“Let’s not get distracted by these wild insinuations,” RJ said. “Your town council has always worked hard to represent the best interests of the community.”
“Really?” Luke noted. “Is that why you’ve entered secret negotiations with Kemp Enterprises to sell them rights to bottle water from the waterfalls?”
The audience gasped.
“But those falls belong to all of us,” Val said.
“And any profit made from them would go into the town funds to help lower taxes,” RJ replied.
“Wait a minute, I never authorized that,” Walt said. “How can we be one of the Best Small Towns in America if we don’t have the waterfalls?”
“Come on, it’s just a tiny waterfall. We’re not talking Niagara Falls here, folks.” RJ tossed them his most congenial smile, but it didn’t have much effect.
The residents of Serenity Falls, at least those present, were looking seriously pissed off.
Luke couldn’t have been happier.
Well, yeah, he could have. But this unexpected turn of events made him smile. Having RJ on the hot seat for a change was satisfying. Not nearly as satisfying as hitting him would have been when he’d given Julia a hard time, but still . . .
“Serenity Falls is
not
for sale,” Walt stated.
“That’s right,” Edith agreed.
“Absolutely,” the Hinkler brothers said. They’d been on the town council since Nixon was president. They ran the local funeral home and had never really forgiven Luke for shooting out some of the lights from their sign.
“What happened to closing down Maguire’s because of the pornographic mural?” RJ demanded.
“That was before we heard you might be closing down the falls,” Mabel replied. “That’s more important. Besides, that woman didn’t look that naked to me.”
“You were in Maguire’s?” Alice sounded horrified. “You saw the mural?”
Mabel shrugged. “I had a hankering for some of Adele’s delicious sweet potato fries. No one makes them like she does, you know. Edith was there with me.”
Edith gasped and made quieting motions with her hands, which Mabel totally ignored.
“She also had a hankering for those fries,” Mabel rambled on. “And some English ale, she called it. You know how she is about that limey stuff.”
Edith looked like she might faint. “It was only one small glass,” she protested.
“That’s right,” Mabel agreed. “I’m not saying she’s a drunk like Alice’s husband is. Anyway, I think we should shelve this topic, too, because someone’s trying to open the door and get in here. We certainly wouldn’t want outsiders hearing our dirty laundry.”
“Or seeing it, either,” Mr. Soames added. “For the record, I vote no on that underwear thing. I say, if you’ve got it, flaunt it. That’s what the blue-footed boobies do.”
“So you understand my dilemma, right?”
Lucy the llama nodded and nudged Angel for another piece of banana.
Angel gave it to her while continuing her conversation with the animal. “I mean, if she’s going to find out who her father is anyway, then maybe it would be best if I was the one to tell her. Tyler made a point of warning me that Luke was close to getting the information. No, I’m not seeing him. I mean, obviously I did see him or he couldn’t have spoken to me. But it wasn’t deliberate. I mean, I was just out sitting next to that pine tree I was telling you about the last time I visited you. Anyway, with the warmer weather now, Tyler has resumed his Rollerblading ways. He couldn’t sleep and neither could I. So we chatted briefly. But that doesn’t mean anything is going to happen. I won’t let it. I’m determined to be an all-American mom to Julia.”
Lucy looked perplexed.
“Yes, I realize she’s thirty,” Angel said. “An adult. But I never was a serious mom to her. I mean, I never fit the mold, you know? So I’m proving a point to her—that I can be normal. I’ve had that awful job at the pancake house for weeks now. Yes, I know it’s bad karma to call the job awful. Instead, I should consider it a mere cosmic hiccup and a learning experience. But I get home and have to take a shower immediately to get the bacon smell out of my hair. But I haven’t said a word to any of the patrons there about clogging their arteries. I’ve kept perfectly silent. And I’ve dated that guy Phil several times now. I confess, I do like his sense of humor, but there is absolutely no chemistry there. You know what I mean?”
Lucy nodded.
