Lone Star (58 page)

“No,
I'm
not going. I'll wait in the truck.”

“Have you visited her even once?”

“She invited me and Mason to her wedding. She wanted me to give her away.”

“Did you
go
?” She gasped out the question.

“Let go of my wheel. Do I look like the kind of guy who'd go?”

Chloe didn't know how to answer that.

“Of course I didn't fucking go,” he said. “What kind of a chump do you think I am?”

She sighed with relief. “So when did you see her?”

“Recently. She stopped by the house to congratulate me on the success of my Spring Fair. Cried. Pretty hard. Apologized. Up, down, left, right. Said she treated me real bad and I didn't deserve it. Maybe she thought I'd argue with her.”

“Did you?”

“I told her she was right, I didn't deserve it.”

Chloe studied him, trying to discern how he felt. He was still the same Blake, almost. Friendly, transparent about the little things, inscrutable about the big. Except there was a hardness to his eyes that wasn't there before, a small unsmiling disillusionment with mankind. Maybe Hannah had hoped little Hayley would bring the sunshine back? “Did she bring the baby with her?”

“She wanted to. I told her to leave the girl with her mom.”

“Wow.”

“What, too tough? I gave her some money. She protested. Not too hard. I think what she really wanted was for us to get back together. She told me she was saving up, and then she and her girls were moving, either to New York or New Orleans, one of the New cities. I wasn't really paying attention. Maybe she was hoping I'd ask her to stay.”

“Did you?”

“Nope.” He made an L with his left hand and placed it to his forehead. “I sent a buddy of mine to check on her a few weeks ago. Orville. Nice guy, unfortunate name.”

“Like you're sending me to check on her now? Blake, stop the car, please.”

He pulled into a dirt lot near the down-market bar and grill.

“You have to go see her, Chloe,” Blake said.

“I know. I plan to, I do. I just . . . I'm damp, I don't want to go into the air-conditioning.”

“Oh, don't worry, there's no air-conditioning at Yesterday's.”

“You and I have so much to catch up on.” Chloe forced a smile. “We didn't even talk about your book or Blake Haul's amazing fundraising fair.”

“Stop buttering me up, I'm not toast. Go.” He took two twenties out of his pocket and stuffed them into Chloe's hand. “Have a burger with her. Leave her the rest of the money for a tip. I'll be here. Wait, not a burger. She's a vegetarian now. Go!”

Chloe sat at a little table near the exit. She was studying the menu—very thoroughly—when she felt a long, tall shape at her elbow. She looked up. Hannah stood like a statue, unsmiling in her beige uniform.

“Hi,” she said. “How did you know I was here?”

“Blake told me. Hi, Hannah.” Chloe managed a smile, guilty,
uncomfortable, happy to see her friend, sad to see her under such circumstances. “How are you?”

“Where is he?”

“Outside.”

Hannah made a desolate face. “He's still mad at me. But it gives me hope, you know, that there's love there. Because you're never mad at people you don't care about. Don't you think?”

Chloe bleated back something inarticulate. She didn't know if she would call what Blake was at Hannah mad. You're mad at your girlfriend because she forgets you're going to the movies on Friday night and makes other plans. Having unprotected sex with an old dude and then getting knocked up while supposedly being faithful to you was a different kettle of fish entirely.

“Hang on, I'll take my break. Can I get you a grilled cheese? I'll have one, too. I don't eat meat anymore.”

While she waited, Chloe peered out the small window. She wanted to shake her fist at Blake lounging in his truck, head back, listening to the radio, but he was facing the road, not the restaurant.

Hannah returned with two crisp hot sandwiches and two coffees. “I only have like ten minutes,” she said, sitting sideways, as if at any minute ready to bolt. “Can you believe what happened to me?”

I can't even believe what happened to me, Chloe thought. “No. How's your baby?”

“She's good. She's with my mom.” Hannah sighed. She still looked ephemeral, delicate, forlorn. In other words, irresistible. “It's terrible. Mom doesn't want me there, and I don't want to be there. She's remarried, and I'm completely intruding. Blake told you everything? Isn't it sick about Martyn? How could it happen? To be in such debt is ghastly!”

Chloe squeezed her mouth together. “Also to be dead.”

“Chloe, he
owed
more money than my mother earned
in twenty years! And all his creditors are now after me. It's a nightmare.”

“It'll be okay—”

“How? I've got Zhenya with me now, too. At my mom's. What was I thinking? Good news is, she's almost old enough to babysit. Bad news is, she wants to be out with her American friends. And I'm like, no way. You're eleven. So we're fighting. At my mother's house.”

Chloe began to tell Hannah about Ray. He was only eight years old. He didn't want to be anywhere but with Lang and Jimmy.

“I know, right?” Hannah said. “I wish my mom hadn't moved. It was so nice on our lake. And your mom helped me a lot with the sponsorship papers. She filled them out for Ray and Zhenya at the same time. I couldn't have done it without her. If we were still there, she could help me look after the kids. She's so great. She's always home.”

“Well, not always . . .”

“Do you have any idea how Blake is feeling?”

“About what?”

“About what? Chloe! About me, the baby, the whole situation.”

“You mean about you getting married to someone else?”

