“Funny thing, that. I had gone to a party—Garner Hayward, you know him? Well, I went to his party, dreadfully boring, and then I heard this angelic voice speaking to a waiter in French. I turned, and there she was. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I haven’t taken my eyes off her since.”
“Stop, David. You’re embarrassing me.” Lillian murmured in the tone of voice that meant No, go on. I love it.
He patted her hand on his arm and turned back to Vivian.
“Enough about me and my blissful happiness. How’s the radio biz?”
“Wonderful,” she said. And it was. Things were going well in her career indeed. The Darkness Knows was at the top of the Crossley ratings in its time slot—Thursdays at eight o’clock. She and her costar, Graham Yarborough, had just appeared in a nationwide magazine campaign for the show’s sponsor, Sultan’s Gold cigarettes. In fact, they’d just completed a photo shoot that might be the cover of the next Radio Stars magazine.
“I hear you might be moving on up to the pictures,” David said. “You’ll be costarring with Clark Gable soon.”
Vivian smiled. “We’ll see. I’m heading out to Hollywood tomorrow for a number of things, but a screen test with MGM is one of them.”
The studio was thinking of making a movie from The Darkness Knows. The sponsor, Sultan’s Gold cigarettes, was so happy with the show’s two leads that they were heavily lobbying MGM to transfer them both to the big-screen version. It was a huge opportunity.
“A screen test. Gosh!” Vivian’s youngest cousin, Gwen, stepped forward, eyes wide. She stood gaping at Vivian.
Gwen was eight years younger than Vivian and had been a sort of mascot for her, the kid sister she never had. Gwen had always followed her around like a puppy, and Vivian welcomed the unrestricted love and adoration. It was hard to come by. Despite all of that, Vivian felt a twinge of guilt. She hadn’t seen Gwen in at least two years.
Vivian held Gwen’s arms out to her sides and gave her an appreciative once-over. She was lovely. Big, brown eyes and chestnut hair, with a hint of early summer bronze to her skin. “Just look at you! Gone and become a young lady on me.”
Gwen flushed. Caught between child and woman, Vivian thought. She must be what? Seventeen? Seventeen, Vivian thought, her stomach flipping involuntarily at long-buried memories. What a pill Vivian had been at that age. She narrowed her eyes at the girl. Was Gwen half as much trouble as she had been? She watched Gwen’s dark eyes shift toward Charlie and widen with interest—saw her long, painted eyelashes flutter. Perhaps she is, she thought.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Vivian said. “Charlie Haverman, this is the baby of the family, Gwendolyn.”
Gwen held out her hand. “You can call me Gwen, and I’m no baby.”
“I can see that,” Charlie said. He flashed a devastatingly charming smile at her as he took her hand.
Two spots of color appeared on the apples of Gwen’s cheeks. “I was just trying to rustle up a game of croquet,” Gwen said. “Any takers?”
“I’ll play,” David said. “Viv?”
“I’m not sure we should. As I recall, the last game of croquet I played with you became so heated that we almost came to blows,” Vivian said.
“We never.”
“Prone to fisticuffs in his younger days, this one. Someone’s never quite gotten the hang of losing,” she whispered to Charlie loud enough for David to overhear.
David rolled his eyes toward the blue sky.
“How about you?” Gwen asked Charlie. “Will you join us?”
Charlie looked down at Vivian.
“How about a drink?” he said. Doubtless he’d never been anywhere near a croquet mallet and was not about to start now.
Chapter Two
Vivian’s mallet met the ball with a satisfying thwack, and she watched as the ball sailed through the wicket. She glanced over at Charlie, and he smiled at her.
“Nice shot,” he mouthed.
