Public Secrets

by Nora Roberts

  corner.” The man with “Buddy” stitched across his cap rolled his eyes, hefted the mattress over his head, and started for the stairs. “We could only fit one at a time in the elevator. My partner’s waiting downstairs.”

  “Oh, right.” She pushed the release button again. “Real beds,” she said as Marianne joined her.

  “Please, not while we have company. Damn, there’s the phone. I’ll get it.”

  The elevator dinged. Emma directed the second man—Riko according to his cap—then smiled at Buddy as he went out to get box springs. When the elevator opened, she grinned at the box springs that filled the car. “One goes up, one goes down. Want a cold drink?”

  Brian eased his way from behind the springs. “Yeah.”

  “Da!”

  “Mr. McAvoy,” Marianne shouted over the radio. She stopped in midstream, wiped her painty hands on her overalls. “Hi.”

  “You want to move?” Buddy complained, then maneuvered the box springs toward the stairs.

  “Da,” Emma managed again. “We didn’t know you were here.”

  “Obviously. Christ, Emma, anyone could ride up in that elevator. Do you always leave the entrance unlatched?”

  “They’re delivering. Beds.” She gestured as Riko struggled in with his load. She drummed up a smile and kissed her father. “I thought you were in London.”

  “I was. I decided it was time I got a look at where my daughter was living.” He stepped farther into the room to take a long, frowning study. Drop cloths covered most of the floor. The packing crate from the stove served as both a table and a stool and was now covered with old newspapers, a lamp, a half-filled glass, and a paint can. The radio sat on a windowsill, blasting away as Casey Kasem ran down the top forty. The stepladder, the card table, and a single folding chair composed the rest of the furniture.

  “Jesus,” was all Brian could think of to say.

  “We’re a construction zone,” Emma told him with forced cheerfulness. “It doesn’t look like it, but we’re nearly done. The carpenters just have a bit of finish work here and there and mister—I mean the tile man is coming Monday to finish the bath.”

  “It looks like a warehouse.”

  “Actually, it was a factory,” Marianne chimed in. “We’ve sectioned it off here and there with glass brick. That was Emma’s idea. It’s great, isn’t it?” She pointed to the waist-high wall that separated the living area from the kitchen. “We got some terrific old appliances,” she continued, and taking his arm, gave him the tour.

  “Emma’s bedroom’s going to be here. The glass makes it private, but still lets in the light. I’m upstairs—a sort of combination studio and bedroom. Emma’s darkroom’s already set up through there, and come Monday the bath should be not only functional but attractive.”

  He hated the fact that he could see the potential. Hated it because it made Emma seem less like his little girl than a woman, and a stranger.

  “Have you decided to do without furniture?”

  “We wanted to wait until it was finished.” Emma knew her voice was stiff, but couldn’t prevent it. “We aren’t in any hurry.”

  “Wanna sign here?” Buddy pushed a clipboard under her nose. “You’re all set.” He blew his nose into a red bandana, then eyed Brian. “Hey. Hey, aren’t you—well, sure you are. I’ll be damned. McAvoy. You’re Brian McAvoy. Hey, Riko, this here’s Brian McAvoy. Devastation.”

  “No shit?”

  Automatically Brian’s lips curved into a charming smile. “Nice to meet you.”

  “This is great, just great,” Buddy went on. “My wife’s never going to believe it. We had our first date at your concert here in ’75. Can I get your autograph?”

  Sure.

  “Jesus, she’s never going to believe this.” While he searched in his pockets for a snatch of paper, Emma picked up a notepad and handed it to her father.

  “What’s your wife’s name?” Brian asked Buddy.

  “It’s Doreen. Man, she’s going to drop dead.”

  “I hope not.” Still smiling, Brian handed over the autograph.

  It took another ten minutes, and an autograph for Riko, before they were alone again. Taking her cue, Marianne disappeared up the curving wrought-iron stairs.

  “Got a beer?” Brian asked.

  “No. Just some soft drinks.”

  With a restless move of his shoulders, Brian wandered to the front windows. She was so exposed here. Couldn’t she see it? The big windows, the city itself. The fact that he’d bought the first-floor unit and installed Sweeny and another man inside didn’t seem to matter now that he was here to gauge the situation himself. She was vulnerable. Every time she walked out on the street.

  “I was hoping you’d choose something uptown, with security.

  “Like the Dakota?” she said, then cursed herself. “I’m sorry, Da. I know Lennon was a friend.”

  “Yes, he was.” He turned back. “What happened to him should make you understand how I feel. He was shot down on the street—not for robbery, not for passion. Just because of who and what he was. You’re mine, Emma. That makes you every bit as vulnerable.”

