner. Actually, there are many complaints, but none about you. He’s…he’s getting famous,” she began, but cut off. “There you two are!”

That’s when I turned and saw Joshua Reed in person for the first time. Judy stood, so I stood, too. I felt my heart start pounding a little.

“Joshua, I want you to meet Leanne,” Judy said. “Hi honey,” she whispered to a second man who had walked up and put his arm around her waist.

Joshua Reed leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “Leanne. Favorite fan. It is a pleasure,” he said.

I nodded. I managed to say that it was nice to meet him, too. At least, I think I managed to say that. I was just taking it all in. There he was, Joshua Reed, Colin Ashcroft, Nate Cummings, soon to be Josiah Whitcomb. Joshua Reed.

He was shorter than the Joshua Reed in my mind. I mean, after seven years, I knew what his details were, and the official statistics put him at 6'1", but Tommy is 6'2", and I swear that Joshua was more than an inch down. But I didn’t focus on that. The rest of the statistics were accurate. The dark brown hair, the dark green eyes. He was growing his hair for the role, Judy had told me, and I could tell. It was curling a bit around the bottoms of his ears. He was beautiful. I’d never seen someone that beautiful up close and in person. I tried not to stare.

Judy introduced me to Lars, her husband, the agent, and he shook my hand hard and enthusiastic and then the four of us sat.

“So Leanne, Judy says that you’ve lived in West Virginia your whole life. Any plans to move?” Lars asked me this, right after our drinks came.

He looked like I always imagined New England professors to look—with little glasses and a beard. And he was one of those people who looked straight at you when you talked, like everything you said was fascinating. I wondered if that made him a good agent.

I told him that I didn’t have any plans as yet, that there were nice things about living in Pinecob.

“The town is called Pinecob?” Joshua asked. “What’s that all about?”

“J.P.,” Judy said. “Please.”

“I’m just asking,” he said.

“I don’t know where the name comes from,” I told him. “Pine trees, maybe. It’s just a small town. I imagine there are lots of small towns with funny names out there.”

“Of course there are,” Judy said, and Lars nodded.

“Has your family been around here for long? You know, I’m from Virginia,” Lars said. “Northern. Close to D.C.”

I nodded, to both parts.

“My father’s family is from Elkins, down south a bit. That’s where Susan, my sister, lives. My mother’s family is from close to Charleston, the capital—not Charles Town,” I explained. “Charles Town is just the county seat. But that’s probably more than you wanted to know.”

“Not at all,” Lars said, though I thought I saw Joshua roll his eyes. “What business is your father in?” Lars asked.

I heard Judy take a quick breath. She knew more about me than either of the men, and I imagine she was worried that I was going to feel uncomfortable, telling practical strangers about my life. But I didn’t mind. I couldn’t remember anyone asking before. That’s the thing about a small town—everyone already knows your story. It’s kind of nice to say it out loud every once in a while.

“My dad died when I was fourteen,” I explained. “But he was in the insurance business. Life insurance.”

“I’m sorry,” Lars said.

“You must have cleaned up after that.”

I looked over at Joshua, but I couldn’t read his expression. I couldn’t tell whether or not he was being nice.

“Why? Oh, because he would have a big policy? Yeah, you’d think that, but they say it’s like doctors smoking. He didn’t leave much of anything.”

“But that’s awful,” Judy said. “I didn’t realize.”

“Wait—your dad was a life insurance salesman and he didn’t have life insurance? Rude!” Joshua sounded annoyed.

“He had some,” I explained. “But it only covered the funeral costs. Anyhow, we’re okay. He had good health insurance, so most of my brother Beau Ray’s care is covered from here on out.”

“Beau Ray?” Joshua asked.

“Brother,” Judy said.

“Yeah, I got that,” Joshua said. He poured himself more wine. “What’s wrong with brother Beau Ray?”

“He had a fall. Years back. He was playing touch football, no helmet, and he fell and hit up against a rock. For a while, the doctors said he was probably going to die, but he made it, only he’s disabled.”

“Disabled how?”

“J.P.,” Judy hissed.

“I’m just asking,” he said. He sounded defensive.

“No, it’s okay. It’s not a secret. My dad always said that families shouldn’t have secrets—except around the holidays, you know, with presents and all,” I said.

I told them—we talked about it pretty much through dinner and on into coffee. Judy and Lars kept asking for details. Joshua Reed didn’t say much, but he did offer to refill my wineglass once, after refilling his own. I told them about Beau Ray and how he was more like a six-year-old than a twenty-nine-year-old, and how that wasn’t likely to change for the better. I told them about Tommy doing construction up and down the Shenandoah. I told them about Susan and her three kids and her husband, Tim, who drove a truck down in Elkins. I told them about Momma and her job as a receptionist in a dentist’s office and her weekends making quilts and how she hadn’t been out with anyone since Dad died. I mentioned Vince and how he left the house that night when I was fourteen, and that except for a couple of phone calls early on, no one had heard from him, no one knew where he was and no one much talked about it anymore.

“Jesus,” Joshua said. “That’s fucked up.”

“You never thought about going to college? You’re clearly bright enough,” Judy asked, waving Joshua away.

I couldn’t imagine ever waving him away, and here she was acting like it was no big deal. Judy was looking hard at me, so I knew I had to answer. I explained that I had figured on college, but when the time came, Momma couldn’t take care of Beau Ray on her own, and he was my brother, after all. I told her how, for a few years running, I’d been taking prelaw courses over in Shepherdstown—during the summer when things were slower at the dentist’s office. Judy and Lars nodded.

“It’ll happen eventually,” I said. “There are worse places to be than Pinecob.”

“I hope we’ll get a chance to visit while we’re here, don’t you, Judy?” Lars asked.

“Of course,” Judy agreed.

“Jesus!” Joshua said, and all three of us looked over at him. I thought maybe he’d burned himself on something. His voice was that sharp. “You think she really believes you?”

“Josh—” Lars began, but Joshua kept going.

“No offense Leanne, but if I get a day off, I plan to find a city, or at least a good-sized suburb. There are a few too many gun racks around here for my taste.”

“J.P.!” Judy said.

“Josh, that’s completely uncalled for,” Lars said.

“It’s okay,” I said. I could tell that Lars was angry.

“It’s not okay,” Lars snapped. He turned to Joshua. “None of your behavior tonight has been okay! None of your behavior on this entire trip has been okay! I want you to apologize to Leanne.”

Joshua turned and stared at me. I didn’t know what to do. I felt like I was some sort of Goody Two-shoes I hadn’t meant to be. Turns out, I didn’t have to do anything. Joshua Reed turned back to Lars and ignored me altogether.

“I’m not your kid,” he said. “You want me to apologize because I don’t want to go to Pinecob? Please! Like you guys would actually be caught dead there. Why the fuck am I even here? Leanne runs the fan club. Great. Wonderful. I’m sure she does a bang-up job. But that’s your bag, Judy. Don’t drag me into it. I could be home in L.A., watching a Lakers game with my girlfriend. I did you a favor. I came to dinner.” Joshua stood up and stepped away from the table. He steadied himself on the back of his chair. “But I didn’t agree to be hauled around and shown off in random bumfuck towns.”

“You’re such a prick,” Lars said. “I’ve been with you for an evening, and I’m sick of you already.”

“Yeah, right,” Joshua said. “You say that and then you get your ten percent and you shut up awfully quick about how sick you are of me.”

“Fuck you,” Lars said. He stood, too, and stared at Joshua. “I don’t care how big you think you’re getting. It’s not worth it. You’re not worth it.”

“Oh, no,” Joshua Reed said. His voice was sarcastic.

“Joshua, please. Lars,” Judy said, but neither man paid any attention. They reminded me of cats in a standoff, staring at each other until one backs away.

