The Little Mermaid on the movie screen and Goodnight Moon in the seat pocket. It was Dylan still in the driver's seat, his forearm propped in the open window as he waited for ... her.
A little dizzy, Kitty tried taking a breath, tried popping the fantasy, tried not wanting it so very much. But it remained in her head, her heart, shimmering like a mirage. As any thirsty person, Kitty was having a hard time believing it wasn't true. That it couldn't be true.
The sound of Aunt Cat calling her name sharpened Kitty's focus, but didn't smother the silly hope in her heart. Glancing toward the rest of the group waiting to leave the park, she spied her great-aunt, accompanied by Samantha. Even upon seeing her mother, her mother made pregnant by some secret lover, Kitty's hope managed to survive.
She turned to Honor. "Can I catch up with you? It looks like my great-aunt wants a word with me." At Honor's nod, Kitty hung back. She saw Honor pass through the gate, and then Dylan. The two walked off together.
Only a few members of the press were left in the newly named Alicia Bennett Park, a cameraman taking footage of the parting crowd and two reporters looking through their notes, when the older Wilder women met up with Kitty. "Did you need something, Aunt Cat?" she asked, keeping her gaze off Samantha.
"Dylan Matthews came by the house looking for you last night," her great-aunt said.
"Oh?" The hope strengthened, in her mind's eye the minivan's chrome glittering, not silver, but gold.
Aunt Cat turned to Samantha. "And D. B. Matthews came by looking for you."
Samantha's mouth opened, but her "Oh" didn't make it out.
Stunned, Kitty stared at her mother, not even noticing as one of the reporters jostled her on his way out.
Dylan's father had been looking for Samantha? It ... it...
"It couldn't be, could it?"
Kitty jumped as her thoughts were spoken out loud in a stranger's voice. Whirling, she took in the reporter - a heavyset man in his late thirties - who had turned back from the exit and was coming toward them.
His gaze was on Kitty's mother. "I heard you'd retired from Vegas, but I didn't want to believe it. Not after twenty years." Without taking his eyes off her, he called over his shoulder, "Max, get the camera over here. Hurry, damn it. This'll be perfect for the weekend show, spliced with some footage from her act."
Her act? Kitty swung back to study her mother. As she watched, Samantha straightened, her features hardening into a colder, but almost more beautiful, version of her usual self. "I'm not available for comment right now," she said, her voice steady and calm.
The heavyset man gave her an unctuous smile and sidled closer. "C'mon. You'll be news."
Without batting an eyelash, Samantha seemed to remove herself even farther from the pestering reporter. "No, thank you."
Kitty had run up against his type a hundred times in The Burning Rose and knew he wasn't going to take the hint. She drew herself up. "Excuse me, sir, but - "
"But nothing." The man's eyes barely flicked her way. "It's my good luck that I ran into the infamous Las Vegas stripper Gold Fever, and I'm not letting it - or her - go."
Las Vegas stripper? Gold Fever? One look at Samantha's frozen expression confirmed the truth. A laugh escaped Kitty's mouth and she clapped her palm over her lips to stop another hysterical sound. What a ridiculous name. And how ironic. How deliciously, I-told-you-so ironic.
In just that moment it was done. For once and for all, for now and forever, a Wilder woman had stripped Kitty of any last hope she might have had for a conventional life in Hot Water. "Stripped," she whispered out loud, then giggled again.
As she ran in the direction of the cemetery, she heard both Samantha and Aunt Cat call her name. Kitty ignored them, focusing instead on her minivan as that ephemeral mental image dissolved like sugar in a pool of tears.
* * *
Kitty loitered in the cemetery for a good hour, poking around the highest knolls that were the sites of the oldest graves. But she finally headed back toward the park - she'd dropped her clipboard there, she thought. In Old Town there were people counting on her and details to oversee.
Divorces to obtain.
She found the clipboard, and then she found Samantha, sitting at a picnic table in the shade of an ancient oak. Despite all the Heritage