Waterfalls (8 page)

Meredith paused before opening the front screen door.
Naw, that would never happen
.

“Back off, flea bait,” she said to Bob Two. Actually, for a dog, he was okay. Not too much slobber; just a little overeager. “I’m coming in.”

Bob Two didn’t seem to realize that Meri thought he was okay. He gave every indication that he didn’t like her. Backing himself into the corner of the kitchen, he barked, and his ears flopped. Meri grabbed the keys and blew a sarcastic kiss to the pooch. “See ya!”

Making sure the screen door was closed tightly behind her, Meredith headed for Shelly and Jonathan’s Jeep. Bob Two was still barking.

The engine’s roar drowned out his protests, and she took off down the gravel drive and headed toward town. Once she was on the smooth main road, Meri tilted the rearview mirror
toward herself and checked her appearance. The top of her nose appeared sunburned as well as the high arch of her cheeks.

“Ah, summer sun. How I’ve missed you.” She noticed that her hair was unusually cooperative and still looked good despite the ride in the convertible, the hike to the falls, and the jog to Shelly’s cabin.

What did Jake think of me? Am I plain compared to the glamorous movie stars he hangs out with? Would he think less of me if he knew my hair was really as brown as Shelly’s? No, I don’t think he would. I think he likes blonds. I think he liked my hair. He noticed it. I know he did. And he took a picture of me. I wonder what he’s going to do with that picture.…

Meredith stopped her train of thought.
Wait a minute. This is pointless. Why am I still thinking about him? Let him go, Meri
.

She rolled into town and slowed the Jeep way down to the posted 25 m.p.h. speed limit. The town looked cleaned out. Few cars were parked along the street at the little shops. Meri knew why. They were all at the conference center.

She parked the Jeep and hopped out, anxious to buy the pregnancy test and get it back to Shelly. She was as eager to know the results as her sister was. Well, maybe not as eager, but she felt special knowing that Shelly had confided in her before telling anyone else. She liked sharing in these significant moments with her sister and was glad to do what she could to participate.

A bell chimed over the door as Meredith entered the small pharmacy. It looked as if nothing had changed in this store since the fifties.

That’s what Shelly had said she liked about Glenbrooke. It seemed to be the town that time forgot. Many of the people lived by the values of a half-century ago. Everyone knew everyone. Some of the people who lived here had never been
outside of a fifty-mile radius of their gentle town. It helped explain a little better the wild reaction when the women saw Jacob earlier. Movie stars just didn’t come to Glenbrooke.

Meredith stopped in the pregnancy-tests aisle and quickly scanned the boxes. She had three choices. All she knew to do was check for an expiration date on the boxes. They were all current. They were all about the same price. She did an eenie-meenie-minie-mo and picked the larger white box. Grabbing a pack of spearmint gum and a Milky Way candy bar, Meredith hurried to the counter. She remembered from their childhood that Jonathan liked Milky Way candy bars. If this test was positive, a Milky Way might help the news go down. Maybe she should buy a Milky Way for Shelly, too. And for their parents.

Why not?
she thought and scooped up the whole box of a dozen or more candy bars. She plopped the box down on the counter in front of the white coated elderly gentleman and nonchalantly placed the pregnancy test next to the mound of candy bars. The pharmacist eyed her purchase suspiciously and said, “Will that be all for you today, miss?”

She smiled at him. “Yes, thank you.”

The bell over the door chimed again. Meredith hoped the guy would hurry up and finish. He was ringing up each candy bar separately. For the first time she realized how embarrassing it was to buy a pregnancy test and understood why Shelly didn’t want to come in here to make the purchase herself. Even though no one in Glenbrooke knew Meredith and she knew she had nothing to apologize for or be embarrassed about, she still felt her cheeks beginning to heat up with more than the tinge of sunburn that graced them.

Come on, come on! Hurry up!

“This doesn’t have a price on it,” the man said, holding up the pregnancy test and looking on the underside and all around the box.

Meredith was aware that whoever had entered the drugstore a moment ago was now standing behind her in line.

Put down the box, mister! The price is right there on the top. Can’t you see it?

Before Meredith could point it out, the pharmacist found the sticker and punched the numbers into the cash register. The total appeared in the register’s window. Meredith suddenly realized she didn’t have enough money.

“I’m fifteen cents short,” she said, aware that she was holding up the person in line behind her. “Could you please take off one of the candy bars? Or wait, just take off this pack of gum.”

The pharmacist gave her a blank look, as if she had just asked him to recite the Declaration of Independence backwards.

“Here’s fifteen cents,” said the calm male voice behind her.

She knew that voice. Meredith bit her lower lip and turned around slowly. “Hi,” she said to the reluctant movie star behind her.

“Hi,” Jacob replied.

Meredith remembered that Shelly had made her promise not to tell a soul about the pregnancy test. So she just turned back to the pharmacist. He was stuffing the goods into a paper bag. Certainly Jacob had seen the pregnancy-test kit.

“It’s not for me,” she said quickly, looking at Jake again.

His expression didn’t change.

“And the candy bars aren’t for me, either.”

Neither the pharmacist nor Jake said a word.

Then, because she didn’t know what else to do, she bolted toward the door.

“Meredith!” Jake called out.

On impulse, she turned around and said, “I’m sorry about what happened in the parking lot.”

Jacob headed toward her, the bottle of aspirin he was about to purchase still in his hand. “It’s okay,” he said calmly.

She felt nervous. This was Jacob Wilde talking to her. He was looking at her with those warm brown eyes. What was he thinking? She hadn’t felt nervous like this when he was Mr. Wartman.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, glancing at the bag and back at Meredith.

