ON SATURDAY, FOR the first time since she’d met Jeremy, Brooke drove herself out to Hidden Oaks. Jeremy had insisted he come to pick her up, but she had said, “That’s silly. I’m perfectly capable of driving a half hour.”
She wasn’t able to take in the countryside, as she had during her last trip into the Lowcountry residential area, but she saw enough today to wonder at the beauty of it all. Magnolias were beginning to blossom. Spanish moss hung like fairy’s wings from the old oak trees. The South in early June was a beautiful place to be.
Brooke enjoyed the drive, although there was no way she could imagine ever moving into this remote rural area. She liked being able to walk a couple of blocks to get a deli sandwich or a soda. The closest movie theater was three blocks away from her condo. Some of the city’s best hotels were also within walking distance, and Brooke often strolled by them and just took in the old charm that was her home city. For sure, lots of land, open spaces and warm, humid air were nice for a person with children, but not for Brooke Montgomery. She was all about the city, and couldn’t foresee giving up the conveniences she’d grown used to. Not even for… She stopped the thought before it fully formed. As much as she’d come to admire and like Jeremy, there was no way either one of them would consider a relationship. There were just too many obstacles between them.
Thinking of Jeremy’s children, Brooke experienced a moment of anxiety when she pulled into the circular drive in front of his house. She wasn’t concerned about Cody. They had made inroads into a comfortable relationship the last time she’d been here. But Alicia. That was another story. She’d pretty much given her word to Jeremy that she would try to communicate with the girl, which explained why Brooke had been up until the wee hours last night studying experts’ advice on grieving children and how to help them. Not that any of it would work. Hopefully, Alicia would give her a chance to try what she’d learned.
Jeremy came out his front door when she turned off the engine of her car. If he was upset about her critique on Wednesday, he hid it well. He wore a cotton shirt with a print of various Lowcounty trees on it and beige shorts that fit him just right. Brooke sighed. Whether in a suit or casual outfits, Jeremy could wear clothes.
He smiled as she got out of her car in a lemon-print sundress and yellow sandals. She walked around her car and he gave her a quick kiss on the lips. Was this going to be the usual way of greeting each other? She wondered. If so, she didn’t believe she’d complain.
“You look great,” he said. “Did you bring your swimsuit?”
“No, I did not,” she said. “We are working today, remember?”
“I remember, but the kids are here, so I’m doing double duty as anchor trainee and daddy-man. Hope that’s okay.”
“We’ll make it work. We can get a lot done if you’ve planned activities for the kids.” She looked across the expansive front yard and off to the side of the wraparound porch. She didn’t see any children. “Where are they?”
“Upstairs changing into their bathing suits. I’ve already given them lunch and told them they could swim while we worked on the patio. Have you eaten?”
She checked her watch. Eleven o’clock. “No, but that’s okay. I’m not particularly hungry.”
“No worries,” he said. “Marta left fruit, cheese and crackers for us before she went off to do some shopping. I don’t think we’ll starve. Can I get you a glass of wine?”
“At eleven in the morning?” She laughed. “I think I’ll pass. But iced tea would be great.”
He walked her to his front door and through the entryway and great room to a sunny area with floor-to-ceiling windows. The last time she’d been here, she hadn’t seen much more of the house than the kitchen, which had been a disaster.
“You can go on out,” Jeremy said. “I’ll bring the tea.”
She sat at a patio table and opened her iPad where she’d typed up her notes from Wednesday. She and Jeremy simply had to buckle down today.
“Hi, Brooke,” a voice hollered from the door to a cabana bathroom. Cody came outside, a towel over his arm and swim rings on his small biceps.
“Hey, Cody. Good to see you again.”
She must have been staring at the safety rings on his arms because he squeezed one and said, “I’m not going to need these much longer. I never learned how to swim in Colorado, but Marta takes me for lessons once a week now.”
She smiled. “Where’d you swim in Colorado?”
“At the Y. But Mom didn’t take me much. She said it was always too cold. I like it here better.”
