Here Without You

‘I’m sorry, Janelle. I just don’t see how I can.’

Her blanched face refills with pink from the bottom up, like someone is topping it off. ‘B-but you said Get me an audition for something powerful. You said Something like Monster, but where I don’t have to look ugly like Charlize. And I did it! I did it, Brooke. You were so upset when that Castleberry twit got the role. When she busted her ass – literally, hah-hah! – on that slope, it was like a miracle. You don’t turn down miracles in this business, Brooke!’

‘I can’t leave him. I can’t leave the process.’ I hold up a hand to forestall the comment forming on her tongue. ‘I’m not going to screw this up, Janelle.’

Like a boulder tumbling down a hill, nothing stops her. ‘But screwing up your career is no big deal?’ Her eyes bug and I hope she meant what she said about being too healthy to have a heart attack. ‘Can’t we just – we’ll get you an au pair! We’ll send them with you. Angelina hauls her brood all over the globe!’

Instantly sceptical – sure I’d read something about at-home and filming swap-offs – I ask, ‘She does?’

‘Hell, I don’t know – probably. Who cares – because you can!’

‘Um, no, I can’t. I’ll have just got placement of him. I can’t run off to Australia with him before the adoption is final.’

She’s so google-eyed that it makes my eyes water to look at her. ‘Look. Brooke. We haven’t heard from the studio yet – maybe something in your circumstances will change, and we won’t have to turn it down …’

‘Like – maybe the court will tell me I’d be the most screwed-up mother he could have, and toss me out on my ass?’

‘I don’t mean that …’

I narrow my gaze on her. ‘Have they called you yet? Because if you do anything even remotely resembling an attempt to keep him from me just so I will do Paper Oceans, I will fire you so fast you’ll be embers.’

She blinks multiple times and then darts her eyes away, tugging at her suit jacket and harrumphing. ‘I’m supposed to call someone back tomorrow, actually, and of course I wouldn’t do … that … to you.’

Seeing Janelle in person was definitely the right move.

‘I know you wouldn’t, Janelle.’ I smile sweetly, my tone conciliatory, with a touch of my native drawl. ‘I didn’t mean to accuse you. I know you would never do anything to hurt me.’

The flight to Austin is blissfully uneventful – no broody teenagers or flirtatious businessmen. No Hollywood golden boys I’d like to strangle with my bare hands. When the flight attendant closes the loading door and the seat next to me remains vacant, I mutter, ‘Oh, thank God,’ a bit too vehemently, earning me an arched brow from a lady across the aisle. I pretend not to notice. Feeling the effects of the past week in all its stressful glory, I know one more annoyance might result in an air marshal and handcuffs.

Finally free of the breakneck round of promotion for Hearts, I’m heading back to Texas to address the final pieces of my application for River’s adoption – one of which is my mother, who’ll soon be contacted for her opinion on my suitability as an adoptive parent. As if she would have a clue.

Some time in my pre-adolescence, some jackass came up with the term MILF and the boys I knew quickly applied it to my mother. Now, Mom’s a three-times-divorced cougar, and instead of being mortified at those titles she wears them like she wore the hayseed beauty-queen crowns now stored in a lighted display case – proudly. She refuses to see that her looks are all she’s ever had going for her, and now that she’s on the verge of losing them, she’s become a pathetic stereotype.

Never undertaking any sort of career aside from securing and discarding husbands, she’s accepted a multitude of labels over the years, including trophy wife and single mother. When I was little, she called herself a ‘stay-at-home mom’ whenever it suited her, though she did little to nothing to earn that designation.

I know how she’ll respond to my bid to adopt River. I knew before I came – because out of all the titles she’s willingly assumed, I can’t imagine Grandma ever being one of them.

I haven’t seen my mother since she showed up in LA last spring, without notice, expecting entrance to the premiere and after-party of School Pride – for herself and her latest cougar-bait. I granted them entrance to the film, but pretended I couldn’t get her into the party on such short notice. Total bullshit, but there was no way I was dealing with her up close and personal while Reid and I focused on our doomed plan to break up Graham and Emma.

When I arrive at her downtown apartment at our prearranged time – 10:00 a.m., she’s fully made up, but still wearing her black dressing gown.

‘Hello, Brooke,’ she smiles tightly. I’m pretty sure she’s had work done since I’ve seen her, because her facial features look a tad … stretched. Her caramel eyes are the same as always – somehow cold despite their warm colour.

Leading me into the familiar living area, she gestures towards the plush sofa and I sit while she grabs her cup of coffee from the kitchen counter and sits without offering me anything. A new yappy dog runs up and barks annoyingly, beginning to nip at my ankles until I lean down and growl – a trick I learned with the last one. Like its predecessor, it runs away bleating.

‘I assume there’s a reason for your visit beyond terrorizing Tipsy.’ Tipsy?