The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [91]
Brad pushed her hand down. “Annie, Jesus! You don’t want to be flashing that kind of wad!” Holding the money beneath the table’s edge, he looked at it. “You back to the poker?” Annie had played a lot of cards at Annapolis and had invested all the winnings in IRAs that Brad’s divorce lawyer wanted “put on the table” of their settlement. Brad said, “You didn’t use to carry so much cash.”
She shrugged. “People change.”
“I guess. These VIPs we jet around never carry a cent. They are living the sweet life. But I tell you this, doesn’t buy happiness.”
“I thought you were sure it did.” Annie glanced at his hand. He still wore the thin gold band she’d put on his finger at their wedding. It seemed a long time ago.
“No,” he insisted, “Money can’t buy you love.” Brad said he had just sold a jet to a gorgeous country-western superstar who had confided when he’d taken her on a test-flight that her whole life was miserable. “All that gold dust was just sand in her eyes.”
“Is that one of her songs?”
“No, I made it up.” He added, “Mama Spring likes to meet the big names. I hate to disillusion her with how fucked up they are.”
“Your mom sent me a Christmas card.” Spring Hopper stenciled her own holiday greetings and had mailed one to Annie, signed “Mama Spring.” In her note was the news that Brad was “seriously involved” with the daughter of a friend. “She said you were seriously involved with a friend’s daughter.”
“Who? No, I’m not.” He frowned. “Mama Spring’s having trouble. It’s angina.”
“I’m sorry.” The tasteless coffee reminded Annie of all the cups of coffee she had stared into, day after cold winter day, in the first months after she’d left Brad, when she’d awakened at four in the morning and had sat playing solitaire until dawn released her. She pushed aside the coffee and stopped herself from wondering if he had slept with the unhappy country-western star to whom he’d sold a jet. To her surprise, the prospect didn’t hurt that much. Wasn’t such a revelation in itself worth the whole flight to St. Louis? She no longer wanted to choke Brad. It was a great relief.
He was saying, “Yeah, and my sister Brandy’s doing totally okay. Sam told you about her twins?”
No, Sam hadn’t mentioned it and the news gave Annie a strange spasm behind her breastbone. Once, shortly after they’d married, she had thought she was pregnant. Brad had been terrified by the prospect.
“Boys,” he grinned. “Back in February.”
She nodded, forcing cheerfulness into her voice. “Twin boys, wow. Tell Brandy congratulations. Funny, we used to wonder if you and I’d have twins—your grandmother and you being a twin—and here they are. Twins. I told you Brandy would have kids before we did.”
He didn’t remember that either. It was as if they had traveled through their marriage in separate tunnels under the sea, parallel but invisible and inaudible to one another. He was holding his wallet open to show her a picture of two fat little blond babies in blue knit jumpsuits. “Brandy had a rough time last winter. She woke up Christmas Day and Dylan had left her.”
“Left her?” Annie was shocked. Her sister-in-law’s husband had always seemed too passive to choose a piece of chicken off a platter, much less desert his wife on a major holiday.
“But hey she’s got her kids.” Brad pointed at the fat babies. “That one’s named Bradley for me and that one’s Bobby. Cute?”
“Very,” she agreed. “Brad, Brandy, Bradley, and Bobby. Now if you ever have twin girls, will they be Babs and Brenda?”
Hurt by her sarcasm, Brad closed the wallet. “Family’s why you come home. We shoulda had some kids, babe.”
She looked away.
“Not too late.”
“Yes it is.”
“I’m never going to stop loving you.”
She didn’t want to argue with him about whether he’d ever loved her at all. She changed the subject. “So your mom’s basically okay though?”
He flipped the wallet back open