“Mommy?”
Pamela stirs, feeling something wet jabbing into her face.
She opens her eyes and sees that it’s the corner of Hannah’s blankie, which has most likely been in her mouth or in the toilet.
“Wake up, Mommy.”
Pamela rubs her eyes, sees that she’s on the couch.
Her parents slept in the master bedroom, she remembers.
And Frank…
Frank’s in jail.
“Where Daddy is?” Hannah asks in a small voice.
“Daddy’s … at work,” Pamela tells her. Her voice comes out raspy.
She glances at the clock, exhausted. And no wonder. She just fell asleep an hour ago. She was up all night with the baby, who was running a temperature. Must be that summer cold that’s going around.
Pamela wouldn’t have slept even if Jason had though. How could she sleep after what had happened with Frank?
“Hannah eat now,” her daughter says, tugging on her arm.
Pamela sighs wearily, closing her eyes. “Hannah, please. Not yet. Just give Mommy a minute to—”
“Hannah eat now!”
A flash fire zaps through Pamela’s veins. “You little brat!”
She hollers, grabbing her daughter’s arm and shaking her. “Don’t you dare act like this now! Don’t you dare!”
“Pamela!”
She turns to see her mother in the doorway, wearing a robe and a disapproving expression.
“Is that any way to talk to a two-year-old?”
Pamela sighs, wanting her mother to go away, wanting Hannah to go away, wanting everyone and everything to just go away and leave her alone.
She gets up off the couch, stalks away, down the hall.
“Where are you going?” her mother calls after her, above Hannah’s wails.
Where are you going?
Back in time, Pamela thinks wistfully. If only I could go back in time. Back to when Frank and I first met. Back to sunny California, and walking on the beach, and wearing a bikini…
“Pamela?” Her mother raises her voice. “I asked you a question.”
Where are you going?
“I have to get out of here for a day or so, Mother. Maybe longer.”
“You can’t just leave! Where would you go?”
“I don’t know,” Pamela snaps. “Someplace. Anyplace but off the deep end. And that’s where I’m headed if I stay.”
“Please hold for Martin de Lisser.”
Flynn inhales sharply, clutching the phone against his ear. When it rang so early on a Sunday morning, waking him from a deep and dreamless sleep, he had expected to pick it up and hear Mallory’s voice.
Now, as he holds for the famed director, he sits up in bed and struggles to organize his booze-scrambled thoughts.
At least he’s alone, he realizes, after glancing, with some trepidation, at either side of the rumpled king-sized bed.
Last night is an unpleasant blur of smoky nightspots in West Hollywood, of throwing cash around and flirting wildly with alluring young men. Of trying to forget that he’s come to a crossroads in his life, now that Mallory Eden has resurfaced and changed everything.
Everything.
His head is pounding and his mouth dryer than the miles of desert between here and Vegas.
Vegas … he had toyed with the idea of taking off and driving to Vegas at some point last night. He even remembered getting on the freeway, heading east toward Interstate 15.
Luckily, he had realized that he was too drunk to drive all the way to Vegas.
He fumbles on the nightstand for the glass of water he always takes to bed with him; it isn’t there.
He can’t even remember driving home last night, much less getting ready for bed. He must have—
“Flynn?”
“Hello, Martin.”
“I heard the news.”
Of course he’s heard the news. Flynn has known this call would be inevitable, wonders why it hasn’t come sooner.
De Lisser tells him in the next breath.
“I was hiking up north all day yesterday, out of contact with civilization.”
Flynn frowns, wondering why a high-powered player like de Lisser hadn’t brought a cellular phone along.
Again, his question is promptly answered, almost as though de Lisser is reading his mind, a disconcerting notion.
“I like to be out of contact with civilization every now and then,” the director confides, “because I need to clear my head. Especially at the beginning of a new project. Especially at this point in my career.”
“I know what you mean,” Flynn says, wondering, as he rubs his throbbing temples, whether his own head will ever be clear again.
“So,” de Lisser says, “Mallory Eden.”
“Yes,” Flynn acknowledges.
