Better Late Than Never

Chapter 12

JENNA WAS HAVING SUNDAY lunch with her father in a real restaurant, the kind with cloth napkins. "How's your chicken?" Stuart d her. "Delicious," she replied. Of course she'd eaten chicken before, many times, but she'd never had it like this, in a sauce with small mushrooms.

Her father was eating some kind of fish. There were a lot of little bones that he had to keep picking out, which would have driven Jenna crazy, but he didn't seem to mind. A man like Stuart Kelley, who had once lived alone on a beach for a month and had fished for his own meals every day, wouldn't be bothered by a few bones. His life had been so amazing!

"Did you really work on an African safari?" she asked him.

"Only for a couple of weeks," he said. "And it wasn't one of those heavy-duty hunting safaris."

This was something else she liked about him--he didn't brag about everything he'd done. He was matter-of-fact about his adventures.

"Good," Jenna said in relief. "I don't like the idea of killing animals." She looked down at her plate. "I eat them, though. I guess that makes me kind of a hypocrite."

"I feel exactly the same way," Stuart confided, and once again, Jenna had that warm, happy feeling she'd been experiencing a lot lately. They had so much in common!

She had one worry, though. How could a man who'd been living such an exciting life suddenly move here and settle down with a regular job and a family? Because that was now her fantasy, and as hard as she tried to let her natural pessimism and distrust have an impact, the stories kept playing out in her head. A house with a yard. A mother, a father, maybe a dog, maybe even a little brother or sister …

"Stu? Stu Kelley?"

A red-faced man in a bright Hawaiian shirt had stopped by their table. Her father rose.

"Arnie! Good to see you!" The two men shook hands.

"What's it been--ten years? More?" the man asked. "How long are you in town for?"

"I'm not sure," Stuart said. He turned and gave Jenna a wink. "Depends on how things work out."

"What are you doing these days?"

"Not much. I'm between jobs at the moment. The money's running out, though, so I have to start looking around."

Once again, Jenna felt a rush of admiration. He didn't have much money, but he'd scraped together enough to take his daughter out to lunch in a restaurant where you didn't have to stand in line at a counter. She made a mental note not to order dessert.

The florid man nodded toward the opposite end of the restaurant. "Well, if you've still got a few bucks and you feel lucky, you might be interested in the back room."

"The back room?"

"There's a regular poker game there every Sunday afternoon. Nice guys, and the stakes aren't too high.

I'm on my way there now. Want to join us?"

"No thanks," Stuart said. "I'm spending the day with my daughter." He introduced them. Stuart and the big man promised each other to stay in touch, and Arnie took off for his game in the back room.

"Is poker a hard game to play?" Jenna asked.

"Not really. It's hard to win, though. It depends a lot on the cards you're dealt, so luck is a major factor. And reading minds."

Jenna's eyes widened. "Reading minds?"

Stuart laughed. "Not literally, Jenna. Have you ever heard the expression poker face?"

"No."

"It's when someone's expression tells you nothing about what they're thinking. It comes from the fact that in poker, frequently you have to bluff and pretend your cards are better or worse than they really are so that the other players will bet or raise or fold the way you want them to--so you can win."

She didn't know what he meant by raising or folding, but she got the general idea. "You have to guess what the other people are holding?"

"Exactly. And if the players have good poker faces, it's not easy. How about some dessert?"

"No thank you," Jenna said properly.

He didn't want any dessert either, so he called for the check, and the waiter brought it to the table. "Now, what would you like to do this afternoon? How about a movie?" He opened his wallet and took out some money. Jenna could see that there was very little left. She tried to think of something they could do that wouldn't cost anything.

"Do you know what I'd really like to do? See a real poker game."

Stuart was surprised. "Why?"

"I like card games, and I want to see how it works."

Stuart smiled. "I'm afraid it's not a spectator sport. Those guys in the back room aren't going to want us watching them."

"What if you played?" Jenna asked. "Would they let me sit with you?"

He looked at her in amusement. "You really want to do that?"

She bobbed her head up and down vigorously. He shrugged.

"We can ask."

In the back room, there was a pool table, a foosball machine, and a couple of tables where people were playing cards. When Arnie looked up and saw Stuart and Jenna, he waved them over.

"Hey, we're just about to start a new round. Want to join in?"

"Do you mind if my kid sits with me?" Stuart asked.

One of the other men grinned. "As long as she's only looking at your cards."

