The Way Back to Happiness (9 page)

Before dinner Bev had changed into a fresh skirt and button-down blouse and spritzed herself with perfume, which added a sticky sweet odor to the scents of tomato sauce and baking peaches. Now she fluttered to the door and opened it, admitting a stocky guy with dark blond hair and a bushy mustache. The mustache ran all the way across his upper lip and spilled over the corners of his mouth onto his cheeks, so that he appeared to be frowning even as he smiled.

There was no mistaking the wary, slightly dazed expression in his eyes. Not a fan of kids, Alabama guessed. “You’re older than I expected,” he said.

“I’m fourteen.”

“She’s going to be starting high school this year,” Bev said with an anxious grin.

One of his bushy eyebrows darted up, and he dug his hands into his Levis. “Everything all right, then?”

Alabama didn’t know how to answer, so Bev darted in. “Oh yes!” Then, on second thought, she frowned. “I mean, no. Mama’s in the hospital. The doctors are saying that recovery might take a while. I want to bring her home with us, but she’s determined to stay in Dallas.”

“Probably a good thing,” Derek said.

Bev’s smile reappeared. “But Alabama’s here to stay.”

“Temporarily,” Alabama said.

Derek swung back to her. “Alabama’s an unusual name. Unless you’re a state.” He laughed.

Ha ha. No one had ever thought of
that
before. “I was named after ‘Moon of Alabama.’ That’s a song.”

His shoulders hunched. “Don’t know it.”

“It’s Jim Morrison,” she said.

He snorted. “That’s why I don’t know it.” Tired of the conversation, or Alabama, he headed for the kitchen, specifically the fridge. He found a bottle of Dos Equis, opened it, and sat down. Bev placed a plate of spaghetti in front of him, and he dived right in, not even waiting for them to join him.

When they did, he seemed uncomfortable. “No point in us sitting here staring at each other all night. Y’all want to watch
Knight Rider
?”

Bev sprang to her feet again and snatched up his plate to carry it to the living room. “I forgot all about that. There’s been so much drama this past day, I’m surprised my head’s still screwed on.” She was almost into the living room when she turned back. “Get yourself some cobbler, Alabama. I don’t mind eating in front of the television, if it’s a special occasion.”

Alabama tried to think what the occasion was.
Knight Rider
? Or her arrival, or Derek’s being there?

She grabbed a bowl and picked the chair farthest from the television. Derek and Bev were on the couch, with Bev on the middle cushion, creating a lopsided effect.

“Isn’t this nice?” Bev asked. “It’s like we’re a little family.”

Alabama stabbed a piece of cobbler but couldn’t force herself to eat it. Even when her mom had boyfriends, she’d never said they were part of the family. Family meant the two of them, Alabama and her mom, and Gladdie far away. Now she was by herself, and Gladdie was still far away, and her mom . . .

She watched David Hasselhoff through a blur.

She didn’t belong here.

She’d been prepared to feel out of place, and sad. She’d been sad for weeks, so that was nothing new. What surprised her was the anger.

Rage welled in her. Frustration at being fourteen and not in control of her own life. Anger at Bev and her smothering personality. She even felt hacked off at gallbladders, and Gladdie.

But those things paled in comparison to the fury that boiled in her veins, all of a sudden, over her mom. What was the one thing a mother was supposed to get right?
Protecting her child.
And yet Alabama was at the mercy of the person Diana had hated most. Her archenemy. And she felt helpless. All these people around her—Gladdie, and Bev, and even somebody like Derek—they all had their impenetrable adult crusts protecting them, goofy or grouchy personality armor as tough as that stupid car’s on the TV screen. Alabama always considered herself smart and able to take care of things. Mature. But next to these people who now held her life in their hands, she was like a newly formed Play-Doh person, barely solid and likely to get smooshed.

This was her mom’s fault. She’d been so careless . . . careless with drinking, careless crossing the street, careless with her life. Half the time while growing up, Alabama had felt as if she was taking care of her mom. Of both of them. Why? Why should she have had to do that?

Unexpectedly, the rage doubled back on herself.
Why did I have to go to that stupid camp? I should have been with Mom, at home. Maybe then she might not have . . .

She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood.

What was she going to do for the rest of her life without her mom?

How was she going to survive this? She had no one.

She jumped off the couch, hurried to the kitchen, and dumped what was left of her cobbler into the trash. Before she could turn around from the garbage can, Bev was hovering near, her face pinched and anxious. “Is everything all right?” her aunt asked.

“I’m tired. And I don’t like that show.”