“Fuck you,” Lars said again. “You want me to see to it that you don’t work here again?”

“In Harper’s Ferry? Go right ahead,” Joshua said.

“You know that’s not where I mean,” Lars said.

“You can’t do that anymore. You don’t decide,” Joshua said. “Just try.” And then he stalked off.

“You’re an asshole!” Lars called out after him.

There were only a few tables where people were still eating, but from where I sat, it looked like everyone in the room turned to stare at Lars. I shrank a little in my chair.

“He is,” Lars said. “Sorry.”

Judy took hold of Lars’s arm and pulled him back to his seat.

“Leanne, I’m so sorry,” Judy said. She dabbed her eyes with a napkin. “I’m sorry you had to see…hear that.”

“It’s okay,” I told them, though I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Sure, no one likes to be insulted, or have the thing or the people they care for held up as goofy or uncool. But it was hard to take it personally. Joshua Reed didn’t know me, or my family, or Pinecob. He was just mad, and I knew that, whatever the reason, it had been there before he met me.

“It’s not okay,” Lars said again. “It can’t always be okay. It’s not okay to insult you, to make Judy cry. I’m really fed up with this kid.”

“He’s not a kid,” Judy said. “That’s the problem.”

“He doesn’t act like any adult I know,” Lars said. “So much potential and I have tried—really—to get him to use it, and not waste goodwill on these outbreaks. I’m serious. I can get a lot of agents not to touch him, but someone out there is going to offer him representation.”

Judy nodded.

“Listen, Leanne. It’s late,” Lars said. “You can take the car back home now, if you want. But why don’t you let us put you up here tonight? You can have a nice night away. We can have breakfast in the morning—I know Judy wanted to talk to you about the movie, didn’t you, hon?”

Judy nodded again.

“We can put this incident behind us,” Lars said.

“Oh, do stay,” Judy said. “They’ve got a great breakfast buffet.”

Like I needed convincing. I’d never stayed in a hotel that nice, and the thought of sleeping in a big bed and getting to use trial-size shampoos, that sounded fun. So I said okay, and Lars jumped up to take care of things.

“Joshua is going through a difficult period,” Judy said, quietly, once Lars was out of earshot.

I nodded like I knew what she was talking about. All I knew was that he was getting more and more famous, and getting to star in a bunch of different movies, and getting to date models like Elise. I wasn’t a guy and I didn’t live in Los Angeles, but it didn’t sound all that difficult.

“He’s…he’s adjusting to a new level of celebrity, and that’s hard,” she said.

“How long has it been difficult?” I asked.

Judy thought a moment, then shook her head. “Pretty much since I’ve known him, I guess.” She smiled but looked sad at the same time.

“That can’t be fun. For you, I mean,” I said.

“It’s not. A lot of the time. But he’s an excellent actor. He really is. He’s more talented than any of my other clients. And when I see him work,” Judy said, “it’s almost worth it. For Lars, it’s different. He doesn’t really like actors, so he’s got a lot less patience.”

“Was he serious about dropping Joshua?” I asked.

Judy seemed to think about it. “He might have been. Something to sleep on, anyhow.”

Lars returned then, with a room key for me. He gave me a brief tour on the way to the lobby. There was a bar that stayed open late, to the left of the restaurant. There was a smaller dining room, where the breakfast buffet would be served.

“What time do you usually wake up?” Lars asked. “For breakfast.”

“I’m usually up around six,” I told him.

“Yow,” Lars said.

Judy laughed. “You’re quite the morning person, but that’s a little early for us,” she said. “Especially since that’s three in the morning California time. How about around eight we meet down here?”

We were standing in the lobby. My room was down the hallway, theirs was upstairs.

“Eight’s fine, too,” I told them.

My room was small, but so neat, and the blankets were turned down and there was a chocolate coin on the pillow. I checked the bathroom, and there was a little bottle of shampoo and another of conditioner and also lotion and two kinds of soap, and a shower cap and a sewing kit. I put everything in my purse right away, then put the shampoo back, since I would need it for the shower in the morning.

I called home so that Momma knew where I was. And then I called Sandy at the beach.

“You’ll never guess where I am,” I told her.

“In Joshua Reed’s bedroom?” she guessed, whispering.

“No. But I am in the same hotel, and I’m staying here. In my own room. For the night.”

“So?” Sandy asked.

I told her all of it, and she was a lot more pissed than I was.

“What a butthole,” she said, when I finished.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said.

“I’m sorry, Leanne,” Sandy said.

“No, I’m really okay about it,” I told her.

“It still shouldn’t have happened. That was a butthole thing to do.”

I agreed.

After I got off the phone, I was still wide awake and figured I might as well poke around the resort, in case a maid had left her cart out, and I could get more shampoos to bring home for Beau Ray. I didn’t find a cart, but I wandered through the various lobbies and waiting rooms until I found myself by the door of the bar. The bartender looked up from wiping the counter and waved me inside.

“Hey, have a seat,” he said. “You were eating with that movie guy earlier, weren’t you?”

“Joshua Reed,” I said, nodding. “Yeah. I hope the yelling didn’t disturb you.”

He just shrugged, as if one man calling another man an asshole across a nice restaurant was something that happened every weekend.

“What’s he like?” the bartender asked, and then he looked past me and said, “speak of the devil, I guess I’ll find out.”

I turned on my stool and saw Joshua Reed swagger into the bar. He looked over at me, frowned, and then walked up and took the stool next to mine. I got the impression that he had kept drinking between dinner and just then. He ordered a martini and turned to me.

“Leanne Gitlin,” he said.

I turned to him, trying my hardest to look like I didn’t care, or like I’d sat next to lots of movie stars in lots of bars before that particular night.

“I hope you’re not angry with me.” He smiled. I’d seen that same smile on Colin Ashcroft.

“Why should I be angry?” I said.

“Exactly,” he said. “You get it.”

“Sure, I get it,” I told him, even though I had no idea what he was talking about.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” he went on. “All these people putting demands on me, expecting me to do this, do that. I just want to live my own life. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Sure,” I said again. I was afraid that I was starting to sound stupid even though I did know a fair bit about demands and expectations.

He took a sip of his drink and turned and looked straight at me. “Why the fuck do you do it?” he asked, and even though I’d heard him swear at dinner, it still made me flinch. It was hard to get used to him as someone who swore so casually. He never swore in the interviews I’d read.

“What do you mean? Do what?” I asked.

“Because you seem smart enough. I figured you for the usual ditzy fan, but you seem smart, so why do it? The fan club bullshit.”

“Oh. That.” I was glad to figure out what he was talking about. “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s different. It’s something different.” I’m not sure he heard me, because he started in again while I was still talking.

“You fans sort of freak me out,” he said. “It’s like some weird fantasy. I don’t understand you people.”

“I guess I do it more for Judy than I do it for you,” I told him.

Joshua looked over like he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me.

“Really? Yeah, I can see that now. She gets a lot of people to do things for her. She’s good at her job.”

“She’s a good person,” I said. I wanted him to understand the difference. “Other people matter to her.” I hoped that was true. It struck me that I didn’t know Judy as well as Joshua did.

“You think?” Joshua Reed asked. “Believe me, I’ve seen her act like they do. But I’m not so sure, in the long run. Hell, I know I matter, but I pay her bills.”

I didn’t want to follow his conversation to somewhere ugly, so I switched subjects and asked him whether he thought that Lars was serious about dropping him as a client.

“I don’t know,” Joshua said, shrugging. “I guess. We’ll see. I can always get another agent. I’m a prize bull at the county fair.” He stood up, unsteady. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “The drinks are on me,” he said, though he hadn’t ordered me one. He dropped money onto the bar. “See you around, Leanne Gitlin.” And then Joshua Reed wandered off.

