Vegas Heat (8 page)

“I don’t know if I could work in a room with canned air all day. I like to look out a window. I read somewhere that people who handle money all day get sick a lot. Is that true?”

Birch laughed. “I’ll have to check that one out. Off the top of my head I’d say our absentee level is about normal. We’re almost there.” Again, he had the urge to reach out for her hand. “Will you have dinner with me this evening?”

“Well ... I didn’t plan ...”

“You have to eat.”

“I didn’t bring any ... I just brought my overnight case. I don’t have anything fancy to wear.”

“I’m not into fancy myself. What you have on is beautiful, and it will fit in anywhere I take you. I like to go to out-of-the-way places where the food is good. Places the tourists don’t know about. Are you a meat or fish person?”

“I like everything. Yes, I would like to have dinner with you. It doesn’t matter where. I adapt.”

“Ah, a girl after my own heart,” Birch said lightly. This time he did reach out to touch her hand. He withdrew it quickly, a huge smile on his face.

“That’s Chue’s house on the right. My grandmother Sallie brought him and his sister up to the mountain when they were children. Chue looks after things here and is responsible for the hanging gardens at the casino. Su Li, his sister, is a famous doctor. She’s retired now, though. We consider them family.” Birch slowed the car at the bend in the road so his passenger could admire the gardens Chue had planted.

“It’s lovely”

“My grandmother lived in a little house right in the middle of the garden. She had it built specially so she could take care of my grandfather. When she died, my mother burned it down. At my grandmother’s request. Her ashes are scattered over the mountain. Look. There’s Daisy.” Birch slowed the car again and opened the door. Daisy hopped in and snuggled in Birch’s lap. “Here comes Mom!” He turned in time to see a startled expression on Lily’s face.

“She looks just like Harriet.” Her breath exploded in a loud sigh of relief.

“Mom, I brought someone to see you.” He hugged her and whispered in her ear. “Hear her out, Mom, this isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Mom, this is Lily Bell. She came from California to see you.” His whispered voice dropped even lower. “I like this girl, Mom.”

“Miss Bell,” Fanny said, offering her hand to the young woman. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Why don’t we go into the studio and have some coffee?”

“Why don’t I make the coffee while you and Lily talk?”

Puzzled, Fanny agreed as she led the way to her studio.

While Birch clanged and banged in the kitchen, Fanny listened to Lily’s story. From time to time he poked his head out of the tiny area to see his mother’s expression. Her face was whiter than chalk. Her hands trembled as she held the small photograph at different angles to view it.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“I imagine it’s a terrible shock. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to see her. I didn’t know you had brothers until your son told me. I wish I had more to tell you, but Harriet didn’t talk about her old life. I’m so sorry.”

“Birch?”

“I can see the resemblance in the picture, Mom. Why don’t you call Uncle Daniel and Uncle Brad and see what they say? I can fly you up there in the morning, Mom. It will be a day out of your life. If you don’t go, you’ll always wonder if you made the right decision.”

“I’ll call my brothers and see what they say. Birch is right—if I don’t go, I’ll always wonder. I need to think for a minute. Birch, show Miss Bell around. Introduce her to Sage and Billie. I hear Bess’s car. Would you ask her to come over to the studio?”

When the door closed behind her son, Fanny let her emotions loose. Her clenched fists banged at the arms of the red chair. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she tried to see the numbers on the phone to call her brothers. Somehow she managed to blurt out Lily Bell’s story. “I’m going, Daniel. You and Brad have to make up your own minds. Miss Bell said time is of the essence. You could take the red-eye and be there before me. We can meet in the hospital lobby I don’t know if you should tell Daddy or not. I’ll leave that up to you. Do you think this is some kind of omen, Daniel? Why now after all these years? We have a brother and a sister we never knew about. That has to mean something to us. I’m going! You will? All right, Daniel. Give Daddy my love, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

Fanny turned. “Did you get all that, Bess?”

“You found your mother. That’s wonderful, Fanny. It is, isn’t it?”

“Yes and no. Why don’t I feel something?”

“You will. I see the resemblance,” Bess said as she held the picture up to the light.

“I see Daniel and Brad more than myself. I look more like my father. I know it’s her. I just know it. What in the world will I say to her? She’s dying. What if I say the wrong thing?”

“I don’t think you need to worry about right or wrong. You say what you feel. Stay as long as you need to stay. We can handle things here. I picked up the mail, and the good news is Billie Coleman sent us another check.”

“Bless her heart. I need to call her tonight. I keep forgetting about the time difference in Japan. Was there any other mail?”

“If that’s your way of asking me if there’s a letter from Simon Thornton, the answer is no. Fanny, why don’t you just write him a letter and pray the post office forwards it? I’m sure Simon has personal mail. If it isn’t forwarded, where does it go? He has no home. He sold the business. Mail goes somewhere. Just do it.”

