The Truth about My Success (25 page)

The sheriff might get excellent TV reception, but it’s unlikely that she’d ever watched
Angel in the House
. Paloma lifted the story almost word for word, right down to the detail that the woman who gave her a ride into Dry River after she ran out on her boyfriend was wearing a blue hat and came from Indiana. The sheriff hadn’t believed the truth, but she believed that. The sheriff also believed that Paloma had no idea why she concocted such a cockamamie story about being a famous TV star who was kidnapped. “I guess I was still so mad I just said whatever came into my head.” The sheriff said she guessed so, and offered to let her call her folks on the office telephone. Paloma said it was OK, she’d text her boyfriend to pick her up; they’d had fights like this before. The sheriff didn’t seem surprised. Paloma apologized for being a nuisance and said she’d go over to the luncheonette to wait for her boyfriend. Instead, she got on the first bus to the nearest city with a Greyhound station.

Which makes the bus she’s now on the second bus Paloma has ever been on in her life. A weight presses against her a little more heavily; a head falls on her shoulder. Paloma shifts in her seat, trying to get away from the head and the weight, but she is already squashed against the window and there is nowhere to go. She sighs. It’s been a long day, and it looks as if it will be a long night as well.

The head, which smells like what a field of spring flowers would smell like if it were made in a chemical lab, belongs to Mrs Buckminster, who is travelling back home to Los Angeles. Mrs Buckminster had been visiting her son Farley and his family. Farley is a developer, his wife is a chef, and his children are small but remarkable. Mrs Buckminster has told Paloma all about them – at great length and in great detail – and now, exhausted, has fallen asleep. Surprising as it may sound, Paloma is grateful for Mrs Buckminster’s company. The ride in the back of the pick-up was unpleasant, the sheriff and her deputy were both unpleasant and scary, and travelling by yourself is terrifying if you’ve never done it before, which, unless you count taxi rides, Paloma hasn’t. The wait in the station seemed interminable. Everybody else seemed to be travelling in couples or families, or at least had people to wave them goodbye. She ate a candy bar and thought of Sunday night at Old Ways. They always have pizza on Sunday night. They put the tables in the dining hall together to make one large one and everybody eats together like a big family at Thanksgiving. There’s always a lot of laughing and fooling around.

Paloma’s stomach clenches like a fist around a straw. She’s never felt so alone in her life. Being alone is something she has been demanding for some time, but now that she is she can see its downside. She’s all by herself; all by yourself can be lonely. Which brings to mind another old saying: Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. When Mrs Buckminster asked her about herself, Paloma told her she’s a famous TV star. Mrs Buckminster smiled at her the way her television mother smiles at Faith Cross when she does something that only an angel would do. “No, I meant what are you doing now. Not what you want to be.” Paloma said she’s been working on a ranch. “Oh, so you’re a cowgirl,” said Mrs Buckminster. Paloma said yes.

It’s a long and uncomfortable bus ride back to LA – a journey that makes economy air travel look like a magic carpet ride in comparison – but Paloma didn’t have enough cash for a flight and she’s afraid to use her credit card. Credit cards can be traced. Besides, no one would think of looking for her on a bus; it’d be like expecting to find the President having lunch in McDonald’s.

She bought a phone so that she could call Jack Silk and have him arrange a press conference for tomorrow. Paloma isn’t used to thinking about how much things cost; she’s always just handed over a piece of plastic. Her father, her business manager, pays the bills. Indeed, she’s never even seen a bill, though she occasionally hears about them. Now, between the phone and the bus ticket, she has almost nothing left. Her hand touches the unused phone in her pocket. She can’t wait to talk to Jack. Just wait till he hears what Leone’s done. And when he finds out how she duped him… He’ll be horrified and outraged. He’ll insist on becoming Paloma’s guardian. Insist? He’ll
beg
her to let him take charge. Unfortunately, however, Paloma is going to have to wait to talk to Jack. Paloma doesn’t know Jack Silk’s private number. In fact, she doesn’t know anyone’s number – not even Maria’s or the landline at home. She never dials numbers, she just presses buttons. She could probably get a number for his office or even go there, but she doesn’t want to do that; she doesn’t trust his secretary. She’ll have to get his number from somewhere; from someone. Paloma doesn’t know about phone books, and if she did she wouldn’t know where to find one. So it’ll have to be a someone. Not Maria. She can’t risk going home.

