Shooting the Moon (11 page)

Kimberly. Kimberly would understand. She always did, but since her divorce, she was living with her parents again, and the phone would probably wake them. Besides, the person she most wanted to call was Harley.

Picking up the phone, she dialed Tank’s number, then held her breath, wondering whether or not she’d have the nerve to say anything if someone answered.

“Hello?” It was him. Lauren immediately recognized his deep voice, but for a moment, she couldn’t speak. She kept picturing him trying to stand up to their father back in 1992 as a tall but scrappy and spirited youth. “I love her, dammit,” he’d cried and Quentin had shouted back at him, “You rotten little son of a bitch. You don’t know anything about love. Who the hell do you think you are, sneaking in here? What are you trying to do? Get in my daughter’s pants? You think I want the likes of you for a son-in-law? You stay the hell away from her, you hear? I don’t want you within twenty feet of her!”

Lauren cringed. Was that really eleven years ago? It seemed like only yesterday.

“Hello?” Harley said again.

Lauren opened her mouth and managed to draw a small breath of air.
I’m sorry,
her mind whispered,
I’m sorry.
But the words hadn’t reached her tongue before Harley
hung up. And she couldn’t have explained why she felt like she owed him an apology, anyway.

S
O THIS IS WHERE
the kids from Hillside Estates go to school these days. K to 8, huh?

Harley pulled his rental car to the side of the road at the far corner of the schoolyard and watched Lauren’s late-model Lexus continue down the street several cars ahead. Because he didn’t know what time Brandon started school, he’d had to sit outside the gates of Hillside Estates for over an hour before she’d appeared this morning, but it turned out to be quite fortunate that he’d gotten an early start. She’d been alone when she left. That had puzzled him at first, but then he’d followed her to another neighborhood of expensive homes where she’d picked up a young boy. And though he’d been too far away to get a good look at the boy’s face, Harley knew it had to be his son. Especially when the friend who’d visited Tank’s apartment with Lauren yesterday came out in her robe and walked them to the car. Did Kim have a child Brandon’s age for him to play with? Or was Brandon staying with her for other reasons?

At least now he knew where Brandon probably was the night Lauren had stood him up and come home alone. And, if he had his guess, he knew where Brandon was going to be staying for the next few days….

“Nice try, Lauren,” he murmured, “but a wasted effort at this point.”

Her Lexus turned into the school’s circular drive, crawling along because of the number of other cars, and she let Brandon out at the front steps. Harley instantly lost sight of him because of the crush, but only moments later picked out his red backpack and watched as he met up with a couple of friends and moved onto the playground.

Lauren exited the lot and headed straight toward where
Harley was parked, and Harley ducked so she wouldn’t see him. When he sat up again, he caught her taillights in his rearview mirror. She turned at the stop sign and was gone. Then it was just him and his son, who was only about fifty yards away.

Brandon…Harley had told himself he’d follow Lauren, catch a glimpse of his boy and drive away. But his heart was pounding so hard he could scarcely breathe. He knew he couldn’t leave now if his life depended on it. He had to get closer. He might run the risk of looking like some perverted stalker skulking around the school grounds, but he had to get a better glimpse of his own flesh and blood.

Taking a deep breath in an attempt to slow his racing pulse, Harley got out and walked beside the chain-link fence that separated him from Brandon. His son was setting his backpack on the ground and getting involved in a soccer game.

Harley stopped as he drew even with him and casually leaned against the fence as though he belonged there—as though he was waiting for someone or making sure a child got to school safely—and watched as Brandon began to chase the ball.

His kid was tall. Brandon stood an inch or two above most of the other boys his age. And he had dark hair, like Harley’s. Harley could definitely see a hint of Audra in his face, especially around the mouth, but his thin build and carriage were reminiscent of pictures Harley had seen of himself at a similar age.

A woman walked by holding the hand of a little girl with at least four purple bows in her hair, and eyed him suspiciously. He supposed he didn’t blend in very well despite his nonchalance, not at a private school where most of the children’s fathers wore Armani suits and drove Mercedes to work. But at this point he was having a tough time caring what anyone thought. Brandon was
so close. Harley wanted to watch him all day, to memorize every line of his face and listen to his laughter—

“Excuse me.”

Harley turned impatiently to the woman who’d just passed him.

“Yes?”

Her eyes flicked over his jacket, jeans and boots. “I don’t recognize you. Do you have a child who goes to school here?”

“I do,” he said.