Fanny bent over to pull a shoe box out from under one of the red chairs. “Should I mail all 120 of them? I’ve written one every day since I got back. I used to write to Ash like that. Every single day. Look what it got me.”

“Four great kids, a wonderful business, one-of-a-kind friends, this lovely mountaintop home, and now your mother. If you hadn’t met and married Ash, you could be clerking in a dimestore and I’d still be serving egg salad sandwiches at the counter in my father’s drugstore. You and I might never have met. Everything happens for a reason. We both know that. I say mail the damn letters. I’ll take them down the mountain tonight when I go home.”

“Okay.”

“I love it when one of us makes the right decision.”

“Oh, Bess, I’m finally going to see my mother. I swear, I never thought it would happen. Say a prayer that I feel something when I see her. I don’t want her to die without knowing us. We had so much love to give her, the boys and me. How could she just up and leave us like that? I need to know why. I want to know what it was that made her walk away. Maybe if she tells me something I can believe, I’ll feel something. Oh Bess, what if she says she never thought about us, never wondered how we turned out?”

“She isn’t going to say that, Fanny.”

“But what if she does?”

“Then you’ll tell her you’re sorry she felt like that. You’ll tell her you and your brothers thought about her every day of your lives. Stop worrying, mothers don’t say things like that. Is there anything I can do, Fanny?”

“No.”

Bess let herself out the door. She looked through the window to see Fanny curled up in the red chair, the picture of her mother in her hand.

“Oh, Mom, I have so much to tell you,” Fanny whispered to the picture.

The hospital had a hushed quietness in the early hours of the morning. The sickening smell of flowers waiting to be delivered permeated the small lobby. Fanny gagged at the overpowering scent. Flowers and hospitals led to funerals and more flowers, eulogies and tears.

She saw them then, her two older brothers. They looked like tired little boys as they paced between the gray plastic-and-chrome chairs, their hands jammed into their pockets. The relief in their eyes when they saw her brought tears to her eyes. “I’m so glad you came,” Fanny said.

“Dad insisted. We would have come anyway, Fanny. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel or what I should say,” Daniel, the oldest, said in a weary voice.

“I think we’ll know when we get there. If it’s any consolation, I feel the same way I’d like you to meet the young lady who ... Lily, this is Daniel and Brad.”

Lily acknowledged the introduction. “I’ll go up first, and if Harriet is awake, prepare her. I’ll come back for you. The coffee shop is open and the coffee is quite good.” Fanny nodded.

Birch ordered coffee that no one drank.

“I think I wish this wasn’t happening. Our lives are going to change now,” Daniel said. “I don’t think I want another brother or sister. You guys and your families are all I need or want.”

“I agree,” Brad said.

The bitterness in both her brothers’ faces tugged at Fanny’s heart. “We need some closure to this part of our lives. Our children have a right to know about our side of the family. Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the timing isn’t quite what we would like, but you have to deal with it. Right now, it’s the only game in town. If it wasn’t for Miss Bell, we still wouldn’t know. We have the right to know the whys of it all. I want to know. Please, let’s try not to be bitter. We all have good lives, wonderful children, and our families are intact. More or less.”

“As usual, Fanny, you’re right,” Brad said squeezing her shoulders.

Birch watched the interaction between his mother and uncles, his heart thumping in his chest. The more or less pertained to him and his father. It always came down to family. Would he be as charitable as these two giants towering over him if he was in their position. They’d come here with bitterness in their hearts because a member of their family asked them to. And now, that member, his mother, had somehow managed to wipe away the bitterness. All he could see in their faces was sadness.

Lily Bell walked over to their table. “She’s awake. It’s difficult for her to talk, but she wants to see all of you. She ... she wanted the nurse to fix her hair and put one of her own gowns on her. Another five minutes and we can go up. Anna and Paul are on the way. Is there anything you want to ask me?” The question was directed at Fanny’s brothers. Both men shook their heads.

They waited.

The door to the coffee shop opened suddenly. Fanny was aware of movement, of hushed whispers. She looked up to see Sunny, Sage, and Billie. She cried then as her children circled around her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Sage draw Birch into the tight little circle. “You belong here too, big brother. Sunny took up two seats.” It brought the desired smiles Sage was looking for.

“We can go up now,” Lily said, her eyes on her watch.

If the frail woman in the bed had ever been pretty, it wasn’t evident now, but there was an alertness in her eyes Fanny hadn’t expected. They circled the bed, uncertainty on their features.

“I’m Fanny, Mom. This is Daniel and this is Brad. My children are here too, Birch and Sage, they’re twins. This is Sunny, who’s going to make you a great-grandmother, and this is Billie. I want to be honest and tell you none of us knows what to do or say. I think we want to know why you left us. We have a right to know that. We can go on from there.”