I looked back at the bartender, who I figured had been listening to us the whole time anyway.

“Does that answer your question?” I asked him.

I slept until almost seven. After my shower, I pocketed the rest of the shampoo, and then put my clothes back on. I was downstairs at eight, but no one was around so I picked up a Virginia travel magazine and sat in the lobby. I read an article on horses until 8:10. I read an article on Thomas Jefferson until 8:15. And I read up on Richmond restaurants until Judy rushed in at 8:20.

“Leanne, oh, I’m so sorry!” she said. “This morning has been unbelievable,” she said. “I’ve got to get some coffee, but, my God! I just got off the phone with the studio. Because of some sort of farming statute, they can’t start filming for another two months.”

“Is that a problem?” I asked her.

“That’s not even the start of it.”

Judy said she wasn’t hungry and only drank coffee, but I figured I ought to take advantage of the breakfast buffet, because I’d never been to one so nice. So I was eating an omelette that the chef made special while Judy told me the story.

Apparently, after Joshua wandered out of the bar the night before, he had found the keys to one of the rented limousines and had taken himself for a ride.

“But he’d been drinking,” I said.

Judy sighed. “It’s not the first time,” she said, then pulled back a little and looked at me. “I’m sure it was a mistake,” she said, more slowly. “I’m sure he didn’t realize how much he’d had.” Judy said that Joshua had crossed the Potomac into West Virginia, though she didn’t figure that he had actually meant to go for a late-night visit to Pinecob. “He was probably looking for a bar or a girl or something. God only knows,” Judy said.

A weaving limousine stands out on West Virginia roads, and the police tried to pull him over. “And if that’s not bad enough,” Judy said, “I guess the lights or siren startled him. The limo ended up through a fence in a field. He hit a cow. He hit a goddamn cow!” Judy said.

I didn’t know the right reaction to news like that, so I just nodded.

“Apparently, it’s fine. The cow is fine,” Judy went on. “I’ve already been on the phone, calling around to find a way to mend the fence. A perfect metaphor for my day.”

“At least the cow’s okay,” I said. “He must not have been going very fast.”

Judy shook her head. “This is my personal nightmare,” she said. “This is the exact sort of thing I dread. Now I’ve got to either try to keep a lid on this, or put some sort of good spin on it, and at the very least, try to get him out of this mess. Lars has gone over to the station where they kept him overnight. He’ll probably be able to get him out, but Jesus!” Judy laughed. “What a fuck-up,” she muttered. “I’m really sorry you’ve had to see all of this. I can’t tell you…”

I shrugged. I offered her a bite of omelette but she shook her head.

“What I want is a cigarette,” she said, “but I quit, and Lars would kill me.”

“All I’m saying is that there must be something we can do. It’s West Virginia for Chrissakes. It’s not like it’s a serious state.” Joshua was trailing behind Lars as the two walked into the breakfast room.

He wore the same clothes as the night before, though his shirt was untucked and wrinkled, and a grass stain smeared one knee of his pants. He hadn’t shaved, and he looked as though he hadn’t slept, but even so, Joshua Reed was striking. Actually, I thought he looked just like the character Stormy Bridges, the street-smart runaway he’d played a few years back.

Lars stopped in front of our table. “Okay,” he said, turning around, “first off, how about you not driving drunk anymore? How’s that for an idea?”

“Well, duh, but that doesn’t help our particular problem,” Joshua pointed out.

“Your particular problem,” Lars snapped. “Because, legally, West Virginia is a serious state. Hi, sweetheart,” he said to Judy. He kissed her on the cheek. “Morning, Leanne. I trust Judy has brought you up to date on our most recent disaster.”

I nodded.

“Leanne Gitlin,” Joshua Reed said, looking down at me. “If it isn’t my number one fan.” He spoke with an exaggerated drawl, so that “fan” sounded like “fie-un.”

“J.P.,” Judy snapped.

“I’m practicing my Josiah accent,” Joshua said.

“You’ll be lucky if we can keep you in the picture,” Lars hissed. “There are lots of pretty boys willing to play Josiah, and a call to the director says one of them’s going to get that chance.”

Joshua’s face froze into an expression I couldn’t read. For the first time, he looked something less than cocky, maybe even a little scared. He glanced back at me and nodded a more polite good morning.

“Dude, so what do you want me to do?” he asked Lars, almost quietly.

“Go to your room. Take a shower. Get dressed. Then come back down here, and we’ll discuss this. You reek.”

Joshua nodded and walked off. Lars shook his head and took a seat at our table.

“So what does it look like?” Judy asked.

Lars shook his head again. “Oh, it looks great. Just great,” Lars said, and Judy winced. “He took a breathalyzer like he shouldn’t have—he should have waited, of course—and it came through as intoxicated, and with state reciprocity in effect, we obviously can’t plead first offense.”

Judy nodded. This was the first I’d heard of any legal trouble Joshua’d gotten into. I looked at the two of them and wondered how much else they had kept quiet.

“So now it’s pretty much a matter of mandatory sentences and precedents. Thank God he didn’t hurt that cow. I know people all through Virginia, but not here. Why couldn’t he have stayed in Virginia? Fuck, we’d be better off if he’d driven into the Potomac.”

“Lars!” Judy said.

“I know. I don’t mean it. Leanne, you know I don’t mean it.”

“How far did he get?” I asked. “I mean, in West Virginia. What county?”

“Jefferson, apparently,” Lars said. “I don’t even know where that is. The driver took me.”

“That’s Charles Town,” I said. “That’s my county.”

Lars looked at me. Judy looked at me.

“You know, I work at the county clerk’s office. Same building as the courthouse,” I told them.

“She works at the courthouse!” Judy said, suddenly excited.

“Not exactly. But in the same building. All the same, I probably know the judge on the case,” I continued. “There aren’t too many.”

“Oh my God, she knows…I mean, you know the judge?” Judy asked.

“I might. I probably do. At least I could find out who it is. You want me to call and find out?”

Lars handed me his cell phone without another word. I took it and stared at it. No one I knew had a cell phone, and I wasn’t sure how they worked. Judy took the phone from my hand and asked me for the number, plugging it in as I told her. She pressed a button and handed back the phone. I heard the ringing tone.

Mr. Bellevue, my boss, answered.

“Hey, Mr. Bellevue, it’s Leanne,” I said.

“We want to keep this out of the papers,” Lars whispered to me.

I nodded. “Something’s come up,” I said to Mr. Bellevue, and told him the story.

I knew that Mr. Bellevue would help if he could, on account of being such a big movie fan. Also I was pretty certain that he was gay, although I’d never asked, and Joshua Reed had a substantial following in that community. Mr. Bellevue listened and sighed a little, and seemed happy to hear that the cow was okay, and then he put me on hold to go find out which judge had been assigned to Joshua’s arraignment.

“Your fella’s a lucky boy,” Mr. Bellevue said when he got back on the phone. “It’s Weintraub.”

“He was Charlie’s, right? That is good news,” I said. I asked Mr. Bellevue to please keep all this to himself, but I wasn’t too worried. I knew that he respected privacy, at least the serious kind. And I promised to give him details when I got there in the afternoon. I handed the phone back to Judy to hang up.

“So?” Lars and Judy were looking at me.

“Yeah, when you paid and asked for the first available court date, that’s good—you got Judge Weintraub. People say he’s pretty progressive and also a nice guy. But what’s cool is that, Sandy, my best friend since third grade? Her brother Charlie got pulled over about a year ago, second offense, drunk driving. Is it Joshua’s second offense?”

Lars and Judy exchanged glances. Lars nodded.