“Anyway, thanks for listening. I didn’t mean to be unloading all this on you. I know you’ve got enough on your llama plate, what with trying to get pregnant and all. I don’t want you to feel pressured. I hope you’re settling in okay here? You and Ricky seem happy enough. But I sure do miss you both. Anyway, wish me luck tonight. I’m going to screw up my courage and give Julia what she’s wanted for weeks. The name of her biological father.”
Julia was having one of those days. The kind librarians write about in online blogs. Nothing was going right. All the copy machines on the premises had gone on the blink. The new teenage library clerk had mishelved three bookcarts’ worth of books who knew where. The library’s computer system was down for an hour, then up for ten minutes, down another hour, up five minutes, down two hours.
And then there was Luke. Julia was worried that she might have slipped up and revealed that she loved him that night last month when he’d created a prom experience for her.
The thing was, she couldn’t be sure if she’d just dreamt that or not. Her memory was hazy. Her mind and body had been so saturated with total satisfaction from making love to him. There was a chance she’d murmured the words before dozing off. Or maybe not.
She had yet to figure out what really happened. What she’d really said.
It wasn’t as if she could just casually say,
You know I dreamt I told you I loved you, but that didn’t really happen did it?
It would be like saying the words all over again and then he’d know.
Luke hadn’t said the words to her. She couldn’t say them to him. Not yet. She wasn’t like Skye, blurting out every word that came into her brain. At least, she usually wasn’t that way. But since she’d started sleeping with Luke, Julia had changed a lot of her old ways.
Still . . . telling him she loved him could be disastrous. Maybe he loved her. When he did things like create that prom for her, she believed he did.
Or maybe he didn’t.
She was trying so hard to just live in the moment instead of having a plan. And all the while, she kept silently questioning herself and who she was because of the fact that she had an unknown father out there somewhere.
And now, to top off her weird day, her mother walked into the library. “Are you coming home right after work?”
Noting the way her mother was nervously tugging on the bland beige windbreaker she wore, Julia became suspicious. “Why?”
“I . . . uh . . . have that information you’ve wanted for a long time. The name. But I can’t talk to you about it here.”
“No,” Julia immediately agreed, her stomach shot through with butterflies the size of T-Rexes. “Not here. I’ll come home right after work. Or I can leave a few minutes early. Now, in fact. Now is a good time.” She didn’t want her mother chickening out and changing her mind about revealing her father’s name. “Just wait a minute while I get my things.”
Julia told Patty that she had to leave early. “After a day like today, I don’t blame you. Go ahead,” Patty said. “We’ll cover for you.”
Ten minutes later, Julia and Angel were sitting in Julia’s living room. Her mother was still as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. “Would you like some tea?” Angel began before answering the question herself. “No, of course not. You just want one thing. The name. Oh, I uh . . . I got you this . . .” Angel reached around the corner of the couch to grab a box of Pop-Tarts. “I know they’re your comfort food.”
“You think I’m going to need comforting after I hear this news?”
“I don’t know about you, but I sure will,” Angel said. She coughed nervously.
“Maybe you should make some tea for yourself. Or I could do it,” Julia said.
“Would you? That’s sweet of you, but I can do it.” They both ended up heading for the kitchen. “You’ve been working all day.”
“So have you.” Julia put the kettle on the stove while Angel reached for her stash of tea bags and a mug.
“I only worked this morning. From five to noon. Then I went to visit the llamas. It’s so peaceful out there, driving along narrow country lanes behind clip-clopping black buggies driven by farmers wearing wide-rimmed black hats. And all the farms are so pristinely kept. It’s just such a serene landscape that it soothes the soul.”
They both were silent until the kettle boiled. Once Angel had her tea and Julia her trusty Pop-Tart, they headed back to the living room couch. Julia was surprised to notice that her mother sat very primly, ankles daintily crossed instead of her usual flowing, free style. And she was wearing khaki, as she did just about every day now, along with a white shirt. Gone were the colorful skirts in Indian cotton, the flowing tunics, the bells on her toe rings, the toe rings themselves.
