by Nora Roberts
And she would not hear Daddy call Aunt Jamie bad names, or Uncle David say in a rough voice, Watch your step, Sam. Just watch your step. This isn’t going to help you.
Finally, Aunt Jamie had said they had to go and had carried her out to the car. She’d waved over her aunt’s shoulder, but Daddy hadn’t waved back. He’d just stared, and his hands had stayed in fists at his sides.
She hadn’t been allowed to go back to the beach house and watch the waves again.
But it had started before that. Weeks before the beach house, more weeks before the monster came.
It had all happened after the night Daddy had come into her room and awakened her. He’d paced her room, whispering to himself. It was a hard sound, but when she’d stirred in the big bed with its white lace canopy she hadn’t been afraid. Because it was Daddy. Even when the moonlight spilled through the windows onto his face, and his face looked mean and his eyes too shiny, he was still her daddy.
Love and excitement had bounced in her heart.
He’d wound up the music box on her dresser, the one with the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio that played “When You Wish upon a Star.”
She sat up in bed and smiled sleepily. “Hi, Daddy. Tell me a story.”
“I’ll tell you a story.” He’d turned his head and stared at his daughter, the small bundle of tousled blond hair and big brown eyes. But he’d only seen his own fury. “I’ll tell you a goddamn story, Livvy my love. About a beautiful whore who learns how to lie and cheat.”
“Where did the horse live, Daddy?”
“What horse?”
“The beautiful one.”
He’d turned around then, and his lips had peeled back in a snarl. “You don’t listen! You don’t listen any more than she does. I said whore goddamn it!”
Olivia’s stomach jumped at his shout, and there was a funny metal sting in her mouth she didn’t recognize as fear. It was her first real taste of it. “What’s a whore?”
“Your mother. Your fucking mother’s a whore.” He swept his arm over the dresser, sending the music box and a dozen little treasures crashing to the floor.
In bed, Olivia curled up and began to cry.
He was shouting at her, saying he was sorry. Stop that crying right now! He’d buy her a new music box. When he’d come over to pick her up, he’d smelled funny, like a room did after a grown-up party and before Rosa cleaned.
Then Mama came rushing in. Her hair was long and loose, her nightgown glowing white in the moonlight.
“Sam, for God’s sake, what are you doing? There, Livvy, there, baby, don’t cry. Daddy’s sorry.”
The vicious resentment all but smothered him as he looked at the two golden heads close together. The shock of realizing his fists were clenched, that they wanted, yearned to pound, nearly snapped him back. “I told her I was sorry.”
But when he started forward, intending to apologize yet again, his wife’s head snapped up. In the dark, her eyes gleamed with a fierceness that bordered on hate. “Stay away from her.” And the vicious threat in her mother’s voice had Olivia wailing.
“Don’t you tell me to stay away from my own daughter. I’m sick and tired, sick and damn tired of orders from you, Julie.”
“You’re stoned again. I won’t have you near her when you’ve been using.”
Then all Olivia could hear were the terrible shouts, more crashing, the sound of her mother crying out in pain. To escape she crawled out of bed and into her closet to bury herself among her mountain of stuffed toys.
Later, she learned that her mother had managed to lock him out of the room, to call the police on her Mickey Mouse phone. But that night, all she knew was that Mama had crawled into the closet with her, held her close and promised everything would be all right.
That’s when Daddy had gone away.
Memories of that night could sneak into her dreams. When they did, and she woke, Olivia would creep out of bed and into her mother’s room down the hall. Just to make sure she was there. Just to see if maybe Daddy had come home because he was all better again.
Sometimes they were in a hotel instead, or another house. Her mother’s work meant she had to travel. After her father got sick, Olivia always, always went with her. People said her mother was a star, and it made Olivia giggle. She knew stars were the little lights up in heaven, and her mother was right here.
Her mother made movies, and lots and lots of people came to see her pretend to be somebody else. Daddy made movies, too, and she knew the story about how they’d met when they were both pretending to be other people. They’d fallen in love and gotten married, and they’d had a baby girl.