Charlie must have run into Uncle Bernard at the bar because now he stood among a circle of middle-aged balding men on the periphery of the croquet field. Uncle Bernard was in the middle of some sort of diatribe, and he jabbed his finger in the air perilously close to Charlie’s nose as he spoke. To his credit, Charlie didn’t flinch. Those lovely blue-green eyes of his remained on Vivian, and she saw the sardonic smile flicker at the corner of his mouth. He looked so dashing in his all-white seersucker suit, she thought. It had been the devil of a time getting him to agree to wear it—he was a man more prone to gray serge. But she’d convinced him that it was just for the afternoon, and she’d promised that no one of his regular acquaintance would lay eyes on him. In fact, Vivian thought he was the most beautiful thing on this lawn, females included. So beautiful that she was considering tossing her croquet mallet aside and laying more than her eyes on him.
Charlie winked at her as if he could read her lecherous thoughts before his eyes shifted back to Bernard. Uncle Bernard was known for his strong opinions—about anything and everything. But he was especially fond of railing on about how he felt Roosevelt was mucking everything up for the upper classes with what Bernard called his “New Deal rigmarole.”
Gwen came to stand beside Vivian. She twirled her croquet mallet in her hands. “I’m so very proud of you, Vivian,” she said. “A radio star.”
“Thank you. I meant what I said before. You’ve grown into a lovely young woman, Gwen.”
Gwen smiled her thanks.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch,” Vivian said. She did feel terrible about leaving Gwen in the lurch like that. Vivian remembered very well what it had been like to be Gwen’s age. She’d had so many questions, and no one she trusted to give her advice without judgment. Vivian’s mother would never have understood, just as Vivian was sure Gwen’s mother wouldn’t. They were products of another time.
Gwen shrugged. “You’ve been busy,” she said. There wasn’t any resentment evident in her voice. “How long have you been seeing Mr. Haverman?” Vivian saw Gwen’s eyes shoot toward Charlie and light with appreciation.
“About six months, I suppose.”
“Is it serious?”
Vivian smiled. “Why else would I subject him to all of this?”
Gwen smiled in return. Then she stopped spinning her mallet and leaned toward Vivian. “I have a surprise for you,” she said. “I’m not sure it’s appropriate anymore but—”
“Your shot, Gwen!” David called.
Gwen glanced at her older brother and then back at Vivian. Gwen had always been dramatic. No telling what her surprise might be, but odds were it wasn’t terribly important to know right now.
“Go ahead,” Vivian said. “We’ll catch up later.”
She looked over at Charlie again. All and all, he was doing quite well, so far. And her relatives were behaving. Not as she’d feared they would, like Vivian had brought them one of the hoi polloi for their amusement.
Vivian hadn’t seen any of her mother’s family since the truth had come out about her father. Julia Witchell had known something of what her husband had been up to, as Vivian had suspected. Oh, not the details, not that he’d plotted to have men killed, but she’d known he’d trucked with unsavory characters. She’d known all along. Julia had also known that the copious amounts of money he had made from his association with those unsavory characters had, in large part, bought her that grand house on the Gold Coast. But Julia had played the dutiful society wife and she hadn’t asked any questions—mostly, Vivian suspected, because her mother hadn’t wanted to know the answers. Vivian looked around at the members of her mother’s extended family. Certainly, they’d all known what Arthur Witchell had been. And they’d all kept quiet.
David won the match and raised his fist in the air in triumph. Vivian conceded his victory and laid her mallet against one of the wickets. She approached Charlie and the small cluster of olde
r men.
“War within the year,” her uncle said, nodding his head vigorously. “There’s no stopping Hitler. He’s said he wants Poland, and he’ll take it.”
Vivian saw Charlie grimace, but he didn’t disagree. There was no point. What her uncle had said was true. War loomed on the horizon. The question wasn’t if America would get involved, but when.
Vivian tried not to think of such things, but her mother’s involvement with Oskar Heigel had impressed the plight of European Jews onto her mind. She noticed the tiny articles on the sixth and seventh pages of the newspaper, hidden among the lesser news. Germany was taking away the Jews’ dignity, their rights as human beings. Just recently, a boatload of Jewish refugees had been turned away from Cuba. There was very little sympathy anywhere in the world for them. Oskar was trying to garner some. He was in Washington right now lobbying congressmen, senators, and anyone who would listen on the Jewish situation.
