Broken Hollywood (Sparrow Sisters Book 1)

  Broken Hollywood

  Lora Richardson

  Copyright 2020 Lora Richardson.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission of Lora Richardson, except in the case of brief excerpts included in a critical review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design copyright 2020 by Kris Hack at Temys Designs. temysdesigns.com

  For Walter, who has the sweetest heart.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 1

  Cat

  My bedroom door flew open as my sister Valerie rushed in, her smile wide and her eyes frenzied. With her hands on her hips, she met my eyes, infusing importance into her gaze. Then she turned and gave the same look to Audrey, her twin. “I have news,” Valerie said.

  Audrey looked up from painting her fingernails, and she and I exchanged patient glances, neither of us ruffled. Valerie was always excited about something or other, and we didn’t have it in us to match her fervor every time she had news. It was a daily occurrence because everything was big news to Val. She was as likely to tell us she’d bought new socks as she was to tell us she was dropping out of school and moving to Africa to stop the trafficking of pangolins.

  Audrey casually blew on her nail polish. Holding in my laugh, I scanned my laptop screen and opened a new message from Matteo. He’d recently purchased an infrared temperature meter that could detect caves by scanning the air, and I hoped he’d have an update for me on how well it worked.

  Valerie crossed her arms and scowled. “You guys suck.”

  Audrey laughed and sat up straight. “We’re just teasing you, Val. Go ahead and tell us your news.”

  I closed my laptop and gave her my full attention.

  Satisfied, she pulled out my desk chair and sat, crossing her legs and folding her hands in her lap. “I was out with Brock Bishop tonight. He took me to Meadowlark Creamery, and I ordered a banana split and then he ordered a small vanilla cone.” Her hands went back on her hips, even though she was sitting. “At first I was embarrassed, looking at my huge dish of ice cream compared to his tiny little cone. Then I was mad at myself for being embarrassed. I’m trying to stop doing that, you know.”

  I did know, because Valerie shared every single thought in her head, a trait which I adored. I smiled at her, fully engaged in her story now. The thing was, even if her news was bland, she made it interesting.

  “Anyway, I snapped right out of that and told myself I can eat what I want, and if he wants a pitiful treat, he can have one.”

  “Maybe he likes vanilla cones,” Audrey said.

  “I thought of that, but then I thought maybe he couldn’t afford two banana splits, and I felt terrible. I mean, good grief, the price difference between a small cone and a banana split is six dollars.”

  Valerie looked sad now. “Is that the news?” Audrey asked.

  “No.” She sat up straighter, her eyes going bright again. “Okay, so we were sitting at the counter on those spinning stools, and Brock kept spinning around and around on his stool. It was driving me crazy. He was acting like he was five years old. I won’t be going out with him again.” She paused to sigh. “Anyway, he was done eating and I was about halfway through my banana split, taking my time, enjoying every bite and trying to figure out how to tactfully tell him I could pay him back for my banana split, when Destiny came running in. Her face was all red with excitement— you know how she gets when she runs—and you’ll never guess who she saw at the hardware store.” Valerie’s face was flushed now, too, excitement lighting her up from the inside out.

  “Who?” Audrey asked, leaning forward so far I worried she’d topple over.

  Valerie took a slow breath in, and paused for dramatic effect. Finally, she announced, “Jesse Relic.”

  Audrey’s mouth dropped open.

  I didn’t recognize the name, but wanting to get the story straight, I asked, “What was Destiny doing at the hardware store?” Destiny was not the working-with-her-hands type, so that detail threw me off.

  Valerie shot me an incredulous look, but she humored me. “She was there to get two new curtain rods for her mom. But Cat, she saw Jesse Relic! Here. In Alden, Indiana.”

  “Okay…” I drew out the word, indicating I didn’t understand the importance. I was trying to follow along. Valerie’s stories were long and winding, and all indications were that I was missing some important information. After all, Audrey’s mouth still gaped open. “Is that one of her ex-boyfriends?”

  Both Audrey and Valerie burst into laughter. I was used to this, so I leaned back against my headboard and waited. When they regained their composure, Valerie said, “I know you’ve spent half your life with your nose in a book and your head in a cave, but you have to know who Jesse Relic is.”

  I scowled at her, but I had to bite my lip so I wouldn’t laugh. She had pegged me in one short sentence. My life, heck, my entire personality, boiled down to caves and books, in that order.

  Audrey put me out of my misery. “Jesse Relic is an actor.”

  “He’s not merely an actor. He’s a movie star,” Valerie amended, spreading her fingers and giving the last two words jazz hands. “You really don’t know who he is?”

  “I guess not.”

  I liked movies, I just liked other things more. There were so many things I wanted to do with my time, I struggled to fit in the things most dear to me. I usually only watched movies when my sisters forced them on me.

  My mind flitted over the various celebrity faces I knew. I couldn’t find anyone named Jesse Relic. Even if I had known who he was, I doubted I’d get very excited. I’d never understood our culture’s glorification of celebrities.

