Out in the waiting room, a rotation of sorts had occurred. Having captured the footage of a lifetime, Zelda Quinn and her cameraman had beat a hasty exit to get at least a short segment ready in time for the five o’clock broadcast, and the full piece together for the six o’clock. The teachers (and former vice principal) had also left, assuring one another they’d be in touch should they hear any news.
And finally the oddball adults had left the waiting room (but not until they’d each inscribed a message on the silky-smooth fabric of the lone unicorn). Justice Jack had jumped onto his High Roller in pursuit of “Commissioner Borsch” to see where his talents as a superhero could best be put to use, and Madame Nashira and Slammin’ Dave had both piled back into André’s car, deciding that waiting could be done just as well in their respective places of employment.
But as the trio rolled across town, André (who had also missed lunch and was suddenly famished) had an unexpected hankering. “Anyone else feel like Italian food?” he asked.
The question surprised even him because André was not a socializer. Especially not with tenants. He’d learned many years ago that getting chummy with residents was asking for trouble. Before you knew it, they’d want favors. Or deadline extensions. Or free rent.
But aside from the potential follies of fraternizing with Gina, he’d also tossed the question out there for Dave’s consideration.
What had possessed him?
He didn’t fraternize with men in bright blue boots!
He just didn’t.
So the minute the Italian-food suggestion made it past his cigar stub, André wished he could take it back.
He needn’t have worried, though, because both his neighbor and his tenant declined. And the idea might have been dropped entirely, but after letting Gina out at her House of Astrology on Main Street (where the astrologer hoped to divine some information regarding Sammy’s future) and then pulling into his usual parking space near the Heavenly, Slammin’ Dave asked, “Have you tried Mindy’s?”
“Mindy’s?” André replied, the car in park, but still idling.
Dave got out of the car and pointed. “It’s around the corner on Main. Where Alphy’s used to be? Best Italian food I’ve ever had.”
“Thanks, man,” André said, and while Dave (and his bright blue boots) walked away, André sat in his car with his engine (and his mind) running. Why had he even asked about Italian food? He had no time to go out!
He had a hotel to run.
He had … well, things to do.
Or, at least, read.
Besides, it was between mealtimes. The place might not even be open.
But something about the events of the day, something about the reminder that life was finite (and always much too short, even if you were lucky enough to get old) kept him sitting in the car with the engine idling.
Plus, he realized with a helpless sort of sadness, he just didn’t want to be alone.
So he put the car back in gear and puttered away from the Heavenly and around the corner to Mindy’s Cucina d’Italia, where he parked curbside.
André found that the restaurant was open, but it was empty. And feeling alone to begin with, he almost turned around. Eating alone in an empty restaurant was sure not going to make him feel any less alone!
But the little bell on the door had jingled, and now a woman appeared from the kitchen area. “Don’t be shy,” she said with dancing eyes. “The food is good!” And before he could find a way to resist, she’d secured him at a corner table with a menu. “Something to drink?” she asked. “Water? Or maybe a glass of Chianti?”
Coffee would have been more his style. Or maybe a beer. But wine? After working at the Heavenly for so many years, wine had a very negative association (caused by the recycled state in which it was left in hallways or corners for him to clean up).
But the setting here, with its checkered tablecloths and lacy half curtains, was nothing like the Heavenly. And the truth was, nothing went with Italian food like a good red wine.
“How about a glass of Chianti on the house,” the woman said with a warm smile. “Seems like you could use one.”
She returned moments later with the wine and a basket of bread. And after leaving him alone for a few minutes to consider the menu choices, she appeared again and looked at him expectantly.
Perhaps it was the wine (which was already half gone), but instead of just placing his order, André asked, “How’s the lasagna?” and (to his bewilderment and extreme embarrassment) his eyes began stinging with tears.
“It’s my grandmother’s recipe,” the woman assured him. “It’s beyond wonderful.”
