Amen, L.A. Read online

  Instead, I polished off the rest of my calzone and took another bite of bruschetta. “Can I ask you something else?”

  “Sure.”

  “How’d you get through it?”

  “You mean, with my mom?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Your mom and everything else, pretty much.”

  “Pretty much on faith,” she admitted, echoing how I had put it.

  “Faith,” I repeated. “That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

  She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “You’re right. It doesn’t. But if I’d paid attention to reason, I would have been out partying with Alex and Brett last night, too. I’ve earned it, I’d say.”

  She stared pensively out at the beautiful day and then around the patio at the beautiful people eating lunch. “I suppose faith never makes sense, really. It’s something your heart tells you is true. You can’t prove it, but you believe anyway. And sometimes, Natalie?” Her eyes met mine. “Sometimes faith is all we’ve got.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  When I drove home in record time—Sunday traffic in Los Angeles is pleasantly manageable—I had Mia’s cell number in my phone, and she had mine. It felt great. I had a new friend who—she told me as much—was opposed to drinking, drugging, smoking, and doing the deed, at least for herself. Before I arrived at the gate to Ricardo’s mansion, I got my first text from her.

  LOVED TODAY. SEE U THERE NEXT WEEK AND HOPEFULLY WED FOR MOVIE. CALL ME LTR.

  It was so thoughtful. She knew I’d be looking for her and would be disappointed if I didn’t see her. As for getting together before the next Sunday, a new Judd Apatow movie had just opened, and I figured that by midweek the rush to see it would be mostly over. We’d discussed maybe going to the Grove. I smiled at the thought, for two reasons. First, because two weeks earlier, I hadn’t had any idea what the Grove was. Second, if I was thinking about the movies, I had to be feeling better about life.

  When I reached the top of the driveway, I saw that we had a visitor; a black Range Rover was parked next to my parents’ Subaru. A vanity license plate announced to the world who was behind the wheel.

  KSTEVE. Kent Stevens. Father of Lisa Hot-for-Chad Stevens.

  Before I even shut down the Saturn, I guessed the sequence of events that had unfolded in my absence. My brother had gone to my father and told him what had happened the night before. My father had called my mother. They’d had a serious three-way yak. Kent Stevens had been summoned for a postchurch discussion, because my mom and dad believed that when kids were involved in something potentially dangerous—sneaking out to a high school party and making a video would fit that definition—not only did all the parents have a right to know, but it was the responsibility of other parents to tell them.

  I’m not saying this is right or wrong. I’m saying this is the way it is with them. I learned the hard way in Mankato, when I made the mistake of hitchhiking with my friend Shelby instead of calling for a ride. Someone in our church saw us and phoned my parents, who then called Shelby’s mom and dad. By the time I got home, all four parents were waiting for us. Big fun. Note to reader: if you live in a small town, you already know you can’t get away with anything.

  There was only one piece of the puzzle missing, I thought, as I closed the door to the Saturn. My folks liked to have all the players present at these kinds of crisis meetings, and I was definitely one of the players in this sordid passion play. Why hadn’t I been summoned? I checked my cell again to see if there was something I’d missed. Nope. I’d been left out of the loop somehow.

  Where would the summit be taking place? My best guess was the kitchen, so I decided to go around and in via the back deck so I could avoid the encounter group. During the day, the sliding doors were usually unlocked.

  That was the plan. It survived until I approached the deck and heard my mother and Kent Stevens talking.

  Now, I am not by nature an eavesdropper, but Kent was yakking so loud it couldn’t be helped. As for my mother, her own decibel level was a standard deviation above normal. In short, he was pissed, and so was she. As I listened, though, I was surprised to figure out that their mutual ire had nothing to do with my brother and Kent’s daughter. It was about church business. Normally, this would be of mere academic interest, but the kinds of threats Kent was making made it matter a lot more than that.