This seemed to surprise her, which was no more than Harley had expected. “And that child’s name is…”

“None of your business,” he finished frankly.

Her eyes widened and her lips pursed, then she gripped her Gucci bag closer to her body and dragged her child down to the corner, where she threw him another reproachful glance before continuing at light-speed toward the school.

Harley knew he should go. With all the dangers children faced these days, he couldn’t really blame the busybody for being protective, but neither could he force his feet to carry him back to his car.

Just another minute or two…

Brandon had the ball and was running toward him, closer and closer. Harley could see the sweat running down from his hairline and was caught by the intensity on his face.

Look up,
he thought,
look at me
. He didn’t want to upset Brandon or bother him in any way, but at the same time, he longed for eye contact, for…something.

But Brandon was too intent on the game. He tried to kick the ball past the goalie, only to have it deflected. Then someone from the other team started moving it in the opposite direction. The ball changed hands several times, but then Brandon’s team scored a point, which brought him close to the fence again.

“That was awesome! Way to go, Scott,” Brandon called, cheering the boy who’d managed to slip the ball past the goalie.

Harley smiled at the camaraderie, completely enamored with his son, but then the boys ran back the other way and a man wearing a tweed sport coat came out of the huge red brick school and interrupted their game. When he pointed at Harley, everyone turned and Harley started hedging away. Evidently, his time was up. He was making people uncomfortable; he needed to move on.

But, man, it had been great to see his son!

Grinning like a boy himself, he shoved his hands in his pockets and strode to his car. And he was still wearing that same silly grin as he drove off.

“H
AVE ANY OF YOU
seen that man before?” Mr. Haggerty asked.

Brandon shaded his eyes and watched a guy in a black leather coat get into a white car and drive away. His English teacher’s question followed the two he’d already posed: “Who is that man?” and “Did he say anything to any of you?” But it received a similar response.

“I don’t think so.”

“Who?”

“I’ve never seen him before.”

“Me, neither.”

“No one knows who he is or what he was doing here?” Mr. Haggerty pressed.

“Why? Do you think he’s a drug dealer or something?” Johnny Lindstrom wanted to know.

“I have no idea,” Mr. Haggerty replied, “but he sure seemed to be taking an interest in your game.”

“He never said anything to us.”

The bell sounded and everyone scrambled to line up at the front entrance, everyone except the soccer players. They hesitated, wondering if the mysterious man was significant in some way, but Mr. Haggerty waved them on. “Go ahead, boys. There’s no need to be late. He’s gone now. But I want to be informed if he comes back, okay? Especially if he tries to approach any of you.”

“Why?” Travis Peltier asked.

“Because we have to be careful of strangers.”

“Maybe he’s not a stranger. Maybe he used to go here,” Travis said.

“I sincerely doubt that,” Mr. Haggerty replied.

Sean Covey made a disbelieving face. “I don’t think so, either. He looked too cool. Did you see his jacket? I bet he has a tattoo. He probably has lots of tattoos.”

“Just remember that we don’t talk to anyone we don’t know regardless of how ‘cool’ we think they look,” Mr. Haggerty said. “There are some very dangerous people out there.”

“My mother told me about this guy who planted a bomb at Southside School,” the boy next to Brandon told the boy standing on his other side. “He ended up shooting himself, brains all over the mirror and everything. And then they didn’t know where the bomb was. But they sent in a bomb squad, and one guy found it under the bleachers in the gym.”

“That only happens at public schools,” Theo, the other boy responded, but Brandon wasn’t really paying attention to the conversations that had started buzzing around him. He was still picturing the man by the fence.

“What do you think that was all about?” he asked Scott as they hurried to the back of the line.

Scott shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t even see that guy until Mr. Haggerty pointed him out, did you?”

“No.” Brandon had been too wrapped up in the soccer game to notice anything else. But when he’d seen the man standing there, watching them, he’d felt sort of singled out even though he couldn’t explain why.

He kicked a small rock and focused on the way it skittered across the pavement while the other children’s voices droned in his ears.
Singled out.
How dumb. Why would a complete stranger be any more interested in him than in the other boys? Maybe he was imagining it. The odd tingle that had zipped down his spine was probably just more of the weird feelings he’d been having about
all the stuff going on at home. His grandparents were still gone, Aunt Lauren was acting strange and Kim was whispering about him when she talked on the phone. People used to whisper in his presence all the time, when his mother was alive. They thought he didn’t know about the pipes she was always trying to hide, but he’d been good at finding them, much better than anyone else. She used to get so angry with him for throwing them away, but he hated the stuff she smoked with them, hated what it did to her. And sometimes he hated her. Once he found a baggie in her purse while they were driving in the car and he’d tossed it out the window. She’d slapped him then, but he’d never given up trying to save her. That was probably what made him the angriest of all. No matter how hard he tried, she always managed to get more, to hide it in better and better places, to smoke it with those pipes.

