Not in Her Wildest Dreams(41)

It was all perspective though. When you showed up to bail out a relative  early Saturday morning, it felt like the crater of doom.

The entrance was surprisingly busy. Friday night drunk-tank checkouts,  she assumed, passing more than one man wearing badges of dishonor  similar to the ones Sterling had been sporting yesterday.

Don't think about it.

She followed a female officer through a rabbit warren of hallways into a  centralized area free of natural light. It was crammed with three  desks, several filing cabinets, a photocopier, a dusty fax machine, and a  tired fichus.

She stopped beside an alcove where Britta and Cam sat on an ox-blood  vinyl-covered bench. Across from them was a counter littered with a  spattered coffee maker, a half-full box of sugar cubes, and a pile of  cellophane-wrapped cookies.

Britta's cheeks were wet with fat tears. Paige felt her knees give way. She sank down beside her.

Cam jerked to his feet, his one hand held out in protest.

"When did you call her? She can't be here," he said to Britta.

"I was looking for Lyle. Where is he?" Britta asked Paige.

"Never came home." It had been a brutal night, actually. She loathed  being alone in that house. Glancing up at Cam, Paige said, "When your  best friend phones and says her son is in jail, you come."

Cam ran a hand down his face, muttered curses. "The J.O. is going to  kill me. A young offender's identity is supposed to be kept strictly  confidential. Strictly."

"She's his aunt!" Britta said.

"She's an owner in the company."

"What's a J.O.?" Paige asked. "And what does this have to do with the factory?"

"Juvenile officer. Ours cracks heads when we get sloppy. She's really  tough. In a good way," he added with a glance at Britta. He scratched  his hair. "Seriously, you have to leave."

Paige ignored him and asked Britta, "What happened? Where is he?"

"Hanging himself with his shoelaces for all I know. They won't let me  see him. Is something missing from the factory? Money or something?"

"Money, yes, kind of, but it doesn't have anything to do with Zack."

"See?" Britta said to Cam.

"I can't do anything, Brit. They've called the J.O. When she gets here from Lasser, we'll straighten it out."

"Who arrested him? Who said he stole from the factory?" Paige asked.

"Zack did." Britta blew her nose.

"What?"

"He turned himself in for stealing."

~ * ~

The ringing phone woke Sterling. He came up on an elbow and pain crippled him into falling back onto his pillow.

His first sleep-dulled thought was that it might be Paige. Then he  remembered he was mad at her. He waited for the voicemail to take it so  he could decide if he wanted to call back.

It was probably his mother anyway. He wasn't interested in being berated for failing to coax his father into coming home.

Listening to the notes of his ringtone echo through the empty bedroom,  trying to work up the will to reach for his phone and see who was  calling, he noted how truly lousy he felt. Like roadkill. He hadn't  realized how much he'd grown used to waking up to sex-scented sheets and  a lazy satisfaction that went bone deep until it was replaced by the  ripeness of his hungover body and a sense of losing rudder control when  it came to steering his life.

Ignoring the sick knot in his gut, the pain in every tissue and cell of  his body, he rolled to reach his phone and saw it was Patty. He  answered.

"You sound like you've been drinking bourbon."

"Beer wasn't doing the job." He tried to find a position that avoided pressure on his scabbed shoulder.

"Oh, sugar, what's happening? Your momma drivin' you crazy? You'd best  get yourself back here. People are calling, you know. Hey, you said you  wanted a contract in Washington State? How ‘bout Northern Cal?"         

     



 

He closed his eyes, might have groaned a little.

"What. Did you find something else?"

"You could say that."

"Oh, no. You are not staying longer, Sterling. I told you not to eat the vitamins if your mother gave them to you."

He snorted, rubbed his face, wound up nudging a bruise. Damn, that was tender.

"Dad left Mom. I'm on deck for taking bag lunches to the lake house, delivering get-your-ass-home lectures."

"Well, you've heard enough of them in your day, I suppose you give a  good one. So what does it mean? You're there for a couple more weeks?"