“Because second is usually jail but third always is,” I told them, although I got the impression that they already knew something about drunk driving sentences. “Anyway, Charlie lost his license of course, for a long time, but instead of jail he got house arrest, at home, for I think it was ninety days. Weintraub’s really into families helping each other through hard times. It drove Sandy crazy to have him there. Charlie, not the judge. I mean, they let him go to work, but then he had to come right home. So you might be able to argue some sort of precedent. You know, if you were willing to plead guilty. That’s the thing, Charlie pled guilty. Pled? Pleaded? You get what I mean.”

“But what are we going to do about the movie? I know you’re pissed, sweetheart, but I really want him to be in this movie,” Judy said to Lars. “It’ll be good for all of us. We can’t have him sitting at home in California.”

“He couldn’t do that,” I told her. “Whatever punishment he gets will have to be in West Virginia. Probably Jefferson County. I remember that from my class on jurisdiction,” I said.

Lars smiled at me. “You’ll make a good lawyer,” he said. He turned to Judy. “Leanne’s right. Whatever happens, it’s bound to happen in Jefferson County.”

“What are you suggesting?” Judy said. “That we stick him in a hotel for three months?”

“I doubt that would count as house arrest,” Lars said. “It’s not a house. And I don’t think there’s such thing as bed-and-breakfast arrest.” Lars was almost laughing, but Judy looked serious.

“So who do we know in Jefferson County?” Judy asked. “We must know someone. Can we rent an apartment?”

Lars was looking across the table at me.

“You know me,” I said. “And of course, I know a lot of people.”

Judy turned to me, smiling and exasperated. “I don’t suppose there are any house arrest bungalows available in Pinecob, are there?” Now she was laughing. “Or guesthouses?”

I shook my head. I had a thought, bit my lip, then opened my mouth. I figured it was likely a stupid idea, that it wouldn’t work so there was no harm in saying it. Knowing what I know now, maybe I wouldn’t have said it. Knowing what I know now, maybe I would have kept quiet and looked at my shoes instead. But I did say it. And everything that would have otherwise stayed the same started changing. Like experiments with food coloring we did in home economics, making icing in green and blue and red shades. Put a drop of red into water, and the water will never again run clear. You can keep adding more and make it deeper red, or add blue and make purple. You still have choices like that. But to get back to clear water, you have to pour out what you’ve done and start over. And that doesn’t work in life, with its days and geography. You can’t just start over. You can never just start over.

“The thing is, Judge Weintraub is really into families. That’s why he likes house arrest,” I explained. I remember hearing Sandy complaining about this. “I know he’s not related, but Joshua might be able to stay in Vince’s room,” I said. “There’s probably a legal guardianship thing to work out, and you’d have to convince my mother.”

Judy turned to Lars and raised her eyebrows. Lars turned to me and raised his.

“We could argue a long-term relationship, given the fan club,” Lars said.

“Can you imagine?” Judy asked. “Let’s think this through a minute. For starters, J.P. would hate that.” Judy didn’t add to her list. She stopped talking and looked over at me, too.

Joshua Reed appeared then, hair still wet from the shower but clean shaven and clean clothed. Even damp, he really was beautiful. Judy and Lars looked at him, then turned to me.

“You are really fucking lucky,” Lars said.

“Yeah?” Joshua smiled. He seemed surprised. “Hey, that’s great.”

“Leanne here knows your judge,” Lars said.

Chapter 4

Start Slow

What’s crazy is how it all worked out. The court system in the United States—or at least in West Virginia—really does work on precedent. I’d heard that, but this was the first time I’d seen it in action. I’d always liked that about law. The logic of it. Knowing, at least in some small part, what you might expect.

A lot went on, I’ll bet much more than I ever saw, and things fell into place. Lars and Judy hunkered down and sweet-talked the hell out of people. Lars spent a lot of time on his cell phone, and at least as much time cursing about how it hardly worked in Charles Town and Harper’s Ferry. Judy spent a lot of time on the phone, too. She called it “putting out fires” and I guess she did a good job of it. The fence got fixed, and the farmer paid for his inconvenience, and People didn’t get wind of Joshua Reed being arrested—though there was a notice in the Charles Town Register about a J. Polichuk. There was no mention of the cow.

Lars got Joshua’s arraignment pushed up to just a week after his arrest, and in the meantime, found a lawyer from Charleston who had previously clerked for Judge Weintraub. Judy kept me in the loop with phone calls, but Lars was over at the courthouse nearly every day, so on my lunch hour, I’d cross over from the other wing and catch up with how things were going. Joshua mostly stayed back in Harper’s Ferry—Judy had told me that Lars agreed to keep him as a client so long as all Joshua did that week was read and think, and that he showed up whenever and wherever Lars asked, acting polite and looking sober and sorry. Judy said she’d convinced Lars that Joshua was a good long-term investment.

There was one long meeting between the lawyer and Lars and Joshua and Momma and Judge Weintraub and the county prosecutor. It must have gone well because Lars looked relieved when they all poured out of the judge’s chambers. Judge Weintraub waved at me. I didn’t know the judge well, though I’d heard a few stories about him on account of working in the same building—how he’d worked at the state capitol a while, until his wife died and he moved north to Charles Town. Judge Weintraub’s leanings toward family made more sense once I found out that he’d been married, though he’d been a widower some years by the time of Joshua’s plea meeting. After the meeting, while everyone was still shuffling around, the judge asked my mother to come back into in his chambers for a moment. I assumed it had something to do with the temporary legal guardianship she had to take on. Momma had a short stack of forms to sign.

I never found out what Judy said to my mother to get her to agree to allow Joshua Reed to sit out his sentence under our roof. Momma didn’t seem too excited about the idea when I first mentioned it, what with him being a drunk driver and all. She put down her quilting and stared hard at me.

“You know what you’re asking? You really want for me to do this?” Momma asked.

“It was just an idea,” I told her. “I just thought, maybe.”

“You been with that fan club how long now?”

I reminded her that it had been seven years.

“I suppose you think this guy’s worth some trouble,” she said. “I’m not convinced of it, but maybe you know better.”

The next morning, Momma told me that she’d take a call from Judy, and whatever Judy said convinced her to go along. I always figured it had something to do with money.

So it was a week after the arrest that Joshua sat in the courtroom at the arraignment, frowning as Judge Weintraub asked for the plea and the Charleston lawyer said, “guilty.” And after that, it was over. At least, most of the legal part.

As Judy predicted, Joshua wasn’t too excited about spending ninety days in Pinecob, even if he’d be allowed to commute to the movie set once production started. But I got the impression that whatever Lars and Judy had on him, it was enough to make him simmer down and sit tight. Lars kept pointing out how lucky Joshua was, though I didn’t get the impression that he saw himself as lucky to live with me and Momma and Beau Ray, even when the other choice was the Jefferson County jail.

“Fuck that,” Joshua Reed said that morning in the Harper’s Ferry hotel, after he’d come back to the table by the breakfast buffet and Lars mentioned the house arrest idea. “You can’t be serious.” He looked at Lars, then Judy, then back to Lars. “There’s got to be another way. Can’t we—I mean, I—just pay a really big fine? Or, I don’t know, talk to high-school kids?”

Lars and Judy had shrugged. As it turned out, Judge Weintraub didn’t think that fining rich people was an effective deterrent (although he did slap Joshua with a $5,000 fine and the cost of the repaired fence and the cow’s vet visit). Judge William Weintraub believed in families and he believed in house arrest for ninety days for Joshua’s sort of a DUI. The terms of Joshua’s sentence were this: He would have to wear an ankle sensor so that the county police would know where he was at all times. He wasn’t allowed to leave the house without police supervision, except to go to required alcohol counseling classes, which in Pinecob meant AA twice a week over at Potomac Springs Senior High. And he lost his license for a year.

“Fuck me,” Joshua had said, leaving the courthouse after all the plea bargaining was done. “This is going to give me a rash.”

