you for anger management classes? At this late stage in the game, I’d think it kind of pointless.”
“Sorry. Okay, so, who’s coming to this damn thing?”
“Your wife’s already en route, and before you freak out, I had a medical van sent for her, the hotel is wheelchair friendly and she’ll be fine.”
“She shouldn’t be moved like that.”
“She’ll be fine, Mace, and she wanted to come, practically begged me. And guess what, Shelby’s coming too.”
Mason’s heart leapt. Shelby was nineteen now; she had been in a USC exchange program in London for the past three months, working on a particularly exciting thesis involving early Saxon folklore. Shelby was the one he was most proud of, the one he was closest to, and to have accomplished so much despite her condition.… But his son?
“No word from Gabriel,” Pamela said, as if reading his mind. “Sorry, we tried. I know, deep down you’d like to see him again.”
“You shouldn’t have wasted your breath.” Mason stood up. His head felt like dead weight, so heavy. He looked ruefully at the weather patterns from 7:38 last night, still frozen on the screens, and he shook his head.
“Don’t bother with Gabriel. I’ve gotten used to his absence. It’s refreshing, actually.” He sighed, thinking back again to that accident on the interstate, in the whiteout. Was that the turning point for the boy? It seemed that up until that day Gabriel had been a normal kid, interested in the usual assortment of young boy things—baseball, cartoons, comic books, movies with things that exploded. After the accident, however, it was like a dark streak had been run through Gabriel; he became bitter and rueful about some perceived hurt, or as if angry that he had been spared, ignored more like it, by the storm. He withdrew from his family, and within a few years he was holed up in his room with an array of odd books and odder music coming from his headphones at all hours. Up until Berkeley, then it all came gushing out of him, all the hatred and bitterness he had been repressing since the car crash.
“All right,” Mason muttered, “let’s get this farce over with. But I’ve got no speech, and I’m not saying anything except thanks to the Academy and thanks for my wife’s undying support.”
“Yeah,” Pamela said, “all that shit, but if you forget to thank your brilliant and beautiful producer, without whom you’d be nothing more than a hack psychic in circus tent, I’ll slip arsenic in your next cup of coffee.”
Mason let a smile slip, then made an exaggerated bow. “I’ll shower you with praise.”
“That’s the spirit, spoken like a man who knows his place.”
“Really? And where is that?”
“In front of a vastly more successful woman.”
Rolling his eyes, Mason started moving. “Let’s go already, before I change my mind. Or lose my lunch.”
It would be good to see Shelby again, see how much she’d changed in the four months since he’d seen her off to the airport. So much like her mother before the accident. Tall and thin, deep blue eyes brimming with empathy. A smile to warm up any room. He couldn’t keep up with her friends, with her sports: lacrosse, sand volleyball, tennis. But she understood her father’s responsibilities; primarily to care for Lauren. Fortunately, they could afford a live-in nurse, and Lauren wasn’t exactly bedridden; she had good upper body strength and an indomitable sense of optimism, more than countering Mason’s inner grimness, his lingering anger at nature, at the weather and simple fate. All the things beyond his control.
At least at first, but that’s what meteorology was all about—exerting some degree of control over something that was inherently uncontrollable. If you could predict the behavior of a thing, you could have some control over it. You could sidestep its assaults, dodge its moods.
And just perhaps, you could save yourself or someone you cared about.
On the way out the door, Mason stopped and glanced back at the current weather screens showing nothing but clear skies.
Shaking his head, he reached to the hook behind the door to grab his umbrella.
Chapter 2
The taxi pulled up to the Westin Resorts Sacramento hotel and let Mason out. Pamela stayed behind to pay the cab and to meet with the film crew, still unloading their gear from a van. Mason passed a valet dropping off a red convertible Lexus, and then right before the main entrance, he stepped in front of a long, sleek black limo. He paused, feeling a sudden