“I’m glad you do,” Brooke said. “South Carolina is a great place to do outdoor things.”
“I’m going to get in the pool now. I want to get the whale raft before Ally takes it.”
“Okay.”
He started down the steps. “Will you watch me? Daddy says somebody has to do that for now when I’m little.”
“No problem.”
Cody was a ray of sunshine with his curly blond hair, slightly sunburned cheeks and dolphin-covered swim trunks. He seemed to be adjusting to the loss of his mother, but Brooke’s heart still ached for the emotions he must be dealing with inside.
The cabana door slammed shut a second time, and Alicia came outside. Only three years older than Cody, she could have been a model in a Macy’s magazine. Her pink bikini with matching half skirt tied around her waist and round sunglasses with pink lenses seemed to be the latest fashion. Her flip-flops, decorated with imitation colored stones, slapped against her feet as she walked by Brooke without speaking. Her dark blond hair was tied in a ponytail.
“Hi, Alicia,” Brooke said.
The girl stopped, turned around. “Oh, hi. I’m getting in the pool. Daddy will want you to watch us until he comes out. I think it’s silly—”
“He’s out,” Jeremy said, walking to the table with a tray in his hand. He placed a glass in front of Brooke and then another in front of an empty chair, which he soon filled. “Be careful, you two,” he said to his kids. “No roughhousing.”
“I noticed Ally spoke to you this time,” Jeremy said to Brooke. “That’s an improvement.”
Brooke didn’t respond. She doubted Alicia would have spoken if Brooke hadn’t first. But, okay, it was an improvement.
“You didn’t say anything to her about me talking to her, did you?” Brooke asked. She didn’t want Alicia to be on pins and needles thinking she was going to get a lecture.
“No. That has to be a spontaneous thing when you think the time is right. I trust your judgment.”
If only you were putting your trust in anyone but me. Brooke adjusted the iPad so both she and Jeremy could see it. “Shall we start?”
* * *
THE TOP OF the iPad screen didn’t alarm Jeremy much. Comments for Jeremy. That could mean anything—good or bad. But the first comment shocked him into preparing himself for what was to come.
“Flat voice?” he said. “You thought my voice was flat?”
“Well, yes, for the purposes of WJQC, at least. Another station might feel differently.”
She was doing her best to deliver a crushing critique under a sheen of politeness.
“Brooke, a flat voice is a flat voice, no matter what microphone picks it up.” He shook his head. “I always considered myself the locker-room cheerleader for the Wildcats, saying things like ‘come on guys, more effort’ or ‘put your heart into it.’ A guy can’t say stuff like that with a flat voice.”
“I’m sure you were great at building enthusiasm for a football team,” she said. “But speaking in front of a still camera with a bright red light is a lot different.” She sighed—sighed, as if she was pulling on reserves from deep within to broach this subject.
“Let me try to explain it this way,” she said. “Years ago, voice training for TV was a fairly simple activity. Men were told to use a low, masculine timbre throughout the broadcast. Women were told to always sound like they were in their kitchens explaining how to cook.” She smiled. “Thank goodness those days are over.”
“Yeah. Now we’re supposed to weep and wail and grind our teeth,” Jeremy said.
“No, of course not. Newscasting took a different turn when popular anchors managed to deliver news, good and bad, as if they were sitting in a chair next to the listener. And they did it by eye contact, honest presentation and trust building. They eliminated the monotone of their predecessors and became…well, human.”
“And after one test, I’ve suddenly moved us all back to the subhuman age.”
She cocked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes at him. “Am I going to have to deal with this childish sarcasm for the rest of the afternoon?”
Okay, she was right to be upset. But he’d thought he had nailed that test. And the dinner and drinks afterward. “All right, I get it,” he said. “So what do I have to do to correct my faults?”
“One simple solution is to record your conversations. When you are talking to your kids, for example, set your phone to Record and play it back when you’re alone. That’s probably about as honest as you’re going to get in dealing with people on a face-to-face basis.”
