Black Ember (3 page)

 Of course, the dark-haired, handsome cowboy good-naturedly trading barbs with his friends—the groom du jour—was nothing like Nathanial. For one thing, his spine wasn’t fused stick-straight, and for another his shirt probably didn’t have a three-digit price tag, and—

 “Galloping gorgons!” Caryn exclaimed, the phrase she and her therapist had agreed she would use to interrupt thoughts that were going in the wrong direction. Which was to say, back toward her disastrous failed engagement. Caryn had been trying to distract herself by re-reading the Harry Potter series at the time, and Hagrid’s colorful vocabulary was the first thing to come to mind when the therapist suggested she choose a phrase.

 “Excuse me, darlin’?” asked a wide, short man wearing a uniform shirt bearing a logo for a snack food company. Caryn wondered why he couldn’t be bothered to change out of his work clothes before stepping out for the night, then reminded herself that she wasn’t versed in the local customs.

 “Uh, nothing,” she said.

 “I could swear you said ‘galloping gorgons,’” the man said. “Reason I ask is, I’m reading
The Sorcerer’s Stone
to my nephew on my days off. The little fella can’t get enough of that stuff. Course then again, neither can I.”

 He chuckled, and Caryn relaxed. She’d endured a few whistles and leers this evening, but most of the clientele at her bio-dad’s bar seemed genial and harmless.

 “Saw you talkin’ to Zane,” the man continued. “Now, there’s a smart one.”

 “Oh, is that his name,” Caryn said, loading her tray with the drinks Turk had lined up on the bar. “I didn’t really catch it.”

She kept her eyes focused on the tray, afraid that the customer would see the interest in her eyes. Well, she was only human wasn’t she? Even back in New York, Zane’s model-worthy face, those pale gray eyes, the way his jeans molded precisely to his very nice rear end, would draw attention. Maybe especially in New York. Caryn had to admit that there was something irresistible about the local men: they were sun-browned, wore jeans faded and washed until they fit perfectly, and had the kind of muscles that came from hard work, not from the gym.

“Yep. He’s part of that crew that came up from Arkansas last year to work on the rigs. Now they’ve made it through a Dakota winter, I imagine we’ll never get rid of ’em.” He chuckled again at his own joke before ambling off to watch a pool game.

Caryn stared off at the table for a moment. Arkansas…one of the many states, along with North Dakota, that she’d never visited. Her mother’s idea of a vacation featured see-and-be-seen hot spots like Miami and Vale and Nantucket. And once Caryn started dating Nathanial, they tended to focus on destinations where he could ski or sail. That left out the nation’s midsection, an omission Caryn seemed destined to make up for now, after three decades of not knowing what she was missing.

She focused on attending to her customers, who were beginning to settle up and make their way out into the warm June evening. When there was finally a lull, Opal leaned against the bar and dabbed at her forehead with a handkerchief.

“How are you making out, sweetie?” she asked, patting her apron pocket where she stashed tips, the coins jingling.

“Oh, I’m not sure,” Caryn said. All evening long, she’d dumped the wadded bills and coins into her skirt pocket, unable to take the time to count.

“Well here, let’s take a look.”

Opal began smoothing out the bills and stacking coins while Turk set a club soda with lime in front of her without being asked. Caryn thought about asking him for one, too, but he hadn’t been very friendly all evening and she didn’t want to alienate him further by presuming.

The two women counted in silence for a moment, then Opal folded the stack of bills and put them in her wallet, and swiped the coins back into her apron pocket. Wiping her hands on a bar rag, she said, “A hundred eighty and change. You?”

Caryn had been trying to square up her own smaller stack of bills, but at the figure Opal named, she stopped and gaped. “Seriously? I only made thirty-two dollars.”