And then, because the director seems to be waiting for him to add something more, he says, “I’m very shocked and excited about the fact that she’s alive.”
“You and the rest of the world,” de Lisser says dryly. “Have you spoken to her?”
Flynn absently folds the edge of the satin bedsheet back and forth in his fingers, wondering whether he should lie.
“Actually, not yet, but I was … out of contact myself for most of yesterday and last night.”
“I see.”
If the director is wondering why a big star like Mallory Eden wouldn’t promptly call her agent under circumstances like these, he doesn’t say it.
Nor does Flynn dare to betray his own uncertainty.
Why hasn’t Mallory called?
What if she doesn’t come back to L.A.?
What if she doesn’t come back to him?
He can’t ignore that it’s a distinct possibility. Can’t forget how she had threatened to fire him that last summer, when both their lives seemed to be falling apart around them.
Everyone will be expecting her to be his client once again, but what if she no longer wants him? What if she wants a fresh start with someone else?
“Her first project,” de Lisser announces, “is going to be my film.”
Flynn nods. He has been anticipating this.
Still, he has to ask …
“What about Rae?”
De Lisser lets out a low, almost mocking chuckle. “Why would I want a Mallory Eden imitation when I can get the real thing?”
“We don’t know that Mallory is planning to return to acting,” Flynn says, intending a gentle reminder.
But it comes out rather sharply, and de Lisser is silent for a moment afterward.
Then he says somewhat icily, “I suggest that you find out, Flynn, at your earliest convenience.”
“I’ll do that …”
“And,” de Lisser continues, “I suggest that if she isn’t inclined to return to acting, you do your very best to convince her.”
“I will.” Flynn clears his throat. “And … what should I tell Rae in the meantime?”
“Why do you need to tell her anything? she’s an intelligent woman. She’ll figure out where she stands, if she hasn’t already.”
In other words, Rae will be out if Mallory should decide she wants in.
And if Mallory doesn’t want in—
Or want Flynn—
Or want to return to acting-
Then Flynn will be out.
Left again to the bleak, mundane existence of an aging retiree.
A has-been.
Just last week you were retired. And you didn’t feel that that was a fate worse than death, he reminds himself.
But now that he’s had another taste of that heady, high-powered tinseltown status, he simply can’t allow himself to sink back into oblivion.
If he loses the strategic foothold he’s gained by his association with the most influential director in town, he knows what he’ll have.
Nothing.
Nothing but the booze and the gambling and the one-night stands that were almost the death of him once in his life.
“Frank,” his lawyer says, swooping into the small meeting room and shaking his hand. He’s chewing gum, as always, working it rapidly in the front of his mouth. “How are you doing? Hanging in there?”
“What do you think?” He glowers at Stan Bauer, but the attorney doesn’t seem fazed.
“I have news for you,” he tells Frank, whose heart lurches.
“What news?”
“she’s gone.”
“Pamela? Oh, Christ, I knew she wouldn’t—”
“Not Pamela. Mallory Eden. She left for the airport an hour ago, to fly back to Los Angeles.”
“But … how can she just pick up and leave?”
Bauer shrugs. “She’ll be back, I’m sure, to testify against you.”
“Oh, that’s good news.” Frank buries his head in his handcuffed hands for a moment, then looks up at his lawyer. “She has to tell them that it wasn’t me in L.A. That I’m not the one who stalked her there, who shot her.”
“Look, Frank, she’s not going to do that. She—and everyone else—thinks you were the one. She never got a good look at whoever shot her, and there’s circumstantial evidence pointing to you as the—”
“I didn’t do it. You’ve got to let me talk to her. I’ve got to tell her that it wasn’t me!”
“Calm down, Frank. I know you’re upset about this. But we’ll straighten it out.”
“she’s the only one who can straighten it out. She has to convince them that it wasn’t me.”
“First we have to convince her,” Stan says calmly, still chewing his gum. “Pamela went over there and tried talking to her yesterday.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, but it wasn’t good.”
“Christ.”
“Don’t get all worked up, Frank.”
“You’ve got to get me out of here, Stan.”
