Free A Little Ray of Sunshine by Lani Diane Rich

again, and he probably will be, if it’s his natural inclination. But he’s not lost.”
    For the first moment since I’d met Jess, the thick fog of my self-absorption lifted, and I could see that she wasn’t talking about me, or Luke. Not entirely, anyway. I was suddenly overtaken with curiosity about her past, but I didn’t ask any questions, mostly because she hadn’t asked me any, and she seemed like a “do unto others” kind of girl.
    I cleared my throat. “I’m just gonna get the Airstream set up in my lot, and then we can get you to the airport.”
    She flashed a smile. “Sounds great.”
    I put the truck in gear and started down the path to my section of the park. “Or, you know, I could drive you to Denver. It’s only another seventy miles, and it’s a bigger airport up there. You can get a direct flight to Portland and it’ll be cheaper.”
    “Well, sure,” she said. “That’d be nice. Thank you.”
    We drove in silence for a short while.
    “ Or ,” I said, “I could just drive you all the way to Fletcher.”
    I kept my eyes on the dirt path ahead of us, but even not looking at her, I could hear the smile in her voice.
    “That you could.”
    “I mean, I’ve paid for the full month. I could just park the damn trailer here and get over myself and go to my stupid mother’s stupid wedding. I mean, I owe Danny that much, right? The few good qualities I have are because of him. I can just think of it as Danny’s wedding, and put up with her for his sake.”
    “That’s an interesting perspective.”
    “Okay. So we’ll just park this thing and pack up and be on our way.”
    A wooden sign nailed to a tree marked my lot and I pulled easily into it. I shut the engine off and turned to face her. She glanced at me, not working too hard to hide her victorious grin.
    “Stop smiling,” I said, reaching for my door handle. “Nobody likes a cocky angel.”
     
    ***

The so-called “feud” between Shelley Fabares and myself, like many Hollywood stories, has been wildly over-reported, and never accurately portrayed. I would like to take this opportunity to clear up some points:
    1. She did not win the part of Mary Stone on The Donna Reed Show over me. Obviously, given that Shelley is somewhere between ten and fourteen years my senior (no one has ever been able to pin down her actual birthdate with any precision) this would be impossible. I will say that the producers were, at one point, thinking about adding a younger sister to the cast, and my name was bandied about.
    2. I have no proof that Shelley requested that there only be one Stone daughter, and threatened to quit should I have been added to the cast. That is hearsay. And my source, while reliable, will remain anonymous.
    3. It is patently untrue that I snuck onto the set of Girl Happy and put hot pepper flakes in Shelley’s bikini bottom. That could have been any number of girls on the long, long list of people who didn’t like her, of which I am only one.
    4. As to the rumors that I named my daughter Emmy just so I could say I got an Emmy before Shelley ever did... well. She still doesn’t have one, now does she?
     
    —from Twinkie and Me: The Real Life Confessions of Lilly Lorraine

 
    Six
     
     
    As we hit the first stoplight on the outside of Fletcher, I gripped the steering wheel so tight my fingers went numb. We’d driven almost non-stop for two days, and I was exhausted. While the driving was easier and faster without the trailer hitched up, I found myself in an elevated emotional state for most of the drive. If I was scared of going home, I was terrified; if I was happy about seeing the people I loved again, I was giddy. I couldn’t maintain a level state of mind, and found myself spiking into hyperactivity whenever I wasn’t fighting to keep from bursting into tears. Jess, for her part, had handled me well, distracting me with crossword puzzles and reading aloud from her Agatha Christie novel.
    Now, less than five minutes