  “What about you?” she countered. “Every time you step out onstage, you’re exposed. It only takes one sick person among the thousands with the price of a ticket. Do you think that never goes through my mind?”

  He shook his head. “No, I didn’t think it went through your mind. You never said.”

  “Would it have made a difference?”

  He was silent as he sat on the windowsill and took out a cigarette. “No. You can’t stop being what you are, Emma, even if you’d like to. But I’ve lost one child.” He struck a match, watched it flare. “I couldn’t survive losing another.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Darren.” The old grief welled up, thickening her voice.

  “We’re talking about you.”

  “All right then. I can’t live for you anymore, or I’ll hate you. I gave you Saint Catherine’s, Da, and a year at a college I detested. I have to start living for myself. That’s what I’m doing here.”

  He drew in smoke and wished for a drink. “I almost think I’d rather you hated me. You’ve all I’ve got.”

  “That’s not true.” She went to him then. Resentments and disillusionments were crowded aside by love. “I’ve never been all, and I never will be.” She took his hand as she sat beside him. He was beautiful to look at. Even without a daughter’s prejudiced eye. The years, the strains, the life, hadn’t scarred him. Not on the outside. Perhaps he was a bit too thin, but time hadn’t lined his poetic face or grayed his pale blond hair. What magic was it, she wondered, that had caused her to grow up while he hadn’t grown older? She kept her hand over his and chose her words carefully.

  “But the trouble is, for most of my life, you’re all I’ve had.” Her fingers tightened on his. “And just about all I’ve needed. I need more now, Da. All I want is a chance to find it.”

  He glanced around the room. “Here?”

  “To start.”

  It was impossible to argue with something he understood so perfectly. “Let me put in a security system.”

  “Da—”

  “Emma,” he interrupted, squeezing her hand. “I need my sleep.”

  She laughed a little and relaxed. “All right. I’ll look at it as a housewarming present.” She kissed him. “Want to stay for dinner?

  He took another look around. It reminded him of his first place, though that had only been a fraction of this space. Still it brought back the memories, lugging in old furniture, slopping paint on stained walls. Making love with Bev on the floor.

  “No.” Suddenly he didn’t want to be there, to feel the youth and the hope and the innocence. “Why don’t I take you and Marianne out?”

  Marianne leaned dangerously over the stair rail. “Where?”

  Brian grinned up at her. “Your choice.”

  ONCE HE WAS forced to accept Emma’s decision, Brian played the indulgent father. H
e bought her a Warhol lithograph, an exquisite Tiffany lamp with signs of the Zodiac, and an Aubusson rug in shades of powder blue and pink. For the week he stayed in town, he dropped in daily with a new present. She couldn’t stop him, and after seeing the pleasure it gave him, stopped trying.

  They gave their first party on the night before he left for London. Packing crates stood on the priceless rug. The Tiffany graced the card table. There was food both in plastic bowls and in the fragile Limoges Marianne’s mother had shipped to them. The radio had been replaced, thanks to Johnno, by a wall-trembling stereo unit.

  A handful of college students mingled with musicians and Broadway stars. Dress ranged from denim to silks and sequins. There were arguments and laughter, all drowned out by the music blasting against the windows.

  It made Emma nostalgic for the parties she remembered from her youth, the people sprawled on the floor, on pillows, the bright and beautiful discussing their an. She sipped mineral water and, as she had always done, watched.

  “An interesting soirée,” Johnno stated, swinging an arm around her shoulders. “Got any beer left?”

  “Let’s see.”

  She steered him into the kitchen. There wasn’t much left in the fridge but a bottle of jug wine and part of a six-pack of Beck’s. Emma opened a bottle and handed it to him.

  “Just like old times,” she said.

  “More or less.” He sniffed the glass in her hand. “What a good girl you are.”

  “I’m not much of a drinker.”

  “That doesn’t require an apology. Bri’s enjoying himself.” He nodded over the wall to where Brian was sitting on the floor and, like a traveling minstrel, plucking an acoustic guitar.

  When she looked at him, strumming, singing for himself as much as for the group surrounding him, the love poured through her. “He enjoys playing like this as much as in any stadium or studio.”

  “More,” Johnno said before he tipped back the beer. “Though I don’t think he knows it.”

  “I think he’s feeling better about all of this now.” She glanced around at the mix of people crowded into her home. Her Home. “After all, he’d had a security system put in that would make the queen’s guards at Buckingham Palace look like pikers.”

  “Annoying?”

  “No. No, really it’s not. Of course, I don’t remember the code numbers most of the time.” She sipped, content to stand in the kitchen a half-wall away from the crowd and the laughter. “Did Luke tell you that he sent my portfolio over to Timothy Runyun?”

  “He mentioned it.” Johnno cocked his head. “Problem?”

  “I don’t know. He’s offered me a part-time job, as an assistant.”