Stuart pulled over two chairs and they sat down. Jenna winced as he added what little was left in his wallet to the pot, and the cards were dealt.

Jenna wasn't exactly sure what was going on--all the calling and raising meant nothing to her. But after a while, some things became clear. The cards that a player was holding were called a hand, and the best hand won the game. Sometimes, though, people would pretend to have a better hand than they really did so that the other players would give up. That was the bluffing part.

Only nobody seemed to be bluffing in this game, and it was all kind of boring. Jenna realized she had made a mistake--card games were only fun when you yourself were playing them. Like her father said, poker wasn't a spectator sport.

She found a magazine in the corner and brought it back to her chair. It was about cars and wasn't any more interesting than the poker game, so once again she indulged in fantasies about her future life. She wondered how her mother would feel about her ex-husband's return. Would she be happy? She never talked about Stuart or expressed any interest or curiosity in where he was or what he was doing. Probably because she thought she'd never see him again. She was in for a big surprise . . .

"Jenna? What do you think?"

She shoved aside her daydreams and turned to her father.

"What?"

"Everyone's folded--it's just me and Mr. Clifford there. What I don't know is whether or not Mr. Clifford has a better hand than I do."

She glanced at her father's hand. It looked pretty good to her--three aces, two kings. But if Mr. Clifford had something like four aces and a king, it didn't matter--Stuart would lose and Mr. Clifford would get that pile of money in the center of the table.

"Take a look at him," her father urged her. "Do you think he's bluffing?"

She looked at the man across the table. He seemed friendly, with bushy eyebrows and a broad smile. She didn't have the slightest idea what kind of cards he had--he held them close, like all the players, and all she could see was the back of them. Too bad she didn't have x-ray vision.

But she did, in a way. Even if she couldn't see the actual cards, Mr. Clifford was probably thinking about them.

She was pretty sure it wasn't the right thing to do, but she couldn't resist. It would be so awful for Stuart to lose the little money he had left. So she did her thing.

And she was right about what was going on in Mr. Clifford's thoughts. There they were, spread out in her mind--two aces, two jacks, and a ten. She didn't know the value for sure, but it seemed to her that her father's hand was stronger.

"I don't think you should fold."

He didn't--he raised the bet, which Jenna thought was crazy, because he didn't have any more money. But then Mr. Clifford had to show his cards, and Stuart won.

Mr. Clifford wasn't angry. He congratulated Stuart and said, "Your daughter's got good instincts."

Stuart nodded. "Yes, I think I'll keep her," he said jovially.

When Jenna saw how much money he'd won, she was pleased. "I'm glad I was right," she told him.

"But you knew you were right, didn't you? You read his mind."

She admitted she had. "But I guess that's cheating, huh? I probably shouldn't have done it."

He laughed. "That's one way to look at it."

She wasn't sure what he meant, but he wasn't mad at her, and that was all that mattered.

He insisted on getting her a little gift with some of his winnings, and she let him buy her a T-shirt-- black, of course, with silver glittery stars all over it.

"Thanks," she said. "Have you tried any of those fake tattoos?"

"Not yet. How about you?"

She hesitated. Then, with an abashed smile, she took off her cardigan and revealed her upper right arm, where the word Dad was emblazoned in red.

Stuart put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a little squeeze. "That's my girl."

It seemed as though she'd been waiting for a moment like this all her life. Not that she'd been depressed about not having a father--like her mother, she had never given him much thought. But she had one now, and better late than never.

When they got back to the Devons' house, Mrs. Devon insisted that Stuart stay for dinner. While the adults had their cocktails, Jenna ran up to Tracey's room to show off her new T-shirt.

"Guess what?" she said to Tracey. "I'm happy!"

"You should be,"Tracey said. "It's a great T-shirt."

Jenna picked up her pillow and tossed it playfully at Tracey. "Not just for that. Tracey, I really think he's going to stay! As soon as my mother comes out of the hospital, he's going to talk to her. And they might get back together!"

"Don't get carried away," Tracey cautioned her.

"Your mother doesn't even know he's back in town. She might not want him."

"Are you crazy?" Jenna shrieked. She threw herself on the bed and gazed at the ceiling. "He's handsome, he's funny, he's nice . . . Who wouldn't want a man like that?"

"He doesn't have a job, does he?"

"He can get one. You wouldn't believe all the interesting jobs he's had. He worked on a ship, he worked at a safari camp, he had a job in Alaska--"

"Really? That's what he said?"