The rest of my life. He didn't say anything as reality struck. What had he been thinking when he had said that?

"Ster?"

"Um, I don't know. It was weird. Dad and I argued and he kind of gave up  the reins of the company." Or I yanked them from his weary hands.

Sterling found a rough spot on the inside of his lip with his tongue, where a blow from Lyle had cut his skin against his teeth.

"Don't you think you're being snowed there, darlin'? That's what they always wanted, wasn't it?"

"Mom did, yeah." Had he played into her plan, then? Was he that stupid?

"Sweetie, I think I'd better come up there and stage an intervention.  You've told me a thousand times how living at home, running the family  business is, like, your biggest Stephen King-sponsored nightmare."

"Yeah." But it wasn't the reality of running the company that made him  squirm. It was the realization he hadn't made a conscious choice to do  it. He'd engaged in a power struggle without thinking through to the  consequences. That wasn't like him at all.

"Hon, you're not doing this to make your mother happy, are you?"

"No." Was he? "But if I can help them keep their marriage together,  well, it's not a crime to want to keep your father from bogarting the  exhaust pipe of the family car, is it?"

"It's really that bad?"

"No, he's not going to kill himself." He hoped. "But he's not happy. Certainly not up to running the company."

"So you're just shouldering the burden while he pulls it together?"

Sure. He'd go with that.

"And you're not actually living with your mom, right?" she asked.

"No, I'm pretty comfortable in this house." Despite the fact he'd torn  half of it apart. Which was a project he'd had no business starting, now  that he came to think of it, since it was a way bigger renovation than  he could have reasonably accomplished in the handful of weeks he'd  originally given himself. Really, what had he been thinking?

"She'll drive you nuts anyway."

"Mom? She does no matter where I live." He scowled at the water stains  on the ceiling tiles, not happy with the realization that he had  unconsciously moved back here without weighing all the angles.

"If you stick around too long, she'll think you're ready to find a wife and make grandbabies."

An electric jolt raised all the hair on his body. Through the fog of his  hangover, he went back to what he'd been ignoring since waking, what  he'd tried to tranquilize with alcohol since his father had said it  yesterday: A one-woman man. Built the same.

"Oh. My. God," Patty said into the silence.

"What? Hey, I'm just thinking about something."

"Someone. Tell me she's tall and blond."

"Who?"

"I don't know. You tell me."

"There's nothing to tell." He threw off the quilt, growing hot yet coated in a clammy sweat.

"Except that you're seeing someone."

Was. It hurt to breathe as he thought about watching a bottle smash  through his kitchen window. Thought about Lyle calling him lovesick, his  father accusing him of being built the same. Don't you want what we  have, son? Oh, Christ.

"Ster? Tell me about her. Does she look like me?"

"What? No. Why would you say that?" He scrunched his eyes shut,  accepting the accompanying pain as justified punishment for letting  himself be tricked into revealing there was anyone at all.

"I mean, is she a short brunette?" Her voice gurgled with excitement.

"No." Where was she going with this? "Not short-short. Slightly below  average height, I guess. And more like a blond-brunette. Maybe the  streaks are store-bought. Probably, since she didn't have them in high  school."

"You've been carrying a torch since high school?" Her tone hit a note  between shocked and gleeful. "Oh, that makes so much sense."         

     



 

"No!" He almost sat up, but an all-over flash of blinding pain pushed him flat onto his back again.

"You have so! Every woman you've ever turned your head for has been a short brunette. That's how we met."

"So I find short brunettes attractive. Sue me."

"No, it sounds to me like you were hard-wired by- What's her name?"

"I am not hard-wired for anyone. I make my own choices based on what I  want and what I can live with doing. If I happen to have a pattern for  dating a certain kind of woman, it doesn't mean anything."

"Whoa. Listen to you. Not sensitive at all, are you? Why haven't you  gone back for her before? Was she married or something? Hey, was she the  one in the paper that time- You know, in that local rag you have sent  from up there? Something to do with your dad's partner?"