Free Catch a Falling Star by Jessica Starre Page A

to get his appendix out.
    “But that’s not all,” he guessed.
    She shook her head. “I had a relapse when I was nine. That was just after my dad married your … Chrissy. And that time, it was Brianna who was always at the hospital with me.”
    “Brianna?” he said. Not that he was surprised. Brianna was solid. But she would only have been a kid herself at the time.
    “Chrissy never got sober,” Natalie said, relentless about the truth in away he suspected she’d learned from Brianna. “And neither did my dad.”
    Christ
. He’d known he had to leave to save his own life but he’d left Brianna behind in the care of an alcoholic who had immediately hooked up with another alcoholic. And yet he still didn’t know what he could have done differently.
Not be a drunk, Dick
. Lotta help that line of thinking was.
    “Then I relapsed when I was fifteen,” Natalie said, reciting a fact like it had come out of a history book, and not that there had been pain and blood and tears. Which he was sure there had been.
    “They were both dead by then,” he said, remembering their earlier conversation, doing the math. “Chrissy and your dad.”
    “Yes.”
    “So Brianna … I hope Brianna … ” Listen to him. Hoping a kid had held another kid’s hand.
    “She did,” Natalie said. “‘We’re sisters,’ she used to say. ‘Not by accident but by choice.’ Still says it. I always knew I was going to be okay because Brianna was there.”
    Brianna had always been a good kid. He had no idea where she’d gotten it from.

Chapter Eight
    Monday morning Brianna was late to work because Dakota had gotten into something and had vomited all over her shoes, so there had been cleaning up, and a phone call to the vet, and then a mad dash out the door only to find that Mrs. Curtin wasn’t in anyway. Out at a breakfast meeting, which meant Brianna could have driven Natalie to class instead of making her take the bus. Natalie had looked beyond exhausted this morning.
    Brianna was worried, but Natalie would bite her head off if she said so. So she was just shutting up these days. She hoped Natalie appreciated it.
    Heidi peeked around the wall of Brianna’s cubicle. “Mr. G called earlier. I said you’d call him back.”
    Brianna’s heart gave an unsteady lurch. She’d missed a call by Mr. G! She had hardly heard a word from him last week, since the movie. She tried to think if he had called even once since then. Before, he’d been calling a couple of times a week because … well, she didn’t really know why he’d been calling. But he had been and then he’d stopped, which was depressing because it seemed like maybe he’d been calling her because he liked talking to her but now that he’d gotten to know her better he was so over that.
    She picked up the phone and dialed his number, which she had memorized. Not because she called it so much — she didn’t — but because … maybe some day she’d be stranded somewhere and she would need someone to call, and he was the most reliable person she knew. He was her just-in-case phone number. Her two-o’clock-in-the-morning-and-I’m-calling-from-the-county-jail number. She doubted he knew that.
    The phone was answered by someone who was not Mr. G, probably that awful housekeeper Beverly who looked like she drank vinegar for breakfast to get her started for the day. Then he came on the line a moment later and said, “Good morning, Brianna,” and that made her feel good.
    “Good morning, Mr. G. I had a message you called earlier? I was running a little late this morning.”
    “Car wouldn’t start?” That had happened before.
    “Dakota this time. She ate something that disagreed with her.”
    “Sounds messy.”
    “It was fairly disgusting.”
    “I called because I know you’ve been working on your event-planning business. I’m wondering if you would be available to help me with something?”
    Yes yes yes. Anything you want.
She reined herself in. “I’d be glad to