He’s changed his opinion of me, too. I can tell. He’s standing here, trying to be polite, but he’s not intrigued or charmed anymore. The tiny bit of electricity that sparked this morning is gone
.

“I had a good time at the waterfall,” Meredith said, nudging herself forward. “I’m sorry I reacted the way I did and drew so much attention to you.”

“It’s okay,” Jake said. “I probably should have said something to you earlier, but, to be honest,” he paused and his voice softened, “I was enjoying being Jay for awhile.”

Meredith nodded her understanding.

“I would have gone up to the lodge with you, but sometimes it can get a little crazy in a crowd. I went back to Kyle and Jessica’s to make some phone calls, and—”

“Hey,” Meredith cut in, “I wasn’t trying to say that I thought you should have stuck around. I understand completely.”

“Good,” Jacob said.

An awkward pause hung between them. It felt to Meredith that the contents of her bag were burning a hole in her arm. She wanted to say something to him—anything. Did he think she was pregnant? All her thoughts wadded up like a ball of gum and stuck to the roof of her brain, making it impossible to think. He looked as if the same malady had struck him as well.

The door opened, and a teenage boy walked in. He stopped and stared at Jake. “It
is
you! My sister said you were
here. She said you were driving a black Mustang, and I was going home, and there was your car, and—oh, man, I can’t believe it! Here you are!” He excitedly spilled his words all over Meredith and Jacob.

Once again Meredith knew what it was like to be cut off from Jake. And right when things had the potential of being patched up, too.

“Man, oh, man! Can you wait here one second? I have to get Russell. He’s never going to believe this. Don’t go, okay? Just one more minute. Stay right there.” The boy burst out the door and took off running down Main Street.

“I’m sorry,” Meredith said.

Jake put on a smile as if the camera had just turned on him and it was time to play the closing scene. “Don’t give it another thought. This is how it goes sometimes.” His voice lowered, and he tilted his head to the right. “None of this is your fault or your responsibility.”

Before Meredith could add her closing thought, the door burst open, and seven teens came rushing in with the young guy who had left a few moments earlier.

“See, I told you it was him!”

“Can we have your autograph?”

“Are you going to make any more movies?”

“How come you’re in Glenbrooke?”

“Here, sign my arm. I don’t have any paper.”

“This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened in my whole life!”

“You’re the first movie star I’ve ever seen!”

Meredith was once again brushed aside as Jake was ambushed by the young fan club. He looked over at Meredith and smiled.

“I owe you fifteen cents,” she said.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he said, signing a pad of
paper. His words seemed like the closing line.

You don’t owe me anything.

“Well, bye, then,” she said, carelessly tossing her words into the huddle of admiring teenagers.

Jake glanced up. A boy was pulling up his T-shirt sleeve and begging Jake to write on the back of his arm with a permanent marker.

“Good-bye, Meredith.” His voice carried a bittersweet echo as she left the drugstore and stepped into the Jeep. Jake’s rental car was parked four spaces down from hers.

Good-bye, Meredith. Did he mean that as in good-bye forever or good-bye until our paths cross again?

Slowly backing up the Jeep, Meredith cranked the wheel and headed to the conference center with the pharmacy bag on the seat next to her.

D
o you want me to come in?” Meredith asked Shelly half an hour later as she stood outside the door of Shelly’s bathroom.

“Sure,” Shelly said, opening the door. She held a white plastic stick in her hand. The box for the pregnancy test rested on the sink’s corner.

“Now what?” Meredith asked.

“It says here to wait three to five minutes. If one line shows up on this stick, it means I’m not pregnant. If two lines show, then I am.”

“Three to five minutes, huh?”

“Yes,” Shelly said, glancing at her watch. “This is going to be the longest five minutes of my life.”

“I’ll tell you a little story to pass the time,” Meredith offered.

Shelly gave her a mildly irritated look. Stories were not Shelly’s way of getting her mind off life.

“I think you’ll like this story. It’s about a loving sister who goes to the drugstore in a small town and buys her precious sis a home pregnancy kit. Then the customer in line behind her turns out to be a friend of the potentially pregnant woman. But he, of course, thinks the pregnancy test belongs to the loving sister.”

“Who was it? Kenton?”

“No,” Meredith said slowly.

“That’s right,” Shelly said. “Kenton and Lauren are gone this week. Who was it? Everyone else was at the conference center.”

“Almost everyone else.”

Shelly definitely looked irritated now. “Who was it, Meredith?”

“Try a certain Vivaldi-loving man with gorgeous hair and a trail of crazed fans following him all over Glenbrooke.”

“Jake was at the drugstore?”

“He came in after I did, but I didn’t see him until I was at the register.”

“You didn’t tell him the pregnancy test was for me, did you?”

“No, I told him it was for me,” Meredith said sarcastically. She could see her sister beginning to perspire.

“If you told him,” Shelly said, her face turning red, “and he tells Brad, this will be on the six o’clock news before I have a chance to talk to Jonathan.”

“Don’t worry. He didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell. Can you imagine how I felt with him standing there looking at me with a pregnancy test in my hand? Just what we needed to make sure there was never any possible, slightly hopeful chance of a relationship developing between us.”

“Oh, Meri, I’m so sorry.” Shelly calmed down and glanced at her watch.

“It’s okay. Really. I thought you should know so you can give your crazy matchmaking plans a rest.”

“I won’t say anything about it again. I’m sorry you were stuck in that embarrassing situation because of me.”

“I’ll remember that the next time I want a favor out of you,” Meredith said.

Shelly quickly glanced at the stick. She didn’t say anything. Meredith came closer. The two sisters stood with their heads touching, staring at the plastic stick, willing the second line to appear. A full minute and a half passed.

“It’s only one line,” Shelly said.

“How long has it been?” Meredith asked.