“You mean I should talk to the viewing audience like I talk to my kids?”
“No, not exactly. You’re taking me too literally. But you should try to establish that kind of intimacy.”
“I don’t know. I can try. What else?”
She scrolled down her iPad screen. “Recognize that the human voice has peaks and valleys. It’s supposed to. A voice inflection can change in the middle of a sentence to become more listener friendly. Vary your sentences. We try to do that for the anchor before the material is loaded into the prompter, but you can eventually learn to play around with our writing to make it more comfortable for you. A short sentence every now and then is a good tactic if you want to hold someone’s attention.”
This all made sense and turned his ideas of broadcasting upside down. He’d thought the idea was to deliver the news as blandly as possible. “Just the facts, ma’am,” as one TV police sergeant from the 50s used to say.
“But don’t be maudlin. Show some emotion but not too much. The reason people still remember Cronkite’s reporting of the death of John Kennedy was because he showed more true emotion than he ever had before. And rightly so. The situation called for it.”
He glanced over the pool, taking in the bobbing heads of his children. All was right in that world. “So what should I do? Practice? And how does a person practice to be a newscaster?”
“It’s training,” she said. “I’m sure you understand that. You trained to be a wide receiver. Work on making your script voice sound like your ad-lib voice. Keep your words simple. Use words like traffic tie-up instead of transportational gridlock.”
“I would never say transportational gridlock in my lifetime,” he said.
She laughed. “Yes, but you get the point.”
“So it’s like those people who need to walk ten thousand steps a day wearing a monitor from the time they get up. I have to have a microphone ready every time I plan to say more than a few words.”
“Can’t hurt. Talk, talk, talk, and then listen. How many times did you catch a football before you were drafted by a professional team?”
He shrugged. Not all that many times, actually. Maybe he was just a dumb jock. Maybe his talents were destined to be centered on what his body could do and not his brain.
“And one other thing—don’t ever smile during a serious story.”
“Okay. I’ll try to remember that,” he said. “Don’t give up on me, teach.”
Her smile was warm when she said, “Not a chance.”
“Hey, Dad!” Cody’s voice drew Jeremy’s attention away from the mesmerizing blue of Brooke’s eyes in the sunlight.
“What is it, Cody?”
“Why don’t you get in and swim with us?”
He looked at Brooke. “Do you mind? I think I may have some stress to work off. Wanna come?”
“Go ahead. I’m perfectly happy in the sun.”
He stood, unbuttoned his shirt and chucked it on his lawn chair. Thinking about a dive from the deep end, he walked to the diving board. And he was aware, every step of the way, that Brooke’s attention was fixed right where he wanted it—on the body that could catch a football, not the man who could deliver the news. That made him feel a bit better, but he’d still like to be the man who could be both brawn and brain for Brooke.
* * *
BROOKE STAYED BY the pool until the Crocketts got out, dripping and panting. “That was so fun,” Cody said.
“You bet it was,” Jeremy said. “Won’t be long before you can take me in laps.”
Cody snapped off his arm wings. “Gotta get rid of these stupid things first.” He tossed the wings to a chair and came over to Brooke. “Did you watch us?”
“I did. Looked like you were having fun.” She looked around for Alicia. The girl was not on the patio. She’d obviously gone inside without stopping to talk.
“I need a snack,” Cody said. “Dad, will you get something for me and Brooke?”
“Sure will. I promised Brooke some lunch and I don’t want her to think I’m not going to keep my word.”
Jeremy dried off and hung his towel over the back of a chair. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “You guys will be okay?”
“We’ll be fine,” Brooke said.
Cody sat across from her. “Did you have a pool when you were little?” he asked.
“No, I didn’t, but I lived pretty close to some great beaches on the Carolina coast. My parents would take us almost every Sunday if the weather was nice.”