I think he meant the ankle sensor.

“Three months in fucking Pinecob. It’s a fucking bad dream.”

By the time Momma got back from the Y with Beau Ray—that first afternoon with Joshua Reed in the house— Lars and Judy were on their way to the airport, and Joshua was tucked behind the closed door to Vince’s old bedroom. I asked Beau Ray to keep extra quiet that afternoon. I thought Joshua might be sleeping, although I didn’t know. I could have walked in easy enough. There was no lock on the door to Vince’s room. Except for the bathrooms, there were no locks on any of the inside doors in our house. Dad hadn’t believed in them, and after he died—well, it would have felt disloyal to make an addition like that. The Gitlin family rule was that closed doors were as good as locked, so you were supposed to assume that the person who’d done the closing didn’t want to be barged in on. You were supposed to knock before walking in. Although, logically, I knew that he had to eat, part of me wondered if we would ever see Joshua Reed again.

“Leanne,” Momma said, “you come over here and help your brother put to right his playing cards.”

I’d been in the living room, comparing our own setup against the picture of Joshua’s “artist’s cottage” from the home decor magazine Judy’s assistant had sent me. The quilt that Momma had laid over the long couch hadn’t been cleaned in a while, so I’d hauled it out to soak in the laundry tub and replaced it with one I thought was prettier, made mostly of blue shirting. But even that didn’t look like something you might see in a magazine.

Don’t get me wrong, our house was fine and it’s not like we didn’t have room enough. Momma and Dad had moved in back when Tommy was a toddler and Susan, just a baby. So I’d been conceived there, and before me, Vince and before Vince, Beau Ray. Growing up, Dad was always the one with big plans—tearing out a wall to expand a room, adding another bedroom out back. But most of those plans never materialized. And after Dad died, Momma wouldn’t talk of renovations. As the seasons passed, that meant that the kitchen floors sagged a bit along one edge, and the basement tended to smell a little swampy. Ours just wasn’t a home decor house.

Beau Ray had rushed off to his room upon returning from “Move Your Body, Move Your Mind.” Even though I knew that extended periods of quiet were usually followed by the discovery of some sort of chaos—like the time he’d dunked all of his clothes in the bathtub or cut his hair in jagged layers or tried to repair an old model plane but only succeeded in pasting it to his arm with superglue—I hadn’t felt like checking in on him. Transitions home from the Y tended to be difficult, but that day had also been Raoul’s last before moving back to Mexico to be with his family. Raoul was a physical therapist’s assistant, and Beau Ray had worked with him for the previous two years. There had been a going-away party the week before, but there’s nothing like the very last day you’re going to see someone to make the loss hit home.

“Leanne, didn’t you hear me? I’m talking right at you,” Momma said. She sounded mad. “Beau Ray’s done mixed up all his playing cards, plus the ones from the game chest. I don’t know, just fix it!”

“Yes, Momma,” I told her, and I put the artist’s cottage picture inside the pages of the fancy Bible that Susan had given us the year before.

Beau Ray’s room was a mess of playing cards.

“Beau Ray,” I said to get his attention. I could see how Momma had probably taken one look and called for me. There were cards strewn across his bed, across the rug, across the dresser, everywhere. If there’d been anyone else to ask, I’d have kept passing the buck.

Beau Ray was squatting in the doorway of his closet, pretending to play solitaire. Sometimes, even though years had passed, I’d have these split-second moments when I’d forget all that had happened, that Beau Ray wasn’t exactly Beau Ray anymore, that there was a new person in our midst.

“What’s with all the cards?” I asked him.

He looked up at me, confused, and it all came back.

“Playing solidtare,” he said.

“Solitaire,” I told him. “But what about all these?”

“Playing twenty-eight pickup,” he said.

From the door, I could see that he’d mixed at least four different decks, four different designs including one from my room that had roses on the backs and gold around the edges. I don’t put too much stock in playing cards, but Vince had given me the rose deck when I was twelve, so they were not something I wanted to see torn up or stepped on.

“Looks like two hundred and eight pickup,” I said, doing the math.

“Two hundred eight pickup,” Beau Ray said. He threw his solitaire pile into the air. On the outside, it looked celebratory, the cards fluttering around him like petals and whirligigs. But he didn’t look happy.

“Momma says we’ve got to clean this up. Help me get the cards into a big pile, okay?”

Beau Ray nodded but didn’t move. I started gathering the cards into one pile and finally he shrugged, then helped a little. I told him that I wanted him to ask before he took the deck of rose cards, and even though I was trying not to sound mad about it, Beau Ray started to rock back and forth as he did when he sought to comfort himself.

“Beau Ray, it’s okay,” I said. “I’m not yelling at you. It’s just that they belong in my room—like this is your room and your cards live here, right?”

He nodded, but I knew that we’d be having the same conversation again about something else, some other thing he found and would take or break or both. I’d learned not to become too attached to things since Beau Ray’s fall. Nothing lasted.

Beau Ray was a good guy—at least, he meant to be. That he’d always been mellow, even back when he was functioning at normal levels, was a saving grace. I’d heard stories of people, brain-injured like him, full of adult-sized rage but without the ability to put it anywhere. So my brother marked Raoul’s departure by throwing four packs of playing cards in the air. That wasn’t so bad.

Maybe an hour later, I was in my room replacing the rose-backed cards in my desk drawer when Joshua opened Vince’s door. He stood in the doorway, stock-still for a moment, staring across the hall into my room. He looked both sleepy and mad, like a toddler roused too early from a nap. His dark hair curled out in different directions. Then he shuffled across the hall and stood at my bedroom door, frowning out my window toward the yard below and the street beyond. He looked down at his left ankle, where the gray plastic sensor with a locked band hung. He shook his left foot, and I could hear the plastic rattle and thud against his skin.

“So it’s not a bad dream,” he said. “Fuck.”

“You awake?” I asked him and then cringed to myself. It was a stupid question, given that he was standing before me, his eyes open. “You want to see the rest of the house now?”

Joshua shrugged. “I guess. Whatever. Why the fuck not?”

He hated us, I thought, if he could be goaded to feel anything at all. At least, he acted like he hated us, and as Judy had pointed out, Joshua Reed was a fine actor.

“Great. I’ll give you the grand tour,” I told him.

I thought about what Judy had told me to do—or rather, how she’d told me to act. But still I heard myself being nice to him before I knew if I wanted to be, before I’d even thought about what I wanted. No one ever noticed, I don’t think—that I tended to be nice as pie even when I didn’t mean it. But it was a quirk that bugged me, and I realized that if I were going to be aloof to Joshua, I’d have to become a better actress. I’d have to practice.

He’d already seen most of the upstairs, what there was to it. He’d seen his room, and mine, and the hall bathroom. Besides that, there was Momma’s bedroom and Susan’s old bedroom, which had years back been converted into the sewing room where Momma did all her machine piecing. I pointed out both rooms on the way downstairs, but Joshua didn’t seem to care. There was a lot of shrugging.

Downstairs, Beau Ray sat on the couch watching This Old House on television. He had quieted down and for that, Momma had given him a slice of cake. Momma sat beside him, stacking fabric squares. She nodded up at us.

“Joshua, this is my brother Beau Ray. Beau Ray, say hello,” I said.

Beau Ray didn’t look up.

“Beau Ray, it’s polite to say hello,” I said.

“Hello,” he said but still didn’t look up.

A streak of chocolate icing colored his face, across his mouth and cheek. I usually wouldn’t have cared about something like that, but I remember being a little embarrassed just then.

“Joshua’s going to be our house guest for the summer,” Momma said. “Isn’t that nice?”

Joshua looked a little uncomfortable. Beau Ray finally tore his eyes from the television set and glanced up at Joshua.