“I know. I’m working on getting them to set bail. Like I told your wife last night, I plan to get you out of here by the end of today. Just hang in there.”
Frank shakes his head sullenly, hating Stan, hating Pam, hating Mallory Eden most of all.
“I have a collect call from Mallory; will you accept?”
Rae’s heart leaps into her throat.
“I’ll accept.”
There’s a click, and then her old friend’s voice is on the line, asking, “Rae? Are you there?”
She swallows, sits down, hard, on a chair.
“I’m here,” she manages to say.
“It’s me …”
“I know …”
And somehow all she can think of is Mallory’s ghost. How frightened she’s been, for five years now, that Mallory’s ghost would come back to haunt her.
“Well … I guess I have some explaining to do,” Mallory says, sounding nervous.
“I guess you do,” Rae agrees softly, and bites her lip to keep it from trembling.
“Pardon?”
She forces her voice out again, louder this time. “I guess you do have some explaining to do, Mal,” she says.
“I’d like to do it in person, if that’s okay with you.”
“That’s … fine.”
“Good. My flight is boarding. I’ll be landing at LAX this afternoon.”
“Do … you want me to meet you there?”
Mallory exhales, her relief obvious. “Would you?”
“No problem. Just give me a minute to find a pen, and I’ll write down the information.” Rae crosses to the kitchenette on shaky legs, fumbling in the drawer for a pen and something to write on.
“This is so damned strange, Rae.”
Mallory’s comment startles her. “What do you mean?”
“Here we are, making plans to meet, like nothing ever happened. Remember how you used to meet me at LAX sometimes when I was on my way back from location? Remember how we’d go straight out to the beach so that I could feel like I was home again?”
Rae is still, staring off into space. “I remember.”
“Listen, would it be all right … would you mind if I stayed with you awhile?”
“Sure,” Rae says after only the slightest hesitation. “Sure, it would be fine.”
“I know it’s weird of me to ask, but I really have nowhere else to go.”
“It’s okay.”
“Thank you. But, Rae … would you do me a favor? Would you not tell anyone that I’m coming?”
Rae falters for only a moment before saying, “I won’t.”
“Thanks. I knew I could trust you. God, I have a lot to tell you, Rae. And I know you must have a lot to tell me.” Mallory sounds nervous, chatty. “I watched you on Morning, Noon, and Night … you were terrific.”
“That’s … thanks.”
“And I don’t even know if you’re married—”
“Married?” She chuckles humorlessly. “God, no. Never even came close.”
“Still have a one-track mind, huh? Totally focused on career?”
“Absolutely.”
“I don’t even know what you’re working on these days.”
I was about to replace you, Mallory.
Imagine if Rae blurted that out.
But of course, she won’t.
Mallory will find out about that soon enough.
And what about you, Mallory? What are your plans? Are you coming back to acting?
Rae longs to ask the question, to put an end to the awful suspense. But that, too, will have to wait.
She clears her throat, blindly grabs a white paper napkin from the holder on the counter, and holds the pen poised over it.
“Okay, Mal,” she says, “I’m all set to write down your flight information. Go ahead....”
“The next flight to Los Angeles departs in fifteen minutes, connecting through Denver,” says the short, stout woman at the airline reservations desk at T. F. Green State Airport. “We have plenty of seats available, but you’ll have to hur—”
“I’ll take a one-way ticket,” Brawley cuts in brusquely. “First class.”
“All right, sir.” The ticket agent’s fingers fly over her keyboard.
He raps his knuckles impatiently on the countertop, looking around anxiously, hoping for a glimpse of Mallory. She’s nowhere in sight, of course.
She’ll be down by the gate, getting ready to board.
This is the first flight to Los Angeles from Providence today; it has to be the one she’s taking.
And she has to be in first class.
As soon as he boards, he’ll request that his seat be changed so that he can be next to her.
He smiles faintly despite his impatience, imagining her surprise when she sees him.
She’ll probably—
“I just need your credit card, then, sir.”
He nods and pulls it from his wallet, shoving it into her outstretched hand.
Mallory will probably do a double take when she sees him.
