by Nora Roberts
There were fairy lights strung through the trees and candles already glowing on the glass-topped table. The garden was hushed with dusk. Only the sound of air breathing through leaves and the music of water against water from the fountain. The gardenias were beginning to flower, and the sweet romance of their fragrance drifted everywhere.
“There’s so much I need to tell you tonight.” Eve paused as Travers came out with plates of stuffed mushrooms. “You may find it too much, all at once, but I feel I might have waited too long already.”
“I’m here to listen, Eve.”
She nodded. “Victor was waiting for me in the car this morning. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to be with him again, to know we were together, in our hearts. He’s a good man, Julia. Trapped by circumstance, upbringing, religion. Is there a more difficult burden than trying to follow heart and conscience? Despite all the problems and pain, I’ve had more happiness with him than many women find in a lifetime.”
“I think I understand.” Julia’s voice was like the shadows. Soft, comforting. “Sometimes you can love without the happy-ever-after. That doesn’t make the story any less important, any less vital.”
“Don’t give up on your own happy-evers, Julia. I want them for you.”
Travers trooped out with salads, frowned over the fact that Eve had barely touched her first course, but said nothing.
“Tell me what you thought of Kenneth.”
“Well …” Realizing she was starving, Julia dived into the salad. “I’d have to say first that he wasn’t what I expected. He was more charming, more relaxed, more sexy.”
For the first time in hours, Eve was able to laugh. “Christ, yes. It used to irritate the hell out of me that the man could have so much sex appeal and be so prim about it. Always the proper word at the proper time. Except the last time.”
“He told me.” Her lips curved. “I’m surprised he escaped with his skin.”
“It was nip and tuck. And he was right, of course, in what he said to me. Still, it’s difficult for a man to understand what a woman goes through when she must be in second place. Even so, I’ve always known I could count on Kenneth for anything.”
Julia listened to the rustle of air in the leaves, the first cooing of night birds as Eve stared into her wine. “Did you know he was at the top of the stairs the night Delrickio got out of hand, the night Paul was almost beaten?”
The green eyes flashed back up. “Kenneth?”
“Yes, Kenneth. At the top of the stairs with a loaded pistol, and apparently ready to use it. You’re quite right when you say you can depend on him.”
“I’ll be damned.” Eve set aside her fork, exchanging it for her glass. “He never said a word.”
“There’s more, if you want an opinion.”
“I’d like yours.”
“I think he’s been in love with you most of his life.”
Eve started to laugh it off, but Julia was watching her so quietly. Memories, scenes, half phrases, moments, passed through her mind so that her hand was unsteady when she set her glass down again. “God, how careless we are with people.”
“I doubt he regrets a minute of it.”
“But I do.”
Eve was silent as Travers served the salmon. Inside her head was a cacophony of sound, voices hammering. Threats, promises. She was afraid she would say too much, afraid some things would never be said.
“Julia, did you bring your recorder?”
“Yes, you said there were things you wanted to tell me.”
“I’d like to begin now.” Eve made an elaborate pretense of eating while Julia set the tape. “You know my feelings now on many people. The way my life had wound with theirs. Travers and Nina coming to me from such destructive beginnings. Kenneth, whom I stole from Charlotte out of spite. Michael Torrent, Tony, Rory, Damien, all mistakes with different results. Michael Delrickio, who appealed to my vanity, my arrogance. Through him I lost Drake.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was Drake who broke into your house, who stole, who wanted the tapes.”
“Drake?” Julia blinked against the flare of a match as Eve lit a cigarette.
“Perhaps it isn’t entirely fair to blame Michael. After all, Drake was marred years before. But I prefer to blame him. He knew the boy’s weakness for gambling. Hell, the boy’s weakness for everything, and he used it. Drake was weak, he was calculating, he was disloyal, but he was also family.”
“Was?”
“I’ve fired him,” Eve said simply, “as my publicity agent, and as my nephew.”
“That explains why he hasn’t been returning my calls. I’m sorry, Eve.”
