“You can’t grieve until you admit what it is you’ve actually lost,” Gabe said quietly. “Angie’s death doesn’t change who she was, the good and bad. You can’t mourn someone you won’t let yourself see clearly. When are you going to figure that out?”
“Stop it.” She stood up to face him. “This isn’t about you. Or me.”
“No,” Gabe said, and all at once Mercy and Michael were completely forgotten. “I won’t. Look at what silence does to people, Jules. It’s not just Mercy. It’s us, too. It’s been fifteen years and we’ve never once had a conversation about what happened, which made sense when we were both fucked up, but makes no sense now. My parents were in that car, too. My parents died that night, too. They were all drunk, as usual, and probably fighting, as usual, and it finally caught up with them. It wasn’t the fog or the music or whatever the hell else the cops said. You and I know what they were like when they were all together, and it killed them in the end.
He drew a deep breath. “There. I’ve said it. Out loud. And look, the world did not end. It was an awful thing, but it wasn’t the most important thing that ever happened to you. At least it doesn’t have to be.”
Juliette stared at him, opened her mouth to speak, shook her head, turned neatly on her heel, and walked out the door.
For the second time that day, she mounted the steps to Casa Padua, her muscles knitted into preflight tension, determined this time to leave Cerreta, possibly forever, to take her credit cards and what was left of her savings and fly far away, to Paris, to Greece, back to Los Angeles. Anywhere but here, where the ghosts rose from every corner, laughing over their wine, stumbling across the courtyard to fall into bitter arguments behind closed doors. She grabbed her purse, her car keys, and pounded down the steps again, ignoring the sight of Michael emerging from the villa, expelling from her mind the words Gabe had just uttered and all the pain they rained down.
Eyes straight ahead, she strode past the lights and wires, past the monitors, the racks of clothing, the stacks of chairs and crates, the table with its assortment of drinks and snacks, through a stone arch, along a stone wall, and straight to where a line of cars were parked. There, a man stood, having apparently just pulled in. Juliette took one look at him and threw herself into his arms.
“Well, J.,” Devlin said, rocking back on his heels but embracing her nonetheless, “I had hoped you would be pleased to see me, but this exceeds even my wildest dreams.”
“Let’s go,” she said, keeping her eyes down so he wouldn’t see her tears, pulling him toward the car. “Get in, just please get in. I have to get out of here. I’ll explain later. Just please, Dev.”
“All right, all right, calm down,” Devlin said, his amusement transformed into a wary concern as he got back into the car and put it in reverse. “I’m assuming you’re not running from the law. Because if you are, I certainly hope you have your passport on you.”
“Yes,” she said, gulping slightly. “I mean yes, I have my passport, but no, I am not running from the law. Just my friends and relations. Just my past.”
“Ah,” Devlin said, and said no more.
She sat back into the quiet of the car, drank in the rich leather smell of the upholstery and the wonderful miraculous relief of having Devlin calmly driving next to her, his profile so familiar, his presence a reminder that there was life outside of Cerreta, outside of this movie shoot, away from Mercy and Michael and Gabe. The simple act of his shifting gears took on an almost magical quality of reassurance.
A few minutes passed, then a few more.
“Where am I headed?” Devlin asked finally.
Juliette shrugged. “I don’t care.”
Two small towns later, Devlin again broke the silence.
“J., you know I would follow you to the ends of the earth, but I’ve been in transit for about twenty-four hours now, so unless you object, I’m going to head back to the Coronet. Because I have a feeling,” he added, “we’re going to be having one of those long and complicated conversations you like so much, and I may need some coffee.”
Juliette laughed, giddy with the distance rolling out between herself and Cerreta and the soothing sound of her boss’s voice.
“Oh, Dev,” she said. She closed her eyes, leaned back in her seat, and put her hand on his wrist, circling it very lightly. “It’s been a terrible, horrible day and I’ve missed you so much. But what in God’s name,” she said, raising her head and looking at him as if for the first time, “are you doing here?”
