Larry S—continued. “There aren’t any real assets…a house here in town not worth too much, a 1989 Toyota compact. Obviously, the truck is no longer included. She assigned a guardian for her daughter here though, another gal you went to school with, so I thought maybe it would be best if you contacted her about all this. Let’s see, what’s her name?” Larry S asked himself as he shuffled through the manila file folder containing Charla’s papers. “Ah, here it is: Elizabeth Castle.”
Elizabeth Castle? Buck’s heart skipped a beat—that was the girl.
“Um, sure, Dad. I can contact her. Do we have a phone number?” he asked trying to play it cool with the same butterflies in his belly he’d felt before calling her and asking her to be his date to the dance.
His father scribbled the number on a yellow Post-it note and handed it to Buck, who headed for his private office. Once inside, with the door closed, he sat behind the desk preparing what he would say.
His heart was racing with anticipation—in just a few minutes he would be speaking with Lizzie Castle. He had taken Lizzie to his senior prom when she was a junior, but just a few weeks after that he had gone off to Arizona for football preseason practice. Because of the football schedule, he hadn’t gotten back to Victory for Christmas that year and had joined a bunch of guys at Lake Havasu for spring break. When summer finally rolled around, Buck had been eager to return home to see Lizzie but had learned that just days before his homecoming, she had headed to Los Angeles to get a jump on her freshman year at UCLA. She hadn’t returned to her hometown after that, but over the past years Buck had thought about her often.
Lizzie was the only girl who had ever resisted Buck, and that intrigued him beyond belief. As an attractive athlete, Buck had never had to work hard with members of the opposite sex; it seemed that there were plenty of girls who wanted to go out with him—or just have sex with him—simply because he played football. Lizzie Castle was the only girl who had ever seemed immune to this. Buck had always found her lack of interest in him irresistible.
Feeling ashamed that he felt excited to be placing a call of such a depressing nature, he carefully dialed 9 for an outside line, followed by 1-310, and then the phone number his father had scrawled out for him. She picked up quickly, and Buck figured that she must have been on the other line.
Instead of saying what he had planned, the words that came out of his mouth sounded like they always did when he was trying to deal with clients—completely dense. The call was over in a matter of seconds, and only after he heard the dial tone return did Buck realize that not only had he failed to identify himself, he had also failed to impart any of the information he was supposed to.
He thought about dialing her number again but thought again, deciding that he needed the evening to compose himself and would give her the night to collect herself as well before calling again in the morning. Dejectedly, he opened the door that joined his office to his father’s and walked back in where the aging Platner and Charla’s daughter sat uncomfortably. As he entered his father looked up, glad to see him.
“Well, everything settled?” he asked, a little too eagerly. “Is she on her way here now?”
“Not exactly,” Buck said, uncomfortably.
“Are you driving her down to L.A.?” his father asked, his eyes narrowing as he motioned toward Tiffany.
“Not quite. She just needed the evening to collect herself,” Buck offered, aware of how lame it sounded.
He saw his father’s face flush slightly. “This girl’s a minor. She cannot spend the night alone, and her grandparents are out of town.”
Buck felt the disappointment he always felt oozing out of his father whenever he tried to handle something around the office. The fact was that although he was a good attorney, Buck was horrible at handling anything to do with the clients or the business side of the practice.
“She can spend the night at my place,” Buck offered pathetically.
“Well, I guess there’s not really another option now, is there,” his father said, rising from the desk and closing a briefcase as ugly as Buck’s but much more worn. “Be sure to connect with this Ms. Castle first thing tomorrow so this girl can get down to L.A. Miss Dearbourne,” he said looking at the miserable young girl as he crossed his office, “I am sorry for your loss. Things will get straightened out in no time.”
“I don’t want to go to L.A.!” Tiffany called out, her eyes filling with tears.
“Well, I’m afraid there’s not much choice. We have to follow your mother’s wishes here,” his father said as he squeezed past Buck with a glare and stepped into the office’s small reception area.
Before either Buck or Tiffany could say another word, his father was out the door and the two of them were alone in the office. The room was so still they could hear the quiet buzzing of the old copy machine that their secretary, Doris, had forgotten to turn off—again. The silence was only broken by occasional sniffles from Tiffany while Buck stared down his chest, unsure of what to do next.
Seeing the gravy spots on his belly, he looked up. “Have you had your dinner yet?” he asked kindly.
Although upon first appearance, Buck looked more like a fighter than a lover, he had a truly kind heart, which easily shone through his rough exterior as soon as he opened his mouth—as long as he wasn’t with a client. Tiffany, not looking up, shook her head no.
“Well, come on, let’s go get something for you to eat.”
4
A few hours earlier, fifteen-year-old Tiffany Dearbourne had been pedaling her old purple bicycle as fast as it would go toward home. She’d been at her friend Laci’s house and hadn’t realized the time…her mother would be home any minute. Normally it wasn’t a big deal for Tiffany to get home after her mom, but right now she was grounded and shouldn’t have been out at all. After spending most of the weekend cooped up inside the stuffy house, Tiffany decided that if her mother couldn’t bother to stay in town and uphold the punishment that she didn’t need to obey it.
It really was a stupid punishment anyway. Tiffany had returned home twenty-seven minutes past curfew the weekend before. Her mother, Charla, had gone down the warpath and had grounded Tiffany for the next three weeks. Obviously an overzealous punishment, but since her mother had gotten pregnant her senior year of high school, she was convinced Tiffany’s fate would be the same.
The ridiculous thing was that while Tiffany had been with a boy—her boyfriend of four months, Red Richley—she was not going to make the same mistakes her mother had. Instead, she was determined to follow in the footsteps of her Aunt Lizzie and get the hell out of Victory. Lizzie wasn’t actually Tiffany’s aunt, but rather her mother’s best friend in the whole world. Tiffany hadn’t seen Lizzie since she was a little baby because Lizzie had hit the road and attended college in Los Angeles, where she was now a successful career woman.
Sure, Tiffany had been at the lake (dried-up lake bed) with Red in his father’s green Chevy, but she never had and never would let him move below her waistband. Unfortunately, Charla didn’t believe Tiffany’s pleas of innocence. Tiffany didn’t let the punishment get her too far down, though. She just kept counting the days until her high school graduation, when she could make her own exit from Victory. Until Sunday afternoon, that is, when the boredom had gotten to her and she’d ridden her bike the three and a half blocks to Laci’s house.
The girls had just