Unless you’re counting her followers on Facebook and Twitter (who, really, are following a woman named Natalie who lives in Long Beach, since it is she who keeps the pages going), Paloma doesn’t really have any friends. Although she did have one. Until her mother found out and broke it up. Seth. She’ll have to go to him. He’ll know Jack’s number.

Mrs Buckminster snuggles against her, making the kind of deep, gruff, snuffling sounds you’d expect from a bear not a grandmother. Paloma stares through the window at the night, thinking of all the other things she’s missed besides Lula Hirschbaum’s party. It’s starting to rain.

Monday
morning arrives dark and scowling. The city is wrapped in curtains of rain and thunder rolls towards it from the mountains like a train. Oona’s mood when she wakes isn’t much better. Outside the wind moans and the trees rattle, but inside the house is tense with the silence of anticipation – as if it’s waiting to be attacked. For the first time, Oona is aware of the absence of Paloma Rose. Where is she? When is she going to show up? Oona lies there for a few minutes, barely breathing and listening for Paloma to start ringing the bell and banging on the door. Let me in! Harriet whimpers in her sleep, and Oona gives her a gentle shake. They tiptoe down the stairs. Oona puts on coffee and then she gets her rain parka and she and Harriet go for their walk. Usually, of course, she calls Abbot, no matter what the weather, but today she is watching every tree and bush and car and building, half-expecting to see a face very like her own looking back at her.

Leone doesn’t wake up in what could be called a good mood, either. Yesterday morning she was happy as a pig in mud, and now she’s about as happy as a pig on her way to the butcher. You’d think Paloma was psychic, picking now to run away from Old Ways, when so much depends on the interview with Lucinda – an interview that could mean the difference between permanent fame and permanent obscurity – to pull a stunt like this. “I’d swear she did it on purpose just to annoy me,” Leone mutters to herself as she marches into the breakfast room. Which does nothing to make her feel any better.

Oona is already there, drinking a coffee and staring out at the rain. She has, of course, been sitting here for a while, waiting for Leone with the patience of a fisherman. When she hears the sharp click of Leone’s heels, Oona turns, her expression as warm and friendly as a closed steel door. She skips the good morning. “So what have you done with Maria?” she asks. Now that she knows what she knows there’s no need to try to get along any more.

Leone doesn’t meet her eyes. “I haven’t done anything with Maria.” She puts her phone, her iPad and her notebook – the equipment of someone organizing a major event – on the table and continues on into the kitchen. “She wanted a few days off to help her cousin with the new bundle from heaven.” Leone says this last sentence with such casual sincerity that someone who doesn’t know her as well as Oona wouldn’t guess that she usually counts Maria’s hours the way a miser counts pennies.

“She didn’t say anything about that to me,” says Oona.

“Well, why would she?” Leone slaps a cup down on the counter. “You’re not her boss.”

“It’s the kind of thing she’d mention,” says Oona. “You know, because we talk to each other? And anyway, I thought you needed her. I thought you have to rebuild the house before the TV crew gets here.”

“Actually, darling, it’s probably easier to organize everything without having to stop every minute to explain things to Maria.” Leone lifts the coffee pot as though she’s testing its weight. “You know what she’s like.”

Of course Oona knows. Maria’s like the person who does everything in the house.

“You mean you’re going to do all the cleaning yourself?”

Leone sighs. Are all teenagers difficult, or is it only the ones she has to deal with? “If I have to, I can hire someone to blitz the place on Friday.” She comes back to the table, and sits to one side of Oona, not across from her. “If that’s all right with you, that is.”

“What about food? Who’s going to do the cooking?”

Leone’s smile could wither a rose. “This is the twenty-first century, sweetie. We have caterers.”

“But what about—”

“Excuse me.” Leone holds up the hand that isn’t gripping her cup. “I thought you wanted to be a vet, not a lawyer.”

“I’m just curious,” says Oona. “I came down for breakfast like usual and Maria was gone. It all seems pretty sudden if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask.” Leone touches her forehead. “And I think I may be getting a migraine. So, if you don’t mind, I could do without the cross-examination.”

