Public Secrets

by Nora Roberts

  “Until just after the first.”

  The next pause was long and awkward. Both women glanced over in relief as Alice wheeled in the tea caddy. “Thank you, Alice. I’ll pour the tea.” Bev put a hand over Alice’s briefly, and squeezed.

  “She stayed with you,” Emma commented when they were alone again.

  “Yes. Or I suppose it’s more that we stayed with each other.” It helped to have the tea, the pot, the cups, the pretty little biscuits arranged on a Sèvres platter. She had no thirst, no appetite, but the mechanics, the simple, civilized mechanics of serving the tea relaxed her. “Do you still take too much cream and sugar in your tea?”

  “No, I’ve been Americanized.” There were fresh flowers in a blue vase. Tulips. Emma wondered if Bev had bought them from the flower seller in the square, or if she’d forced them herself. “Now it’s just too much sugar.”

  “Brian and I were always afraid you’d be fat and toothless with your penchant for sweets,” Bev began, then winced and struggled to find an easy topic of conversation. “So, tell me about your photography. What sort of pictures do you like to take?”

  “I prefer shots of people. Character portraits, I suppose, more than abstracts or still lifes. I’m hoping to make a career of it.”

  “That’s wonderful. I’d love to see some of your work.” She cut herself off again. “Perhaps the next time I’m in New York.”

  Emma studied the Christmas tree in front of the window. It was covered with hundreds of tiny handpainted ornaments and lacy white bows. She hadn’t bought a present for Bev, no shiny wrapped box that could sit under the tree. But perhaps there was something she could give.

  “Why don’t you ask how he is, Bev?” Emma said gently. “It would be easier for both of us.”

  Bev shifted her gaze to meet Emma’s eyes. Those beautiful dark blue eyes so like her father’s. “How is he?”

  “I wish I knew. His music’s going better than ever. The last concert tour … well, you probably know about all of that.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s scoring a film and talking about doing a conceptual album. Then the videos. You could almost believe music videos were made with Da in mind. Everything comes across, just as it does in concert.” She paused, then blundered on. “He’s drinking too much.”

  “I’ve heard that, too,” Bev said quietly. “P.M.’s worried about him. But they—for the last few years their relationship’s been strained.”

  “I want to talk him into a clinic.” Emma gave a quick, restless shrug. “But he won’t listen. He can see it in Stevie—but then it’s so hard to miss there. It’s difficult to reason with him about it because it hasn’t affected his work, his creativity, or even his health to this point. But—”

  “You’re worried.”

  “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  Bev’s smile was softer, easier, a ghost of the one Emma remembered. “Is that why you came?”

  “Partly, I suppose. There seem to be a lot of parts to why I came.”

  “Emma, I swear to you, if I thought I could help, if I thought there was anything I could do, anything at all, I would.”

  “Why?”

  She picked up her cup to give herself time to choose her words. “Brian and I shared a great deal. No matter how long it’s been, no matter how much hurt, you don’t forget all those feelings.”

  “Do you hate him?”

  “No. No, of course I don’t.”

  “And me?”

  “Oh, Emma.”

  With a quick shake of her head, Emma rose. “I didn’t mean to ask you that. I didn’t mean to bring all of this back. It’s just that all at once I’ve felt … unfinished somehow. I don’t know what I thought I would accomplish today.” She stared down at the fire that crackled sedately in the hearth. “I went to see Jane.”

  Bev’s cup clattered against her saucer before she managed to still her hands. “Oh.”

  With a laugh, Emma dragged at her hair. “Yes. ‘Oh.’ I felt that I had to, that seeing her would help clear up my feelings. And foolishly, that I might influence her to put a stop to the film they’re making from her book.” She turned back. “You can’t know what it’s like to look at her, to see her for what she is and know she’s my mother.”

  “I don’t know what to say to you, Emma, but the truth.” She studied Emma a moment. Perhaps there was something she could do, some small thing to redeem the mistake she had made all those years ago. She set down her cup, folded her hands. When she spoke, her voice was very calm and very sure.

  “You’re nothing like her. Nothing. You were nothing like her when you came to us, nothing like her now.”

  “She sold me to Da.”

  “Oh God.” Bev pressed both hands to her face, then let them drop. “It wasn’t like that, Emma.”

  “He gave her money. She took it. I was like some piece of merchandise they passed between them, and foisted off on you.”

  “No!” She sprang up, clattering china. “That’s a cruel thing to say, and a stupid one. Yes, he paid her. He’d have paid her whatever it took to keep you safe.”

  “She said he did it to preserve his image.”

  “She’s a liar.” She walked over, took both of Emma’s hands. “You listen to me. I remember the day he brought you home, the way you looked. The way he looked. He was nervous, maybe even frightened, but he was determined to do what was right for you. Not because of some bloody public image, but because you were his.”

