POLKA DOTS AND MOONBEAMS - Synopsis

By Kay LeGrand

The last thing Lora McDaniel needs is a ticket for speeding in a school zone. Newly fired and dumped by a manipulative ‘boyfriend’/boss, she has no idea how she’s going to pay her rent, much less a pile of hefty fines. She’s been abused, betrayed, and she has no use for men. Especially not for the handsome but stern-faced motorcycle cop who’s just ruined what’s left of her life.

Rookie Forrest City, Ohio, officer Jim Brook has little desire to become entangled with women, either. One of seven siblings in a family that’s heavily into meddling with the course of his life, he’s long since decided bachelorhood is the only way for him. But he’s totally unprepared to find himself face to face with a hysterical, green-eyed beauty. And when she tearfully confesses she can’t pay the fines he’s imposed, Jim discovers a protective instinct he never knew he possessed. Letting his heart get in the way of professionalism and common sense, he finds a way to slip cash into her purse without her knowledge.

Of course, Lora’s furious. She sees this as an attempt at charity, and charity’s one thing she’s vowed never, after a childhood of physical and emotional poverty, to accept again. Still, she’s trapped. With no job and no savings, she’s forced to use Jim’s money, though she makes it perfectly clear she considers it a loan. One she will pay back.

And that, she thinks, is the end of that.

Fate, though, isn’t about to let her off the hook. Without warning, her ‘boyfriend’, Bjork, reappears. He’s got the idea that she and Jim are having a love affair, and he’s worked himself into a self-centered fury. Telling Lora she will come back to him because she belongs to him, he strikes her to drive his point home.

When Jim learns what Bjork has done, he wants Lora to press charges. But she refuses. Experience has taught her it’s safer, wiser, to do nothing and wait for Bjork’s fit to pass.

Unable to change her mind, Jim does manage to convince her it’s not safe to stay where Bjork can find her. With no safe-house available in small Forrest City, all he can offer is his apartment. But she’ll have it all to herself. He promises. And he’ll be right next door, should trouble arise.

At first, it seems like a perfect solution. Until Bjork finds her, and promises retaliation if she doesn’t do everything he demands.

Worried that Bjork’s obsession will escalate into real violence, Jim tries again to get her to file charges. And when she still refuses, he spirits her away to a cottage on the shores of nearby Gauden’s Lake.

Unfortunately, Lora’s been to the lake before. Her father, an angry and domineering man, took her and her mother there for ‘vacations’, and the memories aren’t good. And the worst of all is the memory of the terrible punishment her father inflicted when she was six, and asked to ride the carousel in the park. She didn’t belong on ‘that side of the lake’, he’d shouted. She’d ‘never’ belong there.

Yet that’s where Jim has brought her. ‘That side of the lake’, where the carousel music haunts her.

Sensing that the carousel lies at the root of so many of her troubles…her lack of confidence, her fear of reprisals from Bjork should she cross him, her insistence that a man she calls ‘the gardener’ is stalking her…Jim tries to convince her to ride. He has to do something. He can’t just stand by, and watch her suffer.

Gradually, as he works to convince her to face the demons she’s held inside for too long, he realizes he’s fallen in love with her. And he’s revealed a few secrets of his own, things he never meant to share with anyone. About his family, and the single-minded way they pressured him to conform to tradition and become a cop. And he’s allowed Lora to see the effects of a strange illness that’s been plaguing him, leaving him dizzy and short of breath. An illness that seems to have grown worse.

Bewildered and unnerved, Jim tries to retreat. But it’s too late. Love, he discovers, is a lot like a jack-in-the-box. It’s sneaky, it’s unpredictable, and it has a habit of hitting with a sledgehammer when a person least expects it. And that’s doubly true when he realizes Lora seems to love him, too.

The realization leads to moments of intimacy that even a day or two earlier would have seemed impossible. Moments that leave Lora aglow with new hope, and new belief that her most cherished dream might now come true. Starry-eyed, she confides she’s always wanted kids of her own. She wants to lavish upon them all the love she’s always been denied.

When he hears her dream and sees the wistful sparkle in her eyes, Jim’s devastated. Because he has one other secret…one he’s never thought important until now. As part of his youthful rebellion against his family, he had a vasectomy.

Sick at heart, Jim confesses. And Lora’s reaction is even worse than he feared.

Feeling once again betrayed and used, she won’t trust him any longer. She’s just about to demand he take her home to Forrest City when Bjork appears, spoiling for a fight.

The confrontation between Bjork and Jim is as short as it is brutal. Amidst vile threats and insults, Jim ejects Bjork from the cottage, then suffers an attack of illness so severe he can no longer deny something’s wrong. So Lora makes a deal with him. She’ll go back to Forrest City and file charges against Bjork, if Jim agrees to see a doctor. But first, she has to ride the carousel, if only to prove to herself that she really is ready to stand up to Bjork.

Despite last-minute misgivings, it’s a magical moment. It helps her see that Jim has been right all along. She has nothing to fear from the past. She has only to face up to it, and she’ll find all the strength she needs to take charge of the future.

But fear, it turns out, is very much a part of the present. On the way back to Forrest City, they’re run off the road by someone who seems intent upon killing them. Only Jim’s skill with the motorcycle saves them, though they’re both badly shaken. Then, stopping at a convenience store to pull themselves together and report the incident to the state patrol, they walk into a robbery attempt. Jim steps between Lora and the robber, and is shot.

With Jim cradled in her arms, Lora finally admits to herself that she loves him. But it’s too late. He’s unconscious. Probably dying. And in all the chaos that follows…emergency surgery, a harrowing moment when his heart stops, the surprising revelation that he’s been suffering a well-hidden heart problem all along, and the not-so-surprising news that his family blames her for what happened at the convenience store…she fears she’ll never have a chance to tell him how she feels.

Fortunately, Jim’s sister seems to understand. Shielding Lora from the family, and hospital protocol designed to keep non-family out, she announces Lora and Jim have secretly married, and takes Lora to see him.

Lora’s horrified, Jim’s amused, and the family reluctantly admits they could have been wrong about her.

But no one can protect Lora from a confrontation with her mysterious ‘gardener’. Admitting he followed them and ran them off the road, he says he believed Jim was Bjork, and was looking for revenge. Because Bjork has been having a love affair with his wife. And later, nothing can protect her from news that Bjork’s been arrested for killing the ‘gardener’s’ wife when she tried to break off the affair.

Shocked and saddened, Lora is relieved, too. With Bjork out of the picture, she’s free for the first time ever, to take charge of her life. To tell Jim she loves him, and to accept with joy in her heart when he asks her to marry him.

Even if he can’t father the children she wanted, she’s learned that there are all kinds of families, all kinds of ways to love. Jim comes with a ready-made family. She’s already started to win their acceptance, and in time, she’s sure they’ll come to love her as much as they love Jim.

And Jim’s free, too. No longer able to be a cop, he’ll finally have a chance to make his own decisions, follow his own dreams. More importantly, he’s learned the true meaning of family. He’s learned that his is a real treasure, and he doesn’t want the solitary life, after all.