The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 4

by Nora Roberts

  “No. Cilla McGowan’s eyes.”

  She smiled, sipped her last glass of wine. “I was going to make up an excuse—or not even bother to make one up—about not coming tonight.”

  “Is that so?”

  “That is so. Because you got bossy about my living arrangements.”

  “Defining ‘bossy’ as ‘sensible.’ Why did you come?”

  “Buying the toilets put me in a really good mood. Seriously,” she said when he choked out a laugh. “I’ve found my thing, Ford. After a long time looking.”

  “You found your thing in toilets.”

  It was her turn to laugh. “I found my thing in taking something broken down or neglected, or just a little tired, and making it shine again. Making it better. And doing that’s made me better. So because I was in a good mood, I walked across the road. I’m really glad I did.”

  “So am I.”

  SHE DIDN’T SEE him or Spock when she let herself in his home gym the next morning. Cilla plugged in her iPod and got down to business. She gave herself a solid hour, and at some point during it the dog strolled out into the backyard and lifted his leg a number of times. But there was still no sign or sound from Ford when she let herself out again, with one wistful glance at his hot tub.

  No time for jets and indulgence, she told herself. But as Spock raced over, so obviously thrilled to see her, she spent a good ten minutes rubbing him while he gurgled and grunted in what seemed to be some form of communication. The workout, the silly dog, just the day itself put her in a fine mood as she jogged back across the road. She showered off the workout sweat, downed coffee and a blueberry yogurt. By the time she strapped on her tool belt, her crews and subs began to arrive.

  It took time, every morning, but Cilla was happy to spend it. Talking, evaluating, brainstorming away problems.

  “I’m going to expand the bathroom, Buddy,” she told him, and, as she expected, he let out a windy sigh.

  “The one I’m using now, not the one you’ve roughed in.”

  “That’s something anyway.”

  “I’ve already talked to Matt,” she said. “Come on up, and I’ll show you what we’re going to do.”

  He hemmed and he hawed, but that was expected, too. In fact, she’d come to look forward to it. “Now that we’re putting my office upstairs instead of in this bedroom, I’m going to use this space to make it a master suite. We’ll be taking out this wall,” she began.

  He listened, he scratched, he shook his head. “Gonna cost you.”

  “Yes, I know. I’ll draw it up in more detail later, but for now, here’s the idea.” She opened her notebook to the sketch she’d drawn with Matt. “We’ll keep the old claw-foot tub, have it refurbished and set here. Floor pipes and drains. Double sinks here, and I’m thinking undermount.”

  “Guess you’ll be putting a slab of granite or whatnot.”

  “No, zinc.”

  “Say, what?”

  “Zinc countertop. And over here, I’m putting in a steam shower. Yes,” she said before he could speak. “Hollywood ideas. Glass block here, to form the water closet. In the end, it’s going to reflect and respect the architecture, pay homage to retro, and, Buddy, it will rock.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  She grinned. “Damn straight.”

  The boss moved outside, to build her rail and pickets in the April sunshine.

  When her father pulled in, Cilla had her sides run, and had worked up a fresh sweat.

  “Doesn’t that look nice,” he commented.

  “It’s coming along.”

  He nodded toward the house, and the cacophony of construction noise. “Sounds like more’s coming along inside.”

  “First-stage demo’s done. I’ve changed some things, so we’ll have more demo on the second floor later. But the inspector’s coming tomorrow.” She lifted her hand, crossed her fingers. “To approve the rough plumbing and electric. Then we’ll boogie.”

  “It’s the talk of the town.”

  “I imagine so.” She gestured toward the road. “Traffic’s increased. People slow down, even stop, to look. I had a call from the local paper for an interview. I don’t want pictures yet. Most people can’t see what it’s going to be while it’s at this stage, so I gave the reporter a quick hit over the phone.”

  “When’s it going to run?”

  “Sunday. Lifestyle. Janet Hardy still has the switch.” Cilla pushed back her cap to swipe the back of her hand over her forehead. “You knew her, Dad. Would she approve?”

