Cloudburst (Storms 2)

“My therapist says it was my call for attention. The way I saw it, it was the kindest way he could come up with to tell my parents they were too into themselves. They didn’t see it that way, of course. There had to be something wrong with me. I was punished, practically locked away until almost the end of my father’s shoot.

“My mother was nearly six months pregnant at the time. She was always good about not showing her pregnancy until about the seventh month so fans didn’t know, and they had been successful keeping it out of the entertainment press.

“When I was finally permitted to rejoin the human race, my mother, Summer, our nanny, and I went to a place called Positano in Italy. My mother wanted to do some shopping, and we were going to be permitted to go swimming in the ocean. Most of the shops are along this steep hill, at least the shops my mother wanted to visit. I thought we were taking too long to reach the beach at the bottom, so I decided to take off myself. Our nanny realized I was gone, which threw my mother into a panic. She left Summer with our nanny and began looking for me. I wasn’t that far down the hill. She saw me, and called after me, and I started to run and was nearly hit by a man on a motorcycle. She screamed, ran after me, tripped, and took a nasty fall.”

“And that was when she miscarried?”

“Yep. She had to be taken to the hospital. She was also pretty scraped up. The story about her pregnancy and miscarriage leaked out. Afterward, my father wouldn’t talk to me except to bark an order here and there, and a dark silence fell over us all. Summer wasn’t that upset, even at four. She was already jealous of the new baby that might come. I couldn’t blame her. We shared so little in terms of parental love and concern that the prospect of dividing what little we had into thirds disturbed her.”

“You were just a little boy. They can’t be holding that against you now.”

“Oh, my therapist has an answer for that, too. He says I’m holding it against myself but making it easier for myself to live with it by transferring my self-blame to them. He says as long as I can believe they hold a grudge, I’m comfortable with it.”

“Maybe that’s true, Ryder.”

“Maybe it is; maybe it isn’t,” he said, the anger seeping into his voice. “You felt the tension just now. Was it all my imagination?”

I knew I was walking on thin ice. It was on the tip of my tongue to say he might be the one who was mainly bringing on the tension. From what I had seen, he wasn’t exactly nice to them, either. But I was hesitant, as cautious as a soldier trying to disarm a bomb.

“Very few people know this stuff about us—about me, I should say,” he said. “No one at Pacifica does, obviously.”

“I’m not going to be the one to talk about it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

He was, but he didn’t want to admit it. “I’ve never trusted anyone with the story, except, of course, my therapist,” he said after a moment. “Somehow, maybe because of the hard life you had, I felt I could trust you.”

“You can, so shut up about it,” I said, and he smiled.

“This is all too depressing. We need the California fix,” he said, sitting up.

“California fix? What’s that? I hope not something to do with drugs.”

“Not unless you consider golden sunshine, sparkling pools and fountains, pristine tennis courts, and a putting green drugs. C’mon. Let me show you our Disneyland.”

He reached for my hand as he slipped off the bed, and we walked out, through the living room to some patio doors and out to the rear of the property. For a moment, we stood there looking at it all. Their property had a better view to the west than the Marches’ estate had. There was more ocean to see in the distance.

“Well? Not too shabby, huh?”

“It’s all very beautiful. You could spend time quietly here, too.”

“Somehow, because it’s my house, I can’t,” he said. “Of course, the pool is half the size of the one at the Marches’, and they have two tennis courts and a lake.”

“They have, not me,” I reminded him. “Think of it this way. You’re at home. I’m at a hotel.”

He laughed. “You ever golf?”

“No. Donald belongs to an expensive golf club, and Jordan goes at least once a week with some of her friends, but I’ve never gone.”

“They never offered to take you?”

“No. They used to take Kiera when she was younger, but she was so disruptive that they stopped.”

“Let’s putt around. I’m pretty good. I’m better than my father, in fact,” he said, and led me to the shed where the equipment was kept. He gave me one of his mother’s clubs to use and gathered up dozens of balls.

“I thought your mother didn’t golf. How come she has all this?”

“As I tried to tell you before, you will see that we have lots of things we don’t use very much. That’s called being successful.”

I laughed and followed him to the putting green. He set us up four feet from the hole.