“No, about what's happening to me
now
.”

Their sandwiches lay untouched, their coffee undrunk. Chloe sat and listened, shaking her head or nodding in the appropriate places. It was as if Chloe didn't exist. It was as if Europe, Johnny, Mason, San Diego weren't even a blip on the friend radar. Chloe tried to keep the sting of their suffocating one-way friendship from watering up her eyes. When it was time to go, she left Blake's money on the table.

“Aww, don't cry,” Hannah said. “You said yourself it'll be fine. Maybe you can come visit me and the baby?” She grabbed the two twenties and hid them in her apron. “She's fifteen months now. Super cute.”

Chloe swatted away a rogue tear. Why did growing up mean having to accept that people you loved kept disappointing you?

“But bring Blake with you,” Hannah added. “Don't come on your own. I want him to forgive me. I
need
him to forgive me. I know he won't be able to resist the baby when he sees her. He can barely resist me.”

Chloe thought Blake would want to talk about Hannah, but it was the last thing he wanted to talk about. He slammed the truck into reverse and peeled out into the open road.

“Thanks a lot,” she said.

“Better you than me.”

“Why is
that
the choice? Why is that the
only
choice?”

He laughed. “You think that was hard work? Try writing.”

“Sorry, no. That was harder than hauling junk out of people's homes.”

“How would you know? Try sitting in one place for hours and hours. Your back hurts, your ass hurts, your arms go numb, your eyes stop focusing. You chew the pencils to nubs, so now you got wood chips floating around in your gut, and then the words don't come. Outside the sun is shining and you want to be fishing or swimming or . . . I mean, I'm glad I wrote it, but man, I wouldn't want to inflict that on someone I hate.” He didn't specify who that might be.

Chloe felt sorry for herself for only a second. Blake told her Hannah never even asked him about
The Blue Suitcase.
When he told her his story had won first prize, she said what story?

“She didn't!”

“Oh yeah. She did.”

But then again, Blake was running around town, working a little, bowling a lot, and Chloe was on a break from awesome, while Hannah was waitressing an empty lunch shift before she
went home to her mother's where her two kids waited, one of them a tween.

“So if you don't marry Hannah,” Chloe said, “what else are you going to do with your money?”

“Don't joke, I'm not in the mood,” he said lightly. “The dough, when it arrives, is already spoken for.”

“For what? You got the truck. Mason is doing his own thing.”

“My dad, if you must know,” Blake said. “His back keeps getting worse. He's nearly paralyzed.”

“Sorry.” She had been too flip.

“The operation is crazy bucks. My mom's insurance covers most of it, I guess”—Blake raised his voice—“except for the
twenty thousand dollar
lifetime deductible. Plus thousands more for rehab. Who the hell has all that?”

“Well,” said Chloe. “I guess the answer is, you do.”

Blake didn't even sigh as he drove, one hand on the wheel, one arm bent through the open window. “After I get paid, who knows when, my mom and I will still be short. And Mason never has any money. And Dad's really been struggling. So I got this idea to have a fundraising fair on the Academy grounds. Games, rides, prizes, some food and drink, and charge a few bucks for admission. I talked to the president, and he agreed to let us have the Academy for a weekend, provided that afterward we made it look like we were never there. So a month ago we had our first Annual Haul Spring Fair, sponsored by Chevy.” Blake smiled happily. “The mayor was so proud that I'd won the competition, he made the town put up a banner over Main Street. ‘Congratulations Blake Haul' or something like that, and the local radio interviewed me and the local paper did a piece on me, so we had pretty good attendance. Like ten thousand people.”

“No!”

“Yeah, it was epic. We made fifty grand.”

Chloe loudly verbalized her astonishment.

“I know, right? Well, thirty in the clear after expenses. But amazing, still.”

“No wonder Hannah wants you back.”

“What did I say about jokes? Dad's going under the knife in August. Maybe I'll get my money by the time we have to pay for his rehab. But now Mom thinks she's found her true calling. She went around for months asking local businesses to contribute garbage cans, drinks, games, cookies, burger joints, zeppoles, pizza. She loved it. She wants to have the fair every year. She's a born saleswoman.”

“Your dad is not going to need an annual operation, is he?”

Blake smiled. “Let's hope not. Mom says there'll always be a kid out there who needs help.
Your
mom, because she's a troublemaker, says to my mom we should have a fundraiser for Hannah and her daughters.”

“Be cheaper just to get back together with her.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that unlike your mother, you're not funny?”

Chloe faced him as he drove, observed his familiar profile, his easygoing expression. “So who are you making time with these days? Taylor told me you and Melissa hooked up.”

“Did she actually use the term
hooked up,
or is that your San Diego surfer girl talking?”

“She actually said
hooked up
.”

He was keeping it light. “Yeah, for a while. Then we moved on.”

“Who'd you move on to? Taylor said you were sweet on Crystal.” Taylor said he had broken up with Crystal in April.

“She was cute.”

“Still is. I like her better than Melissa.”

“Your approval of my girls means a lot to me, Chloe,” Blake said.

They drove through Fryeburg. The banner with
C
ONGRATULATIONS
B
LAKE
H
AUL!
still spanned Main Street.