  “I’m giving you one more chance to reconsider, Marsha. I want the sanctuary and social hall a week from today for my niece’s wedding. I need it.” Kent said the word “need” in the same tone that a Mafia boss might use to say he needed his blackmail money paid immediately. Or else.

  “I know that’s how you feel, Kent. I’d like you to have it.” My mother’s voice was understanding but firm. “But they’re both booked. Alcoholics Anonymous is having their annual conference. We’ve donated the space, and they’re expecting a thousand people. A hundred of them are members of our church family.”

  “Then I’ll rent them other space for their damn meeting!” Kent was adamant. “This is my niece. She was going to elope. When my sister found out, she threw a fit. No daughter of hers is going to elope. You wouldn’t want her to elope, either,” he added. “You’d want her to have a church wedding.”

  “Of course I do. I wish I could officiate, too. But I’m booked to keynote at the conference. I’m sorry, Kent, but the space just isn’t available.”

  “Are you deaf? I just said I’ll rent them another place to meet!” Kent fairly exploded.

  “They don’t want another place to meet. They want our church, they reserved it, and they deserve to be in a house of God. From what I understand, you took part in the board vote that approved this rental. In fact, you voted yes.”

  I edged closer to the house, not wanting to be seen.

  “I don’t get it, Marsha.” Kent’s tone changed. He sounded almost regretful. “Stuff like this comes up all the time. Our last minister would have been happy to do this. We’ve always been a church that puts its membership first. A church that goes out of the way for its membership. I want Skyler and Paul to have a church wedding. In our church.”

  Silence. As if my mom was actually thinking about it.

  “I’m sorry, Kent. There’s nothing I can do.”

  Kent’s tone was light in response. “I understand your position, though you’re making it hard for me—which means it might be harder for your husband’s novel to become a film, or for Gemma to have a chance to be on my show, or any number of things. You understand that.”

  Shut the front door. He’d really take back the goodie basket unless Mom fell into line?

  Kent didn’t know my mother like I did. If he had, he would have recognized the venom in her voice when she responded with utter calm to his obvious threats. “You do what you need to do, Kent. I have to look at myself in the mirror in the morning.”

  The producer barked a short laugh. “So do I. Goodbye, Marsha.”

  The conversation was obviously over, so I hightailed it around the house and through the front door before Kent made his way back to his Range Rover. Now I had to decide whether to tell my mom that I’d overheard the conversation.

  As it turned out, I didn’t have to. She called for me as I reached the bottom of the steps to the second floor. “Nat! Can I talk to you for a moment?”

  I turned and trudged back toward her. She wore the same work clothes I’d seen her in at breakfast.

  “Natalie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sometime in the not-too-distant future, when you pick your beautiful career, please don’t try to be Harriet the Spy.”

  Yikes. She must have seen me as I eavesdropped. How?

  “Your shadow,” she said by way of explanation. “On the patio. Fortunately Mr. Stevens was a bit preoccupied.”

  I felt myself flush. “I’m sorry. I had no right to listen in.”

  My mom sighed. “If your listening in on that conversation is the worst thing that happens to me today, I’m in very good shape.” Sh
e shook her head and rubbed her eyes, though it was still barely afternoon. “Anyway, I’ll deal with Kent. Somehow. How was your morning?”

  “I didn’t even get into Alex’s room,” I admitted. “It’s like she had a cordon of her friends who decided their mission in life was to keep me away.”

  “What about after that?” she queried. “You just got home.”

  “I stopped by the church.”

  “Really.” My mom raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t see you in the sanctuary.”

  “I went to the chapel. I needed someplace quiet,” I explained. “That girl Mia I told you about? I saw her there. She decided to join.”

  “That’s great. If she’d like, I’ll give her a call when her paperwork comes through. Or even before. You’ll ask her?”

  I nodded. “I had lunch with her in West Hollywood. I really like her. I think we’re going to go to the movies this week.”

  “Is she fresh out of rehab too?” My mother gave me a look to say that she was just joking. I would have laughed if I hadn’t had the same thought at some point in the morning.

