Christine Rimmer - Cat's Cradle

“For God’s sake, Natalie. Get a grip on yourself. He’s waking up.”

He looked toward the sound of the voices. Two familiar faces swam into focus. Natalie, the woman he had meant to marry. And L.W., the man who’d made his name a household word. Both of them were looking right back at him, their mouths stretched into big, brave smiles.

He felt sorry for them, in a removed sort of way. He wasn’t going to be much use to either of them now. Just as neither of them was going to be much use to him. Because he didn’t kid himself. He’d been broken up enough in his time to have a vague idea of what he was in for. He may have survived his final jump after all. But hell was still waiting for him–a living hell.

A sharp longing pierced him, worse, in a way, than the pain that waited to eat him alive.

It was a longing for home. And for the kind of woman who could take the tough times; a woman strong enough to stand by his side while he endured the months of torment and superhuman effort that were coming up next.

Cat Beaudine stood in the doorway of her sister’s bedroom. She took in the room at a glance. On the dresser, the small color television soundlessly played the 11:00 p.m. news. There were balled-up tissues everywhere, looking like sad, crumpled paper flowers, used and discarded in drifts and trails across the pink satin sheets of the bed. In the center of the crumpled satin, surrounded by all those used tissues, Cat’s sister, Adora, lay sprawled facedown sobbing forlornly.

Adora’s most recent boyfriend, Farley Underwood, had left her. And, as always, Adora had called Cat.

Slowly, as if it pained her to lift her head, Adora looked up. She let out a strangled cry. Then she reared back on her knees, her tousled brown hair curling enchantingly around her pretty, flushed face, her cream silk negligee slipping off one shoulder. “Oh, Cat!”

Cautiously Cat approached the bed.

Adora dabbed at her streaming eyes with a wadded-up tissue. “Oh, Cat. Thanks for coming. For always being there over all the years. For being the best big sister in the world. I don’t know what I’d do...without you.” With a desolate moan, Adora held out her arms.

Cat sank to the edge of the bed and allowed herself to be enveloped in her sister’s misery and the heady scent of Adora’s perfume.

Adora moaned against Cat’s heavy winter jacket. “I’m sorry. To be such a pain. But I had to have someone. Some family. You understand, don’t you?”

Cat made a small, sympathetic sound; all that was required at the moment.

Adora sobbed on. “Why me? What is it about me? Why does every man I ever meet end up dumping me? All I ever wanted was what my two baby sisters have. A good man. A family. Someone to take care of me and someone I can take care of in return. Is it too much to ask? Is it unreasonable to hope for?” Adora gave another quivering whimper. “Is it?”

“No, of course it’s not.”

“Of course it’s not!” Adora picked up Cat’s words and gave them back in a wail. “But it never happens. I’m thirty-four years old. How long do I have to wait? And I’m not like you, Cat, perfectly happy wandering around the woods in work boots and baggy jeans with no man in sight, wanting to live out in the middle of nowhere alone in some ancient, run-down shack. I’m just a woman. An ordinary woman. I want a home, with nice window treatments and a baby on the way.”

Adora surrendered to a fresh fit of weeping. Cat held her and made the required soothing sounds. Eventually Adora calmed a little. Then Cat put her arm around Adora and said the things she always said whenever Adora lost a boyfriend.

“You’re too good for him.... You’re better off without him.... Someone terrific will come along soon....”

Adora listened, tucked up in the hollow of Cat’s shoulder, and made tiny, woebegone noises of agreement.

“Oh, Cat. Do you really think the right man could still come along?”

“Of course I do. I promise you. It’s only a matter of...”

But Cat didn’t get any farther, because Adora wasn’t listening. Adora was gaping at the television instead.

“Omigod!” Cat’s sister exclaimed in an ecstatic whisper.

Cat looked at the television. One of those late-night talk shows had come on. A host Cat didn’t recognize was interviewing some dark-haired hunk in designer jeans and fancy alligator boots. “What? What is it?”

Adora clutched a wadded-up tissue to her breast and pointed at the television. “It’s Dillon. Dillon McKenna. Turn it up. Cat, turn it up!” When Cat didn’t move, Adora frantically fumbled around under the mountain of pillows at the head of the bed and came up with a remote control, which she pointed at the television. The sound came on.

“So, Dillon.” The host held up a book with a photograph of a gruesomely wrecked motorcycle on the dust jacket. Beneath the crumpled motorcycle, the word Daredevil was printed in letters that seemed to be on fire. “Tell us about this book you’ve written.”

Cat made a low noise of disbelief. “Oh, please. Dillon McKenna never wrote a book. I don’t buy that for a minute.”

“Shh!” Adora hissed and craned forward toward the small screen. “Oh, God. He looks wonderful.... You can’t even see how bad he was hurt in that awful crack-up in Las Vegas. He looks just like before.”

On the screen, the dark-haired hunk began to talk. “Well now, if you look down in the corner there, you’ll see that I didn’t write it.” He nudged the slender, serious-looking man sitting next to him. “Oliver here did that. He’s the writer.”

Oliver picked up his cue. “But the story is authentic. Just as Dillon told it to me. From his early days in rodeo, through his years as a movie stuntman, right up to the challenges he set himself. Nothing’s missing. There’s every jump he ever accomplished, including that baker’s dozen Peterbilt semitrucks at the Anaheim Speedway. And, of course, the story finds its climax in Dillon’s spectacular, near-death experience in Las Vegas just a year and a half ago.”

Cat watched her sister watching Dillon McKenna. Adora’s face wore a dreamy, faraway look. Farley Underwood might never have existed.

“Dillon really did turn out to be a fantastic-looking man, didn’t he, Cat?” Adora asked.

Cat didn’t even bother to look at the man on the screen. One answer was expected of her. She gave it. “Sure.”

On the television, the host asked, “So what’s up next for Dillon McKenna?”

“You know, I gotta say I’m not sure.”

“No kidding?”

“Yeah. Things are going to be different for me, that’s all I know for certain. I think what I need right now is a real change of scene, a little time away from it all, to decide where I’m going from here.”

Cat only half listened to the rest. She busied herself gathering up some of the drifts of discarded tissues and tossing them into the wastebasket in the corner, waiting for the next commercial break.

At last, her sister raised the remote control and punched the Mute button again. Then Adora sighed. “Oh, Cat. He made good, didn’t he? Dillon really made good.”

There was no arguing with that. Cat smiled. “He certainly did.”

“Did you hear what he said, about not knowing what he was going to do next? About how he’s thinking he needs a little time away from it all?”

“Yeah, I heard it.”

Adora’s emerald eyes were shining. “Do you imagine he might come back home?”

Cat imagined no such thing. The way she saw it, there was absolutely no reason on earth why an international celebrity like Dillon McKenna would want to return to the tiny mountain town of Red Dog City.