“You kept saying you didn’t need any help,” he answered. “And for once in our long years of friendship, I didn’t believe you.”
It did not take long to reach the Coronet, though when she reached into her purse to tip the valet, she was annoyed to discover she had somehow picked up Angie’s instead of her own. So much for leaving Cerreta never to return, she thought, and now I’m carrying a dead woman’s purse.
But as the temperate hush and discreet luxury of the lobby and then the soft-pile comfort of Devlin’s suite washed over her, Juliette felt nothing but blessed relief. It was as if she were finally coming home. There were bowls filled with orchids beside chairs deep and soft, the sofa shone with a silken damask, and the coffee arrived in sterling silver with napkins so large and plush they could have been tablecloths. As they ate panini, Juliette carefully explained all that had happened since Mercy had arrived at Cerreta, her strange moods and midnight ramblings. She told him about Inspector Di Marco and what Mercy had said about the DNA, about Joseph being taken in and how she didn’t know what to believe because Mercy lied so often.
“Gabe says you can’t trust anything she says because she’s an addict, which is definitely true, but then sometimes she does seem to know things, to see and understand things in a way that’s almost frightening.”
“She is something of a savant, our Mercy,” Devlin agreed. “And even a liar is capable of telling the truth, if only accidentally. It’s what makes them so irresistible. And how is dear Mr. O’Connor?”
Juliette heard the question behind the question and all she could think of, and only with burning shame, was the sight of Carson in Michael’s trailer and how it had filled her with mortification.
“Aging,” she answered, with a light vicious laugh, “rapidly.”
“Brilliant,” Devlin said. “I’m all ears.”
Michael, she told him, seemed to have taken on the project to prove something, and it was turning out to be harder than he had anticipated, what with all the various tensions, between himself and Mercy, Mercy and Angie, Angie and Carson, Golonksi and everyone, Gabriel and Steve Usher. Usher, meanwhile, seemed more interested in buying Cerreta than keeping Mercy sober. “Though I wonder if it isn’t some sort of ruse, because he’s offering so much money, more than it’s worth, actually, and he seems to think he could get Gabe to stay, though I don’t know why, since Gabe shows him nothing but open contempt most of the time.”
“Steve Usher is far more complicated than he ought to be,” Devlin said, pouring himself a second cup of coffee. “Many people have expressed concern over how the press always learns so much about those who pass through Resurrection. Certainly he seems more interested in notoriety than anonymity.”
“That’s true,” she said with a laugh. “He’s a terrible gossip considering his line of work. He keeps asking Mercy for Lloyd’s copy of that damn Little Book and Mercy won’t give it to him because she says he’ll just auction it off. Which I totally believe, even though it apparently makes him look like an idiot. Still,” she added, “out of everyone, I think he was the most sincerely upset about Angie’s death.”
“That is surprising,” Devlin said, and something in his markedly unsurprised tone made her look at him more closely. Sitting in one of the leather chairs, with one leg resting at a right angle on the opposite knee and an arm thrown across the back of the chair, Devlin was a portrait of a dark-eyed urbane businessman. He may have just gotten off a plane, driven along Italian highways, and
up the dusty road of Cerreta, but there was not a crease, wrinkle, or smudge on his person. With his square jaw smoothly shaved and his dark hair combed sleek, he fairly sparkled with freshness and respectability.
But Juliette knew there was no way he would have left his beloved hotel just to help her cope, even with the most stressful circumstances. Coping with stressful circumstances was her best area. With a little sigh, she looked him straight in the face. “Why are you here, Dev?”
Devlin put down his coffee cup.
“Tell me again what happened the day Angie died,” he said.
Eyeing him narrowly—would he never just answer a simple question?—Juliette recounted Mercy’s anger and Angie’s drunken monologue, told him all that Mercy had said and implied, about how her mother had been in Lloyd’s room the night he died, about how Mercy thought it was Angie who had taken the pictures that showed up on deadanddying.com, how she had sold photos of her own daughter, and more than photos, her own daughter herself.