She’ll get that startled expression she used to have when he would unexpectedly show up to meet her on the set of her first movie—
Her first real movie, after calling herself Babie Love for Jazz Taylor’s low-budget porn film.
Back then, when she was on the road to becoming a legitimate actress, and he would show up on the set, she would be all surprised. Pleasantly surprised. At least, that was what she said, although sometimes he wasn’t so sure.
Especially later, looking back, after she’d dumped him.
That was when he started to wonder if maybe she was a better actress than he’d given her credit for being.
If maybe she was acting like she cared about him, when all along she was using him. Even back in Custer Creek.
Using him to impress all her friends, who had thought it was cool for her to be dating an older guy …
Using him to prove a point to her grandmother, who thought she could keep Cindy locked up and obedient in that old farmhouse, like a prisoner.
And still, she’d had the nerve, later, when she was Mallory Eden and she no longer needed him, to accuse him of using her.
She had actually said—
“Sir? There seems to be a problem. This isn’t going through.”
He blinks, then frowns at the ticket agent who’s interrupted his thoughts. “What isn’t going through? The ticket?”
“The credit card. It says you’ve exceeded your limit.”
“Damn.” He fumbles in his wallet. “I must have given you the wrong one. Try this.”
She takes the card he hands her.
He watches, again thrumming his fingers on the countertop, watching intently as she attempts to make the transaction.
“I’m sorry,” she says at last, handing the second card back to him. “I’m getting the same thing.”
“Something must be wrong with your machine,” he says angrily, glancing at the clock. “I’m going to miss this flight if you don’t—”
“There’s nothing wrong with this machine, sir,” she cuts in.
He hates her dumb, round, ugly face and he hates the way she’s looking at him from behind those dumb, round, ugly glasses.
“Try this card,” he says, tossing another one at her. This one, he knows, is maxed out. But he’s starting to feel panicky, like he’ll do anything—anything—to get onto that plane with Mallory Eden.
The woman bends to retrieve the card, which has fallen to the floor. She turns to glare at him before inserting it into the slot on her machine.
“What was that look for?” he demands, leaning toward her.
She ignores him, pressing buttons.
His blood boils.
The clock ticks.
The plane is going to leave without him.
Mallory is going to leave without him.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she says smugly. “This one won’t go through either.”
“Then you must be doing something wrong! What the hell are you doing? You’re going to make me miss my plane!”
“Don’t you yell at me!” bellows the woman.
“I have to get on that plane!” Brawley hollers. “Do you understand me? I have to get on that plane!”
“Yes, Ms. Dodd, we did forward your message to Mallory Eden,” says the harried male voice who answered the phone at the Windmere Cove police station.
“Isn’t there any way you can give me her number?” Gretchen asks him, frustrated.
“I’m sorry, even if I were able to do that, it’s too late to reach her here in town.”
“What do you mean?”
“I understand that she left this morning for Los Angeles.”
“I see.” Gretchen hangs up the phone without another word.
She narrows her eyes, sitting absolutely still, her hand still resting on the receiver.
So. Mallory Eden doesn’t have a care in the world. She’s going back to her charmed life in Hollywood …
Obviously with no intention of returning Gretchen’s phone call.
Obviously not caring that her former loyal assistant is doomed to live life as a reclusive freak.
Damn you, Mallory Eden, Gretchen thinks as bitter tears spill from her eyes and trickle over the scarred red flesh that had once been her cheeks.
I’m going to make you listen to what I have to say. I’m going to make you look at this face, and then look me in the eye and tell me you won’t help me.
She crosses to her closet, opens it, and looks at the sand-colored Coach luggage sitting there, a gift from Mallory on the one-year anniversary of Gretchen’s employment.
She hasn’t touched it in five years.
But now she reaches down, picks it up, and carries it over to her bed, to start packing.
Becky shifts her weight on the edge of her bed, watching the cameraman pack his equipment into a big bag, and waiting for the pretty lady reporter to get off the phone, where she’s talking in a low voice to someone—her producer, Becky thinks she said.
It turns out the lady’s name is Laura Madison and she works for some local television program. She spent an hour talking to Becky, and the cameraman filmed the whole thing.