When Olivia missed her father, she could look in the big leather book at all the pictures of the wedding when her mother had been a princess in a long white dress that sparkled and her father had been the prince in his black suit.
There was a big silver-and-white cake, and Aunt Jamie had worn a blue dress that made her look almost as pretty as Mama. Olivia imagined herself into the pictures. She would wear a pink dress and flowers in her hair, and she would hold her parents’ hands and smile. In the pictures, everyone smiled and was happy.
Over that spring and summer, Olivia often looked at the big leather book.
The night the monster came, Olivia heard the shouting in her sleep. It made her whimper and twist. Don’t hurt her, she thought. Don’t hurt my mama. Please, please, please, Daddy.
She woke with a scream in her head, with the echo of it on the air. And wanted her mother.
She climbed out of bed, her little feet silent on the carpet. Rubbing her eyes, she wandered down the hallway where the light burned low.
But the room with its big blue bed and pretty white flowers was empty. Her mother’s scent was there, a comfort. All the magic bottles and pots stood on the vanity. Olivia amused herself for a little while by playing with them and pretending she was putting on the colors and smells the way her mother did.
One day she’d be beautiful, too. Like Mama. Everyone said so. She sang to herself while she preened and posed in the tall mirror, giggling as she imagined herself wearing a long white dress, like a princess.
She tired of that and, feeling sleepy again, shuffled out to find her mother.
As she approached the stairs, she saw the lights were on downstairs. The front door was open, and the late-summer breeze fluttered her nightgown.
She thought there might be company, and maybe there would be cake. Quiet as a mouse, she crept down the stairs, holding her fingers to her lips to stop a giggle.
And heard the soaring music of her mother’s favorite, Sleeping Beauty.
The living room spilled from the central hall, flowing out with high arched ceilings, oceans of glass that opened the room to the gardens her mother loved. There was a big fireplace of deep blue lapis and floors of sheer white marble. Flowers speared and spilled from crystal vases, and silver urns and lamps had shades the colors of precious jewels.
But tonight, the vases were broken, shattered on the tiles with their elegant and exotic flowers trampled and dying. The glossy ivory walls were splattered with red, and tables the cheerful maid Rosa kept polished to a gleam were overturned.
There was a terrible smell, one that seemed to paint the inside of Olivia’s throat with something vile and had her stomach rippling.
The music crescendoed, a climactic sweep of sobbing strings.
She saw glass winking on the floor like scattered diamonds and streaks of red smearing the white floor. Whimpering for her mother, she stepped in. And she saw.
Behind the corner of the big sofa, her mother lay sprawled on her side, one hand flung out, fingers spread wide. Her warm blond hair was wet with blood. So much blood. The white robe she’d worn was red with it, and ripped to ribbons.
She couldn’t scream, couldn’t scream. Her eyes rounded and bulged in her head, her heart bumped painfully against her ribs, and a trickle of urine slipped down her legs. But she couldn’t scream.
Then t
he monster that crouched over her mother, the monster with hands red to the wrists, with wet red streaks over his face, over his clothes, looked up. His eyes were wild, shiny as the glass that sparkled on the floor.
“Livvy,” her father said. “God, Livvy.”
And as he stumbled to his feet, she saw the silver-and-red gleam of bloody scissors in his hand.
Still she didn’t scream. But now she ran. The monster was real, the monster was coming, and she had to hide. She heard a long, wailing call, like the howl of a dying animal in the woods.
She went straight to her closet, burrowed among the stuffed toys. There her mind hid as well. She stared blindly at the door, sucked quietly on her thumb and barely heard the monster as he howled and called and searched for her.
Doors slammed like gunshots. The monster sobbed and screamed, crashing through the house as it called her name. A wild bull with blood on his horns.
Olivia, a doll among dolls, curled up tight and waited for her mother to come and wake her from a bad dream.
