03 - Three Odd Balls (2 page)

***

Whatever it was, Wilson’s news would have to wait—Bernice was on the move. She hopped down from the couch, yawned expansively, and in typical Bernice-fashion, sauntered past several cat toys, ignored Wally’s invitation to play, and found the food dish. Snowflake’s food dish. Wilson and Snowflake were on it in a flash.

While Snowflake scolded her guest, Wilson spoke to me. “This will be the issue while we’re gone.” He pointed to Bernice, who was involved in an intense stare-down with my cat. “It’s the reason she’s so fat. She steals food. She eats Wally’s all the time.”

I shifted my gaze to Wally. But he had discovered one of Snowflake’s catnip mice and was completely unconcerned about the food-dish showdown. I shrugged and reminded everyone Candy had been apprised of Bernice’s dietary regimen. “She promises to make sure everyone eats only the food allotted to them.”

“Good luck, Candy,” Wilson mumbled. He picked up Bernice—no easy feat—and returned to the couch.

“Your bad news?” I asked.

He cleared his throat. “You know Chris?”

I blinked twice. “No,” I said. “I do not know Chris. Your son refuses to meet me, remember?”

“Well, he’s changed his mind. He’s tagging along.”

“With us!?” I jumped and would have spilled my champagne if Wilson hadn’t caught the glass.

“The ski trip to Vermont with his buddies fell through,” he explained and quickly put the glass back in my hand. “His roommate Larry broke his leg.”

“Excuse me?” I shook my head in dismay. “That’s what happens while one is skiing, not before.”

“Maybe. But Larry was cramming on his way to his chemistry final and wasn’t watching where he was going. Bumped into a brick wall and fell backwards down a flight of stairs.”

I groaned and took a gulp of my beverage.

Perhaps I should mention that Christopher Rye is a junior at the University of North Carolina. And yes, I had never met the guy. This, despite the fact that I had been dating his father for months, and despite the fact that Chapel Hill is quite close to Clarence, where Wilson and I live. Apparently Chris chose to hate me, sight unseen.

“Larry will be fine,” Wilson was saying. “But it ruins the ski trip. Chris sounded pretty disappointed.”

“So you asked him to join us.”

“He’s meeting us at the Atlanta airport. I can’t stand the idea of him being alone for the holidays, Jessie. The kid’s pretty independent, but.” He caught my eye. “You okay with this?”

I considered the news. “Maybe. But I thought he hated me?”

“Well,” Wilson sang. “Maybe he’s changed his mind.”

“Maybe? Chris has never even given me a chance.”

“So here’s your chance. What do you say, Jessie?”

I had to say I was quite curious to meet the Rye offspring. “Who knows?” I said. “Maybe I’ll win him over, and he’ll tell me all your deep dark secrets.” I raised an eyebrow. “Unless, of course, you’d like to do that yourself?”

Wilson kept his gaze steady and said nothing.

I sighed dramatically. “Okay, so Chris is unlikely to tell me anything of any use,” I grumbled. “But will he at least be civil to me?”

“Absolutely. But I doubt we’ll see much of him. I booked him his own bungalow at the Wacky Gardens. And if I know my son, he’ll spend the week surfing and chasing bikinis.”

Thinking the matter settled, he leaned back and relaxed. But that would just not do.

“Umm, Wilson?” I said soothingly. “Going back to the idea—your idea—that no one should be alone for the holidays? There’s one more teensy reason you may want to kill me.”

He blinked at the index finger I was holding up. “What’s that?”

“My mother.”

“Your mother, what?”

“She’s coming with us!” I blurted out and quickly dived into the whole spiel about Danny, and Capers, and the twins, and Saint Martin.

But Wilson stopped me before I had gotten very far. “Tessie Hewitt goes Hawaiian.” He offered one of his signature grins. “This, I have got to see.”

I reached out and squeezed his hand. “Mother is right about you, you know?”

“She thinks I’m darling.”

Testimony to our whimsical and flexible natures, we toasted our impending vacation and vowed to have a fantastic time, despite the three odd balls who were tagging along, and the three odd cats we were leaving behind.

It was only later that night, as I was tossing one last bathing suit into my suitcase, that a thought occurred to me.

I shooed Snowflake away as she tried to join the bathing suit and spoke to Wilson. “I wonder why the Wakilulani Gardens had so many last minute cancellations during the holiday week. I mean, isn’t it interesting that everyone got their own private bungalow? On such short notice?”