“Would you rather watch
Murder, She Wrote
?”

“I just want to go to my room.”

“That’s completely okay,” Bev said. “Of course you can be excused.”

Resentment spiked in Alabama’s chest. “Am I supposed to ask permission every time I want to get up? Do I need a hall pass?”

In a flash, she realized she’d made everything more tense. What’s more, she didn’t care. She was glad.

Bev’s eyes became saucers, wounded and defensive. “No, of course not. I was only trying to say I don’t mind . . .”

If her aunt had been someone she liked, Alabama might have apologized, or at least backed off. Instead, she remembered her mom and felt a surge of satisfaction to be striking a blow for the home team. “I’d like to be excused now, Miss Putterman.”

Lip curled, she scuttled out. In her room, she tossed herself facedown on the bed, her breaths coming in ragged gulps as she inhaled the scent of the unfamiliar laundry detergent in the bedding. Everything was foreign here. She didn’t have a home anymore—only a place she was being parked till she was an adult. Which she couldn’t wait to be. She wanted to be old.

Low voices filtered through the closed door, the words indistinct. Derek’s gruff rumble rose in spiky inflection, and Alabama imagined him asking “What the hell’s wrong with her?” A little while later, the volume dropped, until she couldn’t distinguish anything over the sounds of the television.

Maybe they’d gone out to the kitchen or even outside to discuss her.

Or maybe they weren’t talking about her at all.

Maybe she didn’t matter to anyone anymore. Maybe she really was all alone in the world.

“A
labama, it’s time to go.”

Grumbles sounded from inside the bedroom. Except for those moments when Alabama would jerk it open and quickly slam it shut again, the door always remained closed. The girl might claim to dread attention, but when she wasn’t semi-comatose, she tended toward oversized gestures, like a character in a French farce.

This wasn’t how she’d behaved in Dallas. Gladys had said she was so helpful, so mature. Ha.

Bev despaired. Not just for today—although she hated getting a late start on Dallas days—but for their future. It had been two weeks since Alabama moved in, and their relationship had stalled out at a tense standoff. The source of the friction remained a mystery. Bev had tried, Lord knows. She didn’t complain when everything from Jim Morrison to Prince thumped from the phonograph player in Alabama’s room at house-quaking volumes. (She missed the Walkman.) Her lip remained firmly buttoned when Alabama didn’t help her around the house, and even sat sulking while Bev did everything. Her helpful rug-cleaning days ended when she’d left The Villas, apparently. She had even sat through
The Breakfast Club
twice at the local movie theater, even though she found the film crude and a woefully one-sided depiction of high school. She did things like that for Alabama, but Alabama rebuffed her attempts to establish camaraderie between them.

Alabama hurled herself out of her room, landing on the couch with a thump to stuff her feet into a pair of ancient sneakers. “I don’t know why we have to leave so early.”

“We’ll have more time to spend with Gladdie.”

“More time to run dumb errands, you mean.” Alabama sighed. “Craft stores. Fabric stores.”

In the past weeks, it had become apparent that she and Alabama weren’t interested in the same things. Unfortunately, Bev couldn’t quite discern exactly what Alabama was interested in.

In the car, after they were buckled in, Bev announced that they needed to gas up. Alabama sank down in the passenger seat. “You couldn’t have done that while I was getting ready?”

“Certainly—if I had known it would take you so long to put on a T-shirt and shorts that I could travel to the gas station and back at least eight times.”

Alabama turned slowly, aiming that cold stare Bev’s way, and for a moment Bev’s words echoed around the car’s interior, making her blush at the snippy sound of them. That was another thing about Alabama. She made her feel so old, so nerdy and naggy, so uncool. She rolled her eyes at expressions Bev used, and her hooded gaze seemed to hold Bev’s clothes and activities in constant contempt. As a single, modern woman, Bev had never questioned her up-to-dateness. And she
was
cool—more so than a lot of adults, at least. A person couldn’t spend a lifetime in a high school without absorbing teen lingo and mannerisms and being pretty darn hip to youth culture.

Maybe things would get better when school started. Much as she cherished her summers, fall’s approach always hailed a new beginning, a time for optimism.

She turned into the gas station and was dismayed when a familiar vehicle pulled into the pump directly behind her. Bev jumped out as Glen Hill got out of his car. He smiled at her, and she felt an all-too-familiar tightness squeezing her chest, along with a blush creeping up her neck. Why did she have to run into him like this? Hazards of small town living, she supposed. But the encounters always proved awkward.

“Hi,” he called over to her.

