Fifteen Minutes

head home to Kentucky and never look back.”

Cullen had looked at her like she’d sprouted an extra set of eyeballs. “Zack is about to own the world. How could you wish him back on the horse farm?”

Chandra could have a sharp tongue when the cameras weren’t rolling. Like the way she called Kelly out about Cal. In that moment, Chandra’s response had been much softer. “Really, Cullen? You like being famous?”

“Of course.” He looked smug.

“No you don’t.” She stared at him. “You can’t walk out your front door without people taking your picture.”

“Oh, please.” Cullen laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Everyone wants to be us. Look at your life, Chandra.”

Kelly winced a little. In light of Chandra’s parents, Cullen hadn’t exactly been sensitive.

Chandra’s voice grew icy. “You know why they want to be us? Because they’re not us. You and you.” She pointed at Kelly. “You’re addicted to all this and you tell yourselves you’re happy.” She gathered her long ironed hair. “But look at us. Our personal lives are a mess. We can’t do what we want or wear what we want or go where we want.” She lowered her voice again. “I wish the boy a ticket back to Danville, that’s what.”

Kelly opened her eyes and looked at the green rolling hills twenty thousand feet below. Did the pop singer have a point? Fame had cost them much. The murder of Chandra’s parents and a broken engagement. Her own marriage to Cal failed, and for Cullen, at least four publicly failed relationships in the last two years. The man stuck to his dramatic all-white getup. So had fame become an addiction for him? Had it become that way for her?

The plane landed and a sedan met her. Now she was ten minutes from her parents’ home in the country. She would stay today and leave tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully in that time she and her dad could find common ground. She hadn’t processed that he was dying. Her memory of him would always be bigger than life, no matter what cancer might do to him.

The driver passed the church where her dad had been pastor for nearly four decades. Don’t bring up Jesus, Daddy. Don’t do it. Not this time. She looked away from the church. Too much history, Kelly and Cal. Wednesday nights. Rides to the lake in his pickup truck. She looked straight ahead. Chandra Olson’s rant had stayed with her. Kelly had no intention of taking Chandra’s advice about Cal. The singer’s verbal attack last weekend was completely out of line. If Chandra tried to corner her with a dose of relationship advice, she would tell her where she could take it. Kelly had been caught off guard, nothing more.

It wouldn’t happen again.

She narrowed her eyes, trying to see farther ahead. The road never changed. Pale gray asphalt lined with fading yellow dashes. Two stoplights a mile apart and then the turn. Right on Bentonville, another three miles on a road that was more one lane than two. A few more minutes, then a left on Sandy Creek, and there it was. The house she had grown up in. Kelly pulled her compact from her purse and checked her look.

All this travel wasn’t good for her skin, but she was holding up.

The breakup, the news about her father, the constant pressure from Rudy for her to meet up with Cal. All of it took a toll on her face. She pressed lightly on her cheekbones. As long as she looked okay on the outside she could keep it together. Play the tapes in her head. Life was good. She was young and successful. Everything would be okay.

She touched up her lipstick and returned the compact to her purse, a subtle Marc Jacobs number. The last mile felt like ten, but finally they pulled into her parents’ gravel driveway and up to the front door. The driver helped move her bags to the front porch while Kelly put the conversation with her fellow judges out of her mind. She hadn’t reached the door when she heard the voices of her children.

Kelly’s heart sank. What was this? No one had told her the kids would be here. She hadn’t seen them in two weeks, not since the last time their nanny had brought them from Cal’s house in New Jersey to her flat for a few days. They had planned for the kids to stay mainly with Cal while the Fifteen Minutes season played out.

Now as she opened the door, as she watched them run to her, she realized how much she missed them. How could two weeks have gone by without the three of them being together?

“Mommy! You’re here!” Kai was six, a miniature of Cal with blond hair and beautiful blue eyes.

“I am.” Kelly dropped low and held out her hands. Kai ran at her full force, wrapping his tanned arms around her neck and holding on as if his next breath depended on it.

Kinley was four, right behind her brother. “Mommy! You were gone for so long!” She worked her way into the hug and all three stayed that way for a long time.

“I’m sorry!” Kelly whispered into her daughter’s long pale blond hair. “Mommy’s been so busy.”

Kinley leaned back and smoothed her hand over Kelly’s head. “Grandma says mommies should never be too busy for their kids.”

Kelly bit her lip. She would have to thank her mother later. “Grandma’s right. Maybe your nanny can bring you over one day next week.”

“And we can spend the night.” Kai put his hand on her cheek, his expression deep and earnest. “Okay, Mommy? Can we spend the night?’

Something about his words or the way he said them exposed in her heart a blind ambition, a cancerous complacency that had found its way there. She ran her hand over his small back. “That would be nice, Kai. I’d like that.”

“Me, too!” Kinley jumped around, her eyes big. “We could finger-paint, okay, Mommy? Could we finger- paint?”

“We could.” The sting of tears was back, and Kelly wasn’t sure what to say or think or feel. Sorrow was rising within her like storm waters. These were the faces she’d spent every waking moment with until Kinley was one. The year she began answering more to the mirror and her manager than Cal and the kids. None of what she was feeling would make sense to Kai and Kinley. So she stayed there, on her knees. Hugging them and quietly saying the only thing she could say. “I love you both. I do.”

She saw something in the corner of her eye and when she looked up her mother was standing in the hallway watching. Kelly kissed Kai’s cheek and then Kinley’s. “I’m here for two days. We can bake cookies for Grandpa, okay?”

“Yay!” Their voices made a single chorus that rang through the house. The sound was more beautiful than Kelly remembered.

As she stood, Kai hugged her waist. His eyes lifted to hers. “We’ll be outside, okay? We’re making a fort.”

“Perfect. I’ll come see it in a little while.” She ran her hand over his head and smiled. “You’re more handsome all the time.”

He grinned in response. Then he took hold of Kinley’s hand and the two ran back outside. When they were out of earshot, Kelly looked at her mother. “Mommies should never be too busy for their kids?”

Her mom gave the slightest shrug, her expression unforgiving. “They shouldn’t.”

“Thanks.” Kelly pulled her bags into the house and glanced at her mom. “Nice to see you, too.”

“Kelly.” Her mom’s face changed. Instead of anger and indifference, a desperate hurt filled her eyes. “I don’t want things to be like this. You’re . . . you’re so different.” She looked over her shoulder toward the backyard and then at Kelly again. “Sometimes I wonder if you remember any of us. Me and your dad . . . Cal.” Her voice fell away. “Even your babies.”

The comment settled like gravel in Kelly’s gut. “Fine. You can think that.” She sighed as she walked past her mother to the kitchen. She helped herself to a glass of water. Through the window she could see Kai and Kinley chasing each other around a couple of the biggest backyard trees. She took a few long sips and turned to her mother. “It’s a busy life. I can’t help that.”

Her mom only stared at her, as if trying to see past the makeup and hair and designer clothes to the girl Kelly used to be. At least it felt that way. She thought about closing the distance between them and hugging her mother, but the timing felt off. “Where’s Dad?”

“In his room. He’s . . . thinner.” Her mom’s eyes grew damp. “Very thin. He’ll be glad you came.”

“That makes one of you.” Kelly set her glass on the counter and walked down the hallway to her parents’