“Hey, man,” Joshua said.

Beau Ray’s eyes went wide. “That’s!” Beau Ray said. He pointed at Joshua Reed, then turned to me with an incredulous smile, mouth open, icing everywhere. “That’s!” he said again.

I had to smile back. Anyone would have.

“Yes. It is,” I said. “Remember how I was telling you? And you didn’t believe me.”

Beau Ray scrambled to his feet, his eyes locked on Joshua the whole time. Chocolate crumbs fell to the floor and got mashed into the carpet as Beau Ray rushed over and enveloped Joshua in a huge hug. Joshua looked at me like he could use some guidance.

“It’s!” Beau Ray said, hugging him close.

“Now, now, dear,” Momma told my brother. “Of course you’re excited but let the man alone!”

But Beau Ray was a lot beefier than Joshua, and he was holding on tight.

“It’s!” Beau Ray said again, laughing a little. His laughter shook Joshua up and down.

“It’s cool, man,” Joshua said, but I thought he looked sort of scared. His arms flapped a little—as much as they could pinned beneath the hug.

“Beau Ray, please let go of him. You’ve got the whole summer to hug him,” I said. I must have sounded serious because Beau Ray released Joshua, then came to my side. He poked me in the shoulder, like I hadn’t seen Joshua yet or if I had, didn’t realize the magnitude of amazement he warranted.

“Cool man,” Beau Ray said to me, poking me hard.

“Ouch. I know,” I said.

Joshua was catching his breath. He’d taken a couple steps away from Beau Ray and was wiping chocolate icing from his cheek.

“I’ll get you a towel for that,” Momma said. “You got some on your shirt, too. I’ll get the soap.”

“Really, don’t bother,” Joshua said, but she was already halfway to the kitchen.

“Beau Ray,” I said. “Have you cleaned your room? Because I want to show Joshua your room, but I want to make sure it’s clean first.”

“It’s clean,” Beau Ray said, still staring, as if Joshua might disappear if he looked away.

“Really?” I asked.

Beau Ray cast his eyes to the floor. The playing cards had been only the top layer of disorganization. I’d taught Beau Ray to throw all his things into the closet and shut the door if he couldn’t actually get them put away in time for company to see. I figured that’s what still needed doing.

“I’m gonna go clean my room,” Beau Ray said. “Cool man.” He smiled at Joshua and hustled off. Joshua stared after him.

“He was just excited to meet you. He’ll calm down,” I told him. “He’s the one I was telling you is disabled.”

“I see it didn’t stunt his size,” Joshua said.

“He used to play a lot of football,” I said.

“When did, you know, his head happen? You said it was a fall?” Joshua asked.

“I was thirteen,” I said, trying to remember. “It was January, so he was seventeen. So twelve years ago. He’s turning thirty this summer. You’ll be here.”

Downstairs, in addition to the living room with the TV and the two couches and Dad’s old reading chair, there was Beau Ray’s room and his bathroom, the dining room and the kitchen. Another set of stairs, near the door of the kitchen, led farther down, to the washing machine and the swampy basement with the Ping-Pong table that no one ever used, the computer Judy bought me, and my fan club filing cabinet. Joshua didn’t say anything as I showed him around. He sniffed a bit and frowned a lot, but he didn’t say a word.

Outside was the big backyard and smaller front yard, and between the front yard and the door, a covered porch with a clothesline and a rickety table. On one end sat half a motorcycle Tommy had abandoned a few summers back, and at the other, an old tire that Momma had fashioned into a marigold planter. We ended up out there after I ran out of things to show him inside. Joshua sank into our one porch chair, so I sat on the two-step stoop, looking out at the driveway, beyond which Joshua couldn’t go. For a while, he held his head in his hands, like he had the worst headache. I asked him if there was anything he needed.

“A drink,” he said.

“You mean a liquor drink or a soda or something because Lars told me he didn’t want—” I started saying, but he cut me off.

“No,” he said. “Nothing.”

“I usually go to the Winn-Dixie on Sundays,” I explained. “But if there’s anything special you want, let me know. I could make an extra trip.”

“What the fuck is a Winn-Dixie?” Joshua snapped.

I felt my cheeks go hot. Sandy was right, I thought just then. Joshua Reed was a butthole. Joshua was a butthole and this was day one of ninety. The summer stretched out farther into the future than any of us could see, like the bend in Prospect Street when you turned left. There was never any way to know what might be coming at you there, so it was best to take it slow. That’s what Dad had always said.

I didn’t answer him, and eventually Joshua Reed looked up at me. I still didn’t answer and he frowned, then looked a little ashamed, then broke out one of his smiles.

“Sorry,” he said. “Winn-Dixie?”

I took a breath and thought, okay, I’ll forgive him, the way you forgive a kid who is done with time-out, even though you know that he’s bound to start roughhousing again. I took a breath and thought, start slow.

“For groceries. It’s a supermarket,” I told him. “I guess they don’t have them in Los Angeles?”

He shook his head. “There’s nothing I need. Wait. I’ll let you know. I can’t even think right now,” he said.

I looked at my nails. I was still sporting the polish I’d put on the night I first met Joshua Reed. It had begun to flake and crack, and I picked at it as I looked out into our driveway. A car rolled by. I didn’t recognize who it was, but I waved like I always did and whoever it was waved back. Joshua turned to me.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, though I knew that his look carried something with it.

“You want lemonade?” I asked.

He kept staring into the street. I stood up.

“I could use a beer,” I said.

Lars had asked me not to serve Joshua alcohol so long as he was under house arrest, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t indulge, even if it was mostly for show. As I opened the screen door, Joshua buried his head in his hands again.

“Fuck me,” he muttered. And then louder, like he was really angry, he yelled it. “Fuck me!”

“Hey,” I said to him, walking back near. “About the swearing. You can’t be doing that. You can’t be swearing like that around the house.”

He turned to me. “What?” But I could tell he had heard me, because he sounded fed up. I suddenly got all nervous.

“It’s just…you can’t…you shouldn’t…not around the house.”

Joshua looked like he didn’t know where to begin. “People swear in prison,” he finally said.

“On account of Beau Ray,” I explained. I told him how Beau Ray had this bad habit—more annoying than bad, I guess—of mimicking. Especially with swear words. “We’ve all trained ourselves not to,” I told him.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks,” I said, and went to get my beer. From behind the screen door, I heard Joshua again.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered.

The house was quiet that night, but I didn’t sleep well. Joshua’s door was closed, and Momma had closed hers, too. As I padded down the hall, ready to crawl into bed, I wondered what Momma was really thinking. She’d been fairly closemouthed on the subject of Joshua up to then. All I knew was that she saw his house arrest as an extension of my fan club duties, as if Joshua were a hobby of mine I had to keep neat and in the right place, like the plastic horses I’d collected when I was little. She’d already told me that I’d be the one driving him to AA. I would also be the one to buy groceries and whatever else he might demand. That night, Momma had gone to bed before dinner, saying that she was tuckered and had a big day ahead. I wondered if it hadn’t been the arraignment and being civil to Judy and Lars and worrying over Beau Ray. Or maybe it was just having someone in Vince’s room after all that time.

I had always slept with my door open. When I was younger, it was so I could look into Vince’s room and see his feet sticking up under the covers and know that he would hear anything awful or scary and could rush to my side in seconds. Not that anything awful or scary ever happened—not that he could prevent at least. And after Vince left, I’d kept my door open so that I would be able to see if he came back in the night. And years after that, it was habit. But that night, that first night with Joshua, I’d closed my door, and with all the doors upstairs closed, it felt like a different house. Like my family wasn’t my own anymore. I wondered if we’d made a mistake.

