“Terrific. Let me just get our stuff.” He turned to the boy. “Stay here with Auntie Mel while I get our things, Champ.”
Alex peeled his hand away from the little boy and walked swiftly back to the car. He reached into the back seat for a suitcase, a canvas grocery bag full of what looked like toys and stuffed animals, and a battered black guitar case plastered with stickers.
No violin.
A momentary ripple of disappointment pulsed through Melanie at the notion that the surprise visit was going to be short. The suitcase wasn’t that big, little more than an overnight bag. Alex hadn’t brought much with him—unless what he had in his arms now was all he had? No matter if it was. Whatever Alex or his son lacked, Melanie would find a way to get it for them. She looked down at the little boy.
“Hi, Nicky. It’s very nice to meet you.”
He smiled at her then, big and wide, and held up his right hand with all the fingers spread out. “I’m five!”
Alex was laughing as he returned to them. “Tuck in that thumb, Champ. You’re not five until February.”
Melanie reached for the toy bag to lighten Alex’s load. “I’m so glad you’re here. I can’t even tell you how much.” The isolation from earlier that day was already falling off like a tossed shawl. Tears of joy were pooling in her eyes. Yes, she had a million questions. But Alex was here. Alex.
She blinked the tears away as she led them inside the house and apologized for there being only one guest room.
“I can take the couch in the living room if you want to sleep in my room and we can give Nicky the guest bed,” she said.
Alex waved the offer away. “You don’t have to do that. Nicky and I can sleep in the same room. We have lots of times.”
The suitcase, guitar, and bag of toys were brought into the pristine guest room, and Melanie turned on a bedside table lamp and noticed the stickers on the guitar case were from places around the world: London, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Rome, Florence, Madrid. So many places.
“Pretty nice digs, Nellie,” Alex said, breaking into her thoughts as he surveyed the room. “Is the person who owns this place rich or something?”
Melanie didn’t know much at all about the Gilberts other than they were in Cairo. Maybe Mr. Gilbert did have money. She didn’t care if he did. There was more important information she was craving at that moment.
“Alex, where have you been? Where’s BJ? And how did you find me?”
The questions would have kept coming if Alex hadn’t held up a hand.
“How about if we have a bite to eat and I’ll tell you everything. We’re starving, so I hope you’ve got food in the house. We’d be happy with peanut butter toast. Or just the toast. Anything, really.”
“Sure. Of course.”
“Okay. Just show us where the bathroom is and we’ll be right out.”
Melanie led them to the guest bathroom down the hall and then went into the kitchen. She pulled out the beef-and-noodle casserole that Eva had put together earlier that day for her supper and put it in the oven, and then opened a bottle of red wine. She was setting the wine bottle and two long-stemmed glasses on the kitchen table when Nicky and Alex, carrying a cigar box brimming with plastic soldiers, joined her. They took seats at the table and Alex dumpedthe soldiers on the floor by their feet so Nicky could play while they sipped the burgundy and waited for the casserole to heat up.
“California is amazing,” Alex said as he leaned back in his chair and kicked off his sandals. “Seventy-five degrees the week before Christmas! This is like paradise. I actually saw someone watering their lawn here.”
“Yes, it’s often warm here in December,” Melanie said absently. She did not want to talk about the weather. “There is so much I want to know, Alex. I don’t even know where to have you begin.”
“Well, first off, you won’t believe how I found out you were here,” Alex began. “Get a load of this. I was in New York last week—no, more like the week before that—and I was already wondering how I was going to find out where you were living. I’d called the house where I knew you were before and—was it a Norine who answered?”
“Nadine.”
“Yeah, so she answered and said you’d moved out and she didn’t know where you were. Not back to Omaha, she knew that. Anyway, so I’m in New York because an actress friend of mine has a part in a play on Broadway. So she gets me a ticket and I go, and guess who’s starring in the same show she’s in? That Carson Edwards fella you made the movie with.”
Melanie had been about to take a sip from her wineglass but she paused with the rim an inch from her lips. “You saw Carson?”
“What? No. I didn’t see him. But I did see my friend after the show and we went out for drinks and she told me she’s stayed over at his place a couple times and—”
Melanie set the glass back down on the table, a little too hard. A blip of crimson sloshed out of it and landed on the table. “She’s stayed over at his place a couple times?”
“I guess so. Anyway, this Edwards guy told my friend you’rehiding out in Malibu. I figured this beach town can’t be that big so I decided I’d come out and drive around ’til I found you. It’s bigger than I thought. But we found you!”
Melanie pressed a paper napkin to the splash of red wine and concentrated on repeating the wordsIt doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matterin her head. She didn’t love Carson; he didn’t love her.