That’s where Frank Brady found her. He might have overlooked her huddled in with all the bears and dogs and pretty dolls. She didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. Her hair was a golden blond, shiny as rain to her shoulders; her face a colorless oval, dominated by huge amber eyes under brows as dark as mink pelt.
Her mother’s eyes, he thought with grim pity. Eyes he’d looked into dozens of times on the movie screen. Eyes he’d studied less than an hour ago and found filmed and lifeless.
The eyes of the child looked at him, looked through him. Recognizing shock, he crouched down, resting his hands on his knees rather than reaching for her.
“I’m Frank.” He spoke quietly, kept his eyes on hers. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Part of him wanted to call out for his partner, or one of the crime scene team, but he thought a shout might spook her. “I’m a policeman.” Very slowly, he lifted a hand to tap the badge that hung from his breast pocket. “Do you know what a policeman does, honey?”
She continued to stare, but he thought he caught a flicker in her eyes. Awareness, he told himself. She hears me. “We help people. I’m here to take care of you. Are these all your dolls?” He smiled at her and picked up a squashy Kermit the Frog. “I know this guy. He’s on Sesame Street. Do you watch that on TV? My boss is just like Oscar the Grouch. But don’t tell him I said so.”
When she didn’t respond, he pulled out every Sesame Street character he could remember, making comments, letting Kermit hop on his knee. The way she watched him, eyes wide and terrifyingly blank, ripped at his heart.
“You want to come out now? You and Kermit?” He held out a hand, waited.
Hers lifted, like a puppet’s on a string. Then, when the contact was made, she tumbled into his arms, shivering now with her face buried against his shoulder.
He’d been a cop for ten years, and still his heart ripped.
“There now, baby. You’re okay. You’ll be all right.” He stroked a hand down her hair, rocking for a moment.
“The monster’s here.” She whispered it.
Frank checked his motion then, cradling her, got to his feet. “He’s gone now.”
“Did you chase him away?”
“He’s gone.” He glanced around the room, found a blanket and tucked it around her.
“I had to hide. He was looking for me. He had Mama’s scissors. I want Mama.”
God. Dear God, was all he could think.
At the sound of feet coming down the hall, Olivia let out a low keening sound and tightened her grip around Frank’s neck. He murmured to her, patting her back as he moved toward the door.
“Frank, there’s—you found her.” Detective Tracy Harmon studied the little girl wrapped around his partner and raked a hand through his hair. “The neighbor said there’s a sister. Jamie Melbourne. Husband’s David Melbourne, some kind of music agent. They only live about a mile from here.”
“Better notify them. Honey, you want to go see your aunt Jamie?”
“Is my mama there?”
“No. But I think she’d want you to go.”
“I’m sleepy.”
“You go on to sleep, baby. Just close your eyes.”
“She see anything?” Tracy murmured.
“Yeah.” Frank stroked her hair as her eyelids drooped. “Yeah, I think she saw too damn much. We can thank Christ the bastard was too blitzed to find her. Call the sister. Let’s get the kid over there before the press gets wind of this.”
He came back. The monster came back. She could see him creeping through the house with her father’s face and her mother’s scissors. Blood slid down the snapping blades like thin, glossy ribbons. In her father’s voice he whispered her name, over and over again.
Livvy, Livvy love. Come out. Come out and I’ll tell you a story.
And the long sharp blades in his hands hissed open and closed as he shambled toward the closet.
“No, Daddy! No, no, no!”
“Livvy. Oh honey, it’s all right. I’m here. Aunt Jamie’s right here.”
“Don’t let him come. Don’t let him find me.” Wailing, Livvy burrowed into Jamie’s arms.
“I won’t. I won’t. I promise.” Devastated, Jamie pressed her face into the fragile curve of her niece’s neck. She rocked both of them in the delicate half-light of the bedside lamp until Olivia’s shivers stopped. “I’ll keep you safe.”
She rested her cheek on the top of Olivia’s head and let the tears come. She didn’t allow herself to sob, though hot, bitter sobs welled and pressed into her throat. The tears were silent, sliding down her cheeks to dampen the child’s hair.
Julie. Oh God, oh God, Julie.