Often when I couldn’t sleep, I called Sandy late at night. But that night, she was with her family at the beach—would be for the next week, too—and I was afraid I’d wake everyone. Sometimes when I couldn’t sleep, I’d sit on the porch and listen to the crickets. But closing my door seemed so final, and I didn’t want to take a chance on running into Joshua while I was in nightclothes. So I stared at the ceiling and wondered how long ninety days would last. Start slow, I told myself.

I’ve been an early riser since forever—or at least since my teens. Usually I’m up around six. I don’t know where it comes from, since no one else in my family gets up so early. Beau Ray had long been one of those guys who’d sleep until noon in a bright room. And Momma was more of an eight o’clock riser—earlyish, but not early. But me, I’ve never even had to set an alarm. I could always tell myself “get up at five forty-five” or “get up at six-fifteen” and my body would obey (although daylight saving time would have me off-kilter for a couple days). So even though I didn’t sleep well, I still woke up by six-thirty that first morning after Joshua moved in.

I got up, got dressed and took Momma’s station wagon to SpeedLube for an oil change, and then I drove into Charles Town and it was still but seven forty-five. I had a key that got me into the county clerk’s office, no matter what the time, and I went to my desk and organized my things like I’d meant to do the day before, except the arraignment had gone longer than I’d figured. For the next eighty-nine days, I was only going to be working half-time, since it turned out that we would be getting paid for taking care of Joshua.

I hadn’t been thinking anything about money, I’d swear on Susan’s fancy Bible, when I offered up Vince’s room. Heck, I hadn’t even known it the day Momma signed the guardianship papers, though I think Momma might have. Momma had told me that Judy and Lars were fixing to pay her $200 a day for the use of Vince’s room and meals and laundry and not killing him (that last part being a joke). Judy said that it was like paying for a hotel, which they would have been doing had there been such thing as hotel arrest. Judy even asked Judge Weintraub whether he thought that was fair, and he said he didn’t see anything wrong with it.

Two hundred dollars a day was a lot more than I was making at the county clerk’s office. It was probably more than what Momma and I together brought home. And Momma said that if we were getting paid like that to take care of Joshua, we sure as hell better take care of Joshua, which meant she wanted me to be around more.

This is the way Momma would talk: “Leanne, I’m wanting you to stick around the house more this summer.” It sounds polite and all, but if I’d ever said no, all of that niceness would be gone and she’d start in with how ungrateful I was and didn’t I see how hard it had been for her, and I’d end up doing what she wanted anyway. I knew it, and she knew I knew it. But it still irked me because I also knew that it was awful convenient that Beau Ray would be watched over at the same time. And that screwed me, since summer was when Momma usually did more watching so I could take my extension courses. It’s like she had forgotten that I was the one she’d pushed to think about college, well, me and Vince. I remember wondering whether Vince had found his way to college, wherever he was, as I straightened my desk in case Mr. Bellevue assigned someone else to sit there on Mondays, Thursdays and Friday afternoons.

I saw that Mr. Bellevue had left a note for me.

Leanne, it read, I’m terribly excited for you!!! Enjoy this experience—but of course you’ll have to tell me everything! I’m sure it will be unique and memorable!!

By his use of exclamation points, I had to assume that Mr. Bellevue meant memorable in a good way. But President Kennedy’s assassination was memorable, too. And the space shuttle coming down in flames. And my dad dying, even that was memorable on a smaller scale.

Of course, I hoped the summer would be memorable in a good way. For heaven’s sake, Joshua Reed was going to be living in my house! He was there even as I folded up the note. He was there even as I walked out of the county clerk’s office. I wondered if he’d sleep late. I wondered what he’d want to do on his first full day under our roof. I had no doubt that after a good night’s sleep, he’d have relaxed some and feel more himself. Maybe I’d suggest that we rent a few movies. Maybe he’d let me listen to him practice his Musket Fire lines.

With the first, awkward night behind us, I felt hopeful. Ninety days was ample time to get to know someone. Sandy and I hadn’t needed a month to become fast friends when we’d met in the third grade. At the end of ninety days, Joshua and I might well be inseparable. We might have private jokes. We might realize that we both hate runny eggs and love Mounds bars. Maybe he’d introduce me to some of his friends—on the phone or if ever a few of them decided to fly in and surprise him for a weekend.

I knew that Joshua and I already had things in common. Like the fact that we’d both excelled in English in high school. And that we were both allergic to cats. And like me, he’d grown up in a small town, even farther from a big city than we were in Pinecob. Although he’d sure made it clear that he preferred city living.

In the parking lot, my keys fit in the car lock the same as usual. The steering wheel felt in my hands like it always did, as I spun it away from the municipal building. The road beneath the tires was smooth where I expected smooth, and the stoplight by the post office shone red, then green, as always. But back at my house, Joshua Reed was sleeping between the same sheets I sometimes slept between. How crazy was that? It felt like remembering a dream, the sense of everything just a step beyond belief. My house, but not my house. The feel of life, but not quite. Joshua Reed, movie star, was sleeping between my sheets.

I knew that a lot of women would have killed—or at least scratched and bit—for the chance to take my place. Back when I was sixteen or seventeen, I might have done the same. But at twenty-five, I wasn’t holding on to the crazy fantasies I’d harbored in my teens. And besides, I knew that Joshua was dating Elise, the Belgian supermodel with aqua eyes.

I looked into the rearview mirror. My eyes were as brown as ever. And anyway, I’ve always been one to respect an existing relationship. I don’t know what the feminine equivalent of chivalry is, but maybe you’d call it that. Sandy, on the other hand, would probably call it me not having the gumption to hold my hand out for what I wanted. But I knew what it felt like, someone moving in on your boyfriend when you’re not around. The same thing had happened to me with Howard Malkin. I wasn’t going to be like that.

It was around eight-thirty in the morning when I got back home, and Momma was making blueberry cottage cheese pancakes, which sounds weird, but they’re the best pancakes ever. She almost never made them, so it must have been Joshua who brought out the act. She told me to get Beau Ray up and to offer Joshua more coffee.

“Judy said we shouldn’t be catering to him,” I told her.

“Judy’s not here,” Momma said. “And Judy don’t make the rules in this house, so git.”

I’d bought a Charles Town Register on my way home, and I dropped it on the dining room table as I passed. Joshua looked up at me.

“Hey sleepyhead,” I said, at the door of Beau Ray’s room. I was glad to see that Beau Ray, at least, had slept with his door wide open. His closet door was open, too, and a huge pile of clothes and books and sporting equipment spilled out onto his floor. “Momma’s making pancakes,” I said. “You don’t want to miss pancakes.”

Beau Ray turned over. “Pancakes?” he asked and started to sit up.

“Blueberry. Come soon,” I said.

Beau Ray followed me into the dining room. He took a seat across from Joshua and smiled at him. Joshua looked up from the paper.

“Morning, Beau Ray,” he said.

“Morning, cool man Joshua Reed,” Beau Ray said. “Fuck me.”

“Beau Ray!” I snapped.

Joshua seemed surprised, then amused.

“Beau Ray, you know we don’t say that,” I said.

“Fuck me! Fuck me!” Beau Ray said. Joshua started laughing.

“It’s not funny,” I told him, but Beau Ray looked so pleased with himself and with Joshua that I found myself fighting a grin.

“Shh,” Joshua said to Beau Ray. “We don’t want your mother to hear.”

“Shh,” Beau Ray said back, nodding and winking.

Momma brought a plate of pancakes to the table. “Who’s ready for the first round?” she asked. “Morning, angel,” she said to Beau Ray. She kissed him on the head.

Beau Ray was already poking at the pancakes with a fork. “Yum. Pancakes,” Beau Ray said. “Fuck me!”

Joshua and I went silent.

Momma turned to me. “Leanne,” she said, frowning.

I shrugged and turned to Joshua, who started to laugh.