  “I think she loved this place. I think she’d be pleased you love it, too. And that you’re putting your mark on it. Cilla, are you building that railing yourself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I had no idea you could do that. I thought you had the ideas, then you hired people to work them out.”

  “Some of that, too. Most of that, I guess. But I like the work. Especially this kind. I’m going to go for my contractor’s license.”

  “You . . . Well, how about that?”

  “I’m going to start a business. This house? Talk of the town, and that’s going to turn into revenue for me down the road. I think people might like to hire the woman who rebuilt Janet Hardy’s little farm, especially if she’s Janet’s granddaughter. And after a while?” Her eyes narrowed and gleamed. “They’ll hire me because they know I’m good.”

  “You really mean to stay.”

  So he hadn’t believed it. Why should he? “I mean to stay. I like the way it smells here. I like the way I feel here. Are you in a hurry?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you want to walk around a little, play landscape consultant?”

  He smiled slowly. “I’d like that.”

  “Let me get my notebook.”

  Walking with him, listening to him as he gestured to an area, described the shrubs and groupings he suggested, Cilla learned more about him.

  His thoughtful way of listening, then responding, the pauses between while he considered. His ease with himself, the time he took.

  He paused at the edge of the pond, smiled. “I swam in here a few times. You’re going to need to get these lily pads and cattails under control.”

  “It’s on the list. Brian said maybe we’ll do some yellow flags.”

  “That would be a nice choice. You could plant a willow over there. It’d make a pretty feature, weeping over the water.”

  She scribbled. “I thought a stone bench maybe, somewhere to sit.” Remembering, she looked up at him. “So, is this where you kissed Ford Sawyer’s mother?”

  His mouth dropped open in surprise, and, to Cilla’s delight, a flush rose up into his cheeks. He chuckled, and began to walk again. “Now how’d you hear about that?”

  “I have my sources.”

  “I have mine. I hear you kissed Penny Sawyer’s son out in the front yard.”

  “Buddy.”

  “Not directly, but he’d be the root of it.”

  “It’s a little weird.”

  “A little bit,” Gavin agreed.

  “You haven’t answered the question.”

  “I guess I’ll confess I did kiss Penny Quint—which she was in those days—more than a few times, and some of those times here. We went steady for a number of months in high school. Before she broke my heart.”

  He smiled when he said it, and had Cilla smiling in return. “High school is hell.”

  “It sure can be. The heartbreaking took place here, too, as it happens. And back there, near the pond. Penny and I had a fight—God knows about what—and we broke up. I admit to having been torn between wooing her back and making a play for your mother.”

  “You dog.”

  “Most boys are dogs at eighteen. Then I saw Penny, near the pond, kissing Johnnie.” He sighed, even now, remembering. “That was a blow. My girl—or I still half thought of her as my girl—and one of my friends. It broke the code.”

  “Friends don’t move in on exes,” Cilla said. “It’s still the code.”
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  “Johnnie and I had words about it. Then and there, and Penny gave me a piece of her mind. About that time, your mother came along. She’s always been drawn to drama. I went off with her, soothed my heart and ego. That was the last time Johnnie and I spoke. The last words we spoke to each other were hard ones. I’ve always regretted that.”

  There was no smile now, and in its place, Cilla saw old grief. “He died two days later. And so did another of my friends, and Jimmy Hennessy was paralyzed. I was supposed to go with them that night.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Something squeezed inside her. “I’ve never heard that.”

  “I was supposed to be in that car, but Penny kissed Johnnie, Johnnie and I had hard words. And I didn’t go.”

  “God.” A shudder snaked down Cilla’s spine. “I owe Ford’s mother quite a bit.”

  “I went off to college the next fall, like I planned—then a couple of years in, I dropped out, went off to Hollywood. Got myself a contract. I think it was, at least in part, because I was another kind of reminder of her brother, her mother, that had your mother giving me another look. She was too young when the look turned serious. We both were. We got engaged secretly, broke up publicly. Back and forth, back and forth for years. Then we eloped.

