Mother of the Bride (7 page)

Gus headed for the Country Club Plaza, the swankiest chunk of real estate in Kansas City. One of the first shopping areas in the country, dotted with fountains and statuary, its architecture modeled after Seville, Spain, with towers and grillwork and names like Gucci scrolled over shop doors. Gus hated city traffic and took the back streets, confident that he could find his way.

An hour later he was lost, wandering like a rat in the maze of one-way streets on the north side of the Plaza, the chemical ice bag turning to blue goo on the tan leather seat beside him. The streets that refused to go where he wanted them to were lined with stately homes and soaring trees that had been shedding leaves here, vivid gold and blazing red, since the pioneers headed west in their ox-drawn wagons.

The fourth time he passed the Nelson-Atkins Museum of
Art, Gus pulled into the parking lot to check his road map. He didn't always leave home with his American Express card, but he always left home with a road map. Except this time. He could've sworn—but he couldn't remember—having a road map last night. It wasn't in the glove compartment, between the seats, under the seats or in the trunk.

He decided to hell with it, locked the car and set the alarm and walked the mile or so to the Plaza. Slowly, taking his time since it was barely one o'clock and he had four hours to kill until he met Aldo at Cydney Parrish's house. He hoped he could find the place. He couldn't remember how he'd found it last night without a road map.

He ate lunch and took a pain pill, then strolled into Barnes & Noble. His heart in his mouth, his hands sweaty in his jacket pockets, but no one recognized him. With his bruised eyes hidden behind his Ray-Bans—he had to spread the nose pads to get them on—and a navy wool ball cap tugged over his forehead, he figured even the sharpest-eyed clerk would need his dental records to identify him.

What a joy it was to wander the stacks unmolested. Online bookstores were the best invention since unlisted phone numbers for a confirmed recluse, but there was no smell on earth as sweet as the smell of books.
How about Cydney Parrish's perfume?
his inner voice asked, but again Gus played deaf.

His ego, which felt damn near as beat up as his face, got the best of him in Mass-Market Fiction. While the clerk talked to his girlfriend on the phone, Gus turned
his
backlist titles face out, spined Fletcher Parrish's, and stood back grinning at his handiwork. Served the old bugger right for cutting him dead. All he'd wanted was Parrish's autograph, a chance to tell him how much his books meant to him.
Well,
said his inner voice.
This is a nice way to show your appreciation.

Gus frowned, put the shelves back the way he'd found them and headed for the car. His legs felt like Jell-O, the top of his head like it was going to blow off by the time he reached the museum. He cut through the outdoor sculpture garden, found a bench that gave him a view of the south lawn
and sat down. On the still summer-green grass lay two sculptures of giant shuttlecocks.

“Hey, little bro,” he could almost hear Artie say with a wink and an elbow in the ribs. “Let's see you hit one of those over the net.”

Gus smiled in spite of the ache in his throat. Artie had written his will expecting Gus would be a lot older if something happened to him and Beth. He hadn't planned on Gus being nineteen and left with a four-year-old to raise, but that's what had happened.

Of course he knew what he was doing. What a stupid question. You couldn't raise a child on a wing and a prayer. You had to have a plan and Gus had written one—a plan for his life and one for Aldo's—the day after Artie and Beth's funeral. He'd set goals and he'd achieved them. He'd worked full time while he finished college and Aunt Phoebe, his father's sister—dead now, bless her heart—took care of Aldo, fed him and read to him and taught him his letters and numbers. Gus earned a degree in English and got a job teaching to support the three of them.

He taught for three years, broke his leg in two places showing Aldo how to slide into second and wrote the first Max Stone while he was in the cast. He sold it, got an agent and a contract for two more books and sent Aunt Phoebe on a cruise. He thought he'd written a pretty good little detective story. So did his publisher until
Dead Soup
hit number three on
The New York Times
List. He still had nightmares about the thrown-together book tour, the print and radio interviews, the photographers and the readers—mostly women who drooled over him and Max Stone—lined up for his autograph and his phone number at book signings.