Oona taps her spoon against her cup. “I didn’t know you get migraines.”

“It’s the weather,” says Leone. “All these thunderstorms. They play havoc with the electricity in your brain.”

Oona gazes at her with an expression that could be mistaken for concern. “I thought migraines were caused by things like stress and hormones.”

“That too.” Leone gets to her feet. “I certainly have plenty of stress dealing with you.”

Oona watches her go into the kitchen for another cup. “You really shouldn’t be drinking coffee, you know. Caffeine’s not good for migraines.”

“Thank you, Dr Ginness. But I didn’t say I had one. I said I thought I might be getting one.”

Oona’s still watching her with what might be concern – were Leone someone else, and she someone else, and the two of them on a different planet. “You’re coming to the studio, right?”

“I can’t, sweetie. I really can’t.” Leone waves at the tools of her trade. “We’ve less than a week to get ready. I have someone coming about flowers. And doing the carpets. And the caterer. And I have to get a new outfit. I’ll need at least half a day at the spa. So I’ll have to stay close to home.” A very small smile darts across her face. “I just hope I can trust you not to mess up without me.”

Oona finishes her coffee, saying nothing. She isn’t the one who can’t be trusted.

All the way to work, Oona stares out the window, her eyes sharp as new blades, looking for a girl standing on a corner who’s looking for her. The closer they get, the more her head flips from left to right and right to left, as if she’s watching a trapeze artist swinging across the road. But, of course, the acrobat is really Oona – who will catch her if she falls? When they reach the studio, she leans forward, searching the hive of fans and tourists, but there’s no one who looks as if she used to be on the other side of the security gate.

She calls Maria as soon as she’s alone in her dressing room.

Maria says she should have known that Leone was up to something. She wasn’t sure which surprised her more – that Leone gave her time off out of the blue like that, or that Jack Silk, who brought her the bag Leone packed, was able to find her cousin’s neighbourhood.

“It’s incredible,” says Oona. “Every single thing they told us and probably everything they told Paloma was a lie.”

“But are you sure?” Maria likes to hope that people are better than they often seem. “You didn’t misunderstand? Miss Paloma, she was very excited about this vacation. She said it was going to be just like being in Hollywood, only everybody would leave her alone.” Meaning Leone. She’d never been away from her mother before. She thought it meant that at last her parents were finally paying attention to her; not treating her like a little girl any more. “That is what she always say,” says Maria. “That Mrs Minnick won’t let her grow up. I thought she was going on some kind of cruise.”

“I misunderstood before,” says Oona. “I thought they were trying to help Paloma.” She can’t believe how gullible she’s been; not so much born yesterday as born two seconds ago. “But this time I haven’t misunderstood anything. They didn’t send her on any big-deal vacation, they sent her to a brat camp. I looked it up online.”

“A brat camp,” repeats Maria. “You mean like on TV? For children who are always getting into trouble?”

“Yeah. Like that.”

“
Dios mío
, why didn’t I think… after last time…”

“Last time?” They’re becoming echoes of each other.

“Sí, last time,” sighs Maria. “Just before she went away. When the police brought her home…”

This, of course, is the first Oona’s heard of Paloma Rose’s relationship with the LAPD.

“It wasn’t a good day,” Maria says, “but Mr Jack he fixed it again.”

So now it all starts to make a strange if unpleasant sense. Mr Jack fixed it again. It was never about Paloma, except in the sense that she was causing them problems.

“I know she was being a little hard to handle, but…” Maria’s voice trails off. She’s never been known to criticize the Minnicks – though that doesn’t mean that she couldn’t. She has never expected much of them, and in this, if in nothing else in life, she has never been disappointed. Which is why, despite the tantrums worthy of a Castilian prince, Maria has always felt sorry for Paloma. It’s not her fault she’s a spoiled brat and useless. You can’t blame a pup for howling if it’s raised by wolves. This time, however, Leone has managed to surprise even Maria. She thought before that Leone’s heart is small and hard; now she doubts that she actually has a heart, be it small as a gnat and hard as steel. Imagine treating your own child like that. “But I still don’t understand why they would lie like this. Why not just tell her? Everybody in Hollywood gets sent away somewhere at some time.”