The Truth About Air & Water (Truth in Lies #2) (22 page)

“Do you do laundry, like ever?”

“Only sometimes.” I run the back of my hand across my face and turn to adjust the drapes that don’t need adjusting because they’re closed.

“I heard you yelling. The kids are watching
Frozen
.”

I tilt my head to one side and listen. I can vaguely hear little Elliott singing the words to one of the songs. “I was talking to Kimberley. I told her I’d get a restraining order for his temper to protect Cara if I had to.” It doesn’t sound like such a proud moment when I tell this to Marla. My eyes sting. I try again. “Like he remembers who Cara is. Like he
knows
who I am. And this is my life. What a fucking mess.”

She nods and doesn’t even bother to correct my language. Instead, she laughs ever so faintly and shakes her head. “It is a
fucking
mess,” she says with a sad smile.

“Yeah. So. How much did you
hear
?”

“All of it. I especially like the “you tell him to zip it up good and tight” part. Nicely done. And you did that entire speech without swearing at her too much. Impressive.”

“
More
swearing might have helped.”

“Nah, I think she got your message loud and clear. It
was
good,” Marla pronounces as she starts to strip the bed while I look at her in new wonder. “What? It looks like we’re here for the duration. At least a few hours, right? So let’s do some laundry. Get you caught up to the real world. Then, we’ll pack your things so you two can stay with us for a few days, at least through Christmas. Don’t worry, I’ll drive you to the studio when you need to be there. And by the time the laundry is done, Kimberley will have worked out some kind of mysterious deal with your boss and probably the press too.”

“But it doesn’t matter, does it? If it’s true or not. Whether something happened with that girl or not. Actions speak louder than words, Marla. A part of him wanted something to happen with that blonde. The circumstances don’t really change anything. And I have to protect Cara.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Call my lawyer. Let’s face it; I’ve been waiting around for…
him
…to make the first move. It’s never going to happen. He doesn’t remember me. He’s never going to remember me. I mean maybe someday someone will give him the details about Cara, and he may have some legal rights to her then. But right now? I have to protect her. My lawyer can deal with all of that. Leave the laundry. Help me pack some things for Cara, will you?”

“Maybe you just need to start over with him.”

“No starting over. Obviously he doesn’t want to or doesn’t know to want to.” I grab my cell phone searching for Everett Madsen’s number. “Everett will help me. He has before. Just let me make a phone call or two. Can you check on the kids?”

She nods but looks on with disapproval. “Okay. But are you sure you want to do it this way?”

I look at Marla intently. “Yes, I’ve waited long enough. I’ve kept silent long enough while my name and reputation have been dragged through the proverbial mud along with his. I didn’t do any of this. He has Kimberley on his side and his dad and the Giants. Who do I have? You. Charlie. Not very formidable odds for us. I have to do this. I should have contacted Everett Madsen about all of this a long time ago. We need to have to have some ground rules in place. My lawyer can help me figure out what those should be. I can’t keep having Kimberley Powers and Lincoln Presley determine the outcome of my life or Cara’s. I need to take charge of it for our sake, for us.”

I turn away from Marla who sighs behind me. I only take in air when I finally hear her leave as her footsteps retreat down the hallway away from me. Then, I consciously wipe at the tears streaming down my face.

It takes another five minutes before I get it together enough to make the call.

“Everett, it’s Tally Landon. I need your help.” The power returns to me in just admitting this to my lawyer.

But I still can’t seem to breathe.

I don’t stop to wonder why that is.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Who's That Girl -LINC

I stand back from the steel railing on the second floor of the Malibu house and listen in on the discussion going on about me in the glass-walled living room below. The views of the Pacific even from the vantage of the second floor are pretty spectacular but neither Brad nor Kimberley Stevenson is appreciating these right now.

“He has a right to know! She is royally
pissed
. I don’t necessarily blame her at all.”

“Yes, of course, he needs to be told, but one thing at a time. One crisis at a time. Let the story die down, then we’ll move on to the next one.”

“How long?” Kimberley asks, sounding impatient.

“A month. Maybe two. I’ve already called the office and delayed my return by at least three weeks. He needs our help. You heard what he said. He’s been attempting to throw a baseball for the past two months. He has all kinds of pressure on him to perform. I imagine even his escapade last night was a way of coping with all the pressure he feels. He’s
lost
. His course of treatment appears sporadic. It sounds like they’ve been solely focused on the physical aspect and largely ignoring the mental part. He needs some strategies that will help him learn how to deal with his memory loss in order to better navigate and figure things out and determine where he needs to go from here. Doling out a bunch of heavy narcotics is
not
a strategy, and that seems to be what his stellar medical team has been doing. I’ve seen it often enough,” Brad says.

“So you’re taking over?” She asks, incredulous.

“That’s what you want; isn’t it? He’s like a brother to you. You want him to get better, right?”

“Yes. Of course, I do. I love Linc. He’s the best.
Usually
.”

I wince at hearing Kimberley’s obvious disappointment.
I’ve really fucked this up good.

“So cut him some slack,” Brad says easily. “He needs to rest in order to regain his equilibrium. Give it some time, Kimmy. And let me talk to him alone so I can figure out the best way to help him.”

“What do I tell Tally?”