She waved the sympathy away. “I don’t want to dwell on Drake, God knows. My point is that all of the people in my life have had a certain amount of influence on it, and often on each other’s as well. Rory brought me Paul, thank Christ, and that binds all three of us together. I suppose, if you’re right about this Lily person, I’m connected to her too.”
Julia couldn’t help but smile. “You’d like her.”
“Possibly.” She shrugged it off. “Rory also brought me Delrickio, and Delrickio, Damien. You see how each character in a life story alters it, subtly or overtly? Without even one of the players, the plot might take a different turn.”
“Would you say that Charlie Gray changed yours?”
“Charlie.” Eve smiled wistfully into the night. “Charlie speeded up the inevitable. If I could go back, change one thing, it would be my relationship with Charlie. Perhaps if I’d been kinder, less self-driven, things would have been different for him. But you can’t go back.” Her eyes changed, darkened as they fixed on Julia’s. “That’s part of what I want to say tonight. Of all the people I’ve known, I’ve touched in my lifetime, there are two who have influenced it the most. Victor and Gloria.”
“Gloria DuBarry?”
“Yes. She’s outraged with me. Feels betrayed because I’m about to reveal what she considers her private hell. I don’t do it for revenge, or vindictiveness. I don’t do it lightly. Of all the things I’ve told you, this is the most difficult, and the most necessary.”
“I told you from the beginning I wouldn’t judge. I’m not going to start now.”
“But you will,” Eve said softly. “In the early part of Gloria’s career, when she was playing young, innocent girls, giggling angels, she met a man. He was breathtaking to the eye, successful, seductive, and married. She confided in me, not only because we were friends, but because I’d once fallen under the same spell. The man was Michael Torrent.”
“DuBarry and Torrent?” There were no two names that Eve could have linked together that would have surprised Julia more. “I’ve read everything I could find on both of them. There was never even a rumor.”
“They were careful. I helped them be careful. Understand that Gloria was desperately in love. And she wasn’t completely locked into her public image then. This would have been perhaps two years before she met and married Marcus. There was a wildness in her. A passion for life. One I’m sorry she’s smothered so completely.”
Julia could only shake her head. She could no more imagine Gloria DuBarry wild or passionate then she could imagine Eve leaping onto the table to do a quick tap dance.
Less.
“At that time Torrent would have been married to …” Julia did quick calculations. “Amelia Gray.”
“Charlie’s first wife, yes. Their marriage was rapidly sinking. It had a poor foundation. Michael’s guilt. He had used all of his power and influence to keep Charlie out of lead roles and never learned to live with it.”
Julia let out a long breath. If Gloria’s illicit affair had been the left jab, this was the roundhouse. “You’re telling me that Torrent sabotaged Charlie’s career? Christ, Eve, they were friends. Their partnership is a legend. And Torrent’s become one of the most revered names in the industry.”
“Become,” Eve repeated. “He might have ended at the same p
lace if he’d been patient and loyal. But he betrayed a friend out of his own fears. He was terrified that Charlie would overshadow him. He pressured the studio, as some stars could at that time, into boxing Charlie into the buddy characters.”
“Did Charlie know?”
“He might have had suspicions, but he’d never have believed it. Michael also pleasured himself with Charlie’s wives. He confessed it all to me not long after Charlie’s suicide. That, plus excruciating boredom, is why I divorced him. He married Amelia, and somehow his guilt carried him through several years. Then he met Gloria.”
“And you helped them? After what he’d done, with the way you must have felt about him?”
“I helped Gloria. Charlie was dead and she was alive. I was coming out of the disaster with Tony, and the intrigue of it all distracted me. They would meet at the Bel Air, but then, everyone with an illicit liaison did.” She smiled a little. “Including me.”
Intrigued, Julia cupped her chin on her open hand. “Wasn’t it difficult, keeping the players straight? And think of how many bellhops were tipped into being millionaires.”
