Hope chose a ham and cheese made with the kind of soft white bread she hadn’t had since she was a kid, and greasy potato chips. “Where is Adam’s mother?” she asked as if she weren’t dying to know.
“Most of the time she lives in L.A.,” Shelly answered as she plopped a grape on top of a mound of bleu cheese. “But when she has a visitation with Adam, they stay somewhere in Montana.”
“That’s unusual.” Hope popped the top to a can of orange Shasta and raised it to her lips. “Usually it’s the father who has visitation.”
Shelly shrugged. “Dylan’s a good daddy, and when Adam needs female influence, he goes and stays with his grandma and aunt at the Double T. And, of course, a lot of the time he stays here with me and Wally when Dylan is working.” Shelly bit into the cracker, then asked, “Do you have children?”
“No. No children.” Hope waited for either the puzzled frown to wrinkle Shelly’s brow or the oh-you-poor-thing look to cross her face. Neither happened.
“This stuff is addicting,” Shelly said while fixing herself another cracker.
Hope relaxed in the chaise and ate her lunch. She watched Wally and Adam stare intently down, hands poised over the surface of the lake. The meal was greasy and fattening and she polished it off with three Oreo cookies and a piece of licorice. When they traded the baskets back, all that was left in Hope’s basket were a few pitiful grapes still on the vine, the two diet Pepsis, and her camera. She removed the Minolta from its case and pointed it at the two boys diving to catch minnows with their hands. Hope wasn’t a great photographer, but she knew enough to get the shots she needed. She focused the lens and snapped.
“Are you taking pictures for your flora-and-fauna article?”
Suddenly Hope didn’t feel so comfortable lying to Shelly. “Yeah,” she said, which wasn’t a real lie. She was taking pictures of the area for her alien article. She took several more photos; then the boys ran up the beach toward them and grabbed some towels.
Adam dug into the pocket of his swimming trunks and handed Shelly several small rocks. He told her she could have the most special one.
“Take a picture of me, Hope,” Wally urged as he flexed his pencil-thin arms.
“No, me.” Adam pushed Wally out of the way and posed like a bodybuilder.
“I’ll take a picture of each of you and give them to you when I get them developed.” She took several photos before the boys grabbed their peanut butter sandwiches and sodas and took off to find more “cool rocks” on the lake’s shore.
“When are you going to finish your article?” Shelly asked.
Hope opened her mouth to rattle off a fictitious deadline, but stopped. They’d shared picnic baskets. She’d drunk Shelly’s orange soda and eaten her Oreos, and she didn’t feel like lying anymore. Shelly hadn’t judged Hope when she’d discovered that Hope didn’t have any children. Maybe she wouldn’t judge her profession or want to relate Elvis sightings. “Well, if you won’t spread it around, I’ll tell you who I really write for.”
Shelly sat up a bit straighter and leaned toward Hope. “I can keep a secret.”
“I really write for The Weekly News of the Universe. I lied about the Northwest magazine article.”
“You did? Why?”
“Because people assume all sorts of things about tabloid writers. Like we’re sleazy and write gossip.”
“And you don’t?”
“No. I write stories about Bigfoot and aliens and people living beneath the ocean in the Bermuda Triangle.”
“Hmm… that black-and-white tabloid they always sell next to the Enquirer?”
Hope waited for a boat to speed past before she snapped a picture of the clear green lake. “Yes.”
“The one with Bat Boy on the cover?”
“Bat Boy,” Hope scoffed as she focused her camera on the distant shore. She made the trees the focal point and blurred the beach in the foreground. A perfect spot for fuzzy aliens to picnic. “That’s Weekly World News. They can’t write their way out of a paper sack. Those people have absolutely no imagination.” As far as she was concerned, Bat Boy was one of the stupider stories she’d read from the competition.
“Oh! Giant ants attack New York?”
“Bingo.”
“Oh, my God! Did you write that?”
Hope lowered the camera and looked at her neighbor. “No, but my stories are feature articles, and once in a while I write a sort of point-counterpoint advice column under the pseudonyms Lacy Harte and Frank Rhodes.”
“You’re Lacy Harte?”