  “We had you hardly a year later.” He draped his arm around Cilla’s shoulders. “We did our best. I know it wasn’t very good, but we did our best.”

  “It’s hard, knowing so much of what happened, what was done, was rooted in death at worst, on mistakes at best.”

  “You were never a mistake.”

  She didn’t respond. How could she? She’d been called one often enough. “You were still in college when Janet died?”

  “I’d finished my first year.”

  “Did you hear anything about a man, someone out here, she was involved with?”

  “There was constant speculation, constant gossip about Janet and men. I don’t recall anything out of the ordinary, or any talk of someone from here. Why?”

  “I found letters, Dad. I found letters written to her from a lover. They’re postmarked from here, or a lot of them are. She hid them. The last one, bitter, after he’d broken off the affair, was mailed only ten days before her death.”

  They’d walked back to the house, stood now at the edge of the back veranda. “I think she came back here to see him, to confront him. She was desperately unhappy, if even half of the accounts from the time are true. And I think she was in love with this man, this married man she’d had a passionate, tumultuous affair with for over a year before it cooled.”

  “You think he was local? What was his name?”

  “He didn’t sign them by name. She—” Cilla glanced over, noticed how close they stood to the open window. Taking her father’s arm, she drew him away. “She told the man she was pregnant.”

  “Pregnant? Cilla, there was an autopsy.”

  “It might have been covered up. It might not have been true, but if it was, if it wasn’t a lie to get him back, it could’ve been covered up. He threatened her. In the last letter, he told her she’d pay if she tried to expose their relationship.”

  “You don’t want to believe she killed herself,” Gavin began.

  “Suicide or not, she’s still dead. I want the truth. She deserves that, and so do I. People have talked murder and conspiracies for decades. Maybe they’re right.”

  “She was an addict, sweetheart. An addict who couldn’t stop grieving for her child. An unhappy woman who shone in front of the cameras, on the stage, but who never really found her happiness away from them. And when Johnnie died, she lost herself in grief, and smothered the grief with pills and alcohol.”

  “She took a lover. And she came back here. Johnnie kissed your girl, and as a result, you lived. Small moments change lives. And take them. I want to find out what moment, what actual event, took hers. Even if it was by her own hand.”

  SEVEN

  LAS VEGAS 1954

  Janet held the sleeveless, full-skirted dress up, and did a twirl in front of the wall of mirrors. “What do you think?” she asked Cilla. “The pink’s more elegant, but I really want to wear white. Every girl should be able to wear white on her wedding day.”

  “You’ll look beautiful. You’ll look beautiful and young, and so incredibly happy.”

  “I am. I’m all of those things. I’m nineteen. I’m a major movie star. My record is number one in the country. I’m in love.” She spiraled again, and again, spun-gold hair flying in gleaming waves.

  Even in dreams, her sheer joy danced in the air, fluttered over Cilla’s skin.

  “I’m madly in love with the most wonderful, the most handsome man in the world. I’m rich, I’m beautiful, and the world—right this moment—the world is mine.”

  “It stays yours for a long time,” Cilla told her. But not long enough. It’s never long enough.

  “I should wear my hair up.”

  Janet tossed the dress onto the bed where the pink brocade suit already lay discarded. “I look more mature with my hair up. The studio never wants me to wear it up. They don’t want me to be a woman yet, a real woman. Always the girl next door, always the virgin.”

  Laughing, she began to fashion her sleek fall of hair into a French twist. “I haven’t been a virgin since I was fifteen.” Janet met Cilla’s eyes in the mirror. And with the joy layered amusement, and a thin coat of disdain. “Do you think the public cares if I have sex?”

  “Some do. Some will. But it’s your life.”

  “Goddamn right. And my career. I want adult roles, and I’m going to get them. Frankie’s going to help me. Once we’re married, he’ll manage my career. He’ll handle things.”

  “Yes,” Cilla murmured, “he will.”