Eve felt a layer of tension dissolve with her laugh. “It was a delicious time.” There was appreciation in Julia’s eyes. Interest, and no condemnation. Not yet. “Exciting.”
“Sin usually is.” The image was vivid. The glamorous, the famous, the passionate, playing hide-and-seek with gossip columnists and suspicious spouses. Temporary lovers having an afternoon romp—as much for the excitement of sin as the satisfaction of sex. “Oh, to have been a chambermaid,” she murmured.
“Discretion was the byword of the Bel Air,” Eve told her. “But, of course, everyone knew that was the place to go if you wanted a few hours of privacy with someone else’s husband, or wife. And Amelia Gray Torrent wasn’t a fool. Fear of discovery had Gloria and Michael holding their mating ritual at nasty little motels. My guest house wasn’t completed yet, or I might have lent that to them. Still, they managed to do the deed well enough. Ironic that while they were tearing up the motel sheets, they were also filming a movie together.”
“The Blushing Bride,” Julia remembered. “Jesus, he was playing her father.”
“Ah, what Hedda and Louella might have done with that angle.”
She couldn’t help it, the idea had laughter bubbling out. “I’m sorry, I’m sure it was intense and romantic at the time, but it’s just sleazy enough to be funny. All that fatherly frustration and those daughterly pranks onscreen, then the two of them are rushing off to rent a room by the hour. Imagine if they’d gotten their lines mixed?”
Her tension fled long enough for Eve to chuckle into her wine. “Oh, Christ, it never even occurred to me.”
“It would have been wonderful. The camera rolls in when he says: ‘Young lady, I should put you over my knee and give you a good spanking.’ ”
“And her eyes glaze, her lips tremble. ‘Yes, oh, yes, Daddy, please.’ ”
“Cut and print.” Julia leaned back. “It would have been a classic.”
“A pity neither of them ever had much of a sense of humor. They wouldn’t be so crazed about it all still today.”
Feeling good, Julia added wine to their glasses. “They can’t really believe an affair all those years ago would shock people today. It might have been a scandal thirty years ago, but really, Eve, who’d give a damn now?”
“Gloria would—and her husband. He’s a rigid sort. The kind who would have cheerfully cast the first stone.”
“They’ve been married more than twenty-five years. I can’t see him hauling her into divorce court for a past indiscretion.”
“No, and neither can I. Gloria sees things differently. There’s more, Julia, and while the rest might be hard for Marcus to shoulder, I think he will. But this will test him.” She was silent a moment, knowing that her words would be like a snowball tossed down a long, steep hill. Before long, they would be too heavy to stop. “Just as the movie premiered, Gloria discovered herself pregnant, with Michael Torrent’s child.”
Julia’s laughter stilled. This was a pain she understood too well. “I’m sorry. Finding yourself pregnant with a married man’s child—”
“Gives you limited choices,” Eve finished. “She was terrified, devastated. Her affair with Michael was already burning out. She’d gone to him first, of course, undoubtedly raging and hysterical. His marriage was ending, and, pregnancy or not, he wasn’t about to tie himself into another.”
“I’m sorry,” Julia said again because it brought her own memories flashing by too clearly. “She must have been terrified.”
“They were both afraid of the scandal, the responsibility, and of being stuck with each other for any appreciable length of time. She came to me. She had no one else.”
“And you helped her, again.”
“I stood by her, as a friend, as a woman. She’d already decided on an abortion. They were illegal in those days, and often dangerous.”
Julia closed her eyes. The shudder came quickly, and from deep within. “It must have been horrible for her.”
“It was. I found out about a clinic in France, and we went there. It was painful for her, Julia, not just physically. That choice is never easy for a woman.”
“She was lucky to have you. If she’d been alone …” She opened her eyes again, and they were damp. Like wet gray velvet. “Whatever choice a woman makes, it’s so hard to make it alone.”
