by Linda Barlow
“I know business hasn’t been so hot this year, but this is ridiculous,” said Maggie.
April barely heard her. Her gaze was fixed on the author’s photograph. Her mother was still attractive, even after thirty years. The lines of her face were softer, somehow. But of course it was a glamour shot. There was nothing soft about Rina. Nothing at all.
The noise of the crowd around her faded. She was in the Port of New York in early 1965, in the cavernous hall of the steamship docks, clinging tight to her mother’s hand. She remembered all sorts of small details—the gray-black color of the sea, the ear-splitting hoot of the steamship’s whistle, the way the cold air fogged in front of her face when she breathed. Most of all she remembered Rina, all trim and stylish in a red fur coat that sported a little fox head and tail around the collar. She was wearing maroon gloves and a matching hat was coyly angled atop her spun-gold hair.
At her side was the trim, suave Frenchman who was taking her away. Armand. He was a widower with two young children. He needed a new wife, a mother for them.
April hated him. She hated his two motherless children. Most of all, she hated Rina, who was going away.
The ship was waiting. It was huge. It was smashed right up against the dock, its black hull looming tall as a mountain. A gangway poked out from its side and people were boarding, waving good-bye to their friends and family on shore.
“It’s only for a little while,” her mother was saying. “I’ll send for you as soon as we are married and all our papers are in order. We’ll need to get you a visa, you see. There are certain conditions to fulfill.”
April knew she was lying. She knew she would never see her mother again.
She was trying very hard to pretend it didn’t matter.
“Come, cherie, make your farewells,” Armand ordered in that falsely solicitous manner of his. “We must board or we shall be left behind.”
“Sister will take good care of you until I’m able to send for you,” Rina said, nodding to the stern, bulky nun of the Convent of the Sacred Heart Boarding School for Young Ladies where April had been enrolled. But she wasn’t going to stay in that smelly old convent. She’d run away. She’d stow away aboard another steamer and go to Paris all on her own. But she wouldn’t even visit her mother when she got there, oh, no. She’d find a better mother to live with. She’d find someone who really loved her. She’d have a family, a real family.
“Come and kiss me,” Rina said, leaning down. The pointed little head of the dead fox poked April’s cheek and she slapped it away. “Be good,” Rina whispered. “I love you. We’ll see each other soon.”
Liar, liar, liar, April was screaming inside. Don’t leave me, Mommy. Oh, Mommy, please don’t go.
Sister held her unresisting hand while Rina and Armand mounted the gangway together. Rina turned back at the last moment and waved gaily. The tail of the red fox collar fluttered in the wind.
Then the huge ship swallowed her up.
She had never been sent for, not even when Rina and her new family had returned to New York.
She hadn’t seen her mother since 1965. She’d been abandoned, and horrible things had happened to her— things that she could barely bring to consciousness. Violent, secret things that were all her mother’s fault…
“You okay?” Maggie asked, gently touching her arm.
April nodded. Her stomach was churning and the palms of her hands were slick. Get a grip, she ordered herself.
There was a stir at the entrance to the room. Along with everyone else, April craned her neck to see the group of people who entered together. As they moved up the center aisle toward the podium, the public address system boomed out a crescendo of music.
She saw the others first. Armand, who had aged well: an imposing, compact figure of medium height with a more youthful appearance than one would expect of a seventy-year-old man. His hair was silver, his skin tan and smooth, except for slight crinkles around the eyes, and his somewhat stocky build was disguised by the expert tailoring of his thousand-dollar suit.
In the years since Rina had sailed away with him, April had learned all about him. A French industrialist from a distinguished family that alternated between residences in Paris and Manhattan, Armand had been flirting with politics and diplomacy at the time when he and Rina had met, testing the waters by serving as a consular officer in the French embassy in Washington. After their marriage and return to Paris, he had devoted himself to his family’s extensive industrial and financial concerns, the largest of which was an international shipping business, based in New York.
In addition to Armand, April recognized the two other members of her mother’s entourage—a woman and a man. She had studied the voluminous brochures put out by the Foundation carefully enough to know who they were. The slim, black-haired woman was Isobelle de Sevigny, one of the two children of his first marriage whom Armand consigned to Rina’s care. At her side was Charles Ripley, Rina’s personal assistant, a sandy-haired young man with a ruddy complexion and a broad, quick smile that rivaled Magic Johnson’s in sincerity and charm. As they mounted the steps, he briefly touched Isobelle’s hand. Lovers? April wondered.
Isobelle’s brother Christian was not in attendance. He was his father’s heir, although rumor had it that they had never had a smooth relationship.
To the upbeat sounds of the music, Armand, Isobelle, and Charles joined hands and stood in a line, smiling and bowing to the audience. April noted that they made an exceptionally attractive group. All were fit and slender, all were beautifully dressed and exquisitely coiffed. All had obviously been successful at finding their Inner Strength.
An upsurge of music. The star of the show entered through an inconspicuous doorway just to the left of the stage. A tall, solidly built young woman whom April did not recognize hovered at her side, following the elegant blonde up the steps to the podium.