“If Michael hadn’t looked the way he did when she said it,” Juliette said, “I would have thought she was lying. Did you ever hear of anything like that? About the two of them, sleeping with men, together?”
Devlin gave an almost imperceptible shrug.
“Jesus,” Juliette said, sickened almost as much by his lack of outrage as she was by Angie’s actions. “Really.”
“People do awful things sometimes, J.,” Devlin said matter-of-factly. “But I am far more interested in what happened to Angie. Do you honestly think she just fell?”
Juliette stared. “What, you don’t? But that would mean someone killed her. Why would anyone want to kill Angie?”
Devlin laughed. “You can’t be serious. Who wouldn’t want to kill Angie? I myself have fantasized about it on several occasions, as recently as a week ago.”
“Well,” Juliette said, grateful to give voice to a thought that had been nagging her, “the only person crazy enough to do something like that is Mercy. And Mercy didn’t do it, because she was with Gabe all night. Besides, Angie was leaving, which is what everyone wanted.”
“Or so she said.”
“Well, all right, maybe she wouldn’t have left in the end. But even if Carson or Golonski or Andrews hated her that much, it wouldn’t make sense for them to kill her, not with Mercy already on the ledge.”
She looked at Devlin intently. “Is that why you’re here? Do you know something about what happened?”
“I know I don’t like the idea of two deaths on one film set,” he answered with maddening vagueness. “And when a woman not known for her naturalistic tendencies goes for a midnight stroll in the forest and falls into an abandoned quarry, well, it does make me wonder. Or maybe,” he said with a grin, shifting slightly in his seat, “the idea of you and Michael O’Connor sharing a month-long Tuscan idyll just didn’t sit well with me.”
At the sound of O’Connor’s name, the scene in the library unfolded itself on the surface of Juliette’s brain. So much pain exposed by so many in just a few minutes. She had had to leave or she would have just made it worse. So much worse. Gabe thought he wanted her to talk about that terrible night, but he didn’t. Because even he didn’t know what she would have to say.
She walked to the window, gazed out at the narrow street, empty save for the pale gold of the streetlamp and the shadows it threw, and wondered just what the hell she was going to do next.
“Tell me the rest, Juliette,” Devlin said after a moment. “Why were you running away? What were you running from?” When she didn’t answer, he rose and came to stand behind her, his hands light and warm on her shoulders. “Just tell me,” he said, his voice gentle but insistent, “and be done with it.”
But she couldn’t even tell Devlin. So she told the window, she told the street, she told the implacable Sienese night. With as few words as possible, she told him about the night her parents died. How the two couples, best friends for years, had been out to dinner, how they were heading home long past midnight across those misty snow-filled fields into the path of a freight train.
“Gabe thinks it’s because they were drunk, which they probably were; they were always drunk,” Juliette said bitterly. “Drunk and arguing, or drunk and . . .” She stopped, then tried again. “But . . .”
“But?” Dev was still behind her, looking out over her shoulder at the street, his hands steady on her shoulders.
“But my father was driving. My father was driving and I don’t see how it could have been an accident.” She had never, not once, said those words out loud. “He was not . . . happy.” She was so close to the window that her breath fogged the glass. She closed her eyes. “For as long as I knew him, anyway. And the police said my mother was in the backseat. With my uncle. I think my mother always had a thing for my uncle. They used to joke about it, but I think it was real.” She shrugged, a movement she recognized instantly from childhood. “I think he did it on purpose. They fought that night, before they left. I remember lying on my bed listening, wishing they would just leave, just leave already. He said he was sick of being the ‘odd man out.’ And she just laughed. I think he hated them all and did it on purpose. He killed my mother and Gabe’s parents on purpose.”
“You don’t know—”
“Oh, for godsake, Dev, how drunk would a person have to be,” she asked savagely, “to not see a freight train?”
Her eyes were dry and her head ached; she wanted a drink so badly but was stopped by a sense of irony from getting one. Instead, she shivered and leaned her hot forehead against the window, aware of nothing but the sleek cool glass and the warmth of Devlin’s hand against her back; she could feel the outline of his fingers.