But that was what people
used
to whisper about. The grayish rocklike stuff and what it was doing to his mother. The whispering wasn’t so bad when he understood the reason behind it. He would simply act as if he hadn’t heard it. But these new secrets really bothered him. There wasn’t anything to whisper about now. Was there?

“L
AUREN
? Where are you? I thought I could catch you before you left to take Brandon to school. This is your father. Your mother and I are wondering what’s going on and why you haven’t called us. Are you okay? Let us hear from you. We’re planning to visit the Tower of London today, but we’ll wait till you call.”
Click. Beep.

Lauren hit the erase button on the answering machine and slumped down on the stool by the kitchen desk. She’d finished making her bed and straightening her room and getting showered and making a grocery list. She’d even placed a few calls on the fund-raiser and recruited Jennifer Pratt to help her, since she was so behind. But now it was time to talk to her parents and level with them about her
thoughts. She couldn’t put it off any longer. Her father wouldn’t appreciate a dissenting opinion, especially where Harley was concerned, but she felt she owed it to Brandon to voice one. Especially after reading Audra’s journal last night. Her sister’s words painted a very vivid picture of the way Audra had behaved in high school, lending credence to Harley’s assertion that he didn’t exploit her or intentionally get her pregnant. It was Audra who’d been playing games, Audra who’d used Harley.

Rubbing sweaty palms on her khaki capris, Lauren picked up the telephone and dialed the eleven-digit number that would connect her to The Ritz in London.

“Room 311,” she said when the hotel operator answered.

“One moment please.”

Lauren drummed her fingers on the desk while she waited, but it was only a moment before she heard her father’s voice.

“There you are. We’ve been worried about you. What’s going on? Why haven’t you tried to reach us?”

“I haven’t had a chance,” she said. “I’ve been busy.”

“With what?”

Standing Harley up, spying on him, hiding Brandon—take your pick.
“I’ve got a fund-raiser coming up. For the women’s shelter,” she hedged.

“Oh. Well? What’s happened with Harley?”

Straight to the point.
Her father was so predictable. Rock-solid, confident, determined…authoritative, overbearing, closed-minded. “Nothing.”

“Did you talk to him?”

To distract herself from her nervousness, Lauren doodled on the telephone message pad, scribbling out the fifteen thousand dollar figure she’d originally offered Harley until it was completely obliterated. “He stopped by here, but I’d already sent Brandon to Kimberly’s for the night, so it wasn’t a problem.”

“What did he say?”

Lauren hesitated, then decided there wasn’t any point in hiding the truth. “He’s going to fight for custody.”

“That son of a bitch! Who does he think he is, appearing out of nowhere after all these years?”

Lauren winced at her father’s reaction, wondering why hearing him call Harley a
son of a bitch
bothered her.

“He’ll do no such thing!” her father was saying. “I’ve already placed a few calls. Vince, at my office, is going to follow up on this until I can get home. He’ll line up the best lawyers in the state. You don’t need to worry about any of this, Lauren. It might take some time, but—”

“Actually, I’m not so sure that drawing a hard line is the best thing for Brandon,” she said, interrupting before he could go too far down that road.

“What do you mean? We’re not going to sit back and let—”

“Brandon
wants
to meet his father,” she said.

“I don’t care what he wants. We’ve already talked about this. There isn’t any need to go into it again.”

Lauren took a deep breath and blurted out what she’d been dying to say for days. “Actually, I’m afraid there is.
I
think letting Harley see Brandon could be a good idea.”

Silence. Dead silence. She curled her fingers into her palms and waited for the explosion, the disappointment, maybe even a few accusations of disloyalty and betrayal. What her father said hit even lower.

“I thought you loved that boy.”

“I do love him! That’s why I want to give him the opportunity to meet his father. Harley doesn’t seem like such a bad guy, Dad. I’ve—”

“You’ve what?” her father broke in. “Gotten to know him in the past three or four days? How can you possibly assess his character in so short a time?”