  Audrey giggled again and listed off at least ten movies he’d starred in. “He’s been in all those movies, and loads more, and he’s only twenty-three. He’s ridiculously gorgeous. Wait a minute, is Destiny sure it was him? Why on earth was he here in Alden?”

  “Maybe it was just someone who looked like him,” I said.

  Valerie frowned. “I hope she wasn’t wrong; that would be embarrassing! She was running all over town telling anybody who would listen.” She tapped her chin. “But I think it must have been him. She’d know; we’ve watched all his movies many times. She has a special shelf in her room full of his films. I can’t imagine she’d mistake someone else for Jesse Relic.”

  “I wonder how long he’ll be here,” Audrey said, a dreamy look on her face. “Or if I’ll get the chance to see him.”

  “We should spend all day tomorrow out in town, seeing if we can spot him,” Val said.

  “Okay,” Audrey said, eagerly looking at me to see if I would join.

&
nbsp; “I have to work tomorrow,” I said. I tapped my laptop. “For now, I have a few things to do and then I need to get to bed.” I wanted to get to the cavern a little early to see if Otto was interested in doing some surveying before we opened for the Saturday tours. We’d recently begun mapping a passage off one of the bigger caverns, and it was promising. Otto didn’t like to blast or drill to connect passages. He wanted to keep his cave system as wild as he could, which meant manually moving rocks and only approving passages that already existed.

  Valerie stood up. “Come on, Audrey. Let’s go to your room so we can talk more about this where we won’t bore poor Cat,” she teased.

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” Audrey said, starting another coat of pale pink nail polish.

  “Okay. I’ll text Destiny and see if she has any more details.”

  She whirled out the door, closing it behind her, and I glanced down at Audrey. She’d come to my room after dinner with something clearly on her mind, but hadn’t spilled it yet. “How was your day?” I asked.

  Audrey shrugged and didn't look up from her fingernails. I watched her smooth on the polish and waited. If you wanted Audrey to talk, you had to give her the space to do so. Her lower lip quivered. “Mama was in a worrying mood today. She talked about Dad’s cholesterol, you not going to college, Aunt Glory being too loud, me being too quiet.”

  Mama was a bit of a worrier, which in turn caused Audrey to worry about Mama. I didn’t worry much, because Mama had Dad, and he was the calmest, most soothing balm for anyone’s wounds, internal or external. As Alden’s only family physician, people came to see him for their emotional troubles as frequently as they visited him for their sinus infections.

  I wanted to dig deeper into whatever was bothering Audrey, but my mind was stuck on one thing she said. Mama was still concerned about me not going to college? It had been an entire year since I told them I wasn’t going.

  I’d been so sure I was going to college. I’d planned for it since middle school. My best friend from high school, Lila, loved college so much she wasn’t planning to come home this summer, instead preferring to stay on campus and take summer courses. I knew I would have loved it too, because I had always loved school. I loved writing papers. I loved citing my sources. I loved zoology labs. I loved everything about classrooms.

  But I loved the caves more. And Otto. I could not bear to leave Otto. How could I focus on my classes without my morning kiss on his wrinkly, papery cheek? How could I be so far away from his rumbly laughter and the carefully told stories of his youth, the stories of his thirty-year marriage to Emily, of the mistakes he’d made and the regrets he had? His stories stretched my soul, and I didn’t feel my soul was big enough to leave Alden and enter the wide world. Not yet.

  Nearly every day since I was eleven years old, I spent time in Alden Caverns, Otto’s cave system and local business. Though I’d have worked there for free, giving tours, selling souvenirs, leading children on field trips, and mapping the many passageways, Otto paid me well. I hoped the caves would be part of the rest of my life. On my nineteenth birthday last week, Otto asked me if I’d like to take over the caverns when he retires. I’d laughed out loud. He was eighty years old. He was never going to retire. He’d tipped his head to the side and waited until I stopped laughing. Then he said, “I’ll have to retire sometime, Cat.”

  I instantly knew what he meant, and tears sprang to my eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I told him. He was old, yes, and I hadn’t missed that he was more frail these last few years, more careful with his steps and maybe a little quicker to tire. But to me, when I looked into his lively eyes, he seemed ageless. I needed him to always be here.

  “We should talk about it.”

  I almost told him that he should talk about this with his daughter instead of me. But he hadn’t spoken to Poppy in fifteen years. She didn’t visit. She didn’t call. And she didn’t love the caves. But if Otto were to ever “retire,” shouldn’t she take over the business, not me? “I don’t want you to retire.”

  He’d leveled a loving but stern look on me, and said, “Alright, we won’t discuss my retirement today. But Cat, these caves are yours as much as they’re mine. If anyone can ever own a piece of the earth, it’s because they revere it. You live and breathe these tunnels and passages. Your eyes are likely to do like the cave fish, and slowly evolve to lose their sight because you spend so much time down here.”