“There she is,” April said to Maggie. She was shocked at the dry sound of her own voice. “She’s done pretty well for herself, huh?”
“Uh, who?” said Maggie.
“Sabrina de Sevigny, empowerment expert, inspirational speaker, and three-time New York Times bestselling author,” said April, reading the phrases off the front of the glossy brochure she’d been handed at the door. “She looks well-preserved, doesn’t she? Even after thirty years, it’s not hard to glimpse the remnants of the beauty that attracted JFK.”
“Jesus, April. Rina de Sevigny is your mother?”
“Yes. And do I have a surprise for her.”
He moved easily through the crowds, finding a seat in the back, attracting no particular attention. Getting inside the convention center had been easy. As arranged, his registration had been made in advance in the name of Gerald Morrow, a small independent bookseller from Indianapolis. All fees had been paid; he had simply to sign in. Security was lax. Nobody frisked him and nobody discovered the gun.
It was a .22 Colt Woodsman. Semiautomatic. The clip had eight rounds; he had another clip in his pocket. Not that he expected to use more than one or two. A relatively quiet, efficient pistol—accurate, easy to use. He would hide it under a folded newspaper when the moment came to fire. The security people here would never even notice.
Bunch of amateurs. This job was almost too easy. No challenge. He liked a challenge. He liked to use all his faculties—clever mind as well as clever body—while performing the duties of his chosen profession.
He’d wandered the hall, collecting giveaways, nodding, smiling. Killing time until killing time.
He had found the target without difficulty, consulting the schedule and making his way here to the seminar room. She was punctual. He admired that. He, too, made a point of sticking to his schedule, doing everything precisely on time.
His client had described her very well. Blonde. Elegant. Obviously wealthy. Aging, but well-preserved.
He could have taken her earlier—after the autographing—but she had a seminar to give and he’d decided to let her give it. Wh
o knows, maybe he could learn something from her. He liked to read, liked to learn. He believed in improving his mind. He, presumably, had a long life ahead of him. Unlike the woman. His target.
She had less than an hour to live.
He decided to take her as she left the seminar room. The moment would be perfect. The crowds would be at their heaviest, the aisles clogged with bustling bodies. He’d blend in well. He was accustomed to cultivating a nondescript appearance—medium height, medium weight, medium brown hair. No distinguishing marks or features. A pleasant face, or so the women told him. He had the sort of face people trusted.
He stretched, making himself comfortable in the cheap folding chair. Preparing himself to listen, and to learn.
Killing time until killing time.
Chapter Two
Due to nasty traffic on the freeway, it took Blackthorn longer to reach the convention center than he’d anticipated. Although it was mid-morning, it looked like rush hour in New York. He hated southern California—in his opinion it was dry, artificial, and culturally barren. And driving was hell.
But as soon as he did arrive he saw Carla’s problem. The convention center was a nightmare. Too many people crammed into too small an area. Too diverse a group.
Everyone needed a participant’s badge to get through the barrier, but they could be easily faked. People were wandering in and out past bored, inattentive credentials checkers and no one really seemed to care. Blackthorn had credentials but didn’t bother using them. He flashed a fake press card, and they waved him through.
Terrific. Anybody could get in. A professional would yawn over the lack of challenge.
Blackthorn glanced at the program, then at his watch. Rina was giving her presentation right now. If I were the killer, he thought, I’d wait for her to finish, then walk up to her in one of these crowded aisles as she was making her way out, shoot her quickly at close range with a silenced gun, let it slip out of my hand onto the floor, and melt away into the crowd.
Blackthorn consulted the map for directions to the seminar room. All his instincts urged him to hurry.
When the music and the applause finally died down, Rina took a mike from the podium and stepped forward to the edge of the stage. She extended her arms briefly to the sides, as if to embrace everyone in the room. Then she raised the mike to her mouth and spoke:
“Welcome, my friends, and thank you.” She flashed her famous smile. “I’m delighted to see so many of you here today. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the transformation of your lives.”
April was sitting, literally, on the edge of her seat. Her mother was almost as beautiful as she remembered her. She had kept her figure—with the help, no doubt, of a trainer and a plastic surgeon. There were very few lines on her face. Her chin was firm, her throat still slender and graceful, her hair expertly cut and colored. She still had the liveliness and energy that had allowed her to bustle through the trailer, scrubbing and cleaning furiously.
“There are few among us who have not been hurt by the global recession,” Rina said. “Many of you, I know, have suffered, as have the people who shop in your bookstores. Yet even now, even in a time of economic upheaval, I’m here to tell you that abundance can be yours. Anything, my friends, can be yours if you have the will and the courage not only to desire and dream, but also to dedicate yourself to the active pursuit of your goals.”
Anything? April thought. All she had ever wanted was a family. Her mother had never given her that.
Briefly, she thought of Jonathan Harrington. They’d been married for three years. But in the end, like so many of her other relationships, it hadn’t worked out.
