And as she does, she realizes that the sense of trepidation from yesterday hasn’t waned over a good night’s sleep.
The anxiety is still there, making her tense despite the steaming stream of water gushing over her.
There’s something wrong, something she can’t quite put her finger on.
And Mallory can’t help feeling as though the day ahead isn’t something to look forward to …
But to dread.
She’s so close.
After so many years, Mallory Eden is actually here, actually within reach.
All you have to do is—
But not yet.
It isn’t time yet.
Not now, in the wee hours of the morning, when You’re too exhausted to think clearly. You need your wits about you. You need to rest, so that you’ll be ready when the time comes …
If the time comes.
That would depend on Mallory.
Your destiny is in your own hands, Mallory. You don’t have to die. I don’t want to take your life …
But 1 will if I have to.
Tomorrow will come soon enough.
And slowly, like the fog seeping off the waer and snaking around the silent inn, sleep steals in …
Bringing, as always, violent nightmares.
Nightmares about a long-ago August night, and a gun clutched in trembling fingers that pulled the trigger, a split second too early … or was it too late?
A moment earlier, and the bullet would have sailed past Mallory, close enough to scare her, yet leave her unharmed.
A moment later, as Mallory started to crouch to protect herself, and the bullet would have struck her in the head instead.
But she had been hit in the stomach, a flood of wet crimson soaking her pure white cotton nightgown as she lay motionless on the bed.
And then there was the uncertainty …
Did she glimpse your face?
Did she know it was you who shot her?
The agonizing hours of waiting for her to regain consciousness, your own fate hanging in the balance with hers.
And then, exhilaration.
She never knew. She never saw you. She never suspected …
And she still doesn’t.
Maybe she will never have to know.
Or maybe, tomorrow, she’ll discover the terrible, shocking truth … in her dying moments.
Chapter
16
With Rae right behind her, Mallory steps out onto the porch of the inn and is startled by the sound of someone calling her name.
“Mallory! My God, you look different. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Gasping, she spins to see the figure of a woman striding toward her from the small gravel parking lot alongside the winding drive.
Her eyes are momentarily blinded by glare from the rising sun. All Mallory can see is the woman’s silhouette, and that she’s wearing a broad-brimmed hat.
“Who is that?” Rae asks in a low, nervous voice.
“I don’t know …” Panic slices through Mallory. Should she turn and run?
She couldn’t if she wanted to. Her feet are rooted to the wide board floor, her body frozen as she stares at the approaching stranger.
“It’s me, Mallory,” the eerily familiar voice calls as the woman draws nearer. “Remember me? You’re not the only one who looks different.”
Mallory is trembling now, bracing herself for whatever is going to happen next. She takes a step backward, bumping into Rae, who steadies her with two strong hands on her upper arms.
Suddenly the woman steps out of the glare and her face comes into view.
Mallory gasps at the hideous sight in front of her.
“My God. It’s Gretchen,” Rae whispers.
Mallory nods, speechless.
The once-beautiful face of her assistant, framed by matted blond hair, has been mangled beyond recognition. Where there should be smooth white skin, there is mottled red and pink and purple scar tissue.
“Look what you’ve done to me, Mallory.” The words are slightly muffled, coming from a stiff, mutilated mouth that barely moves as Gretchen speaks.
“Gretchen, I didn’t do this to you.” Mallory is incredulous. “I didn’t—”
“When you faked your death and disappeared, you doomed me to the life of a freak. I needed you, and you weren’t there.”
“I was there. I called you in the hospital; I paid for your treatment.”
Gretchen gives a bitter laugh. “You think that was all I needed?”
“What … what else did you need?”
“I needed money to pay a surgeon to fix my face, Mallory. The kind of money a normal human being doesn’t have. Only a movie star has that kind of money.”
Mallory fumbles for something to say.
“I would have helped you if I could, Gretchen. If I had known …”
“Help me now.”
“I …” Her thoughts are whirling. All she has left in the world is the cash in the zippered pouch up in the suite. Everything else went to set up the foundation when she “died.”
“Gretchen, I don’t have any money now.”
“Oh, please,” she scoffs, coming closer so that they’re separated only by the flight of steps leading up to the porch. “How can you not have money? What have you been living on for the past five years?”
Mallory falters, glances at Rae, who is simply staring at Gretchen, her expression a mixture of disbelief and pity and, yes, anger.
“I need your help, Mallory,” Gretchen says again, putting a foot on the bottom step.
“She can’t do this,” Rae mutters. “You don’t owe her anything.”
Mallory opens her mouth, uncertain what she’s even going to say. “Gretchen—”
The word is interrupted by the sudden sound of crunching gravel on the drive.
Mallory glances up to see a long black limousine pulling toward them, trailed by a blue van.
Her heart pounding, she clutches the railing for support and watches as both vehicles draw to a stop and the back door of the limo opens.
A woman she’s never seen before in her life climbs out and waves. “Mallory Eden? I have a surprise for you!”
At the same moment, several men spill out of the van, camera equipment in their hands, all of it trained on Mallory.