He'd been an unmarried, twenty-five-year-old English teacher who lived in Joplin, Missouri, with his orphaned nephew and his maiden aunt. A great publicity angle. The press agent assigned to him by his publisher played it for all it was worth. Gus handled it—he hadn't liked it but he'd handled it—until the day Aunt Phoebe came home with one hand clutching her heart and the other a supermarket tabloid.

The headline and supposedly the actress cast to play Max Stone's faithful secretary, Thelma, in the movie version of
Dead Soup
claimed
GORGEOUS GUS ASKED ME TO BE ALDO'S MOMMY.
The accompanying photo showed Aldo riding his bike on the street in front of Aunt Phoebe's house in Joplin.

Within an hour, the house was up for sale and Gus and Aunt Phoebe were on the road with Aldo, looking for a place to keep the bright and happy towheaded ten-year-old safe from prying reporters and photographers. They'd gotten lost in the Ozarks—even with a road map—found Crooked Possum purely by accident and stayed there.

Becoming a mega-best-selling author hadn't been in the Life Plan Gus had written for himself. Bebe Parrish wasn't part of the plan he'd written for Aldo, either, and that was the problem. It was Aldo's life to plan, Aldo's life to live and Aldo's life to screw up. It didn't matter that Aldo was all he had left of Artie, all he had left of Aunt Phoebe and his family. It was time for Uncle Gus to butt out.

And do what? he wondered with a heavy sigh. Get a dog?

Gus glanced at his watch, saw that it was almost four and rose from the bench. He stretched, felt his stiff neck muscles grind and took a last, long look at the giant shuttlecocks on the grass.

“Damn it,” he said unhappily. “I
don't
know what I'm doing.”

He didn't have a plan or a road map. No outline to follow, no idea which way to turn, and Cydney Parrish knew it. She might be a nut, but she was a perceptive nut.

Time to write a new Life Plan. He should have when
Dead Soup
hit it big. That's when his life went off track, when he'd let himself get sucked into the euphoria of fame and money. He'd written himself into bigger dead ends and written his way out, but this was his life, not Max Stone's, and there was no delete key if he screwed up. This would take some thought, Gus decided, and turned toward the car.

He headed south with his half lenses perched on the tip of his swollen nose and the scrap of paper where he'd jotted Cydney Parrish's address clutched in his right hand on the
wheel. He drove through a quaint little shopping area with striped awnings over the storefronts, spied a florist and went in. He bought Bebe a bunch of daisies and a bouquet of chrysanthemums for Cydney.

By sheer dumb luck he found her street. By the birdbath in the front yard he found her brown brick and stucco house. The lawn was zoysia grass just beginning to turn winter beige in spots. A clutch of sparrows hopped on the lip of the birdbath— damned dangerous things, birdbaths—and a squirrel ran up one of the two shaggy pin oaks still clinging to their sharp-pointed gold leaves.

Gus followed the driveway past the house into a small hurricane of leaves. Not dull as they'd looked last night in the dark, but vivid, neon red maple leaves, swirling around a blue Jeep Cherokee parked in front of the open garage doors. The truck Cydney Parrish said she drove, Gus guessed, and glanced toward the backyard.

Cydney stood in the eye of the storm with a leaf blower in her hands. Gus could see enough of her through the funnel cloud of bright leaves to see that she had on jeans and a green sweatshirt, a pair of tan work gloves and clear plastic safety goggles.

She didn't see him or hear the Jag over the dull roar of the leaf blower. Gus parked next to her truck and sat watching her. With leaves dancing and swirling around her, she looked like a high-tech wood nymph. He smiled, changed his glasses for his Ray-Bans and picked up the bouquets he'd bought. He reached for the door handle, glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a Jag, a vivid, cranberry-red XJ8 coupe pull up the drive and stop a few feet behind his.

Aldo got out from behind the wheel. Gus raised a hand to him in the rearview mirror, but his nephew didn't wave back. He came around the nose of the car and leaned against the hood, crossed his arms and thrust out his chin in a scowl so belligerent it made Gus' head thud. He sighed and opened his door.

“This is
my
car,” Aldo said when Gus got out of his, between his teeth, his voice tight, before Gus could open his
mouth. “I paid cash for it. Paid the taxes, a year's worth of insurance and bought the license. It's mine free and clear, unless you plan to stop payment on the checks.”

