Tom reached him first. He did not bother with a handshake, he simply wrapped his only son up in a big bear hug that Jake returned heartily, feeling a small tear form in his left eye.
“Welcome, Jake,” Tom said when the embrace was broken. There was strong emotion in his voice and Jake saw him wiping at his own eyes. “It’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too, Dad,” Jake told him. “Sorry I’ve been away so long.”
Mary embraced him next, her hug softer, more motherly, longer in duration. She was freely crying as she held her son, her words choked with joy at holding him in her arms. “Welcome to our place, Jake,” she told him. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me too, Mom,” he replied, kissing her on her wet cheek. He pulled from her hug and stood back a moment. “You two look great,” he observed. “Retirement is definitely agreeing with you.”
“It’s all the tennis we play,” Tom said. “And the hiking we do on the canyon trails.”
“We get a lot more exercise these days,” Mary said. “Not having to go to work every day frees up the time.”
“It shows,” Jake said. He turned to his father. “Where are your glasses, Dad? You look really different without them.”
“I had the RK surgery,” Tom told him. “I wrote you about it when you were living in New Zealand—several times I mentioned it, in fact.”
“Oh ... yeah,” Jake said guiltily. “It must have slipped my mind.” It had not slipped his mind. He had not opened any correspondence from home during his expatriate phase, which was why Pauline and Jill Yamashito, his accountant, had had to fly across the globe to finally track him down and pound a little sense into him. He still had not read any of those letters. In his haste to get back to California and start working on putting KVA Records together, he had left all of them unopened in a drawer in his home on the South Island.
“Yeah,” Tom said with a nod, “it sounds like you had a lot on your mind back then.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Jake said.
“I kind of like your new look, hon,” Mary told him, reaching out to touch his mustache.
Jake shrugged. “It’s an almost perfect disguise,” he told her. “I can walk around in public now without people hounding me.”
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” Tom said. “My first thought in the first second was: ‘who the hell is that?’”
They had a chuckle over this and then the Kingsley parents finally acknowledged their other offspring, Pauline, who was standing just behind Jake. Hugs were exchanged, as were warm words of greeting, but the emotion of the moment was not quite as strong. Pauline, after all, kept in regular touch and flew down to visit every few months. She had helped them hire the contractors who had built the place and had helped her father clear all the legal obstacles that had cropped up along the way.
After greeting their daughter, Tom and Mary turned their attention to Celia, who was shyly hanging back near the rear door of the Land Cruiser. She had never met Jake’s parents before and they were a bit puzzled why she had come along for the visit. They knew who she was, of course, and that she and Jake were partners in the record company and both working on solo albums, but they also knew she was married to Greg Oldfellow and that there was not (or at least there shouldn’t be) any romantic involvement between her and their son. He was not bringing her home to introduce a girlfriend, so why would she be here?
Still, they were gracious when the introductions were made and they made her feel welcome.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Celia,” Mary told her. “I have one of the guest bedrooms all set up for you.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Kingsley,” Celia replied. “I’m looking forward to a tour of the house.”
“Oh, call me Mary, please,” she said. “I don’t even let my music students at the high school call me ‘Mrs. Kingsley’. It’s so formal.”
“And I’m Tom,” Tom said. “We don’t stand much on ceremony here.”
“Mary and Tom it is,” she said with a smile.
“Pauline said your husband can’t join us?” Mary asked.
“He wasn’t able to make this leg of the trip,” Celia replied, keeping the answer vague, implying that Greg was simply too busy with movie business to accompany her to meet Jake’s parents. In truth, there was no movie business for Greg Oldfellow these days. The abomination that was his last movie—The Northern Jungle—had all but destroyed his career. He had been offered no roles except for in slapstick parody movies as comic relief. No one was taking him seriously as a serious actor anymore. The real reason he had not accompanied her was he refused to fly in Jake’s plane, thinking it a cramped deathtrap flown by an inexperienced pilot. He had not wanted Celia to come along either and Celia’s insistence on making the trip had led to a long, still unresolved argument between the two of them.
“That’s too bad,” Tom said. “I would have enjoyed meeting him. I think he’s a wonderful actor and I own several of his films in my collection.”
“He’s going to meet us on the second leg of the trip in Oregon,” Celia said. “I’ll give him your praise.”
They beamed at the thought that a famous Hollywood actor—even one who was technically washed up at the moment—would be hearing their names.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the driveway, Stanley and Cynthia Archer had finished greeting their son and their daughter-in-law—it had been the better part of six months since they had last seen them in person—and wandered over to meet Jake, Pauline, and Celia.
“Stan, Cindy,” Jake greeted, shaking hands with the former and giving a hug to the latter. “It’s good to see you both.”
“It’s good to see you as well, Jake,” said Stan. He was a shorter than average man, standing around five foot six inches, and he had a moderately advanced receding hairline. He, like Jake’s parents, looked to be in better shape these days than he had throughout his previous life. A career desk jockey who had worked for Mutual of California Insurance as a specialist in structural and business underwriting, he had always been more than a little round around the middle. He was now at least four inches smaller in the waistline than he’d been at his son’s wedding some eighteen months before.
“I like your new look, Jake,” Cynthia told him, her brown eyes tracking up and down from his face to his hair. “Haven’t your mother and I always said you’d look good with short hair?”
“You did always say that,” Jake had to agree. “You look good as well.”
And she did. Whether it was from walking the trails in the canyon or playing tennis or just generally living better in retirement, Cindy—who he had always thought of as almost a second mother—had dropped at least fifteen pounds since the wedding as well. Her brunette hair had been cut short and neatly styled recently and her face also appeared to defy her age. She could have passed for forty easily, despite the fact that she was fifty-four.
After greeting Pauline, the Archers were then introduced to Celia.
“It’s very nice to meet you at last,” Celia told them. “Bill talks about both of you all the time.”
“Only the good stuff, I hope,” Stan said with a chuckle.
“Is there any bad stuff?” Jake asked. “I’d like to hear that.”
“I’m sure he has a multitude of fascinating narratives about his career as an insurance underwriter,” Bill said seriously. “I always try to get him to share some with me, but he only says they would be boring.”
“Insurance underwriting, boring?” Jake said as if appalled. “Get the hell out of town with that, Stan!”
“Exactly!” Bill said. “Promise me that you’ll share something with us over dinner.”