“My God,” Mallory breathes, shaking her head to clear it.
Is this a nightmare?
It has to be.
This can’t really be happening.
“It’s the press,” Rae murmurs. “I knew someone was following us yesterday.”
The woman calls some instructions to the camera crew, then turns back to the limo, and Mallory realizes that another person is stepping out.
At first the figure is unrecognizable. A stranger. And then she speaks.
“Cindy? It’s me. Mama.”
That voice, those words, slam into Mallory like a falling piano.
She shrinks back, away from the haggard woman who is moving toward her, away from Gretchen, who is still poised at the foot of the stairs as though she might advance at any moment.
“Rae,” Mallory says, turning to her friend for support. “God, Rae, help me.”
“Come on.” Rae grabs her hand and pulls her into the inn, slamming the door. “Let’s go.”
Mallory’s feet leap into action, following Rae a few steps through the still-deserted lobby, and then through a door leading to a corridor running the length of the building.
“They’ll think we’ve gone back to our room,” Rae says breathlessly, pulling her along. “But we won’t.”
She opens another door, and Mallory realizes what she has in mind. This is the passageway to the back garden. The door at the end opens into a small courtyard edged with lush, blooming foliage.
Rae pulls Mallory across the cobblestones, through a hedge, and onto a short path. It winds away from the inn through a dense thicket of pine trees, ending at a rocky, wooded incline where the wilderness trail begins.
Wisps of morning mist hang in the air, making it impossible to see beyond the trees.
“Are you ready to go on that hike?” Rae asks, wearing a wry smile.
Mallory nods gratefully, unable to find her voice.
They scramble forward, disappearing into the fog-shrouded forest.
“What’s going to happen now?” Manny asks his grandmother, who is sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of tea in front of her. Her eyes are red and swollen, and Manny knows his must be the same way.
“I don’t know,” Grammy says, shaking her head slowly. She reaches a gnarled hand for the cup, starts to lift it, and sets it down with a plunk, sloshing tea on the table. “I’m going to lose the house now. We’ll have to move.”
“Where?”
“There’s that senior subsidized housing over in Warwick—but I don’t know …”
When she doesn’t finish, Manny prompts. “You don’t know … what?”
“I don’t know if they allow children there. If they don’t, we’ll think of something else.”
He swallows hard. “Or,” he says miserably, “I could go with her.”
“With who?”
“You know … my mother. If she wants me so bad, she can take me.”
“Manny,” his grandmother says gruffly, “you’re not going anywhere with her. She signed away her rights years ago. And if she tries to take you again, we’ll go to the police. I don’t think she will though. Now that Rafael—” She breaks off, tears filling her eyes again.
“But, Grammy,” Manny says, “what if you can’t take care of me on your own? Who’s going to help us? There’s no one …”
Now that Elizabeth is gone, he thinks bleakly.
And despite her promises to keep in touch, he knows he can’t count on her. She’s a world away. Pretty soon she’ll forget all about Manny.
But I’ll never forget you, he tells her silently. And I’ll never stop wishing that somehow, you could have been my mom.
Gretchen stands in the lobby of the inn, motionless, listening for the sound of running footsteps belonging to Mallory and Rae.
But all she can hear, drifting in the open window, is the sound of Mallory’s mother outside.
She’s hysterical, ranting, shrieking. “Cindy! You come back here to your mama! Don’t you turn your back on me again. Don’t you make me come looking for you. This was your last chance....”
And, of course, the cameras will be focused on the pathetic figure; maybe the reporter in her expensive designer suit will even be doing a subdued voice-over, shaking her head sympathetically at the tragic scene: a mother offering too little, too late, and a daughter who can’t find it in her stone-cold heart to forgive.
None of that has anything to do with Gretchen.
And she has no intention of being captured on film, a hideous human monster adding to the drama of Mallory and her mother’s plight.
Here, in the shadows of the sleeping inn, she simply stands, her ears trained, waiting …
A creaking floorboard somewhere nearby rewards her.
She moves stealthily through a doorway and down a hall, then stops and listens again.
Nothing.
But she won’t move.
She won’t give up until she and Mallory Eden are face-to-face once again.
Mallory stands at the very edge of the land, the toes of her new hiking boots flush against the rocky dropoff.
Gulls swoop overhead. The air is scented with pine and salt and flowers. In front of her is nothing but vast azure sky, dazzling with sunshine that’s already burned off the early morning fog. And below—straight down, a sheer drop—is the foaming surf of the Pacific Ocean.
She can’t help being reminded of another time, another place, when she had stood, very much like this, poised high above white, thrashing water.
She leans her head back, closes her eyes, and breathes deeply, then, hearing a footstep behind her, she spins around, startled yet careful not to lose her footing.
“Sorry … did I scare you?”
It’s only Rae, who had gone into the underbrush along the trail to answer nature’s call.
“I’m just jumpy,” Mallory tells her, and glances back at the view.
“Don’t worry. We’ve covered miles. They’ll never find us up here. They’re probably still looking for us back at the inn.”