  “No. Totally clean-living. She’s pretty religious, actually.”

  I saw my mother relax visibly. Some kids might be annoyed that their parents took such interest in who their friends were, but I thought it was nice that she cared.

  “Well, have fun together,” my mother advised me. “Unless you’d like to stay home and babysit your brother for the next year.”

  I got the implication immediately. “He’s—”

  “Grounded,” she said. “For six weeks, not a year. I do give him some credit for climbing out his window and jumping ten feet to the ground, then hopping the fence at the bottom of the hill.”

  “He was highly motivated,” I pointed out.

  She nodded. “Yes, he was. Anyway, Nat, you did the right thing in having him tell us. I’m proud of you for that.”

  I swallowed hard, knowing the thing I’d done that she would not be proud of. “Thank you.”

  In our subsequent silence, the house was so quiet I could hear the ice maker in the freezer run through its cycle of dump cubes, fill with water, and reset.

  “Where is everyone?” I wondered aloud.

  My mom sighed again. “Your dad’s in his office, writing a treatment for the movie of his book that I just guaranteed is not going to be made, and about to get his world rocked when I tell him about the conversation you just overhead. Your brother is sulking in his room. You already know why his world is rocked. Your sister is sulking in her room, because the girl she thought was her new best friend was hitting on your brother, and she’s about to get her world rocked when she finds out that she’s not going to be on TV. And you?” She pointed at me. “You’re a social outcast for calling your dad for help to keep your new friend sober. Worlds rocked on all fronts. Including my own, I might add.” She rubbed her eyes and pressed at her temples like she had a headache. “Yesiree,” she went on. “Shelton family’s debut in their new home? Big success.”

  I had nothing to add. She was right.

  She rubbed her eyes again. “I’d better get to work on next week’s sermon. I’m sure Kent will be out there grading it. He’s probably on the phone right now to the church board.” She reached out and put a hand on my left shoulder. “Natalie, sweetie? I take back what I said before. Harriet the Spy might be a better career choice than minister of the Church of Beverly Hills. Now, excuse me. I have to go write the sermon of my life.”

  I watched as she headed for her and my dad’s room. I knew that in fifteen minutes, she’d be in her favorite sweats, sprawled on the floor with yellow legal pads around her.

  She hadn’t gone more than ten feet, though, when her cell rang. She stopped and dug it out automatically, then smiled when she saw the caller ID. “It’s from Mankato,” she declared. “Donna Thiessen.” My mother mustered more enthusiasm than I’d heard from her all day in her greeting to our old friend. “Donna! It’s so great to hear from you!”

  I started to move away, to let my mom have some privacy—especially after my earlier listening in—but she motioned for me to stay. I found myself again party to a conversation that was not my own, this time one where I had to fill in the ellipses in my mind.

  “Yes, yes … everyone’s well,” my mother told Donna. “We’re—we’re okay.… Uh-huh.… Yes, you said something about that last time.… Uh-huh … Yes … I told you I wasn’t … It’s that bad with the new minister, is it?”

  My mother edged against a doorframe as I paid close attention.

  “Uh-huh … no hope, really? But maybe if you gave him more time …” She was silent for quite a long time after that. As Donna talked, Mom nodded thoughtfully, completely engrossed.

  So was I, because I got the gist of what Donna might be talking about. I remembered that the last time she’d called, she had wanted us to come home to Minnesota. This seemed like the same conversation, only more intense. The difference was that where my mom had been emotionally for the last call might not be where she was now. In fact, I knew it wasn’t.

  “Uh-huh … Uh-huh … I’m flattered that you’d try again, Donna. I’m not saying yes, and I’m not saying no, either. I think I owe it to the rest of my family to discuss this offer with them. Now, you’re sure about this? … Got it. You’re sure.… Well, you’ve given us all a great deal to think about. Goodbye, Donna. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

  She clicked off. “You got what that was about.”

  “I did.” My mouth was dry. Very dry.