He handed back the menu. “Then that’s what I’ll have.”
She took the menu but paused to study him. “I know it’s none of my business, but … are you okay?”
He nodded.
“Are you new in town?”
He shook his head, and since he couldn’t seem to get any words past the lump in his throat, the woman backed away and disappeared into the kitchen.
André, of course, felt like a complete fool, but when the woman returned with the steaming plate of lasagna, she seemed to have nothing but sympathy. She placed his meal in front of him, then slid into the chair across from him and said, “Do you want to tell me about her?”
“Her?” André asked.
“Well, it must be a girl, right?”
André looked away, and even though the situation was not what the woman was thinking, his head bobbed.
“So tell me about her. This girl who’s made you so sad.”
And since they were alone and the wine was now gone, he studied her kind brown eyes, then took a bite of the best lasagna he’d ever tasted and began. “Her name is Sammy.”
19—OHIO?
As the teens began the walk from Billy’s house back toward the hospital, Marissa was gripped with a horrible, heart-stopping thought: If her mother followed through with her plan to move them to Ohio this summer, it would create a void. A void that Heather would fill.
Heather had always been resourceful and determined, and now that Sammy had “celebrity connections,” Heather would do whatever it took to become Sammy’s new best friend. She’d already shown obvious signs of it, and with Marissa out of the way, it would be easy! Sure, Holly would put up roadblocks for a while, but she had other things going on. Like dogs and becoming a vet and denying her undeniable crush on Preston Davis.
And Dot wouldn’t know how to stop her—she was way too nice.
And Casey? He used to stand up to Heather, but since that trip to Las Vegas he was always telling everyone to go easy on her.
No, without someone truly committed, the resistance would fall pretty quickly.
She was the only person who would stand firm and stop Heather, or in no time Heather would become Sammy’s new best friend.
And so, like a switch suddenly flipped, Marissa knew what she had to do. “Gotta go!” she announced to the rest of the teens, then took off running.
“Wait! Where are you going?” Holly hollered after her.
“Gotta get Mikey!” she shouted (or, rather, lied) at full volume.
“Who?” Heather called after her.
Marissa spun and yelled, “You know, BLUBBER BOY?” then doubled her speed and didn’t look back.
Now it was true that since Yolanda McKenze had moved Marissa and Mikey out of their mansion on East Jasmine and into a modest condo in town, Marissa had been on the hook to walk her brother home from after-school care, because it ended before Yolanda got off work at six. Today, however, Yolanda had told Marissa that she would rearrange things with her new employer so Marissa could be with Sammy.
Even though it meant losing valuable time at work.
Even though (as Yolanda had made very clear) they really, really, really needed the money.
“Mom!” Marissa shouted as she barged through the condo door.
“What?” Yolanda appeared in the small front room with a wooden
spoon in hand. “What happened?”
“We cannot move to Ohio!”
“What’s this about?” Yolanda asked, returning quickly to the kitchen.
Marissa dumped her backpack and followed. She was momentarily distracted by the mouth-watering aroma of sautéed onions, but she forced herself to stay on topic. “Heather! She’s already taking over!”
Yolanda added a can of stewed tomatoes to the saucepan. “What are you talking about?”
“Sammy!”
“But … is Sammy awake?” She nodded at a small television on the counter, which was tuned into KSMY’s five o’clock report. “The news made it sound like she was still unconscious.”
“She is! But Heather’s totally positioning herself to take over!”
“Take over what?”
“My spot as Sammy’s best friend!”
“How can you be worried about that when your friend is in a coma?”
Marissa muted the TV (which was broadcasting news that had nothing to do with Sammy) and gave her mother an exasperated look. “I’m talking about after she wakes up! Heather’s already moving in. She’s taking video and saving the day! She’s calling the shots and snowing Officer Borsch! She’s fooling everyone into believing she’s changed!”
Yolanda had the urge to tell her daughter that a coma was a much bigger thing to worry about than Heather’s manipulations. And that there was no guarantee Sammy would wake up at all.