Opal exchanged a look at Turk, who burst out laughing before wandering down the bar, shaking his head. Opal looked like she was having trouble keeping her mirth to herself. Dabbing at her chin delicately, she said, “Well, I think I might have had more tables than you.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Caryn mumbled. She was surprised how much it stung, to have failed at her first night as a cocktail waitress. She’d done her best, and she thought she’d been pretty successful, considering it was her first time—she hadn’t dropped any drinks, she’d made accurate change, and she’d thanked every patron, no matter how rude or drunk. Sure, Turk had been annoyed with her from the start, especially when he’d had to re-do a couple orders she got wrong, and Opal’s patience had worn thin when she neglected the customers she kept forgetting were seated in her section. But she eventually had gotten to everyone—well, except the guys in back—and she thought she’d improved over the course of the long evening.

“I’ll do better tomorrow,” she added in a quiet voice as she shoved the money in her pocket.

“About that,” Opal said, not meeting her eyes. “Listen, sweetie. You gave it a good effort, you really did. Only I’m not sure you’re really cut out for this work.”

Caryn’s heart sank. Was she really about to be fired? It wasn’t just humiliating, it shook her confidence to the core. The only other job Caryn had had, before starting her design business, was an internship that her stepfather got her at his studio’s New York offices, where the staff treated her with kid gloves and refused to assign her any tasks more challenging than proofing interoffice memos. She’d received only rave reviews from every teacher, colleague, and employee she’d ever had, and she was proud of the business she had built with her hard work. But she never forgot that it was her stepfather’s money that had paid to launch the business, and her mother’s friends who’d supported her by buying her early collections. Even though she’d repaid Randall’s loan within two years, and had customers all over the globe, she’d never shaken the feeling that she’d been handed the job instead of working for it. Without Georgia and Randall’s help, she’d still be struggling.

Deep in her heart, Caryn had always wondered who she would have been without their help. Well, now she was getting a chance to find out—and she’d failed almost before she’d started.

After the sleepless night, the long flight, and the exhausting shift, what Caryn really wanted to do was sink to the floor and have a good cry. But this was supposed to be a journey of discovery.

For most of her life, the thought of her biological father had filled Caryn with a complicated mixture of anger and longing. Only now that she was thirty years old had she begun to understand just how much his absence had affected her.

Being the stepdaughter of a movie star had its compensations, but it had its drawbacks, too, especially since she wasn’t the extrovert her mother was. Georgia never tired of the attention showered on her by the paparazzi and the press, even now, a decade after her divorce from Randall. She had parlayed her fame and generous settlement into a philanthropic empire, and no one enjoyed the social whirl that went along with her life more than she did.

Georgia hadn’t been a bad mother, but she certainly hadn’t been a conventional one, either. Caryn’s earliest memories were of her mother dressing her up to go out in Beverly Hills and Hollywood. Even as a little girl, Caryn understood that the well-dressed men who paid attention to her mother factored in their future. A relationship with a minor soap opera star led to an introduction to a European director who in turn introduced Georgia to a famous, if decades-older, film actor. By the time Caryn was in grade school, Georgia’s relentless social climbing had finally paid off, and she hit the big time.

Randall Carver in person was not the brooding, handsome screen hero that the rest of America knew. To Georgia he was a ticket to the life she’d always wanted for herself and her daughter; to Caryn he was, finally, a man she could start to think of as “Dad.” He came to her recitals and softball games when he was in town; he paid for her to switch from public school to an exclusive private academy. Even after he left Georgia for a twenty-two-year-old swimsuit model (she had been only two years older than Caryn) he continued to take her to lunch every few weeks. She received tickets to all of his premiers and invitations to every holiday at the home he now shared with his young wife and infant twins. And of course he paid for her college tuition and arranged a trust into which he had transferred enough money that she would never have to work unless she wanted to.

But as time went on, the inevitable happened: their lunches became less frequent, and she was not invited to be part of her stepfather’s children’s lives. Any dreams Caryn secretly had of siblings and big family Thanksgiving dinners dried up. When Georgia moved to New York, Caryn moved too, and by the time she had designed her first collection, her stepfather sent flowers and a note apologizing that he couldn’t attend in person. After that, they got together once or twice a year, usually when Randall was in New York, and when Georgia remarried five years ago—this time to a wealthy New York assemblyman with an eye on a senate run—Caryn promised herself that she’d never again allow herself to be lured into believing she might someday have a real dad.

All of that changed last week when Georgia called from the assemblyman’s retreat in the Hamptons.