Wilson looked up from pushing Bernice out of his suitcase. “Interesting,” he agreed.

“Downright wacky,” I said and closed my suitcase.

Chapter 2

“I would have recognized you anywhere,” I said as we shook hands. A bit of an exaggeration, but Christopher Rye did look a lot like his father. Tall, dark, and handsome, he was a younger, slightly slimmer, brown-eyed version of Wilson. He even had Wilson’s frown. I wondered if he might also have his father’s grin, but as the frown evolved into an all-out scowl, I concluded that the younger Rye was not much for smiling.

I told myself that a crowded corner, at a crowded gate, at a crowded airport during the holiday travel rush probably isn’t the best place to meet anyone, stepped over my carry-on, and introduced him to my mother. At least we had found Tessie a seat, and at least Chris seemed genuinely pleased to meet her.

Indeed, there was that Wilsonesque grin. Chris pumped Mother’s hand with far more enthusiasm than he had mine. “Dad’s told me all about you, Miss Tessie. Are we gonna have fun or what?”

“Or what!” she squealed in reply, and Chris asked if she had ever surfed.

Of course the answer was no, but ever-ready to give me heart palpitations, she professed a burning desire to learn.

“I’ll teach you!” he said, and with that he kicked over his carry-on and hopped on.

While Chris pretended to ride imaginary waves, and while my mother and Wilson asked far too many questions as to how one keeps one’s balance and so forth, I called Candy. Chris had launched into a detailed explanation of things called point breaks versus beach breaks when she answered.

“Have they killed each other yet,” I asked.

“Umm, not exactly.”

“What does that mean?”

“They could be so cute together if they tried,” Candy said, not exactly clarifying things. “You know, Jessie? With Snowflake all white, and Wally all black, and Bernice all mottled-like.”

I interpreted the report. “So they’re not playing together, but they aren’t fighting either. Is that it?

“They’re doing both, actually.”

“Candy!” I said, and a few people around me jumped. “Please tell me everyone’s getting along.”

“Okay, okay.” She tried to calm me down. “Puddles and Wally really like each other, okay? They’re chasing each other all over the place.”

Puddles, still in the throes of puppyhood, is Candy’s Poppe’s poodle. If Adelé Nightingale possessed half of that dog’s energy, she could write a book a day.

“Your condo is great for chasing games,” Candy was saying. “Lots of open space, no extra walls. It’s almost as good as Round Robin Park.”

As if verifying Candy’s assessment, I heard Puddles bark in the background. “What about Snowflake and Bernice?” I asked.

“They’re the ones kind of fighting.”

“You mean, they’re actually swatting at each other?” I looked to Wilson for support, but he was still paying rapt attention to his son’s surfing advice. “Has anyone drawn blood?” I asked Candy.

“No, nothing like that. They’re just staring at each other and hissing. And their tails are, like, really bushy. Is that normal?”

I groaned. “Cats do that when they’re mad.”

“I figured. But don’t worry. If worse comes to worse, I’ll bring Bernice and Wally downstairs to stay with Puddles and me. No one will get hurt, okay?”

I groaned again and thanked my valiant friend for her efforts. “I hope all this cat sitting won’t ruin your holiday, Sweetie.”

“Gosh, no. Puddles likes the company, and I bet the cats will be best friends by the time y’all get back.”

“I’ll be happy if they’d just tolerate each other for a few days.”

“No, Jessie. You and Wilson are destined to be together forever. So your cats have got to be best friends.”

“Forever?” I glanced skeptically at Wilson. My mother had stood up, and he was holding one of her hands aloft as she suitcase-surfed on Chris’s carry-on. I tried not to notice how the crowd was encouraging her.

“Like, duh!” Candy sounded exasperated. “I’m sick of reminding you how much you love the guy, Jessie. Which reminds me—what’s his son like?”

As if he had heard the question, Chris took a hiatus from smiling at my mother in order to frown at me. I held his gaze.

“He and Mother seem to have hit it off,” I said and hung up as Tessie toppled off the suitcase into Wilson’s arms.

“Now then, Chris,” she said as she sat back down. “Explain to me what hanging ten is?”

Chris glanced at his father. “I took them off for TSA, so why not again?” He tore off his sneakers, and much to my mother’s delight, demonstrated hanging ten over the edge of that poor suitcase.

Mother clapped in glee. “Do you think I’ll be able to hang ten?” she asked.