He uncrossed his arms, spread his palms on the hood and scooted an inch or two to the left so Gus could see the license plate. A vanity plate that said
ILOVEBB.

“Hello to you, too. And I feel fine, thanks for asking.” Gus walked around his Jag, laid the bouquets on the trunk lid and leaned against it facing Aldo. “What makes you think I'll stop payment on the checks?”

“Beats me, Uncle Gus. Maybe you storming in here last night and shoving my dad's will in Miss Parrish's face.” Aldo jammed his arms together again and glared. “I'm a grown man and you made me look like a kid who can't wipe his nose without your permission.”

Oops. Gus hadn't thought about Aldo when he'd jumped in his car and set a new land speed record between Crooked Possum and Kansas City. He'd only thought of Fletcher Par-rish and his own ego.

“I'm sorry, Aldo. I went off half-cocked. I was trying to apologize for it when Bebe punched me and knocked me cold.”

“You asked for it.”

“I was speaking figuratively.”

“I don't care if you were speaking Greek.” Aldo raised his voice above the roar of the leaf blower. Leaves skipped over the chain-link fence and fluttered onto the driveway between them. “You scared Bebe half to death. She thought she'd killed you.”

“Well. How rude of me to pass out.” Gus picked up the daisies in their green tissue paper and thrust them at Aldo. “Give her these.”

A tiny smile cracked the grim line of his nephew's mouth. “You brought some for Miss Parrish, too?”

“Yes.” Gus laid the flowers back on the trunk. “And you can keep the car.”

“You aren't gonna make me take it back?”

“No. Sunday was your twenty-first birthday. Seems like a great present to me. Happy birthday.”

Aldo tilted his head to one side. Just enough to catch one of the long beams of late afternoon sun slanting through the maple tree. The light glowed on his mane of palomino hair and made Gus' chest ache. He looked so much like Artie it hurt, and Beth had worn her long, pale hair the same way, in a drawn-back ponytail with a wave of bangs.

“You know how much I paid for this car,” Aldo said.

“Not to the penny, but I can guess.”

“And you don't care?”

“I don't give a damn about the money, Aldo. I know that's how it looked last night, but I told you—I misunderstood.”

“You thought Bebe was after my money?”

“The possibility occurred to me,” Gus hedged. He hadn't thought that at all, but it was safer ground than what he did think.

“But you don't think so now?”

“No. I know better now.” Cydney Parrish's ostrich-size nest egg had convinced him.

“So what do you think of Bebe?”

“She throws a wicked left.”

“C'mon, Uncle Gus.” Another inch or so of smile cracked the scowl on Aldo's face. “I mean really.”

His nephew didn't want to know and Gus didn't want to tell him what he
really
thought. He thought Bebe Parrish was a few fries short of a Happy Meal, her aunt was a kook who talked to pictures of him cut out of magazines and her grandfather was a first-class SOB.

“She's very pretty,” Gus said. “And she seems very sweet.”

“So it's okay with you for us to get married?”

“I didn't say that.” Aldo pushed off the Jag, his fists clenched, and Gus flung up a hand. “It might be okay if you can convince me that you and Bebe realize the responsibilities of marriage and that you're genuinely committed to each other.”

“The State of Missouri says we're old enough to get married. We don't need your permission.”

“No, you don't, but I hope you want my blessing.”

“Sure I do. Why do you think I called you?”

“Why
did
you call? If you wanted me to think there was something not quite kosher about all this, that was the perfect way to do it.”

“I didn't think of that,” Aldo admitted.

“I didn't think much last night, either, and I'm sorry.” Gus offered his hand to Aldo. “Want to start over?”

“Sure.” Aldo threw his arms around Gus. “I'm sorry, too. I love you, Uncle Gus.”

“Love you, too, Aldo,” Gus said thickly, and hugged him tight.

The leaf blower switched off and Gus glanced toward the yard. Cydney Parrish stood near the fence smiling, her goggles on her head, leaves stuck in her hair and her eyelashes sparkling.

“I've reconsidered your invitation, Miss Parrish. What's for dinner?”

chapter

eight