  “Oh, I know what you’re thinking.” Standing in her white silk slip, Janet continued to place pins in her hair. “Within the year I’ll be filing for divorce. Then a brief reconciliation gets me knocked up with my second child. I’m pregnant now, but I don’t know it. Johnnie’s already started inside me. Only a week or so, but he’s begun. Everything changes today.”

  “You eloped to Vegas, married Frankie Bennett, who was nearly ten years older than you.”

  “Vegas was my idea.” Janet picked up a can of hair spray from the dressing table, began to spray suffocating clouds of it. “I wanted to stuff it down their throats, I guess. Janet Hardy, and all the parts she plays, wouldn’t even know Vegas exists. But here I am, in the penthouse of the Flamingo, dressing for my wedding. And no one knows but me and Frankie.”

  Cilla walked to the window, looked out.

  A pool sparkled below, lush gardens flowing back from its skirting. Beyond, the buildings were small and on the tacky side. Colors faded, shapes blurred, like the old photographs Cilla supposed she’d pieced together to form the landscape for the dream.

  “It’s nothing like it will be, really. Vegas, I mean.”

  “What is?”

  “You’ll marry Bennett, and the studio will spin and spin to counteract the damage. But there won’t be any, not really. You look so spectacular together, and that’s almost enough. The illusion of two gorgeous people in love. And you’ll take on your first true adult role with Sarah Constantine in Heartsong . You’ll be nominated for an Oscar.”

  “After Johnnie. I have Johnnie before Heartsong. Even Mrs. Eisenhower will send a baby gift. I cut back on the pills.” She tapped the bottle on her dressing table before turning to lift the dress. “I’m still able to do that, to cut down on the pills, the booze. It’s easier when I’m happy, the way I am now.”

  “If you knew what would happen? If you knew Frankie Bennett will cheat on you with women, will gamble away so much of your money, squander more. If you knew he’d break your heart and that you’d attempt suicide for the first time in just over a year, would you go through with it?”

  Janet stepped into the dress. “If I didn’t, where would you be?” She turned her back. “Zip me up, will you?”

  “You
said, later, you’ll say that your mother offered you like a virgin to the studio, and the studio tore the innocence out of you, piece by piece. And that Frankie Bennett took those pieces and shredded them like confetti.”

  “The studio made me a star.” She fastened pearls at her ears. “I didn’t walk away. I craved what they gave me, and gave them my innocence. I wanted Frankie, and gave what was left to him.”

  She held up a double strand of pearls, and understanding, Cilla took them to hook around Janet’s neck.

  “I’ll do amazing work in the next ten years. My very best work. And I’ll do some damn good work in the ten after that. Well, nearly ten,” she said with a laugh. “But who’s counting? Maybe I needed to be in turmoil to reach my potential. Who knows? Who cares?”

  “I do.”

  With a soft smile, Janet turned to kiss Cilla’s cheek. “I looked for love all of my life, and gave it too often, and too intensely. Maybe if I hadn’t looked so hard, someone would have given it back to me. The red belt!” She danced away to snatch a thick scarlet belt from the clothes tossed on the bed. “It’s just the right touch, and red’s Frankie’s favorite color. He loves me in red.”

  She buckled it on, like a belt of blood, and stepped into matching shoes. “How do I look?”

  “Perfect.”

  “I wish you could come, but it’s only going to be me and Frankie, and the funny old justice of the peace and the woman who plays the spinet. Frankie will leak it to the press without telling me, and that’s how the photo of the two of us coming out of the tacky little chapel gets into Photoplay. Then the chit hits the fan.” She laughed. “What a ride.”

  And laughed, and laughed, so that Cilla heard the echoes of the laughter as she woke.

  BECAUSE SHE WANTED to let her thoughts simmer away from the noise and distractions, Cilla spent the majority of her time the next two days sorting out the dozens of boxes and trunks she’d hauled into the barn.

  Cilla had determined on her first pass that her mother had already culled and scavenged whatever she deemed worthwhile. But Dilly had missed a few treasures. She often did, to Cilla’s mind, being in such a rush to grab the shiniest object, she missed the little diamonds in the rough.