  My mother nodded thoughtfully. “Well, I have a sermon to finish, and then this family has a decision it has to make. We came here as a family; we’ll decide this as a family. Family meeting. Eight o’clock tonight. To decide whether to go home. Tell your brother and sister. Tell them to think about this like they’ve never thought about anything else in their lives.”

  That was it. My mom went into her bedroom, and I drifted into the kitchen, taking a Red Delicious apple from the fruit bowl and polishing it with the bottom of my shirt just for something to do.

  I was stunned. There was an actual chance that we would be going back to Minnesota. How did I feel? At that moment, alone in the kitchen, with my sister sulking, my brother sulking, my mother overworked and browbeaten, and my father about to get his heart broken, with my new friend in the hospital and me a social outcast, how did I feel? I had a chance to go home. How do you think I felt?

  Yes. That’s how I felt. Once again, I knew exactly what I needed to do.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I was going to see Alex, and no guardians of the gates of hell in designer clothes, also known as Alex’s friends, were going to stop me.

  That didn’t mean I couldn’t use backup. So before I drove back to Cedars-Sinai, I stopped and talked one more time to Shep. He was so ticked that I hadn’t been able to see his sister that he called the nurse’s station and told them in no uncertain terms that whenever Natalie Shelton came to the hospital, she was to be escorted into Alex’s room, and any other visitors were to be escorted out. He might be under house arrest, but he was still Alex’s legal guardian. If he heard that his instructions were not being followed, they’d hear from his lawyer.

  As it turned out, none of that was necessary. Either the Brooke squad was on a late-lunch-and-drinks-at-the-Ivy break, or they’d simply had enough. The hall outside Alex’s room was empty, and her door was open.

  I peered inside. No one was there beside Alex. She was sleeping, so I shuffled in as quietly as I could. I’d brought with me once again both the photograph of her parents and Twitch the rabbit. As I entered, I tried to figure out where to put them. I decided to lean the photograph on the nightstand so it faced her, and arranged the stuffed rabbit next to her head, on the pillow.

  When they were in place, I looked at Alex. Really looked at her. Her hair was pulled back off her face in a ponytail. Without makeup, she appeared no older than fourteen. A battered fourteen. There was a bruise on he
r left cheekbone and another above her right eye, probably from the airbag that had to have deployed at the moment of impact. An IV drip ran into her right arm; there was an oxygen monitor clipped to her manicured right forefinger. Her color was better than I’d expected for someone who’d just had her spleen removed. I smiled ruefully at the thought of that. She wasn’t going to be happy with the scar on her abs.

  “Alex?”

  I breathed her name as softly as I could, watching the consistent rise and fall of her chest under the thin blue hospital blanket and sheet.

  No answer. She was really sleeping, not just resting in the twilight zone from the pain meds that had to be dripping through the IV.

  I tried one more time, in case she was on the verge of coming back to the world. “Alex?”

  Nothing.

  Crap. This would have to be a monologue—a monologue that probably wouldn’t even register with her. I needed to do it anyway. I just wasn’t sure if it was for her or for me. Maybe it was for both of us. There was an ugly blue plastic chair near the window. I quietly retrieved it and sat by her bedside.

  “Alex? It’s me. Natalie. This is the second time I’ve come to see you. I want you to know that there are lots of people who care about you, who’ve been here, too. I saw your brother twice today. He’s not allowed to come to the hospital, or else he’d be here all the time. He loves you so much.

  “Chloe is fine at camp. Shep thinks you should call her in a day or two, tell her that you were in an accident but that you’re going to be fine and she should just enjoy the summer. So don’t worry about her.”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. What else?

  “I am so, so sorry about last night. I blew it. I said I’d help you stay sober and I didn’t. I’m well aware that if you were awake, you would say I was being ridiculous, that what you did was of your own free will, and that I ought to just shut up. I know you. I still got caught up in my own drama and let you down. I’m sorry for that, and I’ll always be sorry. I hope that you can find a way to forgive me.”