Jenna sat up. "You think he's lying?"

"Oh no," Tracey said quickly. "It's just interesting that he's had such a variety of jobs.What did you two do today?"

"We had lunch in a restaurant, and then we played poker. Well, my father played--I just watched. And he won!"

"Lucky him," Tracey said.

"It wasn't luck," Jenna confessed, and she told Tracey about reading the other player's mind.

It probably wasn't the right thing to do--Tracey was big on honesty Jenna wasn't surprised when

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Tracey scolded her.

"That wasn't smart," she said reprovingly. "I'm sure Stuart wouldn't be happy to know you did that."

"He knows," Jenna admitted. "I told him."

Tracey looked at her curiously. "What did he say?"

"He laughed."

Tracey looked appalled. "You're kidding!"

"My father is very cool," Jenna informed her. "He doesn't lecture or give lessons on how to behave."

Tracey murmured something that Jenna couldn't hear.

"What did you say?"

"I just said . . . that doesn't sound very fatherly."

Jenna stared at her. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

But there was an uneasy silence in the air, which Jenna finally broke. "Don't you like my father?"

"He's okay," Tracey said. "It's just that . . ."

"What?"

"Well, he just shows up out of nowhere, says he's your father, and all of a sudden your whole life is going to change. I just don't want you to be too disappointed."

"Why would I be disappointed?" Jenna asked in bewilderment. Then, something else Tracey had said echoed in her ears. "What do you mean, he says he's my father? Don't you believe he's my father?"

"I don't know," Tracey replied. "Maybe. But your mother hasn't seen him yet. And you believe him because you can't read his mind. Which isn't much to go on."

"My mother could have been at home when he came to Brook side Towers," Jenna pointed out.

"But she wasn't," Tracey said. "And maybe he knew that."

"That doesn't make any sense," Jenna argued. "Why would he lie about being my father? To hang out with me? He's not some kind of sicko!"

"Oh no, I didn't mean that," Tracey said hastily "All I'm saying is that you should take it easy. Don't jump to any conclusions."

Jenna glared at her. "I like my conclusions."

Tracey was silent. Then she offered Jenna a half smile. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't talk like that about him--it's none of my business anyway. Let's talk about something else."

"Fine," Jenna said. "What did you do today?"

"Practiced disappearing."

"Oh yeah? How did it go?"

"I'm getting better," Tracey told her. "I was able to go completely invisible for a full minute. At least, I think I was completely invisible. It's hard to tell, looking in a mirror. There might have been an outline of me or something I didn't see."

"Try it now and I'll tell you if you're invisible," Jenna suggested.

Traceys brow puckered, and she gazed at Jenna steadily for a moment. "Okay," she said finally. She went over to Jenna's side of the room, by the door. "If I disappear, time me so I'll know how long I can do it." She handed Jenna her cell phone and showed her the stopwatch feature. Then she stepped back a few paces.

Jenna watched. Tracey stood very still with her eyes closed. She breathed evenly and steadily, in a way that told Jenna she was concentrating.

And she began to fade. At first, it was practically imperceptible. Jenna thought it was her own imagination or wishful thinking that made Tracey seem less solid to her. But then she actually began to see through Tracey. She was translucent, and then she was transparent. Jenna couldn't see her at all.

She started the stopwatch. She was still feeling a little annoyed with Tracey for not being enthusiastic about Stuart. But Tracey hadn't had an easy life until now--she'd been ignored at home and tormented at school--so it was probably hard for her to accept people or believe in them. Stuart would work his charm on her eventually.

How long had Tracey been able to stay invisible earlier? A full minute? She'd been gone longer than that already. It was a minute and 19 seconds . . .

A form started to appear, and Jenna stopped the watch. "One minute and twenty-two seconds," she announced as Tracey became solid again. "Why are you so out of breath?"

Tracey was panting, and her fists were clenched. "You think it doesn't take any energy to vanish?"

"1 didn't think it was like running a marathon," Jenna commented. "Hey, I'm starving. Did your mother put out any of those nibbly things with the cocktails?"

"Go look,"Tracey said. "I'll be down soon." She was still breathing a little heavily, and Jenna caught a glimpse of a strange, sort of sickly expression on her face before she turned away.

Clearly, vanishing required a lot more energy and effort than mind reading, Jenna thought as she ran downstairs. On the other hand, invisibility could be a real benefit in playing poker . . .