“Your father was a good man. Solid, dependable, hardworking. I wanted something different. I tried to tell him that, but he didn’t hear me. When you were born something happened to me. All I did was cry. I couldn’t eat or sleep. Three children in diapers overwhelmed me. I tried, but I couldn’t make it work. I left knowing in my heart your father would do a better job of raising you three than I ever could. I was right. Many times I wanted to call or write, but I told myself I gave up that right. I have no excuses, and I don’t ask your forgiveness because I’m dying. I’m grateful that you came. I always wondered how you turned out.”

“Pretty damn good,” the outspoken Sunny blurted.

“I want you to leave now. Go back to your families and lead your own lives. Mine is over, and I take full responsibility for all the things I should have done and all the things I shouldn’t have done. I have two children who will mourn for me. I don’t know if I have a right to say this or not, but I’ll say it anyway. I’m very proud of the way your father raised you.”

“Just a damn minute here,” Sunny said.

“Hush, Sunny,” Fanny said.

“What will you name the child?” Harriet asked, her voice little more than a raspy whisper.

“It’s not going to be Harriet, that’s for sure.”

Strangled sounds came from the frail figure. “I like that. There’s one in every family. Brad was like that as a little boy.”

“He still is, Mom,” Fanny said. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

“Say a prayer once in a while. Not for me, for your father. Good-bye.”

There was nothing for them to do but leave.

More strangled sounds came from the bed. “What did she say?” Fanny asked Lily.

“She said you weren’t to stay for the funeral.”

Sunny waddled back to the bed and leaned over. “Well, guess what,
Grandmother
, we aren’t staying. We all came here because of our mother, not because of you. You’re right, you don’t deserve us. When you get to your final destination say hello to our
other
grandmother.” She leaned closer and kissed the dry sunken cheeks. “That’s for my mother.”

“Take care of her.”

“You bet we will. You have a good trip now, you hear.”

The old woman’s tortured laughter followed them from the room.

“If you weren’t pregnant, I’d lay you out right here,” Sage said. “What the hell got into you? Have a good trip? Jesus.”

“She laughed, didn’t she? I didn’t want her to think we’re like her. I wasn’t being mean-spirited, Sage, I was trying to lighten the moment. She knew that, I saw it in her eyes.”

“It’s a damn good thing Mom didn’t hear all of that.”

“Is that a threat you’re going to hold over my head?” Sunny asked.

“If I thought it would get me anywhere, I would. Just shut the hell up and let’s go. This family is going to breakfast to talk. ”

“About what? I am hungry. I’m always hungry. I eat all day long. I’m actually starving.”

“Miss Bell is going to bring ... what do I call them, aunt, uncle, what? Anna and Paul, I guess,” he said answering his own question. “After we talk I assume we’ll leave. It was a good idea of yours, Sunny, to come here. I thought Mom was going to faint dead away. Are you okay?”

“If you feed me, I will be. Now do you understand about family, Sage? This is all so sad. Mom must be devastated. I don’t know what to say to her or if I should say anything. Sometimes I think this family is jinxed. I saw that little thing with Birch. You’re a nice guy, Sage, and if I say so, it must be true.”

“So, how are you
really
feeling?”

“Real shitty. I think there’s something wrong with me aside from my pregnancy. I’ve had every test in the book and nothing shows up. It’s something I feel, something I just know, if that makes sense.”

Sage felt his stomach lurch. He wanted to say a prayer right then and there for his sister and didn’t know why. He closed his eyes for a second, trying to imagine life without Sunny in it. “I’ll tell you what. If you don’t feel better after you deliver, we’ll go to New York. They’re supposed to have the finest hospitals and the best doctors. I’ll go with you. I think it’s your pregnancy, though.”

Sunny stopped. “No. It’s something else. I’m afraid, Sage.”

He was afraid too. “Don’t go spooking me now, Sunny. I bet you’re having twins and that’s why you feel like you do.”

“I hope you’re right, Sage.”

To Sage, his sister’s voice had an ominous ring. “You know me, I’m always right. Hey, did’ya see that guy driving by? He looked just like Uncle Simon.”

“What guy?” Sunny asked as she looked up and down the road.

“He’s gone now. It looked just like him. I guess today isn’t the best of days. Maybe I wanted to see him to make sense out of all of this. Uncle Simon always had the answers to everything. If Mom ever needed Uncle Simon, it’s now.”

“Dad ruined that. He’s at the bottom of it all,” Sunny said. “God, can’t we talk about something pleasant once in a while? I think Birch likes Lily Bell. I think he likes her a lot. So there.”

“Long-distance romances never work. So there yourself.”