She smiled and stuffed the gas pump nozzle into her car. For a moment she breathed in the fumes and was glad for the distraction of watching the dollar total roll slowly higher. This gas station was ancient, but she liked giving her business to the local folks more than to the newer places on the interstate.

Alabama got out of the car. “I’m going to get a soda,” she said. “You want me to pay for the gas?”

“Sure—grab my purse and tell Jimmy I’m getting twelve dollars’ worth. And take money for your pop, too. And could you get me a Diet Dr Pepper?”

“Okay.” From Alabama’s hint of a smile, Bev had the uneasy feeling she’d fallen into a trap.

When Alabama had disappeared, Glen spoke again. “Is that your niece?”

“That’s Alabama.”

“I’d heard she was staying with you.”

New Sparta might be a pokey, dying town, but its grapevine flourished.

She couldn’t help casting a furtive glance at him. He looked good—lean and tanned. He’d been out in the sun this summer.
Doing what?
They used to go to his parents’ lake house during vacations. She wondered if there was someone else he’d been taking there this year. She’d been so preoccupied with family problems she hadn’t been paying attention to local gossip.

His gas pump finished before hers and he strolled over. “I was sorry to hear about your sister. That must have been so difficult for you.”

“Thank you.”

“I know you two weren’t close, but still.”

Yes.
But still...
Diana’s loss hurt more than she could have ever dreamed. She thought about the letter locked away in the bottom of her file cabinet, which she hadn’t been able to face reading again. She hadn’t told Alabama about it, of course—she couldn’t—and she hesitated to show it to her mother until she was feeling 100 percent again. Given how disturbed Gladys had seemed when they’d discussed the possibility of Diana’s having taken her own life, she wondered if telling her would ever be a good idea.

Why pass those haunting last words to another person? Why burden anyone else with that pain?

She’d even considered burning the letter and holding its sorrows to herself forever.

But strangely, she found herself wanting to open up to Glen. He would know how traumatic it had been for her. He felt things deeply, sometimes a little too deeply. After she’d broken up with him last fall, for instance, he had spent the rest of the school year acting like the walking wounded whenever their paths crossed. Which, in the fishbowl that was New Sparta High, meant constantly.

He didn’t look broken up now. Just concerned. He crossed his arms and leaned against her car. “Did she . . . ?”

Bev nodded, and when his big hand clamped around her upper arm, squeezing it in comfort, she bit her lip to hold back tears.

In the next moment, he was clearing his throat and smiling at someone coming toward them. Bev twisted and saw Alabama, her arms loaded down with enough junk food for a road trip to California. She tilted her head cautiously at Glen.

He pushed away from the car and offered her his hand. “Hi, Alabama.” The ensuing handshake nearly resulted in an avalanche of snack cakes, soda cans, and candy bars. “I’m Glen. I teach school with your aunt.”

“Hi.” Alabama’s curious gaze studied them both.

A click beneath her hand alerted Bev that the pump was done. She glanced at the total and clucked at her absentmindedness. $14.32. She’d been so distracted, she’d gone over.

“Run and give Jimmy another $2.32, will you?” she asked Alabama.

Alabama paled and shifted legs. “I used all your cash.”

All of it?
Bev thought there had been more money in her purse than what the gas and even the pile of junk food would have cost. Her money seemed to be disappearing a lot lately. Of course, she didn’t want to make accusations without proof. And she certainly didn’t want to get into it now, in front of Glen.

“I’ll have to write Jimmy a check,” she said.

Glen stopped her before she’d taken two steps. “Never mind. I’ll give Jimmy the difference when I pay for mine.”

“Oh, but—”

He laughed away her objection before she could even voice it. “Allow me my Galahad moment. They don’t usually come as cheap as $2.32.”

She relented. “Thank you. I guess I’ll see you at school soon anyway. I’ll pay you back then.”

A cloud crossed his face. “You heard that Lon Kirby got married, didn’t you?” Lon was the principal. “His wife, Leah, is a teacher . . . and choir director.”

Bev frowned. “In another district.”

“Lon hired her for New Sparta this year.” He hitched his throat. “I think she might be taking over the choir.”

She swallowed. “Oh.”

“I’m not positive,” he added quickly. “But I got that impression.”

How on earth did a person
get the impression
that a person was going to usurp her spot as choir director without it being said flat-out? “When did you hear this?”

“A few weeks ago, at the picnic for Lon’s birthday.”

She looked away. A picnic she hadn’t been invited to.

“I was sorry you couldn’t make it,” Glen said. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he confessed, “Jackie invited me.”