Instead, what popped out of her mouth was, “Toss the salad, would you? And set the table? And tell me what video you’re talking about and how Heather is snowing Officer Borsch.”
So Marissa got busy tossing and started talking. And when she was done relaying the drama, she said, “So we can’t move. We just can’t.”
“Sweetheart,” her mother said with a sympathetic sigh, “has it occurred to you that Sammy might move?”
“No! She’s happy at Hudson’s! Why would she move?”
“Because her parents will want her to. Because from what you’ve told me, Lana and Darren are headed for the altar, and once that happens, they’ll want to be together as a family.” She shook her head. “Because there’s no way they’ll leave Sammy alone after this, and I sure can’t see either of them moving to Santa Martina.”
Marissa didn’t like that thought.
Didn’t like it one bit.
“Sammy belongs here,” she said at last. “Not in Los Angeles! Or Las Vegas! Can you imagine her having to live in Las Vegas?”
Mrs. McKenze simply gave a little shrug as she put pasta into a pot of boiling water.
Marissa realized that they’d gotten way off track, and, thinking reinforcements would help, she asked, “Where’s Mikey?”
“Right here,” the nine-year-old said, then stepped out from around the corner.
“You don’t have to spy,” Mrs. McKenze scolded.
“But he’s Spy Guy,” Marissa said, giving her brother a knowing grin. “Hey! That reminds me … Justice Jack is back!”
“He’s back?” Mikey squealed. “For good?”
“I don’t know about for good,” Marissa said, placing utensils around the plates she’d already put on their small kitchen table. “He’s here for Sammy. To help figure out who put her in a coma.”
Mrs. McKenze sighed, then muttered, “How can anyone want to stay in a town where a fool like that roams the streets?”
“He’s not a fool!” Mikey cried. “Justice Jack is awesome.” He stepped farther into the kitchen. “How can you want to leave?”
“We really have to talk about it, Mom,” Marissa said quietly. “I don’t want to move, Mikey doesn’t want to move—”
Yolanda McKenze’s eyebrows knit together. “Because of Justice Jack?”
“No! Because he’s finally got some friends!” Marissa said. “Because Hudson’s been great for him, and where are you going to find another Hudson? Because he doesn’t want to live with me if I’m miserable, and I’m going to be completely miserable if you move us to Ohio!” She suddenly turned to Mikey. “There are no fish in Ohio.”
“No fish?” Mikey gasped (as fancy fish in an aquarium were still his favorite thing in the whole wide world).
“There are too fish in Ohio!” Mrs. McKenze cried. She turned to her daughter. “What sort of tactic is that?”
Marissa plopped into a chair and flicked her eyebrows up. “Dirty.”
“So tell him the truth!”
Marissa sighed. “Okay. There are fish.” Then she quickly added, “They serve them filleted. With soggy rice pilaf. And Brussels sprouts.”
“Marissa!”
“Fine,” the teen grumbled as she slumped in her chair. “There are fish. In tanks. Swimming.” She eyed her brother. “But they’re nowhere near as pretty as the ones you can get out here.”
“Marissa!”
“Look,” Marissa sighed. “We don’t want to move.” She gave her brother a recruiting look. “Am I right, Mikey?”
Mikey’s face furrowed. “I thought we had to move.”
“We do!” Mrs. McKenze said. “We would have moved already, but there’s a lot of … of legal work that needs to be wrapped up. And I wanted you to be able to finish out the school year!” She gave her son a pleading look. “Don’t you want to get to know your grandparents better? Aren’t you excited about meeting new people and getting a fresh start?”
Marissa (still slumping) crossed her arms. “No, we’re not.”
Mikey’s arms crossed, too. “Do we have to?”
Yolanda McKenze sighed as she looked from one child to the other. She knew the Ohio Plan was a desperate one, but everything she’d done since she’d bailed her husband out of a Las Vegas jail had been some desperate form of triage. Some way to stop the bleeding. In their finances, in their reputation, and in her marriage.
