Star Flight

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “You sure can. But first maybe you’d like to see something else. Something I hid away and kept when they packed off all your gramma’s things for charity. Look behind that door over there.”

  I opened the door of a small closet and found a clear plastic garment bag—a zippered bag of more recent vintage than the dress it protected. I took out the long gown and held it up on its padded hanger. Yards of white cloth had been used and it frothed out over my hands, released from the restriction of years.

  “She wore that dress in the movie she made here,” Betsey said softly. “It was a funny scene because she wore an evening dress and he wore cowboy clothes. She tore it once—” She broke off, as though she’d stopped herself from saying something more. “It was a bad tear, but I mended it so you can hardly tell.”

  The gown was made of some filmy material that had been popular at the time. It was sleeveless, with a scooped neck and a softly full torso that would cling around the bust and then float out in an ageless style that fell to the floor.

  As I held up the gown that had once been worn by Victoria Frazer, I felt again a strange enchantment. It was as though my grandmother touched me—as though, through the dress, she could reach out to me.

  “You’re about the same size,” Betsey said. “You could wear that dress.”

  I smiled at her. “Hardly. But thank you for letting me see it.” I returned the gown carefully to its protective bag and touched it gently—almost a caress—as I hung it back in the closet.

  “Nobody ever knew I kept that dress,” she told me. “Nobody missed it. All those strangers picking over her things. She was six months pregnant with your mama when she last wore that dress, but I made it so cleverly that no one could tell.”

  Suddenly, I knew what I must show her. I dropped the tissue-wrapped emerald into my bag and drew out the silver bracelet. Tiny bells chimed as I held it out to her.

  “Do you recognize this?”

  She put her hands in her lap so they wouldn’t touch the bracelet. “He gave her that. I hated everything he gave her because I knew how false he was. How come you’ve got it now?”

  “Ty sent it to me by a small boy. But I don’t know why.”

  Her face crumpled into even more lines and I thought she was going to cry. “Put it away. Get rid of it. He is a wicked man.”

  I knew she didn’t mean Ty.

  Suddenly, all the energy faded out of her and she looked tired and very old. It was time to leave.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Betsey. And for recognizing me.”

  She roused herself for a few more words. “Don’t show her that bracelet. Or the emerald. After all, she’s his wife.”

  “Roger Brandt is my grandfather,” I reminded her. “And I can’t help that.”

  “So long as you don’t do anything about it. It’s not your fault. My beautiful, magic lady was young and foolish and too much in love. I can still remember what that’s like. I’m sorry about your husband. He seemed like a nice man.”

  She closed her eyes, looking even more ancient, and appeared to doze off gently. I went out to where Camilla waited for me in the car.

  “That took a while,” she said as I got in beside her. “What did she want?”

  I couldn’t tell her all of it. “She wandered a bit, but I think she wanted to tell me how sorry she was about Jim.”

  “Yes—she can wander, poor old thing.”

  As Finella had pointed out, not all that many years stretched between Betsey and Camilla Brandt and I smiled to myself. This woman would never think that old applied to her. And in a way, it really didn’t.

  We were driving away from the apple farm when she spoke again. “I’d hoped that Betsey might give you something you could use for the documentary. Did she?”

  I had a feeling that she was simply probing. “I’m not sure. Why do you want to see Jim’s work continued, when your husband doesn’t?”

  Her attention was fixed on the road ahead and her patrician profile told me nothing. It took her a little while to answer me.

  “Roger deserves to be remembered, whether he appreciates that fact or not.”

  Somehow I doubted that this was her true motive. She might simply be quoting Natalie.

  “What if something comes to light that you don’t expect? Something that might hurt him? Betsey seems to think she might be able to damage him.”

  Camilla turned her head to look at me and I saw a flash of excitement in her eyes—quickly hidden. “Perhaps it’s time for all that’s been concealed for too long to come out. The terrible, as well as the good.”