“Put it down, Juliette,” he said quietly. “True or not, it’s not your burden and you’ve carried it long enough.” Now both his hands were on her shoulders, and his voice was in her ear. “So just put it down.”
“I can’t,” she whispered, and drew a long painful breath.
“You can,” he said, and, gripping her arms, pulled her away from the window, turned her around. “But that’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it?” He put a finger under her chin and raised it; now his eyes were dark and gently mocking. “However will you survive without that snowy night to haunt you, without all that lovely dark guilt to keep you from being happy?”
“Fuck you,” she said furiously, and then she kissed him. Deep and angry, pushing back against all the years of forgetting that rose up, her mother’s perfume and the smell of spilled wine, the dusty frightened dark behind some sheltering door, the sight of a car driving away in a cloud of dust.
Up they rose, sights and smells, and she wrapped her arms around Devlin, kissed him so hard she could not breathe, so hard she tasted blood. His hands were on her hair, her face, stroking her, calming her, trying to disentangle himself, but she made a small sound in her throat and after a moment’s struggle he gave in and kissed her back, until all those images receded and only the warm wet depths of his mouth remained. For years she had pushed aside his nonchalant flirtation, the almost automatic attempts at seduction, and now all she wanted, all she needed, fiercely, undeniably, was his hands on her, rough and irresistible, his body covering hers, creating a wall to hold back everything that had happened, everything she was feeling. She thought of all the men she had loved, all they had required of her, and she felt an overwhelming urge to strip herself naked and wipe her whole self clean, inside and out. She filled her mind with fire and sank her teeth gently, then not so gently, into Devlin’s neck, ground herself against him; she felt his teeth on her neck, his thumbs pressing hard into her hips until she groaned.
“Wait,” he said breathlessly, pulling away. “Sweetheart, wait, just wait.”
“No,” she said, yanking him back to her, pushing him onto the bed. “Don’t talk. Not now. Just fuck me. Finally. Just fuck me.”
“Christ,” he groaned as her mouth found warm naked flesh. He gripped her arms with bruising fingers and forced her back
onto the bed, his knees jammed hard between her legs, forcing them wide. “Is this what you want?” he said, looking into her face, offering her one last chance to turn back. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
“Harder,” she breathed into his ear. “Fuck me harder than you think you should.”
He laughed softly and dangerously. With one hand he forced her hands above her head and with the other tore her blouse open. Teeth clenched and muscles taut, Juliette cleared her mind of everything but the thin and brilliant line that divided fear and desire, pleasure and pain.
There was, at last, a warm and throbbing darkness that rose and fell like gentle breathing, cradled her as it moved. Swimming up through something like sleep, she moved a leg, an arm. Muscles strained, joints ached, and she could feel the heat of Devlin’s body lying alongside her. She smiled and imagined a shell, scraped sleek and dazzling by sun and sand and pounding surf.
“Feel better?” Devlin’s voice rose from the dark behind her eyelids. He chuckled and she felt his mouth on her bare shoulder. “I’ve been many things in many beds, J., but never before an exorcist.”
“You should try it as a second career,” she said dreamily. “Or a fifth career. Whatever you’re up to now.”
Juliette did not open her eyes—she knew once she did, whatever this was, whatever had happened, would be over, and real life, with all of its tangles and blurry patches, would be right there where she left it. Rolling toward Devlin, she pulled herself onto his chest, blind eyes and seeking hands, until she found his face and kissed his mouth as softly and tenderly as she could. To make up for the rest.
“I’ve set my mark on you,” he said as he examined her arms, neck, and torso with great thoroughness, planting kisses on the places where she knew small bruises were already rising. “Look. Now you’re damaged goods, and no one else will want you.”
“You’re a brute,” she answered.
“I didn’t invite the beast into the room; you did. Open your eyes, Juliette,” he said, with a firmness that bordered on anger. “Look at me.”
The Starlet Page 22