“A car-switched lanes. Cutting me off. Nothing I could do. I saw him barreling toward the tollbooth. Boston drivers…” He pauses, and I can see his hands clench into fists.
Sirens approach. The cops.
“Did you get any identification? Of the car?” I ask. Just making sure. “License plate? Make? Color?”
“No,” Ross begins, “I-”
“It was a blue car.”
Gabe, still holding Franklin’s hand, is standing on one foot, then the other. “Like my Matchbox car, Daddy,” he says. “I saw it.”
Two state troopers are out of their cruiser, doors slamming, almost before the gray and black Crown Vic comes to a halt. Hulks in stiff steel-blue uniforms, opaque sunglasses, massive leather belts armored with weapons, high-polish boots, they stride toward us, shoulder radios squawking static.
Gabe takes a step back, mouth open, then runs to his father, his little arms circling one blue-jeaned leg in a death grip, his face buried in his father’s thigh.
“Everyone all right here?” One trooper’s embossed metal nametag says Scott Maguire.
Maguire, I say to myself, remembering it. Again, better to be safe.
“We’re fine, Officer. We just need a tow truck.” Ross says, smoothing Gabe’s hair. He smiles at me, then points. “And I need my daughter back.”
“It’s for your own good, I promise you.” I’m on the floor, on all fours, pleading. “No, not you, Franko. I’m talking to Botox.”
I’m finally back at my apartment. As I predicted, the producers spiked the hit-and-run story, so we dutifully stashed the accident video in our archives and split. Two hours of overtime pay for J.T., two hours of unrecoverable Josh-time for me. But on the way home, in one of those everything-happens-for-a-reason kind of moments, the whole crash thing gave me a potentially brilliant idea. Now, with the phone clamped between my shoulder and my cheek, I’m trying to explain my brainstorm to Franklin and coax Botox into the cat carrier at the same time. She made herself heavy when I picked her up, then twisted out of my arms and is now glaring at me from under my dining room table. She’s bitter. Slashing her calico tail. Daring me to make a move to grab her.
“Hang on, Franklin, I never should have hauled out the cat carrier. She despises it.” I pause, clamber to my feet and peer at her, glaring back. “I’m going to leave you, you know. And you’ll hate that even more. No, not you, Franko. The stupid cat.”
Franklin is already home, probably already cuddling with his adorable Stephen. But me? I’ll never get to Josh’s house. And though Josh is used to my excuses for being late, “the cat was hiding,” though true, is not the most compelling.
And I still have to tell Franklin my idea.
“So here’s the scoop,” I say. “And maybe we can pull it off in time for the February ratings book.”
Before I can begin, Franklin interrupts to tell me what I already know. We’re working a solid lead on phony organic food.
“And Charlotte,” he says. His leftover Mississippi drawl always makes my name sound charmingly like Shaw-lit. He’s the only one, besides my mother, who never calls me Charlie. “February is looming, less than a month away. You want to switch gears now? What if it falls through?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I reply. He’s such a Boy Scout when it comes to rules and schedules. “But this could be big. Listen. Spend one hour thinking about it. I vote-let’s risk one day on it. Maybe two. Hear me out. Just briefly.”
“It’s your funeral,” Franklin says.
I stick my tongue out at the still-unreachable Botox, head down the hall to my bedroom and begin throwing clothes into a suitcase. “You know Declan Ross’s car? It was recalled, right? And he got it fixed. But how many people just ignore those recall notices? Don’t bother to take their cars to be repaired? And how many of those cars are still on the road? They’re like-time bombs, you know?”
I scout my closet, listening while Franklin, reluctantly at first, agrees I might be on to something.
“And you know, I see what you mean, Charlotte. All we need is a few victims,” he says. “People who bought used cars with open recalls. And what if they got hurt?”
“Uh-huh,” I say. Part of my mind is in the closet. Black suit for work tomorrow. Sweatpants for tonight. Sweatpants? On the other hand-I dig into my dresser and find a gauzy black nightgown, still wrapped in hot-pink tissue paper. If not tonight, when? Into the suitcase. Now for my perfect jeans. I scrounge into the closet, dragging clear plastic hangers across the metal rod, one after the other. The jeans are not there. I scrape through the hangers again. Nothing.
Are my jeans at Josh’s? Half my stuff has already migrated to his house in Brookline. Half my stuff is still here in my condo on Beacon Hill. I just don’t know which is where. I have two toothbrushes. Two complete sets of contact-lens solutions. Two hair dryers. Leading a double life is increasingly complicated. And expensive.
Franklin continues, having snapped up my story bait so completely he’s now content with my scattered uhhuhs. “If we search through the files at the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration and demand records and documentation…”
“Uh-huh.”
He’s hot on the trail. But I’m suddenly distracted by my third finger, left hand. For better or for worse, my life is about to change.
I plop onto the bed, listening to Franklin with half an ear, awash with uncertainty. We may finally have a good story for the February ratings: how many dangerous recalled cars are still on the road? But for the first time since I can’t remember when, I’ve realized our sweeps story is not my top priority.
What if that’s a life-wrecking mistake?
Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. It already happened to me once. And once to Josh. What if I’m panicking now, freaking out at age forty-seven? What if I’m tossing away twenty years of television? Sometimes when you try for everything, you wind up with nothing. But if you don’t try, you could also end up with nothing.
In the news business. And in real life.
“Okay, Franko, glad you think it’ll work,” I say. “We can hit Kevin with the idea first thing tomorrow. And maybe wind up doing some good. Give my love to your adorable Stephen.”
I click off the phone. With a snap of the locks, I pack my fears away, slam my suitcase closed and head down the hall to give Botox another chance. This will work. I can make it work. A job. And a husband. Watch this, statistics guys. I’m going to have it all.
Chapter Two
“Clink me again, Daddo. Clink me again, Charlie Mac.” Penny’s crystal glass is full of ginger ale, ours of champagne. My giggling stepdaughter-to-be is more interested in toasting than taking a sip.
Not me. I’m on my second fizzy glass of Veuve Clicquot and I’m delighted there’s more where that came from. It’s not every day you have to inform an unpredictably prickly preteen you’re going to be her stepmother, move into her house and sleep with her father.
We didn’t actually go into that much detail. And we still haven’t set the date. But Penny-nine going on sixteen-knows the score. She came back from Walt Disney World with cropped hair, pierced ears and a vocabulary that includes incomprehensible abbreviations and unknown (to me at least) pop music stars.
Happily, she says she’s “cool” about our plans. She tried on my ring, performed a spot-on walking-down-the-aisle imitation, then ran off to call her new after-school babysitter and instant role model, Annie Vilardi. Annie’s a Bexter senior, and suddenly her word is inviolable. Now Pen’s back clinking faux champagne. Annie-fied, she’s part little girl, part prom queen.
“So, pumpkin, you think you’d like to be in a wedding? The flower girl? You think you and Charlie Mac might be able to shop for a dress?” Josh scrabbles Penny’s spiky new do and smiles at me over his glass.