She wanted to scream out her sister’s name. To rave it. But there was the child, now going limp with sleep in her arms, to consider.
Julie would have wanted her daughter protected. God knew, she had tried to protect her baby.
And now Julie was dead.
Jamie continued to rock, to soothe herself now as Olivia slept in her arms. That beautiful, bright woman with the wickedly husky laugh, the giving heart and boundless talent, dead at the age of thirty-two. Killed, the two grim-faced detectives had told her, by the man who had professed to love her to the point of madness.
Well, Sam Tanner was mad, Jamie thought as her hands curled into brutal fists. Mad with jealousy, with drugs, with desperation. Now he’d destroyed the object of his obsession.
But he would never, never touch the child.
Gently, Jamie laid Olivia back in bed, smoothed the blankets over her, let her fingertips rest for a moment on the blond hair. She remembered the night Olivia had been born, the way Julie had laughed between contractions.
Only Julie MacBride, Jamie thought, could make a joke out of labor. The way Sam had looked, impossibly handsome and nervous, his blue eyes brilliant with excitement and fear, his black hair tousled so that she’d smoothed it with her own fingers to soothe him.
Then he’d brought that beautiful little girl up to the viewing glass, and there’d been tears of love and wonder in his eyes.
Yes, she remembered that, and remembered thinking as she smiled at him through that glass that they were perfect. The three of them, perfect together. Perfect for one another.
It had seemed so.
She walked to the window, stared out at nothing. Julie’s star had been on the rise, and Sam’s already riding high. They’d met on the set of a movie, fell wildly in love and were married within four months while the press raved and simpered over them.
She’d worried, Jamie admitted. It was all so fast, so Hollywood. But Julie had always known exactly what she wanted, and she’d wanted Sam Tanner. For a while, it had seemed as happy-ever-after as the stories Julie told her daughter at bedtime.
But this fairy tale had ended in a nightmare—blocks away, only blocks away while she’d slept, Jamie thought, squeezing her eyes shut as a sob clawed at her throat.
The sudden flash of lights had her jumping back, her hea
rt pumping fast. David, she realized, and turned quickly to the bed to be certain Olivia slept peacefully. Leaving the light on low, she hurried out. She was coming down the stairs as the door opened and her husband walked in.
He stood there for a long moment, a tall man with broad shoulders. His hair of deep brown was mussed, his eyes, a quiet mix of gray and green, full of fatigue and horror. Strength was what she’d always found in him. Strength and stability. Now he looked sick and shaken, his usual dusky complexion pasty, a muscle jumping in his firm, square jaw.
“God, Jamie. Oh, sweet God.” His voice broke, and somehow that made it worse. “I need a drink.” He turned away, walked unsteadily into the front salon.
She had to grip the railing for balance before she could order her legs to move, to follow him. “David?”
“I need a minute.” His hands shook visibly as he took a decanter of whisky from the breakfront, poured it into a short glass. He braced one hand on the wood, lifted the glass with the other and drank it down like medicine. “Jesus, God, what he did to her.”
“Oh, David.” She broke. The control she’d managed to cling to since the police had come to the door shattered. She simply sank to the floor in a spasm of sobs and shudders.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He rushed to her and gathered her against him. “Oh, Jamie, I’m so sorry.”
They stayed there, on the floor in the lovely room, as the light turned pearly with dawn. She wept in harsh, racking gasps until he wondered that her bones didn’t shatter from the power of it.
The gasps turned to moans that were her sister’s name, then the moans to silence.
“I’ll take you upstairs. You need to lie down.”
“No, no, no.” The tears had helped. Jamie told herself they’d helped though they left her feeling hollowed-out and achy. “Livvy might wake up. She’ll need me. I’ll be all right. I have to be all right.”
She sat back, scrubbing her hands over her face to dry it. Her head throbbed like an open wound, her stomach was a mass of cramps. But she got to her feet. “I need you to tell me. I need you to tell me everything.” When he shook his head, her chin came up. “I have to know, David.”