  “And every time he looked at me, every time you looked, you must have seen her.”

  “Not Brian. Never Brian.” She sighed, and putting an arm around Emma’s shoulders, lowered to the sofa. “Maybe I did at first. I was young. Christ, the same age you are now. We were wildly in love, planning to be married. I was pregnant with Darren. And then suddenly there you were—a part of Brian I’d had nothing to do with. I was terrified of you. Maybe I even resented you. The truth was, I didn’t want to feel anything for you. Oh maybe a little pity.” When Emma pulled away, Bev took her by the shoulders. “I didn’t want to love you, Emma. Then suddenly, I just did. I didn’t plan it, I didn’t stop one day and tell myself that you deserved a chance. I just fell in love with you.”

  Emma broke down then, dropping her head onto Bev’s shoulder and weeping, weeping brokenly, shamelessly, as the fire crackled and Bev stroked her hair.

  “I’m so sorry, luv. So sorry I haven’t been there for you. Now you’ve grown up, and I’ve missed my chance.”

  “I thought you hated me—because of Darren.”

  “No, oh no.”

  “You blamed me—”

  “No.” Bev drew back, stunned. “Good God, Emma. You were a child. I blamed Brian, and I was wrong. I blamed myself, and I pray I was wrong. But whatever unforgivable things I did, or thought, I never blamed you.”

  “I heard him crying—”

  “Ssh.” She gripped Emma’s hands, bringing them up to her cheek. She’d had no idea Emma had suffered this way. If she had … Bev closed her eyes for a moment. If she had, she hoped she would have been strong enough to have put her own pain aside for the child’s sake. “Listen to me. It was the most horrible thing that’s ever happened in my life, the most destructive, the most painful. I lashed out at the people I should have been holding close. The first few years after Darren’s death, I was … I hardly knew what or where I was. In and out of therapy, contemplating suicide, wishing I could find the courage to end it. There was something about him, Emma, something special, something almost magical. Sometimes I couldn’t believe he’d come from me. And when he was gone, like that, so quickly, so cruelly, so needlessly, it was as if someone had taken out my heart. There was nothing I could do. I had lost my child. And then, in my grief, I turned away from my other child. And I lost her.”

  “I loved him, too. So much.”

  “I know.” She smiled, gently. “Oh, I know.”

  “And you. I’ve missed you.”

  “I never thought I would see you
again. Or that you’d be able to forgive me.”

  It amazed her. Forgiveness? For years Emma had thought she was the one who would never be forgiven. Now, with a few words, the rawness she had carried with her all day eased, and she was able to smile.

  “When I was little, I used to think you were the most beautiful woman in the world.” Emma leaned forward, rested her cheek against Bev’s. “I still do. Would you mind if I called you Mum again?”

  Emma felt the shaky sigh as Bev gripped her tightly. “Wait here a minute. I have something for you.”

  Alone, Emma groped in her bag for a tissue. Resting against the cushions, she dried her eyes. Her mother had always been, and would always be, Bev. Perhaps at last this was one quest she could put behind her.

  “I’ve saved him for you,” Bev said as she came back into the room. “Or maybe I saved him for myself. He helped me through some very lonely nights.”

  With a cry of pleasure, Emma sprang up. “Charlie!”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  TWENTY-TWO ORCHESTRA PLAYERS, including violins, cellos, flutes, bassoons, and a harpist, crowded into the recording studio. A couple of assistants had taken considerable time and trouble to decorate. There were shiny red balls hanging from the ceiling, boughs of pine draped on the walls, and an aluminum tree, just tacky enough to be amusing, revolving on a stand in the corner.

  Johnno had mixed together what he grandly termed a wassail. After he’d drunk two cups and survived, others were lured into sampling. No one was drunk, yet, but there was plenty of cheer being passed about.

  They’d been working on a single song for over four hours, and Brian was nearly satisfied with the cut. Through his headphones, he listened to the last take. It still amazed him that a song, once only a vague melody in his mind, could take on such a clear and powerful life of its own. There were still times when he listened to what he had helped create that he felt an echo of the thrill he’d experienced in writing his first song.

  He could see Pete standing in the engineering booth, annoyed and impatient as always with Brian’s nit-picking perfectionism. Brian didn’t give him a second thought, and let the music wash over him.

  Johnno was playing poker with one of the flutists and the stunning, slender-fingered harpist. Johnno had unearthed a green visor from somewhere and livened up the game with straightforward cheating and wild betting.

  P.M. was reading what appeared to be a paperback mystery. A lurid one if one could tell a book by its cover. He seemed to prefer his own company and a couple of grisly murders at the moment.

  Stevie was in the bathroom again. His last attempt at coming clean had lasted less than a week after he’d checked himself out of the newest clinic.

  They were satisfied, Brian thought, and more than ready to call it a day. He listened to the final sustained note.