  The intensity in her voice shocked me more than her words. Had I detected a vindictive quality in Camilla Brandt, directed toward her husband, that the passing years had never erased? Perhaps she had even wanted Betsey to say those things about Roger Brandt. Yet Camilla had stayed with him all these years. Natalie had said that they loved and hated each other.

  I could find nothing to say, and if Camilla sensed that she had shocked me, she gave no sign. We spoke very little until we reached Lake Lure. Then I asked her to drop me at Finella’s. She left me there with a careless wave of her hand and drove away. It might even be that she wanted to use me in some way against her husband—so she hadn’t minded what Betsey might say.

  When she heard the bell at the shop door, Finella came out from the back room. “You’re just in time, Lauren. Gordon and I are about to have lunch. I hope you’ll join us.”

  I thanked her and followed her into a small sitting room pleasantly furnished with informal odds and ends. A gateleg table had been set with woven yellow place mats and china in soft delft blue. A tiny vase of asters celebrated the season.

  Gordon was setting out cold ham and potato salad while Finella brought hot rolls and a pot of coffee to the table. Without warning, the shock of seeing him struck me all over again—even more piercingly than when I’d met him in the Indian village. When we sat down to eat, I said hardly anything. Luckily, Finella filled in the gap with a story about a customer she’d met that morning in the shop.

  I said nothing because I wasn’t really present. Some treacherous, long-buried emotion had pulled me back to San Francisco. I stood all over again with Gordon on a hilltop and watched the fog roll across the bay. That day, I had been totally aware of everything about him—as I was now. There had been such sweetness for me in those few days, and a sharpening of my senses. I had never felt as much alive since then.

  There’d been only a handful of days, yet they had seemed timeless. Nothing existed for us except each other. All that mattered were the moments we shared. Underneath the tremulous sweetness, I was aware as well of a new lacing of excitement and anticipation as we moved toward a new closeness that now seemed inevitable.

  I had not hesitated when the time came. Nothing could ever take the memory of our loving away from me. Now, when I looked at Gordon, I knew how the crisp texture of his hair would feel to my touch. I knew the tracing of his fingers down the line of my chin and throat. I knew so much more, and something in me shattered into little pieces of pain.

  Gordon was watching me and I dared not look at him. I must remember that he had become someone I no longer knew as I’d known that man in California. Finella saved me when she asked about Camilla’s and my visit to Betsey Harlan. I steadied myself and told her how much I’d liked Betsey and about my surprise that Ty had once courted her. Gordon listened but remained silent, remote. He had distanced himself from me, and my heart, already cracked, felt about to break.

  Now and then customers came into the shop and Finella went out to wait on them, leaving us alone.

  Somehow I had to reach him, and I spoke quietly. “We both loved Jim. Can we accept that and find some common ground?”

  He listened coolly. “I can understand why you wouldn’t let Jim talk about his wife’s real identity. But why are you playing out this deception here in Lake Lure now? Don’t you think you could at least tell Natalie?”

  I tried to explain
the way I felt. “I know I can learn more if no one is aware that Victoria Frazer was my grandmother. I’m sure Camilla would never have taken me to see Betsey if she’d known who my grandparents were. I don’t think she’d want to have anything to do with me at all. So I’m sorry if you think this is a cheap deception, but I feel it’s necessary.”

  He didn’t seem impressed, though he made no comment.

  I went on. “This afternoon, Roger Brandt is going to show me the film he and Victoria made together. I expressed an interest and he made the offer. But I wonder if he would have done so if he knew that I was his—his illegitimate granddaughter.”

  “How did that happen?”

  I was explaining about Roger Brandt’s visit to the lodge when Finella returned, and she listened with delight when she heard what I planned.

  “That’s exciting. He never shows that film to anyone.”

  “Why don’t you tell my mother about your connection with the Brandts?” Gordon asked.