“I just hope we stay out of it,” Bernard continued. “We can’t afford another war. Though we did make a killing during the last one with those government meat contracts.”
Vivian winced at her uncle’s inelegant phrasing. Made a killing. She glanced around at the dour middle-aged faces that ringed the circle around Bernard. All of them were too old to have served in the Great War and too young to have sons who had either. That was the particular luck of their generation. Likely, they had very little personal connection to the war itself, beyond having made a fortune off other people’s suffering.
“I say we just stay out of it, but if Roosevelt has his way, we’ll find ourselves in the thick of that mess,” one man said.
“Well, you know, those Jew bankers have him in their pockets,” another said.
Vivian’s eyes darted up to meet Charlie’s as she felt the heat rise to her face. Surely, her uncle knew about the new man in her mother’s life—the very Jewish man. She turned and looked pointedly at Bernard.
“You know, Father Coughlin just made that very point the other evening on his radio program,” Bernard said.
Vivian snorted through her nose. Father Coughlin, that bigoted, loud-mouthed fool. Although he was a Catholic priest, Father Coughlin’s audience consisted mainly of well-to-do Protestants with very narrow beliefs about who should be considered true Americans. The men turned to look at her, and for a moment, she was terrified that she’d actually spoken aloud. But their expressions were merely curious, not outraged.
“Ah, something in my throat,” she said. “I think I’ll find the punch bowl.”
Charlie made a move to come with her, but he was stopped by Bernard’s large hand on his forearm. “Now don’t run off so quickly, young man. I’d like to hear about this private eye business.”
Vivian shot Charlie an apologetic look. He shrugged, resigned, and quickly brought his hand to his temple, cocked in the shape of a gun. Save yourself, he mouthed.
So she did.
Vivian whirled on her heel and headed in the opposite direction. Her uncle was a blowhard of the first variety. She’d like to believe he meant well, but she couldn’t think of one instance where he had done something from the goodness of his heart. He was all about money and power and image. Besides, she couldn’t abide war talk. This was a garden party. You shouldn’t talk about invading countries and killing people at a garden party, no matter how pressing the idea.
She decided to clear her head with a walk in the forest. Adaline and Bernard owned three acres of wooded land behind Oakhaven in addition to the lake frontage. Most of it was wild and overgrown, but there was a nice path through the first half acre. Or at least there used to be. Vivian had walked it all the time as a girl, pretending she was an explorer in the virgin forest. She’d imagined the Potawatomi Indians living here long ago off the land, gazing at the calm blue waters of the lake.
Vivian headed in, the thick mat of damp leaves squishing underfoot. The sounds of the party hushed as she entered the forest proper, drowned out by the tuneless drone of the cicadas. That drone became a whirring screech here among the trees. A clamoring mass of the crawling creatures clumped on the tree nearest to her, single-minded in their effort to mate and die. They molted when they emerged from the earth, and empty brown shells littered the ground and stuck to the tree trunks all around her. She pulled an empty shell from a tree trunk and drew it close to her nose for inspection. It was a perfect replica of the creature itself—even its feelers were molded in the brown shellac-like shell.
The air itself was stagnant and thick. It had been a wet spring, and she could smell the fungus and the squishy things growing just under the fallen oaks.
Suddenly there was movement, a rustling of leaves as someone stepped from the clump of wild raspberry bushes to the left of the path in front of her. A very large someone.
The man stood in the middle of the path, blocking her way forward. His face was in shadow. Vivian could still hear the sounds of the party behind her underneath the cicadas; life and safety were just beyond the trees. That gave her small comfort. Still, she was uneasy at the looming bulk of this man and his sudden appearance. It was almost as if he’d been waiting for her to come along. She clenched her hands at her sides, preparing to put up a fight if necessary.
“Hello, Viv,” the man said. “It’s been a long time.”