Lord help me, Chris was actually giving her eighty-two-year-old, one-hundred-pound frame an appraisal and considering the possibility. He must have seen me flapping my arms and shaking my head from the sidelines, but he ignored me. “We’ll get you out on the waves,” he told her. “I promise.”

Mother giggled and twisted around to face me. “Me, hanging ten, Jessie. Can you imagine such a thing?”

Unfortunately, yes. I turned to the complete stranger next to me and asked if he happened to have an Advil in his carry-on.

***

No, but the flight attendant took pity on me. And with my headache averted we soon—or rather, eventually—found ourselves in a taxi and at the gates of The Wakilulani Garden Resort. Can you say “Ahhh?”

“Welcome, welcome, welcome!” Louise shouted and waved an enormous sunhat from across the sun-drenched patio.

“No!” She ran to meet us as we climbed out of the cab. “A-lo-ha, a-lo-ha, a-lo-ha!”

“A-lo-ha, a-lo-ha, a-lo-ha!” we all shouted back, and a few of us did a little dance of joy.

As Wilson, Chris, and the cab driver unloaded the luggage from the back of the van, Mother and I hugged Louise and looked around, astounded and amazed.

Beautiful? Oh, my Lord.

“Even the parking lot is beautiful,” my mother concluded in wide-eyed wonder.

“It’s why I picked the Wakilulani,” I said. “Not the parking lot, necessarily, but the gardens. The pictures on Google were remarkable, but this—” I waved a hand, trying to think of an adjective to do it justice.

“Fantastical!” Louise helped me out. But Louise wasn’t interested in the garden—she was staring at Wilson with unabashed curiosity. “And here he is!” she exclaimed. “The mystery man! Jessica Hewitt’s paramour!”

“Paramour?” Chris glanced up from pulling his surfboard out of the van.

Wilson put down the suitcase he was holding. “Wilson Rye,” he said and held out his hand to Louise. But Geez Louise had other ideas. She handed me her hat and opted for a bear hug instead.

Wilson flapped his arms and appealed to me for help. I shrugged and introduced him to my agent. “Isn’t she everything I said she would be?” I asked him.

“And more.” He gave up and hugged her back, and Geez Louise emitted another fantastical.

Eventually she freed the poor guy from her firm embrace and held him at arm’s length for another assessment. Wilson mumbled something about how nice it was to meet her.

“Nice!?” she shouted for the whole island to hear. “I cannot believe it! Wilson Rye! In the flesh! Oh, and Jessica, what fine flesh it is!”

She let go of Wilson and set her sights on Chris. But the younger Rye was faster than his father. He held up his surfboard for self-protection.

Never one for a lengthy attention span, my agent dismissed the possibility of any further groping and spun around to take my mother by the hand. “Wait until you ladies see the beach!” She reclaimed her hat, and with a fantastical here and a fantastical there, led us ladies down the garden path.

Mother and I were content to take in the exotic scenery while Louise talked nonstop. “I do not understand why the place is so deserted,” she said as we passed by several bungalows that did indeed look unoccupied. “Other than the guy on staff, I’ve been the only one here all afternoon. It’s been so lonely!”

She put an arm around my mother. “I’m so happy to see you! How have you been, Tessie? It’s been, like, forever since we last saw each other. I think we should meet in Hawaii every year, don’t you?”

Mother giggled but had no time to respond before we reached the beach. We stopped short and beheld the Pacific Ocean looming only a few yards away. To Louise’s credit, she actually shut up for a full ten seconds to let us soak it in.

But Geez Louise was soon interrupting the soothing sounds of the waves crashing onto Halo Beach. “Wilson Rye.” She sounded almost forlorn. “Isn’t he the absolute, most perfect man for Jessica?”

“He is darling,” Tessie agreed.

“They make a fantastical couple!” Louise continued. “Romantic, majestic, statuesque—”

“Statuesque?” Mother was studying me as if she had never seen me before.

“Okay, so I’m tall,” I told her and turned to Louise. “But if you call Wilson Rye statuesque to his face, he’s apt to arrest you.”

“He’s off duty,” she reminded me. “And about four thousand miles out of his jurisdiction. Therefore, he cannot arrest me. Isn’t that right, Tessie?”

“Wilson almost arrested Jessie once,” Mother mused.

I rolled my eyes and tuned out any further discussion of the darling and majestic Wilson Rye. I breathed deep of the sea air. “Aloha,” I whispered.

“Aloha,” Wilson whispered back.

I jumped and turned, and noticed Mother and Louise had conveniently disappeared.