  I felt betrayed. I didn’t mind having Finella know, but not in a way that forced my hand. Now I had no choice.

  “Victoria Frazer was my grandmother and Roger Brandt is my grandfather. When Victoria sent my mother to California friends, she told them that the baby’s father was Roger Brandt. There was no reason to doubt this, considering the way the fan magazines had carried on in print.”

  Finella was delighted. “How dramatic! Gordon—you knew about this?”

  “I’ve known for a long time. Lauren and I first met at the university in Berkeley years ago. I’ve gone along with Lauren’s playacting, but it’s begun to wear on me. I don’t know that her reasoning for this is justified.”

  Finella ignored the impatience in his voice, but I could not, and it cut through me.

  “Will you tell Roger this afternoon, Lauren?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. I’m not enthusiastic about telling either Roger or Camilla. What would be the point? I’d like to see that film and know what my grandmother was like. Then I’ll just go home.”

  “In spite of what happened to Jim?” Gordon asked. “Not that there’s much you could do about that.”

  His words stung, and he’d meant them to. What had happened to Jim was the one thing that held me here. Someone knew what had happened to him. Someone knew what had happened to Victoria, and perhaps these two deeds were connected—because of whatever Jim had discovered. Something I might still discover. But there was nothing more I could say to Gordon Heath. He had set himself against me—for reasons that probably went deeply into the past. And how could I blame him? I was the one who had lacked the courage to take a different road from the one I’d so comfortably planned.

  If I stayed now, Gordon would go on hurting me—perhaps punishing me for the past. And, worst of all, enjoying it. I wanted none of that.

  I glanced at my watch. “Thank you for lunch, Finella. I’d better get back to the lodge, since Natalie will be picking me up.”

  She came to the door with me and Gordon followed me outside. When we reached my car, he was still with me, a bit doggedly. I got behind the wheel and when he leaned in the open window, his words surprised me.

  “Maybe I owe you an apology.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” I said.

  He changed the subject abruptly. “Would you be willing to get up before dawn tomorrow morning, Lauren?”

  I stared at him blankly and he continued.

  “There’s something I’d like to show you, but we’d need to make it by sunrise.”

  I couldn’t follow this change in him. It was too sudden. Unless—during our recent lunch—he, too, had remembered San Francisco? A pulse of excitement beat in me—but I must be careful, very careful.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked.

  Small lines that I remembered crinkled at the outer corners of his eyes. “Let’s make it a surprise. It will be more fun that way. Just be ready by four-thirty. I’ll wait for you in the lobby of the lodge.”

  He turned away, as though I might change my mind, and went back to his mother’s shop. I drove up to the lodge feeling light-headed. I was afraid of anticipating more than might be offered, but that was what I was beginning to feel. Now, however, I must get ready for the visit to my grandfather. Much as I wanted to go, I knew an ordeal lay ahead.

  Back in my room, I considered the few clothes I’d brought along. My turquoise blouse was fresh and my full blue skirt would serve again, but this afternoon I would wear white coral instead of lapis.

  While I waited for Natalie, I took out the tiny emerald that Victoria Frazer had dug from the earth so long ago. A million years might be nothing in the life of this stone, but it was only the time since Victoria had dug it out of the earth that interested me.

  I held it on my palm, closing my fingers around it, and willed it to “speak” to me. Something light as a feather seemed to touch my cheek and a sense of well-being I could think of only as loving breathed through me. Her presence—as I’d felt it when I held her gown in my hands?

  The jarring ring of the telephone broke the spell. Natalie was waiting for me in the lobby and I hurried down to meet her.

  This afternoon, she wore jeans again and a man’s shirt, so I felt dressed up and aware of the way she looked at me when I got into her car.

  “Would you mind explaining what this is all about?” she asked as we turned onto the road that wound high above this end of the lake. “Why does my grandfather want to see you?”