“But we have to go back sooner or later.”
Rae doesn’t reply to that.
“I can’t believe my mother is here,” Mallory says after a moment. “I can’t believe she thinks she can show up with some reporter and a camera crew and expect me to … can’t believe it.”
“I’m assuming you haven’t had any contact with her since your sister died?”
Mallory shakes her head. Rae knows the whole story, of course. She had witnessed Elizabeth’s visit, had seen how Mallory had struggled to establish some bond with her half sibling. But how did you bond with a lying, wasted, selfish junkie?
Elizabeth had stolen money from Mallory, had embarrassed her in front of her friends, had nearly OD’d in the guest room. Mallory had thrown her out the day she’d come home to find her living room filled with drug paraphernalia and spaced-out strangers—and several valuables missing.
“I’m having a party, sis,” Elizabeth had slurred.
When Mallory had tried to kick people out of the place, her sister had flown into a rage, slamming things around, breaking furniture, finally putting her fist through a plate-glass window.
Mallory had paid for her emergency room treatment and tried to force her into rehab. When Elizabeth had refused, she had bought her a ticket back to Chicago. One way.
“What was my mother thinking?” Mallory asks Rae, shaking her head and staring at the sky. “Did she expect me to welcome her into my life with open arms? I can’t do that. She beat me, Rae. And then she left me.”
Her voice is tight. She can’t look at her friend.
But Rae knows. She knows every detail of Mallory’s past. About her teenage mother running off. About Mallory’s guilt over leaving Vera, and about Vera’s sudden death. And about Brawley …
Brawley, who had smothered her with everything but love.
“Everybody in my life has always wanted something from me, Rae,” Mallory says bleakly, her gaze on the horizon. “Everyone except you. Even Gretchen now …”
“I know. She’s a mess.”
“All this time since I left L.A., I’ve been trying not to think about her. Not to wonder … But now I know. I have to help her.”
“Mallory … how?”
“Like she said … I have to pay for a surgeon. Someone who can do something about her face.”
“Do you have that kind of money?”
“No. Not anymore. But I can get it.”
“How?”
“You know how.” Mallory sighs and watches a gull swooping up off the water, arcing across the sky. “I have to come back. I have to start acting again.”
But even as the words spill out of her mouth, she regrets them. She doesn’t want to go back to being Mallory Eden. She doesn’t want to live the rest of her life that way, surrounded by opportunistic hangers-on, and the press always probing.
“Are you sure?” Rae asks quietly.
Something in her tone causes Mallory to turn her head, to look at her friend. She can’t read anything in Rae’s expression, and her eyes are concealed by black designer sunglasses.
But Rae knows her so well. Rae must sense that the decision isn’t an easy one. That she has doubts …
But what choice does she really have?
She owes Gretchen …
And what about herself? She had worked so hard to build a career …
Anyway, she had always loved acting—the actual art. Just not everything that went with it.
But maybe this time it will be different. Maybe this time she can avoid the Hollywood hoopla.
Besides, what else is there for her? Where else is there?
Her thought
s dart fleetingly to Windmere Cove. To Harper. And Manny …
“God, it’s gorgeous,” Rae comments suddenly, looking out over the majestic scenery. “I haven’t been up here since you …”
She trails off.
Mallory shifts uncomfortably and looks at her friend, wishing she could see her eyes.
“Since I supposedly killed myself,” she finishes for Rae, who nods and looks away.
“I’m sorry, Rae. I’m so sorry I did that to you. I know how furious you must be, that I put you through all that. But … if there was anyone I considered telling, it was you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Mallory longs to see what’s in Rae’s eyes, needs to discern whether she’s more angry or hurt. Then she wonders if it even matters. Rae has always been a loyal friend. Her only loyal friend.
She’ll get over it. Maybe she already has.
“I didn’t tell you,” Mallory says carefully, truthfully, “because I didn’t want to put you at risk. I was afraid that whoever was after me would turn to you, thinking you might know something. Or that if you knew I was alive, you wouldn’t truly seem like you were grieving.”
“What you’re saying is that you didn’t think I was a talented enough actress to pull off the role of the grieving friend.”
Mallory frowns, surprised at Rae’s brittle tone. “That’s not what I meant, Rae.”
“Come off it, Mallory. Of course it’s what you meant. You never thought I could act. Neither did Flynn. Nobody in this town ever thought I could act.”
“Rae, come on …”
“But I did it. I pulled it off.”
“Pulled what off?” Mallory feels as though she’s missed part of the conversation. Where had this tension, this resentment come from?
“I played the grieving friend for five years,” Rae is saying. “And do you know what? I’m the best goddamned actress anyone ever saw. I deserve an Oscar for that performance.”
Mallory stares at her in disbelief. “What are you talking about, Rae?”
“Do you actually think I mourned the loss of someone who stole every role I ever should have gotten?”
There’s a rushing sound in Mallory’s ears, blood pumping to her racing heart, panic surging through her veins, disbelieving questions roaring through her mind.
Fade to Black Page 32