Still, as desperately as she’d tried to save each, none had survived. And as much as returning to Ohio would in some ways be the ultimate failure, it was a safe (and cheap) place to regroup. And staying in this town with the gossips and the gambler and the grotesquely successful in-laws was too much for her.
Way. Too. Much.
But in truth, she couldn’t just up and move to Ohio with the children until a custody agreement was worked out, or a judge granted her permission. Permission her soon-to-be ex was fighting tooth and nail.
Still, weary as she was from all the stress, embarrassment, and arguments (not to mention the humiliation of clerking for little more than minimum wage), Yolanda McKenze refused to let on to the children how bad things really were. She used words like regroup and downsize and adjust, and avoided calling their father the names he deserved.
Oh, the names he deserved!
“Mom, where are you right now?”
Yolanda was shaken from her thoughts by her daughter’s voice. “In a land far, far away,” she said with a sigh, then crumpled into a chair beside Marissa. “My parents moved us when I was a sophomore. It was only one town over, but I had to go to a different high school. I hated it.”
Marissa’s eyebrows shot up. “So? You know exactly what I mean!”
“But, honey, sometimes it’s good to start over. And you’ll be starting high school, not ripped out of the middle of it.”
“Mom, it’s the same thing! And what about Mikey? He’s in the middle of elementary school!”
“So we really don’t have to move?” Mikey asked again, moving closer.
Yolanda took a deep breath and held her son’s gaze. In the past few months he had become a happy boy. There was no doubt that Hudson’s influence and support throughout their family crisis had been wonderful, but it was more than that. For the first time ever, her son had a real friend. Little, adorable, bright-eyed Lucero. Instead of moping, Michael had become a chatterbox about Lucero this and Lucero that.
Perhaps if he’d been a different sort of child, she would have been more confident that he would move on to new friends in their new location. But Michael was … Michael. And he’d had
a really rough few years.
She looked away and said, “I thought you liked Ohio.”
“Not to move to!” Mikey cried. “I want to stay here!”
Marissa sat up and said, “I was Mikey’s age when Sammy and I became best friends, Mom. It’s a really formative time.”
“Formative?” Yolanda asked, raising an eyebrow Marissa’s way. “And when did you start psychoanalyzing things?” But the comment did resonate with her—perhaps because she regretted how pushing aside warning signs in favor of work had likely created so many issues with Michael. Or perhaps it was because she was remembering her own best friend from third grade. A girl named Susan, whose family had moved away at the end of sixth grade.
Plus, wasn’t divorce hard enough on the kids without also ripping apart their friendships?
“Mom?” Marissa asked, because Yolanda’s mind was clearly wandering off again. “What are you thinking?” Yolanda sighed, then pulled Mikey in and said, “I’m thinking that it’s a parent’s job to make the right decisions for their kids, even if those decisions are hard and not popular. I’m thinking that I really don’t want to live in this little condo in this little town full of gossips. And I’m thinking that a fresh start would be good for me … but that maybe I need to think about all of this some more.” She shook her head. “If we stay in Santa Martina, we won’t be moving back to East Jasmine or anywhere like it. You understand that, right? This is probably as good as it’s going to get for a while.”
“I don’t care!” Marissa cried, and Mikey said, “I like it here! Way better than the big house.”
Yolanda studied him. “You do?”
“Way!” he cried. “There’s no big hill. I can ride my bike! It’s close to the park and the mall and school and Hudson’s … it’s way better here!”
Yolanda was suddenly struck by the futility of her previous financial pursuits. How all the adult trappings they’d chased for years had nothing whatsoever to do with the happiness of her children.
And really, it was about time the children came first.
“You’re really thinking about it?” Marissa asked.
Yolanda gave her a little smile and then a little nod. “No promises, but yes, I will think about it.”