“Be honest and tell her how it is. She’s reacting to the perception—the innuendos—of what took place with Linc, not the reality. Reassure her too as much as you have Linc. His accident has been just as devastating for her. Let’s see how things go for the next couple of weeks with Linc after I’ve had a chance to work with him. Maybe they can start to work some things out. It sounds like his dad has cut Tally off completely from Linc’s life. I wouldn’t have prescribed that. No wonder she’s upset. So yes, call her and reassure her that things are under control, and we’ll know more in the next few weeks about his progress in remembering anything. I need to talk to him first. So don’t make any promises, just reassure her that you’re handling this for him, and that he says nothing happened.”

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to convince her of much, especially after what just transpired here in LA last night. She was pissed off enough already with the stuff Davis pulled and now this? I don’t know if I’d believe me either. She asked how many condoms he found. She
knows
about that stuff already. She knows how it works. She knows what a fan-girl can be like. She’s not a fool. She deals with fame herself. Right now, she’s finishing up the holiday season with SF Ballet. She’ll have some time off after that but whether she’s willing to spend it in LA to try and work things out with Linc is questionable. Romeo, upstairs, really fucked things up, and I should have seen this coming a lot sooner. He wasn’t himself when I saw him a few weeks ago.”

“You can’t control everything, Kimmy. Nobody can,” Brad says.

I walk down the stairs and the conversation between them stops as soon as they see me.

“Hey, Linc. How’d you sleep?” Kimberley is all smiles as if the serious conversation about me they’ve been having never happened.

“Fine. Nice place.”

Right after we arrived, I was ushered by these two to the upstairs guest room and after a lousy night’s sleep at Trinna somebody’s, not surprisingly, I fell asleep within minutes. This is my first opportunity to look around. “Wow,” I say in getting a better glimpse of the Pacific. The sun is halfway down the horizon. “How long was I asleep?”

“Three hours, my sleep-deprived friend.” Kimberley says. “This is my best friend Julia’s place. Remember her? I think you met her years ago. She lets us use it when we’re in LA—”

“Cleaning up my messes.”

“Then too. And those are not too often.” Kimberley looks over at Brad and then smiles at me. “It’ll be okay. It’ll work out.”

“I think I used to say that, didn’t I?” I look hard at Kimberley and she answers with a slight nod.

“All the time. You remember?” She sounds wistful.

“No. I don’t remember anything. I
try
to, believe me.”

“Maybe you try too hard,” Brad says. “That’s what we’ll start working on, if you’re okay with that.”

It’s not really a question. He makes it sound like more of a challenge that I should be willing to take. “Well, what we’ve been doing isn’t really working,” I say with a touch of sarcasm. “So yeah, I’ll try whatever you me want to try.” I look at Brad and then over at Kimberley. “So, who’s this Tally? Let’s start there,” I say softly. “So she’s pissed? At me? Why, exactly?”

“I say we talk more about all of that later. Let’s go for a walk if you’re up to it,” Brad says to me. Then, he’s talking to Kimberley. “Let me talk to him. You make some of those phone calls. Start with Tally. She’s expecting your call back, right?”

“Yes. I’ve got about ten more minutes.” Kimberley grumbles about missing a walk because she has so much work to do, but manages to lecture me about going incognito and tosses me a baseball cap as well as my Ray-Ban’s at the same time. “No more opportunistic photo ops,” she says with a sniff looking a little put out all over again. “The paparazzi will be all around, after all this is Malibu, but they won’t expect to find you here. So just follow Brad’s lead, lie low, and let me do my job by smoothing things over with a few necessary phone calls. Okay, Linc?”

“You do one hell of a job, babe,” Brad says to her as he grabs her around the waist and kisses her.

Then I follow out behind Brad toward the endless stretch of sand and the Pacific just up ahead of us while Kimberley waves at us from the deck. We wave back.

“She’s intense,” I say knowingly.

“Yeah, but she’s worth it.”

Brad keeps to such a fast pace that I have to run to catch up to him, which, after a while, I decide was his intention all along. Somewhere along the way we seem to call a truce and settle into an easy enough jog. My headache becomes a dull throb, and I start to wonder when was the last time I went running on a beach like this.
Of course, I can’t remember.

“So. What do you like to do?” Brad asks looking over at me.

“I thought you were going to ask me what I
remember
, like everybody else does.”

“What’s the point of that? Asked and answered several times already, I imagine.”

It makes me like him even more. I relax a little and take in the fresh ocean air and appreciate the simple act of running on a beach in Malibu.

After a few minutes of running in silence, I say, “I like to cook. I love baseball. I love seasons. Spring. Summer. Fall. Winter. All of them for different reasons. I love sun. Baseball. Wait, I already said that. Wine. A good scotch. Field dust. The smell of rain, and recently the incredible combination scent of cloves and vanilla.” I laugh. “I like fast cars, and I think I’ve had my share of fast women, but I’m not sure why I know that because I don’t remember it.
Them.
” I slow down. Brad follows suit. “I think I’ve loved someone so greatly that I experience this unquenchable thirst all the time now in trying to remember her. I don’t know what it all means. I just know I feel it. What do you think that means?”

“I think it means your mind remembers more than you or I or anybody else thinks it does. We just have to find the right mechanism to unlock it. Sometimes it involves talking it through. Sometimes it means working with all the senses—sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. It’s good that you have favorite smells like rain and cloves and vanilla. We just have to figure out what or who you associate that with now.”