“How can you be any more sure of his character than I am?” Lauren responded before she could stop herself.
“How can you be so confident that you’re always right? That it’s fair to play God with other people’s lives? What if Harley’s just what Brandon needs? Brandon had a mother who chose crack over him, who purposely destroyed herself before his eyes. And he’s never had a father.”

“He’s had us. How could a child possibly need any more than we’ve given him?”

“We can’t replace his father,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve got the right to try.”

“Are you serious?”

“Completely!”

He laughed, but it was a harsh, denigrating sound. “I can’t believe this. What is it about that bastard that turns my daughters’ minds to mush?”

Fresh anger surged through Lauren. Audra might’ve said some things in her journal that had made Lauren think more kindly of Harley than before. And he was an incredibly attractive man. But her decision to let him see Brandon had much more to do with her nephew than it did with Harley. “My mind isn’t mush just because I disagree with you, Dad. Maybe
you’re
the one who has a problem. Maybe you’re afraid of losing control of everyone around you.”

“Now you’re acting like Audra,” her father accused. “And I thought you were better than that.”

Better than that?
Lauren hung up because it was the only thing she could do to stop the conversation from getting even worse, but she was shaking and crying and so angry she could scream. When was her father going to stop treating her with such condescension, as though his opinion mattered so much more than her own? When was he going to stop treating her like a child?

When she quit acting like one, she decided, and dialed the phone again.

“Hello?” Tank. Lauren took a deep breath, so she could speak, and asked for Harley.

“This Lauren?” Tank asked.

“Yes.”

“You and Kim aren’t after my color TV, are you?”

“What?”

He chuckled. “Nothing. Just a minute.”

She heard him say something in the background, then Harley came on the line.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“I know.”

He didn’t sound particularly happy to hear from her. Swallowing hard, she forced herself to speak while she still had the nerve to take a stand against her father.
I have to trust myself now or I never will.

“You can see Brandon,” she said. “Come over tonight at six.”

Stunned silence. Then, skeptically, “Are you going to be there this time?”

“We’ll both be here.”

More silence, but finally, he asked, “What’s changed?”

I have.
“Everything,” she said, “and I’m afraid it’ll never be the same again.”

L
AUREN TOLD HERSELF
she didn’t care what she looked like. She didn’t care whether or not Harley thought she was a good cook. She wasn’t trying to impress him. But she spent all afternoon making salmon steaks, new potatoes, asparagus pasta salad and stuffed mushrooms, and she changed outfits three times before settling on one.

Feminine pride, she told herself. Harley had considered her beneath his notice in high school. She wanted to make sure he realized she could hold her own now, that was all.

Brandon had called her from school two hours ago to see if he could go home with his and Scott’s other friend,
Winston, and she’d let him to buy herself more time. It had saved her the half hour it would’ve taken to pick him up from school—and all the questions he would’ve asked when he saw her preparations. Which was good, because she wanted to have everything ready so she could focus completely on him when she told him the news. Only now that the edge was gone from her anger, and her nephew was supposed to be home any minute, she felt nervous and doubtful again, and wondered how he was going to react when he learned his father was coming to dinner.

The aroma of cooked mushrooms and the sausage she’d used to stuff them permeated the house. Elegant china and fresh flowers graced the table, and she was wearing a sleeveless summer sweater and wraparound skirt that made her appear more shapely than she was.

The house smelled and looked great, but with only a clock ticking in the background, it was too quiet. Lauren felt as though she was holding her breath, waiting, waiting, waiting. She needed music, something to distract her from her thoughts and calm her nerves. Especially since Brandon was late. If her nephew didn’t arrive soon, she wouldn’t have the time she wanted to discuss Harley with him.

She put on a Faith Hill CD and poured a glass of wine.
He’ll be here any minute,
she told herself, but time kept slipping away, and there was no sign of Brandon. Maybe he needed a ride. Although Mrs. Reynolds had agreed to drop him off, something could’ve happened. Lauren called to check, but after a few rings, the answering machine came on. She left a message and hung up.

“They’re on their way,” she said aloud. “I’m sure they’re on their way. God, they’d better be on their way!” Keeping one eye on the clock, she sipped her wine and paced the floor and sipped her wine some more. Five-forty. Five-forty-five. Where was he? Harley was supposed to arrive in fifteen minutes.

She called Winston Reynolds’s house again, with no luck, then tried Scott’s.

“Scott wasn’t able to go to Winston’s today,” his mother told her. “He hasn’t cleaned his room for a week, so I made him come home.”