  “I want to do the vocals again.”

  Johnno pulled in the pot. Who said you couldn’t draw to an inside straight? He sent the harpist a lusty wink. With a laugh, she handed over a five-pound note.

  “How did you know he’d want another take?”

  “I know my boy,” Johnno told her. He rose and lifted a fist toward the engineering booth. Like Brian he noted Pete’s irritated scowl and ignored it. “Once more into the breech.”

  “You can’t want another one, son.” Stevie lurched into the studio. He was flying high now, pumped full of top-grade cocaine with a heroin chaser. “Don’t you know what day it is? It’s Christmas fucking Eve.”

  “Not for a couple of hours yet.” Brian buried his irritation. Sad as it was, they’d get a good twenty minutes out of Stevie before he crashed. “Let’s get it done so you can go home and hang up your stocking.”

  “Well, look who’s here,” Stevie announced as Emma slipped into the studio. “It’s our little girl.” He swung an arm around her shoulder. “Okay, Emma luv, who’s the best?”

  She managed to smile and kiss his thin, bony cheek. “Da.”

  “Nothing but coal in your stocking, pet.”

  “I thought you’d still be here.” Because Stevie’s arm was still around her, she walked with him to the mike. She could feel him vibrate like a tightly strung wire. “Is it all right if I listen for a while?”

  “Tickets are five pence and two.” Noting her distress, Johnno gently disengaged Stevie. “But seeing it’s Christmas, we’ll forget the shillings.”

  “We won’t be much longer,” Brian stated.

  “He said the same thing two hours ago.” Johnno gave her a quick, reassuring squeeze. “The man’s a maniac. We’re turning him in right after the audition.”

  Brian put out his cigarette then cleared his throat with plain water. “Just the vocals on ’Lost the Sun.”

  “The twentieth take of the vocals,” P.M. put in. He was pleased when Emma brushed her lips over his cheek.

  “Sorry to take you away from your dip into literature,” Brian snapped.

  Automatically, Emma shifted to stand between them as she shrugged out of her coat. “‘Lost the Sun’?” she repeated. “I’m in luck then, that’s my favorite of this lot.”

  “Good. You can sing backup.”

  She laughed at Johnno, then started to take her seat.

  “No, wait.” Brian grabbed her arm, grinning. “That’s it. That’s what we need.” He was already signaling for another set of headphones. “You come in on the second verse.”

  “Da, I couldn’t.”

  “Of course you could. You know the lyrics, the melody.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “It’s perfect. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. This song needs a feminine touch. Keep it light, just a little sad.”

  “No use arguing,” Johnno said as he fit the headphones over her ears. “He’s on a roll.”

  Emma let out a sigh. It wouldn’t hurt to humor him. “What’s my percentage? Do I get a mention in the liner notes? What about artistic control?”

  Brian twisted her nose, hard.

  It was enough to see him happy, she thought. There was nothing like a new idea to send her father off. He was calling out instructions, deferring to Johnno now and again, keeping what seemed like an eagle eye on Stevie, and subtly staying aloof from P.M.

  She heard the music in her head, the sad and moody strings and flutes. It was a full, almost classical sound. Like rain, she realized—not a storm, but a gray, unrelenting rain.

  Her father’s voice flowed into her ears, clear and somehow sweet despite the melancholy lyrics.

  “I looked for your face / I called your name / You were the light / But shadows covered me / I lost the sun.”

  She listened, struck as she had always been by the close, almost eerie harmony he achieved with Johnno. Her father’s voice soared up, hanging on notes, caressing them. The sad, hopeless lyrics went straight to her heart.

  Why it’s Bev, she realized all at once. He was singing about Bev. To Bev. Emma’s eyes widened as her gaze fixed on Brian. Why hadn’t she seen it before? Why hadn’t she understood?

  He was still in love. Not resentful or angry, but miserably in love.

  She didn’t think, but only felt, as she did what he had asked and added her voice to his.

  She didn’t realize that Johnno had backed off, leaving her and her father alone. It wasn’t a planned gesture when she reached out to take his hand. She wasn’t aware that tears had spilled over to cling to her lashes. Her voice melded with his as her heart did.

  “My life is shadows without you / Without you / Dreaming of the light I wake to darkness / I lost the sun.”

  As the music swelled and faded, she lifted his hand to her cheek. “I love you, Da.”

  He brushed his lips over hers, fighting the need to let his own tears go. “Let’s hear the playback,” he called out.

  It was nearly one before the session musicians began to file out. The best part of another hour passed before Brian was satisfied with the overdubbing. Emma watched her father pour a tumbler full of Chivas R
egal and drink it like water over a technical discussion with an engineer. She didn’t want to be upset by it, not now, not when she was beginning to understand some of his pain. But neither could she sit calmly and watch while he