  He took a little tug on the hair she’d pulled back in a ponytail. “There are pitiful few who start at the top, Emmy luv.”

  “It’s not that. It’s not that at all. Runyun is one of the top ten photographers in the country. Starting out with him as a janitor would be a dream come true.”

  “So?”

  She turned away from the party to look at him, to watch his eyes. “So why did he offer me a job, Johnno? Because of my pictures, or because of you and my father?”

  “Maybe you should ask Runyun.”

  “I intend to.” She set her glass down, then picked it up again. “I know that American Photographer printed my shot because Luke suggested it.”

  “Do you?” Johnno said mildly. “I suppose the shot wasn’t worthy of that honor?”

  “It was a damn good shot, but—”

  Johnno leaned back against the refrigerator and drank. “Lighten up, Emma. You can’t go through life second-guessing everything that happens to you, good or bad.”

  “It’s not that I’m ungrateful to Luke. He’s been great, right from the start. But this isn’t like giving Marianne and me cooking lessons.”

  “Nothing could be,” Johnno said dryly.

  “I want this job with Runyun to be mine.” She swung back her hair. Thin gold columns danced at her ears. “You have your music, Johnno. I feel the same way about my photography.”

  “Are you good?”

  Her chin came up. “I’m very good.”

  “Well, then.” He considered the subject closed and glanced back at the party. “Quite a group.”

  She started to continue, then dragging a hand through her hair, let it go. “I’m sorry P.M. and Stevie aren’t here.”

  “Maybe next time. Still, we have some old faces among the new. I see you dug up Blackpool.”

  “Actually, Da ran into him yesterday. He’s doing Madison Square Garden next weekend. There isn’t a ticket left in the city. Are you going to catch it?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” He cocked a brow. “I’m hardly a fan.”

  “But he’s recorded three McAvoy/Donovan songs.”

  “That’s business,” Johnno said, and dismissed it.

  “Why don’t you like him?”

  Johnno shrugged and drank again. “I’ve never been sure. Something about that smug smile.”

  Turning, Emma reached in the cupboard for more chips. “I suppose he’s entitled to be smug. Four gold albums, a couple of Grammys, and a stunning wife.”

  “Stunning estranged wife, I’m told. He’s certainly coming on to our favorite redhead.”

  “Marianne?” Tossing the bags of chips aside, Emma shifted, scanned, then spotted her roommate cuddled on the shadowy window seat with Blackpool. She felt a surge of emotion that was tangled jealousy and alarm. “Let me have a cigarette,” she murmured as she struggled to shrug it off.

  “She’s a big girl, Emma.”

  “Of course she is.” She drew in the strong French smoke and winced. “He’s old enough to …” She trailed off, remembering that Johnno was four or five years Blackpool’s senior.

  “Atta girl,” he said with a chuckle. “Bite your tongue.”

  But she didn’t smile. “It’s just that she’s been so sheltered.”

  “Of course, Mother Superior.”

  “Cram it, Johnno.” She picked up her drink again, and kept her eye on Blackpool. The name suited him, she thought. He had dark, lush hair and favored black clothes. Leathers, suedes, silks. He had one of those moody, sensual faces. Heathcliff, as Emma had always imagined him. And she’d always thought Bronte’s character more self-destructive than heroic. Beside him, Marianne looked like a bright, slender candle ready to be lit.

  “I’m only saying that she’s spent most of her life in that damn school.”

  “In the bed next to yours,” Johnno pointed out.

  She wasn’t in the mood to laugh. “All right, that’s true. But I also had all that time with all of you, seeing things, being a part of things. Marianne went from school, to camp, to her father’s estate. I know she puts on a front, but she’s very naïve.”

  “I’d give odds on our favorite redhead. Blackpool’s slick, dear, but he’s not a monster.”

  “Of course not.” But she was going to keep her eye on Marianne nonetheless. She lifted the cigarette again, then froze.

  Someone had put on a new album. The Beatles. Abbey Road. The first cut on the A side.

  “Emma.” Alarmed, Johnno gripped her wrist. Her pulse was scrambling, her skin was ice. “What the hell? Emma, look here.”

  “He say one and one and one is three.”

  “Switch the record,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “Switch the record.” She could feel the breath backing up in her lungs. Clogging there. “Johnno, please. Turn it off”

  “All right. Stay here.”

  He skimmed his way through the crowd, moving quickly, smoothly enough to prevent himself from being detained.

  Emma gripped the edge of the wall until her fingers went numb. She wasn’t seeing the party any longer, the pretty people mixing together, laughing over plastic glasses of white wine or chilled bottles of imported beer. She could only see the shadows of a hallway, hear the hissing and snapping of monsters. And her little brother’s cri
es.