The words jolted Bev. Jackie Kirby was Lon’s sister and erstwhile housekeeper, and served as the school’s secretary and guidance counselor. Now, with Leah working at the school, too, the three would form a regular Kirby cabal at New Sparta High. Did Glen count himself as part of the inner circle . . . or was he just interested in Jackie? She was pretty, and no doubt at domestic loose ends now that her brother was a newlywed.

She forced a smile. “Alabama and I had better shake a tail feather if we’re going to have any kind of day in Dallas. Thank you again for the loan, Glen. I promise to pay it back.”

“Forget it,” he said. “A friend in need is a friend indeed.”

Back in the car, her mind raced. So Jackie was trying to get her claws into Glen. And Lon’s new wife was going to take over the choir.
Her
choir. Bev had already spent a few days this summer picking out songs and special numbers they could do.

Lon, a hometown boy made good, had only boomeranged back two years earlier to take the job as principal. The New Sparta equivalent of coming home in a blaze of glory. Unfortunately, he’d disliked Bev from the start. He was one of those newfangled principals who’d spent more time studying theory than actually standing in front of a class teaching—all diploma and no chalk dust, some of the teachers grumbled. His concerns were for grading systems and standardized test scores. And winning things. He’d been withering about the choir’s failure to garner any prizes last year, even though several people had told Bev that their showpiece—“Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go With Friday on Saturday Night?”—was one of the cutest things they’d ever heard. Lon had made a joke about Lawrence Welk . . . as if there was anything wrong with a fun, old-fashioned song.

For that matter, what was wrong with Lawrence Welk? The man was a national treasure.

“So there really is a Glen,” Alabama said, breaking into her thoughts.

“Did I ever say there wasn’t?” Bev asked.

Alabama aimed her gaze out the passenger window, to the last swelling hills before the flat blackland prairie took over the landscape. The car devoured several miles of highway, and then Alabama spoke again. “Was he the guy before Derek?”

Bev shifted uncomfortably. “This is a personal matter.”

Alabama let out a snort. “Oh, right. Excuuuuse me.” She opened a Twinkie packet and stuffed one in her mouth.

“Is that your breakfast? It’s nothing but chemicals.”

Alabama smacked her lips. “Yummy chemicals!”

She’s trying to get a rise out of me.
Exactly the way Diana used to. But Bev wouldn’t let her. She gritted her teeth through the popping open of a soda can and the slurping that followed. When Alabama broke into a bag of M&M’s, however, Bev could no longer hold her tongue.

“I made oatmeal this morning.”

In reply, Alabama crunched down on a piece of candy.

“You have to eat
something
nutritious,” Bev said.

“I am.” Alabama held a green M&M up for inspection. “That’s why I got the ones with peanuts.”

“They’re candy.”

“If Glen likes you,” Alabama said, backtracking, “why do you have the thing with Derek?”

“Why do you think Glen likes me?”

Alabama shrugged. “I could just tell. He’s a lot nicer than Derek.”

“You only spoke to him for a minute.”

“That’s about as much as I’ve ever spoken to Derek,” Alabama said. “Even though he’s been to the house three times.”

The two had not hit it off. Of course, Derek was naturally a little prickly around strangers, and maybe he wasn’t used to being around teenagers. And Alabama hadn’t done much more than mope while he was around.

“You have to admit that Derek is better looking.”

Alabama’s lips scrunched. “He looks like that actor . . .”

“Tom Selleck,” Bev said. “I always thought so, too.”

“No . . .” She chewed another M&M, thinking. “That other actor—the sleazebag guy.”

Sleazebag!

“What’s his name?” Alabama frowned in concentration. “The guy who makes the action pictures?”

“Mel Gibson?” Bev guessed.

“Charles Bronson!”

Surprise caused Bev to swerve the car, hitting the shoulder. She opened her mouth to tell her how wrong she was, but Alabama smiled and offered her candy.

“M&M?”

Distracted, Bev held out her hand and Alabama shook a few into her palm. Bev took one and crunched busily for a few moments. Maybe Derek wasn’t quite Magnum, p.i., but on the Selleck-Bronson continuum, he definitely fell more toward Selleck.

She didn’t care about looks. The essence of a person was the important thing. Derek was solid, yet exciting. He’d swept her off her feet. No one like him had ever looked twice at her before. Of course, she couldn’t go into sex appeal with a fourteen-year-old. Anyway, Alabama was probably saying she liked Glen better just to be contrary. She didn’t know the first thing about him.

Charles Bronson! Derek looked nothing like him. Nothing.

Except for the mustache. And maybe a little around the eyes.