The next hour went quickly with Brooke, Jeremy and Cody munching on fruit and cheese and chatting about Cody’s school and his successes in soccer. If someone had sauntered onto the patio, they might have thought they were witnessing a perfectly happy, typical family gathering. Only in this case, the missing person made the whole thing far from typical.
“I should be getting back to Charleston,” Brooke said.
“I can’t interest you in a movie and pizza later?”
“It’s tempting, but no.” Brooke didn’t think she could add much to a Crockett family outing, especially when one family member didn’t like her interference in their lives. An opportunity to talk to Alicia hadn’t evolved naturally, so Brooke would wait until she had another chance to engage the girl. Besides, Brooke needed some time, as much as Jeremy did, to process everything she’d told him today. She didn’t want him to become discouraged. The last thing she needed was for Jeremy to quit. She just simply wanted him to be great, for his sake as well as hers. Was that too much to ask? According to Cissy, he didn’t have a chance.
Brooke went into the house to use the bathroom. She passed a small, classically decorated room, Jeremy’s office perhaps, since the furnishings were dark and masculine. She almost walked by before seeing Alicia at the desk. Brooke stopped, considered her options and then went inside, armed with the lessons she’d learned from her reading the night before and her desire to help Jeremy with this troubled child.
Alicia looked up but didn’t speak.
“Hi,” Brooke said. “Since I saw you here I thought I’d say a quick goodbye. It’s been a lovely day, don’t you think?”
“I suppose.”
Brooke interpreted the kidspeak as “it was until you got here.”
Colored pencils littered the desktop, and Alicia was coloring an intricate design of flowers and small animals. “Wow, that looks hard. Coloring was never like that when I was a kid.”
Alicia continued filling in the tiny spaces without looking at Brooke. “We use pencils now. Nobody uses crayons anymore.”
“In any case, it’s quite a work of art.” Brooke tried to think of something to say that might initiate a conversation with Alicia. Unfortunately, nothing came to mind that didn’t sound rehearsed. “Well, goodbye,” she said.
“Goodbye.”
She started to leave when she noticed a photograph on the desk. It was a picture of a very pretty woman about Brooke’s age. Her hair was dark blond like Alicia’s, and though she couldn’t tell for sure, Brooke was certain her eyes were the same soft blue.
“That is a beautiful woman. Is it a picture of your mother?” she asked.
Alicia nodded.
“She’s lovely.”
“Yeah.”
“You look like her.”
“That’s what Daddy says.”
Encouraged by the responses, however short, Brooke probed a bit deeper. “I’m sure you miss her so much.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m very sorry that she died. Mothers are very special, and I’m certain your mother loved you and Cody a lot.”
Alicia’s eyes became tiny slits. Her lips turned down. “How would you know that? You never even met her.”
“You’re right,” Brooke said. “I guess I must have gotten that impression from what your father told me.” She tried to remember something concrete from her research last night but she found herself floundering.”
“She did, though.”
Brooke paused, leaned in toward the desk and the small voice that had reached out to her. “She did?”
“She did love us.”
Brooke nodded. “It’s not fair that you lost your mother, Alicia. I wish I knew the right words to say. To make things better for you.”
“Daddy says that, too. But he can’t do anything about it.”
“He would like to. Your daddy wants you to be happy, but he understands that sometimes you just can’t be.”
The child picked up a colored pencil and pressed hard on the page. The tip of the pencil snapped off. “Now look what you made me do!”
“We can fix it. Doesn’t your dad have a pencil sharpener in here?”
Alicia pointed to a bookcase where an electric sharpener sat on a low shelf.
Brooke extended her hand for the pencil. “May I?”
Alicia gave her the pencil and Brooke sharpened it to a fine point. “Look. Good as new.”
Alicia continued with her coloring as if nothing had happened, as if Brooke was no longer there.
“I would like to learn to color like that,” Brooke said. “Maybe you can teach me.”
Alicia looked up at her. “You don’t need a teacher to color. You just have to stay in the lines.”
Brooke took the initiative of pulling up a chair to the desk and sitting down. “What else do you like to do, Alicia?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know. Stuff.”