“It was a very sterile, very quiet place. I sat in a little waiting room with white walls and glossy magazines, and all I could see was the way Gloria had thrown her arms over her eyes, weeping, as they wheeled her away. It was very quick, and after they let me sit with her in her room. She didn’t speak for a long time, hours really. Then she turned her head and looked at me.
“ ‘Eve,’ she said, ‘I know it was the right thing, the only thing, just as I know that nothing I ever do will hurt as much as this.’ ”
Julia brushed a tear from her cheek. “Are you sure it’s necessary to publish this?”
“I believe it is, but I’m going to leave that decision in your hands, your heart, after you hear the rest.”
Julia rose. She wasn’t sure where the nerves had sprung from, but they were rippling just under her skin, like an itch she couldn’t reach. “The decision shouldn’t be mine, Eve. The judgment belongs to someone who was affected by the story, not an observer.”
“You’ve never been just an observer, Julia, not from the moment you came here. I know you tried to be, that you would have preferred it that way, but it’s impossible.”
“Maybe I’ve lost my objectivity, and maybe I hope I’ll write a better book that way. But it isn’t my place to decide to include or delete something this intimate.”
“Who better?” Eve murmured, then gestured to the chair. “Please, sit, let me tell you the rest.”
She hesitated, but she wasn’t sure why. Night had fallen quickly, leaving only the scatter of tiny lights and candleglow. Eve was haloed by the light, and an owl hooted from the shadows. Julia took her seat, and waited. “Go on.”
“Gloria went home. She picked up her life. Within a year she met Marcus and began a new one. That same year I met Victor. We didn’t have our affair at discreet hotels or dingy motels. It wasn’t a flash of passion, but a slow, steady flame that held us together. On other points, I suppose our relationship had many similarities with Michael and Gloria. He was married, and though his marriage was unhappy, we didn’t make what we had public. I knew, though it’s taken me years to accept, that we would never be a couple outside our own walls.”
She looked around her now, while Julia remained silent. The backsplash of light from the kitchen window sprinkled over the geraniums. Moonlight slashed over the fuming water of the fountain and turned it to liquid silver. Around it all was a wall, closing her in, and others out.
“We loved here, in this house, and only a handful of people we both knew and trusted were ever included in our secret. I won’t pretend I don’
t resent it, that I don’t resent his wife, and at times resent Victor, for all that’s been stolen from me. All the lies I’ve lived with. And one lie, one thing stolen most of all.”
It was she who rose now, to walk toward the flowers, drinking in their fragrance deeply, as if she could find sustenance there that she hadn’t found in the food on the table. This was the point, she knew. The point of it all, the point, once passed, she could never retreat from. Slowly, she walked back, but didn’t sit.
“Gloria married Marcus one year after our trip to France. Within two months she was pregnant again, and deliriously happy. Weeks after that, I, too, was pregnant, and miserably unhappy.”
“You?” Julia absorbed the jolt, then got to her feet to take Eve’s hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Eve tightened the grip. “Sit down with me. Let me finish.”
Hands still linked, they sat together. The flame of the candle was between them, tossing light and shadow over Eve’s face. Julia couldn’t be sure what she was seeing. Grief, pain, hope.
“I was almost forty, and had long since given up on the notion of having children. The pregnancy frightened me, not only because of my age, but the circumstances. I wasn’t afraid of public opinion, Julia, at least not for myself.”
“It was Victor’s,” Julia murmured, understanding throbbing like a wound in her side.
“Yes, it was Victor’s, and he was bound by law and church to another woman.”
“But he loved you.” Julia brought Eve’s hand to her cheek a moment, in comfort. “How did he react when you told him?”
“I didn’t tell him. I’ve never told him.”
“Oh, Eve, how could you have kept it from him? It was his child as much as yours, and his right to know.”
“Do you know how desperately he wanted children?” Eyes dark and bright, Eve leaned closer. “He had never, never forgiven himself for the loss of one. Yes, things might have changed if I’d told him. And I would have trapped him with me with that child as surely as she had trapped him with guilt, God, and grief. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t do it.”