  I’d thrown my arms around his neck, and hopefully he’d never bring up his retirement ever again.

  Audrey sat back, leaning against my bed and blowing on her nails. “I’m bored, Cat. I think that’s my problem.”

  I blinked, coming back to the moment. “My new National Geographic magazine came today,” I said. “It’s on my nightstand if you want to read it.”

  “No, I don’t mean I’m bored right now. I mean in life.”

  “Is it the end-of-the-school-year doldrums?” There was only a month left of school. Audrey and Valerie would begin their senior year of high school this fall. Audrey was involved in so many extra-curricular activities it was rare for her to be home for dinner, but this close to the end of the year, most everything was finished up. Audrey was happiest when she had too much on her plate.

  “Maybe. Cat?”

  I lay down on my bed so my head was right beside hers. “What is it, Audrey?”

  “Keaton’s been acting different lately.”

  “Different how?”

  “He’s been…touching me more. Holding my hand, putting his hand on my back, that sort of thing. And looking at me weird.”

  I wanted to gather Audrey up in my arms and keep her safe from the world. Everyone knew Keaton wanted her to be his girlfriend—everyone but Audrey, apparently. Keaton’s family had been close with our family for over twenty years. Our mothers had been, mostly jokingly, I thought, planning their wedding for ages. “He likes you,” I said, as gently as I could.

  She sighed long and loud. “I thought we were on the same page. He’s one of my best friends, and you know how much I care about him, but I don’t know if I feel the same.”

  I reached a hand out and stroked her blonde hair. “Then tell him.”

  “I’m not completely oblivious. I know that everyone expects me to be with him.”

  I clucked my tongue. I knew how heavy the weight of other people’s expectations could be. “You can’t be with Keaton because people expect it.”

  “But what if they’re right? What if I should be with him?”

  “What do you mean by should?”

  “Just that, what if being with Keaton is what I’m supposed to do? What if I do feel the same way he does, but I don’t realize it?”

  “Audrey, I think if you wanted to date Keaton, you’d know.”

  “How would I know, though? What does it feel like to know?”

  I chewed on my bottom lip. She had a point there, and I wouldn’t be able to help her with it because I’d never felt that way for someone before. “I think you should tell Keaton all of this.”

  “I can’t do that, Cat. It would hurt his feelings.”

  I waited until she looked at me. “It’s not your job to manage his feelings.”

  She looked away and fiddled with the ends of her hair. “Let’s talk about something else. I’m thinking of getting a job.”

  “That could help with your boredom.”

  I sat up, understanding that her abrupt change of subject meant she was done talking about it. I scanned my laptop screen when a new message from Matteo popped up. He owned a cave in Missouri. We’d met on a caving message board, and had been messaging for a year or so, sharing our love of rock formations and cave surveying, but this week I’d been pummeling him with questions about how to run a caving business.

  A spark in her eyes now, Audrey stood up and gathered her nail painting supplies, making a bowl with the bottom of her shirt to carry them. “I’m going to look and see who’s hiring.” Clutching the fabric so nothing wo
uld spill out, she leaned over the side of my bed to look at my laptop. She grinned at me with a sneaky look on her face. “Tell Matteo I say hello.”

  I sighed. Audrey and Valerie grasped at any hint of romance in my life, and currently, Matteo was all there was to grasp at. I didn’t think of Matteo that way. Truth be told, I didn’t think of anyone that way. I was only nineteen, and I wanted to get my life in order before I even thought about bringing a man into it. There were far more important things to do at this stage of my life than dating. I’d leave all that stuff for my sisters. “He’s too old for me, Audrey.”

  “He is not. He’s what? Twenty-six?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Ha! I knew it. If it was all business, you wouldn’t know his age. You might bond over caving, but you talk about other things, too.”

  I sighed. “Matteo is my friend.”

  “Friendship can blossom into something more.”

  I hopped up and held open the door. “Out.”

  She laughed as she danced out the door, the nail polish bottles clinking in her shirt. I closed the door behind her, and leaned against it. For half a second, I wished I were more like my sisters. It seemed fun to get excited over a movie star, or to think about which boy they wanted to date. But I wasn’t an idiot. All the boys in town thought of me as the weird cave girl. That had actually been my nickname in middle school. Cave Girl. Besides, most of the guys my age had left for college or greener pastures far beyond this small town. I was staying here. I’d made my choice, and the caves made me happy. It was enough.

  Chapter 2

  Jesse

  The truck bounced down the gravel road, the sunlight flashing through the gaps in the trees making my headache worse. I flipped down both visors, tilting them this way and that, to no avail. The sun was determined to set, right in my line of vision, and there was nothing I could do about it. There was nothing I could do about anything. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  I glanced over at the three gallon cans of white paint Grandpa sent me to the hardware store to get. Focus on where you are. Work with your hands and quiet your mind. That’s what Grandpa said when he woke me at two this afternoon. I didn’t know how he could tell my mind was loud, but he wasn’t wrong.