Brooke took a deep breath. “Would it be okay if you and I did some stuff together sometime? Whatever you want. You can pick the activity.”
Alicia stopped coloring. Was she weighing up her offer? “Maybe.”
It was a start, and Brooke allowed herself to feel encouraged. “I enjoyed seeing the picture of your mother, Alicia. Any time you want to talk some more, I would love to listen.”
No response, but Brooke was pleased with what had happened so far. It felt as if a door had opened. Maybe Alicia would walk through. “I have to go now,” Brooke said, pushing the chair back. “I hope I see you again soon. Have a good week at school.”
The girl raised her head and looked into Brooke’s eyes. “Thanks for fixing the pencil.”
Wow. Brooke smiled, but secretly, she wanted to cheer.
Brooke said goodbye to Jeremy and Cody, who were both back at the pool. Jeremy offered to walk her to her car, but she told him to stay with his son.
She suddenly felt drained from two of the most difficult conversations she’d ever had in her life. First, she’d had to tell Jeremy that he had a lot of work to do. Second, she spoke to a grieving child who made her own heart ache. She didn’t know which conversation was hardest, but as she got in her car and headed back to Charleston, she felt as though she’d made some inroads with both Crocketts today.
And the odd thing was, she truly wished she could help both of them, and not just because her job depended on it.
* * *
THAT NIGHT ON the phone, Brooke confided in her sister. “Come on, Cammie, you’re the child expert. How can I reach this kid?”
“It’s tough, Brooke. Everyone grieves differently. I never had to comfort Esther over the loss of a human in her life, but I remember what it was like when those wild boars massacred our chickens.”
Brooke remembered, too. That incident, which took place in the middle of a stark, cold night, had sent her sister to the hospital, where her pregnancy was monitored and normalized. A few weeks later, Camryn had delivered a fine, healthy baby girl, but it had been touch and go for a while.
“Okay, so how did you reach Esther when she learned about the chicks?”
“I let her talk, Brooke. And I let her know that despite how awful that night was, we would go on. I do remember reading something once that might be helpful.”
“What? Anything,” Brooke said.
“Well, don’t dance around the fact that someone is dead. Don’t use euphemisms for death. A child who’s nine knows that death does not mean the person is just going to stay asleep forever. Dead is dead. We all die. Our job as the adults is to help the child cope, not sugarcoat the truth.”
“Okay. That sounds wise.”
“And make the child feel safe,” Camryn added. “A death in the family can cause enormous anxiety and fear. Help the child know that she is safe and will always be cared for. That might be more a job for her father, but it can’t hurt for you to second the notion.”
This was good advice and much easier to grasp when told in Camryn’s simple, honest way. “Anything else?” Brooke asked.
“If I think of anything else, I’ll call you. But, Brooke?”
“What?”
“Why is this so important to you?”
“I don’t know.” Brooke answered so quickly and without thought that she felt her head spin. Of course she knew. She cared for Jeremy, and she cared for a little girl who would rather destroy an entire kitchen than reveal her true emotions.
“I bet you do know,” Camryn said. “I bet the woman who always said she didn’t want to have children, that she couldn’t cope with them, has just found that her heart has a soft spot for the little creatures. And perhaps their father.”
“You always sound like such a romantic,” Brooke said. “I guess that’s why I love you.”
“You’ve got romance in your soul, too, sister. And compassion and a heart that’s almost too big to fit in your chest. And truthfully, I know these emotions scare you to death.”
No way was Brooke going to continue this conversation. If she let Camryn expound on her idea, they could go on talking for the rest of the night. “Kiss Esther and Grace for me, okay?”
“I will. And Brooke, good luck with this. The most important thing I can tell you is to be yourself. You’re a good person, you know? I expect to hear how it’s going.”
Brooke wouldn’t know how it’s going for two days. She had no plans to see Jeremy on Sunday and the next day was the beginning of a new week. How much time she would have with Jeremy was, as always, anybody’s guess.