As if reading her mind, Angel said, “I hope you’ve noticed the changes I’ve made over the past weeks. I’ve gone completely respectable. I’ve gotten a job, a normal job. And I’m seeing a normal man, very respectable. I’m dressing conservatively to fit right in with everyone else in town. I stopped writing letters to the editor of the
Serenity News
about the terrible effect on children’s health of having soda machines in the school cafeterias and how they should be replaced with fresh fruit stands. I also stopped writing letters about saving the Arctic Reserve from greedy oil companies, about protecting animal rights, about . . .”
“I never asked you to do any of that,” Julia interrupted her to say. “I only asked for one thing . . .”
“I know. You want the name of your biological father.” Angel took a deep breath. “Tyler thinks I should tell you.”
Her words stung. Angel was still talking to others about Julia, and it hurt that she appeared to value their opinion more than hers. “Did you ask Phil the dentist, too?”
“Of course not!”
“I thought you weren’t seeing Tyler.”
“I’m not. I ran into him one night in the park when he was Rollerblading and I was . . . never mind.” Angel wasn’t about to tell her that she’d been trying to soak up energy from a pine tree. “Anyway, Tyler merely said that I should tell you everything.”
“He’s right.”
“I know that now. But it isn’t easy.” Angel took several calming sips of tea while surreptitiously trying to study her daughter and gage her mood. Julia was sitting at the edge of the couch, turned toward Angel with anticipation. She was nervously nibbling on the Pop-Tart. Angel had hoped that giving her the junk food had earned her brownie points.
Angel took a deep breath in an attempt to encourage more life-force energy to flow through her lungs and entire body. She needed to view this event not as a terrifying ordeal, but instead as a speed bump on the path to mystic illumination.
Outside, the earlier threat of drizzle had turned into a steady downpour. The ping of raindrops hitting the windows created a strangely soothing sound affect for Angel.
The time had come. She was in a calm state of consciousness now.
“Your father’s name is Adam . . .” Angel began, and then the fear returned ten-fold. “Stop that. You need to let go of your negative thought flow,” she muttered to herself.
“His name is Adam . . .” Julia repeated. “Adam what?”
“Adam . . . Adam . . . K ... K ...”
“Adam Kaka?”
Angel shook her head and took a gulp of tea. The warm liquid helped relax her frozen vocal cords. Words came out in a rush. “Before I tell you, you have to swear to me that you’ll listen to the entire story, to everything I have to tell you about him.”
“I promise.” Julia didn’t like to see her mother so upset. That wasn’t her intent. It never had been.
“He’s ruthless, you know. Adam Kemp. That’s his name. He makes Donald Trump look like a wimp. I knew if he ever found out about you, he’d take you from me. He had the money and the power to do that. I had to protect you. So I didn’t tell you. I thought I’d tell you when you were eighteen, but you’d just started college and I didn’t want to upset you. So I pushed the deadline back to twenty-one, but you were frazzled with graduate school by then. And after that I just felt so guilty that I couldn’t work up the nerve to tell you until now. That was wrong of me.”
“Adam Kemp?” Julia repeated. “My biological father is . . . Adam Kemp?”
Angel nodded.
“But he’s . . .”
“Rich. Yes, I warned you about that. I didn’t realize he was rich when I first took up with him, of course. I already told you that. And he wasn’t as wealthy then as he probably is now.”
“He was on a recent cover of
Forbes
. He’s quadrupled his family’s net worth. Actually, it said his family was almost broke, that they’d invested unwisely, and would have been lost without him. That he’d actually broken off and started a company of his own, which is hugely successful. He’s got a new book coming out. The library has it on order.”
“You already sound like you’re impressed with him. Keep in mind that this man has bought dozens of companies and then laid off workers, putting thousands of people out of work. Is that something you think is a good thing?”
“Of course not. I’m just . . .”
“Stunned, confused, dismayed, and dazed?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Me, too. I think maybe we should break out the alcohol now,” Angel said. “What do you think?”
“Good idea,” Julia agreed.
Luke frowned at the sound of something hitting his apartment window. Was it hailing outside? He thought the earlier rain had stopped.
Abandoning the punching bag he’d been working out with, he moved to the window and opened it, only to quickly sidestep a handful of small stones. “What the hell?”