Which was, she reminded herself, one of the reasons she was here. Professionally, her life was successful. But personally, she remained unfulfilled. She had friends, lots of them. But she’d devoted herself to her work—and her beloved books—and she couldn’t seem to trust the men in her life deeply enough to make a commitment to anyone.
Time was passing. Middle age was looming, and if she was ever going to have a family of her own, it would have to be soon.
“We all have a limitless source of power within us,” Rina went on. “Deep inside we are all creative, dynamic, electric individuals. The trick is learning to tap into our own power. To channel it outward until it lights us up with an irresistible inner glow!”
She spoke in exclamations. Quickly, energetically, with a little lift at the end of each sentence. Always that warm and charming smile.
But April suspected it was all carefully programmed. She remembered the days when Rina would stand in front of a mirror in the cottage, practicing her various expressions, gestures, tones of voice. Sometimes she would even ask her daughter what she thought of one or another pose. “Do I look sincere?” she would ask. “Do I sound well-educated? Do you think I’m pretty?”
No longer a mirror in a grimy old cottage, oh, no. These days she could use videotapes, coaches, computer-generated audience response curves. Her act had been more than thirty years in the making, and it was no wonder that she’d perfected it. From the rapt way her husband and her assistants were hanging on her every word, April decided that even they were deceived.
It was unnerving. She felt like a ten-year-old again. She was the only one who recognized her mother’s true face, and the only one who knew it was all a clever game.
And she felt sad. She’d listened to Rina’s self-help tapes, and she’d actually found them moving. She wanted to believe that Rina was a different person than the selfish woman who’d abandoned her so many years ago. She’d longed to discover that her mother was truly transformed.
There was a quick burst of applause which Rina acknowledged with an even broader smile.
“What are some of our most pressing issues?” she was saying. “Let’s talk about them. I want to hear from you— yes, all of you. What are some of the areas of blockage in your lives?”
“Trust,” said a middle-aged woman in the third row. She had two of the Foundation’s books under her arms as well as a stack of tapes. “I was abused by my stepfather, and now I’m incapable of trusting anybody. All my relationships seem to be doomed.”
April felt a quiver. Trust had always been a big issue for her, as well.
“Your relationships are doomed,” said Rina, “if that is what you sincerely believe.” Looking directly into the woman’s eyes, she added, “I know exactly how you feel.”
Oh, please, thought April.
“For many years my relationships suffered too, but I am free of that now. For I don’t believe for one minute that you—or any other human being—is incapable of trusting others. In fact, we all trust others constantly, every day. That is part of what it means to live in a modern, civilized society.”
“I don’t see how—”
Rina stopped her with a quick, impatient gesture. But her voice was earnest and strong: “For example, would you ever trust your life to a stranger?”
“No, of course not,” the woman said.
“Or get into a strange car with a man you didn’t know?”
“Never.”
“Tell me, did you come to this convention from out of town?”
The woman nodded.
“How did you get from the airport to the convention center?”
Silence. Then, “I took a taxi.”
“Had you ever met the driver of the taxi before? Or was he a stranger to you?”
“Well, I hardly think—”
“Do you have any idea how long the taxi driver had been driving his cab? Whether he has ever had any accidents? Whether he’s in the habit of having a beer before he goes to work? Or perhaps a few sniffs of cocaine? Do you know when was the last time the car he was driving had a routine maintenance check?”
“No,” said the woman. “I don’t know any of those things.”
“Yet you trusted the taxi driver to get you safely from the airport to the convention center.”
The woman was silent.
“You trusted him, just as you trusted the good judgment of the people who hired him and the mechanical expertise of the people who service his taxi. And the driving ability of all the other drivers who were on the road at the same time you were. Not to mention the pilot of the plane you took. And the air traffic controllers. And the engineers who designed the plane. You trusted them all.”
Around the room, people were nodding, obviously relating the example to their own lives.
“The truth is,” Rina went on, leaning forward earnestly, “we all trust dozens of people with our very lives each day. No matter what happened to you as a child, do not ever make the mistake of believing that you are incapable of putting your faith in others. For if you believe that, it will be true. All of us are at the mercy of our beliefs.”
“I never thought of it that way,” the woman admitted.
“You have convinced yourself that you are deficient in an important human quality. I submit to you that you are not deficient. That none of us is. In order to improve your relationships, you must take control of your own power. You must acknowledge your own unique strengths. And most of all, you must change your negative beliefs about yourself. They serve no purpose other than to hold you back. Do you understand?”
The woman looked as if she had been shot with a bolt of sunshine. “Yes. Yes, I do. Thank you.”
Rina extended her hands down toward the woman as if to embrace her. “Bless you,” she said. She paused dramatically, and looked around the room, making eye contact with one person after another. “Believe me, all of you,” she continued. “I know hove it feels to be unable to trust.” Her voice was low but intense. “To feel worthless. To lose heart. To know that no matter how hard I try, nothing will ever come right for me again. Oh, yes, my dear friends. I know what it is to be entirely without power or self-esteem.