“Birch can fly here every other day if he wants to. I see something brewing right under our noses.”

“You need to mind your own business. Try and keep that mouth of yours shut over breakfast. This is Mom’s gig, so don’t go screwing it up. We’re here. Behave yourself and don’t embarrass us.”

“Up yours, Sage.”

Sage grinned. Sunny was never going to curb her tongue or her actions. Sunny was a what-you-see-is-what-you-get girl. His eyes were worried, though, as he held the door open so his family could enter the restaurant.

Lily Bell declined breakfast, saying she would wait outside for her half brother and half sister. Birch joined her. Sunny smirked in Sage’s direction as she ordered a breakfast large enough for three people.

“We have to do what she wants, and she wants us to leave,” Fanny said.

“I don’t have any problem with that,” Daniel said. Brad seconded his brother’s words.

“It’s sad. She was our mother. I wanted to feel something, I really did, but she was a stranger. I watched her eyes and I don’t think she felt anything either. Do we just leave and not look back? That seems cruel. She said nice things about Daddy. Miss Bell said she was a nice person.”

“Let it go, Fanny,” Daniel said. “We have our closure now. Oops, here come our new siblings.” He stood to extend his hand and introduce himself. Brad and Sage did the same.

“Please, sit down. Would you like some coffee?” Fanny asked.

Anna and Paul sat down but declined the coffee. An uncomfortable silence fell around the table. Fanny waited until Anna spoke. “I think things should be left as they are. We’ll go on with our lives and you’ll go on with yours. We have nothing in common even though we share the same mother. Paul and I are glad you got to see Mom for your sake. I don’t know what happened before, and neither Paul nor I want to know now. It goes without saying that we won’t make any demands on your family. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we want to go to the hospital.”

Fanny nodded. The men stood again, but this time there were no handshakes.

“Cold-hearted bitch,” Sunny said. She bit into a blueberry muffin slathered with soft butter.

“My life won’t be torn asunder if I never see those two again,” Billie said.

“They’re holding themselves in tight control. They lost their father, and now they’re going to lose their mother. I don’t think they knew what to do. We have no other choice but to abide by their wishes and respect their grief. Daniel? Brad? Do you have anything to say?”

“You’re right, Fanny. It’s behind us now.”

“I want to thank whoever’s paying for this wonderful breakfast,” Brad said as he looked pointedly at Sage. “There’s an eleven o’clock flight to Pittsburgh, and we’ll make it if we leave now. I’m sorry things didn’t turn out better, Fanny”

“I’m okay with this, Brad. I got to see my mother. I never thought that would happen. The truth is, I gave up a long time ago. I’m just sorry it’s under these circumstances. Give Daddy a big kiss and hug for me.”

“Birch and Lily are driving them to the airport. We’ll meet up with them there,” Sage volunteered.

“That’s nice,” Fanny said.

“You okay, Mom?” Billie asked.

“I think so. I feel like I should have ... said something meaningful or ... something. I didn’t even kiss her or touch her hand.”

“Mom, if you were meant to do those things, you would have done them. She didn’t expect it, and I don’t think she wanted it. If you want the truth, I think we interrupted her dying schedule. That’s my opinion.” To the waitress she said, “I’ll have an orange and a blueberry muffin to go.”

Fanny smiled at her daughter. “I think you might be right.
Exactly
how much weight have you gained, Sunny?”

“You don’t want to know, Mom.”

“Tyler calls her two-ton Lizzie.” Sage guffawed. “I’m telling you, she’s having twins.”

“If I do, I’m naming them Daniel and Brad. If I have a girl, I’m calling her Polly.”

“Really, Sunny. That’s wonderful. They’ll be so pleased if it comes to pass.”

“Sure, those guys are so generous I know they’ll cough up a really good trust fund for their namesakes. They’re such mushy pushovers. I just love them to death. Pay the check and let’s get out of this town. It’s depressing,” Sunny said.

Across the street from the restaurant a tall man dressed in khaki slacks and rumpled tee shirt climbed from his car and entered a small market attached to the gas station. The two little dogs hopped up on the shelf behind the backseat to stare out the window. On the other side of the street the Thornton family climbed into Sage’s rental car.

In her struggle to get comfortable, Sunny found herself staring across the street at the small black car. “Did you see those two cute little dogs? I think I’m going to ask Tyler to get me one. I always wanted a dog. That’s the same guy, Sage, the one I told you looked like Uncle Simon. Shoot, he’s going the other way I’ll tell you, he was the spitting image of our uncle.”

“She’s always seeing strange things,” Sage said to his mother, who was busy craning her neck to look where Sunny was pointing.

“I do not
see things
. The man looked exactly like Uncle Simon. He was even wearing khaki pants and a tee shirt. It’s the same guy we saw before. I’m not making this up, Mom.”