The bass voice was familiar. Something about the sound of it started a reflexive tingle at the base of her spine, but still, she couldn’t quite place it. He moved a few paces closer, and as he did, the shaded face came into view.
Vivian’s breath caught in her throat.
“Hap,” she said. That one raspy syllable was all the sound she managed to produce. Seeing him again after so many years was like a punch straight to the solar plexus.
She hadn’t seen Hap Prescott, hadn’t spoken one word to him, since the night eight years ago when everything had ended so abruptly between them. He’d disappeared, and her mother had yanked her back to the Gold Coast for her senior year of high school. That summer here had been a passionate, tumultuous whirlwind. At least for her.
It had become clear in the intervening years that Hap had not felt the same. He’d never been in contact, never apologized for the way he’d left her. He’d never explained why he’d disappeared without a word. Vivian had come to understand in the years since that she’d only been a convenient diversion for him, and she’d come to the conclusion that they had never really had anything in common other than boredom and proximity. But they’d certainly had that in spades that summer here at Oakhaven, hadn’t they?
She reminded herself of all of that now, lest she find herself enthralled by his charms once again. Even though she’d only been in his presence for a few seconds, she could feel her skin prickling with the memory of those stolen moments so many years ago. He’d made her feel so alive, so grown up. She’d attached such hopes to him. She’d been so hopelessly naive.
What was he doing here?
Vivian scrutinized his face, hoping to find it irrevocably altered by the passage of time. But Hap Prescott was as handsome as ever. He was older, of course. Little wrinkles played about the corners of his eyes, as if he’d smiled too much or spent too much time in the sun. Though he must be just shy of forty by now, there was no gray in his shining mink-colored hair. His eyes were still the same crisp, disarming green of fresh grass. He smiled at her now with warmth and presumption—as if he’d seen her just yesterday. As if he hadn’t ripped her heart from her chest all those years ago and stolen away with it.
“You look marvelous,” he said as his eyes traveled down the length of her frame and back up again.
She dipped the wide brim of her hat to cover the traitorous blush that rushed to her cheeks. Despite what her head told her about how ill-suited they were, her body remembered exactly what this man had been to her once upon a time. “H-how long have you been back?”
“Three months,” he said.
/> She looked down at her clenched fists. She’d crushed the cicada shell in her surprise, and she spread her fingers and let the pieces fall to the ground. Then she lifted her chin so that she could meet his eyes. She would not look away. She would not let him know that he’d ever meant anything to her.
She opened her mouth to ask where he’d been, but there was the chance that it would come out all wrong—like she’d been waiting on tenterhooks for his return. But she didn’t need to ask. She’d known where he’d gone when he disappeared, if not why. All she’d had to do was drop a casual reference into conversation with Adaline and Bernard now and then to get information. Hap had gone off to Europe when he’d disappeared so suddenly. He’d lived the life of the idle rich on the French Riviera for a time and then gone on to the Swiss Alps for a while longer. Then there were those ridiculous rumors, the ones Gwen had whispered, her childish face aglow with awe. Those rumors that painted Hap as some sort of revolutionary hero.
“I heard you were off fighting Franco,” Vivian said. The Spanish Civil War had ended just a few months before. Hitler and Mussolini’s ally, the fascist Franco, had finally crushed the Republicans after nearly three years of brutal warfare. The war had been something of a cause célèbre with certain Americans, those who sympathized with the socialists, communists, and anarchists of the motley Spanish Republic. Thousands of them had traveled to Spain to fight for a cause that was not theirs either to foster high ideals of equality and brotherhood or to borrow a little excitement. The latter is right up Hap’s alley, Vivian thought. He’d do anything for a little excitement.
Hap frowned slightly, and a cloud passed over his expression before he looked back to meet her eyes again. “I was in Spain for a time flying supplies,” he said. Then he shrugged as if to imply aiding military rebels was an ordinary endeavor––just something he did to pass the time. Maybe it was for someone like Hap.
“That’s…” Vivian struggled for the right word. Foolhardy? Reckless? Incredibly stupid? “Brave of you.”
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