Momma looked pissed. “It’s not funny,” she said to him. “I don’t know how you live your life out there in California, but here, in this house, we don’t use bad language.”

“Fuck me,” Beau Ray said. “Cool man don’t use bads.” He giggled.

“See what I mean?” I told Joshua, who was still laughing.

“It’s not funny,” Momma said again, even angrier.

“I know,” Joshua said. But he wasn’t doing a very good job of looking sorry. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. It won’t happen again.”

“Joshua Reed say sorry,” Beau Ray said.

“I am sorry,” Joshua said to my mother.

He had found his focus and was wearing his apologetic look. I guess Joshua Reed always played guys who messed up, because I swear I’d seen that same look in every one of his movies. His eyes were wide open and sad, and his chin was tilted down, so that he was looking up at Momma through his lashes. After he spoke, his lips stayed slightly open, and the effect was a much younger, more innocent Joshua Reed. I couldn’t look away. It was a complete transformation. I don’t know whether Momma bought it, but she shook her head and left the room. Once she was gone, Joshua’s face returned to normal—or to the sour version of normal he’d worn from the moment he’d walked into our house. He took a bite of pancakes and turned back to the paper.

“I want to ask you,” Joshua said. Breakfast was over. Beau Ray had gone to take a shower, and Momma had left for work. “What’s the deal with the TV?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Is there something wrong?”

“Well, I couldn’t figure it out. Where’s the cable box? How does it work?”

I cringed. I’d forgotten to mention it, because it had never been a big deal before. But I had a feeling that it was about to become one.

“We don’t have cable,” I told him. “It hasn’t come up the road yet.”

Joshua blinked at me. “You’re kidding,” he finally said. “You’re not kidding?”

I shook my head. “There’s cable in Charles Town—but that doesn’t help you,” I said.

“You can’t get cable? Who can’t get cable?” Joshua seemed confused. “Then what about satellite? You could get a dish. Satellite.”

I shrugged. Sandy’s parents’ new house in Charles Town had cable, so I’d always gone there if I wanted to watch something that didn’t come in on one of our five stations.

“Maybe,” I told him. “Momma has this thing about TV. You’ll have to ask her.” I left it at that.

“Jesus. You live in the absolute sticks,” Joshua said. He sounded amazed, but not in a good way.

“You act like someone told you Pinecob was a big city,” I said. “No one told you that. I know I didn’t tell you that. Besides, you know what a small town is like. You grew up in Rackett, Texas. Population three thousand.” I knew this from his fan club biography.

“Don’t talk to me about Rackett. I left that rat hole as soon as I could,” Joshua said.

I swallowed hard. “Some of us haven’t had that luxury,” I said. I hated that I felt so shaky.

Joshua looked around the empty room, then calmly back at me. He didn’t look at all ruffled.

“Apparently everyone else had the good sense to leave,” he said. “I’m going to call about getting satellite TV.” He left the room. Me, I left the house and didn’t come back again until after dinner, if only because I could.

When I came back—I would have caught hell from Momma had I stayed out any later—Joshua was up in Vince’s room, reading one of the ten scripts Lars had left with him. I walked down the hallway and saw Joshua glance at me before he kicked his door closed. Momma was in her bedroom, lining up square after square of calico cotton.

“We’re not getting no satellite TV,” she told me, before I could say a thing.

“Okay,” I said.

“Joshua asked, but I just…” She paused. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. Even if he pays, you know television is addictive. I don’t want Beau Ray watching more than he already does.”

“Okay,” I said. “It wasn’t my idea. I don’t care.”

“Okay, then,” Momma said. “Beau Ray said you were out all day. You told me you’d already cleaned things up at work.”

“I just had a few more things to do there,” I told her. It was a lie. I’d gone and watched the same movie twice at the Charles Town Cinema.

Momma nodded. “I’m going out Thursday night, so I’ll be wanting you around here then,” she told me.

“You’re going out? Who with?” I asked. Momma almost never went out. I tried to think of the last time she’d socialized and who it had been with. “The Williamses?” I guessed.

“No.”

“Church potluck?”

“I’m going out to dinner with Bill Weintraub,” she said. I didn’t recognize the name at first, and then it hit me.

“Judge Weintraub?”

“He seems like a very nice man,” Momma said.

“You have a date with Judge Weintraub?” I asked. “Or is it some sort of meeting about Joshua?”

“I’m going out to dinner with him,” Momma said. “That’s all.” And I could tell that she wasn’t going to say anything more.

On Wednesday, day three of the ninety, there was a knock at our front door. I was doing dishes in the kitchen, so I pulled off my gloves and went to answer. A tall, skinny woman was waiting outside. She wore sunglasses even though our porch was shady and it looked like a storm was about to blow in. Behind her, in the driveway, a big black car sat idling.

“Is Joshua here?” she asked. She took off her sunglasses then and blinked. “I mean,” she continued, “I know he’s here. Can I see him?”

I stepped aside and let her into the house. “I think he’s sleeping,” I told her. “Come on up. You’re his girlfriend, right?” I asked.

I knew who she was. She was the model for All-American Cosmetics, among other things. I’d seen her in magazines. Her name was Elise.

“And you are?” Elise asked, following me up the stairs.

“I’m Leanne,” I said. “I live here.”

Elise nodded. “Oh right. I heard about you,” she said. “The fan.”

“Fan club,” I said. “Here’s his room.” I knocked lightly. Elise stood beside me and knocked hard.

“What?” Joshua snapped from behind the door. He opened it then, looked at me, then at Elise. He smiled when he saw Elise. “Hey, baby!” he said.

Elise stepped into Vince’s old room, and Joshua closed the door. I stood in the hallway for a moment, feeling even more stupid when I realized I still had a dish sponge in my hand. Then I walked back downstairs and sat at the kitchen table.

They were in his room for about an hour. After that, I heard the door open and the stairs creak as they came back down.

“You want some lemonade?” I heard him ask. She must have nodded because he called out, “Leanne, bring us some lemonade, would you? We’ll be on the front porch.”

I went to the refrigerator, then stopped. I didn’t open it. Instead, I walked to the kitchen window and listened. Joshua hadn’t been in our house long enough to realize that where I stood was perfect for overhearing any porch conversation. I’d discovered that in high school—my mother would listen to all my dates as they were ending, so I’d learned to give kisses in the car, beforehand.

“Are you kidding me?” I heard Joshua say. “You’re just telling me this now?”

“Sorry,” Elise said. But she didn’t sound sorry. I heard her sigh.

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this, Leesie,” Joshua said. “I thought you of all people would stick around. We talked about this!”

“It’s clear that you have some work to do on yourself right now,” Elise said. “And I need to focus on my career. I’m the All-American spokesmodel. I’ve got a responsibility there.”

“You’re not even American,” Joshua said.

“That’s not the point,” she said. “I’m sorry, Josh. It was good to see you, but I have to get going.”

“You kept the car running?” Joshua said.

“Of course. It’s hot out here,” she said. “Oh, don’t pout. It’s not like you and I were going anywhere long-term,” Elise said. “And you can’t go anywhere short-term.”

From the kitchen, I could hear a car door close, then the crunch of tires on the driveway. I could hear Joshua’s footsteps, back and forth across the porch. I went to the refrigerator and got out the pitcher.

He was sitting on the porch, staring out toward the street. I handed him a glass of lemonade and he took it, absentmindedly. He didn’t say anything.

The next day was Thursday. In the evening, Momma got to go out to dinner with Judge Weintraub, Beau Ray got to go to “Life Skills Training” at the Charles Town Community Center and I got to drive Joshua to his first AA meeting. He didn’t talk to me on the way there, and when I asked if he knew where to go and what room it was in, he handed me a piece of paper: Room 220.

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