“Grandmom might squeeze me too hard.”
Melanie laughed. “She might.”
The plane landed and taxied to a stop. Melanie buttoned up her coat and Nicky’s and gathered his bag of toys and her purse. They made their way down the aisle, and then out of the plane and into the overly chilled air of a December day in the Midwest.
As they entered the terminal, it was her mother’s face she saw first. She was on tiptoe with her arm on her father’s, looking over the heads of the passengers who’d already stepped inside. She waved when she saw Melanie, and then her happy countenance turned to surprise when she saw that Melanie held the hand of a little boy.
“Well, who’s this?” Wynona Kolander said, cheerfully after she’d hugged Melanie.
“Hello, Melanie,” Herb said, planting a kiss on her forehead. “Made a new friend on the airplane, did you?”
“Mom, Dad, this is Nicky.”
Her parents smiled tentatively.
“Hello, Nicky,” Wynona said politely a second later.
“I had a visit a couple of weeks ago,” Melanie continued. “From Alex.”
Herb and Wynona had been looking at the boy but both popped their heads back up to look at Melanie.
“You saw him?” Wynona said.
“I did. For a few hours, anyway. He’s married now but I think he and his wife might’ve hit a rough patch and she left him. Or maybe she’s looking for buried treasure and he decided to join her. All Iknow is he didn’t stay. And he didn’t say where he was going. If I had to guess, I’d say I won’t hear from him again for a bit.”
“But…” Wynona gazed down at Nicky.
“He left Nicky with me. Nicky is his little boy. And he’s your grandson.”
For a second neither Herb nor Wynona moved so much as a muscle. And then Wynona was on her knees with Nicky in her embrace, Herb standing over them, touching his grandson’s head.
Melanie was quite certain she’d hear from Nicky that Grandmom had squeezed him way too tight.
They’d been at the house for a couple of hours playing with Nicky and Melanie catching her parents up on Alex’s visit, the details of the fire, the state of her stalled career, and the fact that she hoped she could stay for a couple of weeks—or more—when the phone rang.
Herb came back from answering it. “It’s for you, Melanie. It’s Irving.”
Melanie rose from where she’d been sitting on the floor of the living room with Nicky and her mother. They’d found a box of Alex’s old toys in the basement, and Nicky was happily playing with a shoebox full of little wooden race cars.
She made her way to the phone with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Melanie had told Irving where she was going and had made it pretty clear this was to be like a vacation from her Hollywood life, a time of introspection and a refocusing of her aspirations. If she wasn’t going to be a movie star anymore, what was she going to do with her life? She needed time away from California to consider such a challenging question. It was the reason she’d extended her trip. If Irving was calling, it was because itwas important enough to intrude on this set-aside time with her family.
And that meant it couldn’t possibly be good.
Melanie reached for the telephone in Herb’s office and picked it up, steeling herself to hear the reason her agent had called.
“Hello, Irving,” she said.
“Thank God you’re finally in a place where I could call you,” he exclaimed on the other end of the line. “Please tell me you’ve not had to surrender your passport.”
“What?”
“Tell me you have your passport.”
Carson and other, more notable blacklisted people had been forced to turn in their passports, but not everyone on the blacklist had. Melanie hadn’t.
“I still have it.”
“Hallelujah,” Irving said. “Listen. I’ve been doing a little scouting that I haven’t told you about because I didn’t want to raise your hopes just to see them crushed again. But, Melanie, I have news.”