  There seemed no reason not to tell her, though apparently Roger had not. “When I returned to the lodge last night, your grandfather was waiting for me. He wanted me to know how opposed he is to my picking up Jim’s work. But when I asked about the film he’d made with Victoria Frazer and showed an interest in seeing it, he offered to screen it for me.” That wasn’t all, but it was enough to tell her for now.

  Natalie braked the car and turned abruptly into a parking space beside a house set high above the lake. It was closed and shuttered—probably occupied by summer people who had left when the season ended. Now it offered a private spot to sit and talk without interruption.

  She plunged in at once. “My grandfather has never shown me that picture. So why you?”

  “I’m not sure. I told him about finding an old magazine with pictures and an article about Victoria Frazer. I said I wished I could have seen her in Blue Ridge Cowboy, so I would know what she really looked like at that time, and he invited me to see his print of the movie. That’s all there is to it.”

  So simple an explanation didn’t satisfy Natalie, but before she could push me further, I asked a question of my own. “Yesterday, when you took me off the boat, you were the one who wanted me to go on with Jim’s work. Then, last night at dinner, you’d changed. I could sense your edginess toward me, and it’s there again now. Why?”

  Her sigh had a rueful sound. “I’m sorry. It really has nothing to do with you. Jim said I would like you, and I do. But my grandfather’s reaction turned me in a different direction. So I backed away. After all, I wanted the film finished for his sake—and Jim’s.”

  “But your grandmother seems to want this. I met her at Finella’s shop and she took me to see Betsey Harlan—a fascinating experience.”

  Natalie sat with her hands on the wheel and I saw the way her fingers tightened. When she spoke, her voice was tense. “If Gran wants this enough to try to catch your interest, then perhaps my grandfather will change his mind.”

  I had wondered about any possible vindictiveness on Camilla’s part. It must have been very difficult to live with the scandal of Roger Brandt’s betrayal. I could only imagine the toll Victoria’s life and death had taken on Camilla’s marriage.

  She backed the car away from the empty house and drove down to the road that ran across the top of the dam. “Theirs is a complicated relationship, Lauren. Sometimes I’ve even wondered if he thought he might be rid of her by moving here permanently—that she’d go back to California. But she stayed w
ith him in spite of everything. Still, I don’t think she’s ever let him forget what he owes her because of Victoria.”

  “What a terrible way to live.”

  “I know. Either love or hate is bad enough. But when you mix them, the results can be explosive. Sometimes I think he’s protecting her—or maybe she’s protecting him. I keep waiting for the spark that will set off a fire storm.”

  She watched me speculatively, as though she wondered whether I might furnish such a spark. Of course she couldn’t know how large a conflagration I might create once those two knew that I was Victoria Frazer’s granddaughter. Suddenly, the matter of revealing my identity became a little frightening—no longer a simple choice for me to make.

  When I didn’t respond, Natalie said, “No matter what anyone says, I hope you won’t pick up my foolish suggestion about Jim’s work. If I had dreamed what Grandpa’s reaction would be, I would never have written to you in the first place.”

  “There’s still the matter of how Jim died,” I reminded her.

  “I think about it all the time, but maybe it was just an accident. I don’t know what I think anymore.”

  We were nearly there; I braced myself for the coming encounter with Roger Brandt. By this time, I was feeling far more uneasy than I’d expected to. Natalie’s change of attitude raised all sorts of questions in my mind and I didn’t think she had told me all her reasons for trying to dissuade me from following through on her suggestion.

  I knew one thing: I must step carefully and cautiously with every member of this family.

  8

  When we reached the house, Natalie took me into her grandparents’ wing on the upper level.

  An entryway led into a large open area that contained a sunken living room; a higher level formed the dining room and kitchen.

  Across the living room, sliding glass doors opened onto a stunning view down the lake to hazy blue peaks at the far end. The colors of this entire space were warm and strong, complementing both the view through the glass and the green and gold of two Japanese screens that had been used to partition off the far end of the room.