“How’s Harry?” Caryn had asked politely. Her mother’s second husband, Harold Billings, could kindly be described as interesting, while the crueler wags had dubbed him Homely Harry. If he had a sense of humor, Caryn had missed it, but her mother seemed fond of him and he’d opened up entire new avenues for Georgia to enjoy the limelight. She’d even wondered out loud if she might not be perfectly suited to be the next First Lady of New York.

“Fine, fine,” Georgia said. She sounded distracted, but maybe it was due to the hour: she’d called Caryn just as she was emerging from her morning yoga class. Caryn was walking to her office through Central Park, enjoying the morning sun filtering through the trees along the paths.

“I’m looking forward to the gala,” Caryn said guiltily. “I’m sorry I’ve been putting off choosing a dress.”

“That’s nice, dear, but that’s not why I’m calling. I’m afraid I have bad news. Your father is dying.”

“Oh, no,” Caryn gasped, twenty years of memories of Randall surging in her heart. “I just spoke to him a month ago. He and Cleo were taking the kids to Bermuda. What happened?”

“No, no, not Randall. Your
real
father. Buddy Travers.”

The silence stretched on the phone line as Caryn absorbed the news. “Oh,” she finally said. “Well, thank God Randall is okay.”
 “Caryn Louise,” Georgia chided.

“I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t mean it like that,” Caryn said, wincing. “It’s just, Buddy has never been a part of my life. I’ve never even met him. You always said he wasn’t worth my time.”

Georgia had actually said a lot more than that: when Caryn was old enough to notice that other children had two parents, Georgia had breezily replied that she was busy finding Caryn a much better daddy than all the other kids had, to make up for the fact that the first one wasn’t any good—just as the week before, she had returned a faulty toaster to the store and replaced it with a fancier model.

Georgia’s explanation had seemed perfectly reasonable to Caryn. By the time she was old enough to question what exactly had been wrong with the man her mother had chosen to have a baby with, she had also learned that when Georgia didn’t want to talk about a subject, wild horses weren’t going to change her mind. The few details she managed to get out of her—Buddy Travers was a womanizing charmer who ended up being a no-account drifter and was probably either dead or in jail by now—hadn’t exactly encouraged her to go looking for him.

“Well.” Georgia’s voice sounded funny. “The thing is…I would hate for you to lose the opportunity to get to know him.”

“Get to
know
him? But Mom, he’s a cheat and a liar and a drunk. He never once tried to contact me. He doesn’t even care that I’m alive. You always said it was his loss, not mine.”

This time, the silence stretched even longer, until finally Caryn said “Mom? Are you still there?”

“Caryn, darling, there are maybe one or two little insignificant things I didn’t tell you about your father.”

Caryn braced herself, ready to hear that he was a convicted killer or a heroin dealer or any of a thousand other worst-case scenarios she had imagined whenever her curiosity got the better of her.

“He, um…well, he did actually send you several letters. In the past. The very distant past.”

“He
what
?” Caryn stopped so abruptly that a jogger nearly ran into her. She was standing on a little stone bridge over one of the paths, and she reached for the handrail for support. “Buddy tried to get in touch with me? And you never told me?”

“He gave up all rights to you after your birth,” Georgia said defensively. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed all over again. Most of the letters I threw away without even reading.”

“You—but—” A rush of emotion seemed to be taking the breath from Caryn’s chest. “How many times was this? How many letters did you throw away?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Caryn, don’t be dramatic. He stopped writing by the time you were in middle school. It’s not like he ever made anything of himself, either. He’s had the same stupid run-down bar for the last twenty years.” Georgia sounded cross, as though Caryn had been the one who’d interrupted
her
morning with a bombshell.

“Wait a minute, Mom. You knew where he was all along?”

“Well, yes, I’m sure I told you he was from a little dinky town in North Dakota. After he finally gave up on Hollywood, he went back home and bought a bar. I’ll text you the address and phone number, and you can give him a call. Only, sweetheart, please don’t let on that you know about his illness. I’m quite certain he doesn’t wish to talk about it.”

“Have
you
talked to him?” Caryn snapped.