Becky’s going to be on TV.
Maybe she shouldn’t have told the lady so much. About how sorry she is for the way she’d treated Cindy back when she was a little kid, and how she’d run off and just left her daughter that way, never calling or coming back to see how she was.
And maybe she shouldn’t have told them about Elizabeth either. But the lady seemed to have known about her being dead from drugs and all, though she’d been surprised when Becky said Elizabeth had tried to get her sister to help her. The reporter had asked Becky about it, and Becky had told her how Elizabeth had called Mallory up and told her who she was, and how Mallory had agreed to fly her out to Los Angeles.
Elizabeth had even stayed in Mallory’s movie-star mansion for a while. And she’d tried to get Mallory to let Becky come too. But Mallory wouldn’t even speak to Becky on the phone. She said she didn’t want anything to do with her.
“She turned her back on her own mother?” the lady reporter had said, shaking her head in disbelief.
“She turned her back on her sister too,” Becky had said, caught up in her memories. “She kicked Elizabeth out of her house one day. Put her on a plane back to Chicago, not caring that she had no place to go. Didn’t even send Elizabeth her stuff. Elizabeth came back without her purse, without her ID, without anything. That’s how bad her own sister treated her.”
“What a shame,” the lady reporter had said.
She seemed so sympathetic, Becky had kept talking. Telling her how Elizabeth had OD’d not long after that. And how she, Becky, had tried to get through to Mallory to let her know. How she had figured maybe Mallory would want to come to Chicago to be with her.
But all Mallory had done was arrange for the burial to be paid for. That was it. Her own sister was dead, her own mother was grieving, and she hadn’t even seemed to care.
“Okay,” Laura Madison is saying into the phone, “I’ll get back to you with the details. Thanks, Shawn.”
She hangs up and looks at Becky.
Becky can tell by her expression that she’s excited about something.
“Did you ask them about my reimbursement?” Becky asks. “For doing the interview?”
“We’re going to give you something even better,” the reporter says.
“Something better than money?”
Puzzled, Becky frowns.
What could be better than money?
“Becky,” Laura says, “how would you like to be reunited with your daughter—maybe even tomorrow?”
“But …” Becky frowns. “she’s in Rhode Island, isn’t she?”
“Actually, it’s been reported that she’s on her way back to Los Angeles. We’re trying to confirm that.”
“But … how would I get to Los Angeles?”
“We would fly you there, Becky. We would make all the arrangements for you to come face-to-face with the daughter you haven’t seen since she was a little girl. What do you say?”
Becky’s jaw falls open.
Her mind spins.
“Becky? What do you think?”
A broad grin spreads slowly across her face. “I think I’d like that,” she tells Laura Madison. “I’d really like that a lot.”
What are you doing? Harper asks himself as he dashes through the quiet departure terminal.
You can’t do this.
But he’s already doing it.
He’s already there.
And the next flight to Los Angeles leaves in less than one minute.
Mallory Eden is on that flight. He’s certain of it.
He leaps over a pile of luggage somebody’s left in an aisle, and skirts around a flight attendant pushing a passenger in a wheelchair.
Gate 7 …
Where the hell is Gate 7?
Glancing around wildly, he spots it.
The waiting area is deserted except for an airline employee who’s just closing the door leading to the jetway.
“Wait!” Harper hollers to her, breaking into a sprint.
She looks up, startled.
“I need you to stop that flight!”
“It’s already taxiing out onto the runway,” she tells him, glancing around, as though nervous about his intentions. “What seems to be the problem, sir?”
“I just … I had to talk to someone who’s on that plane.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
Out of breath from his mad dash, he strides over to the window, looks out at the 737 that’s preparing for takeoff.
Then he turns back to the airline attendant, who is still watching him warily, as though poised to summon security.
“Do you know when the next flight leaves for Los Angeles?” Harper asks her breathlessly.
“We don’t have another one until this evening, but I believe that Delta has a West Coast connection departing early this afternoon.”
He doesn’t even bother to stop her, just turns and makes his way back toward the terminal and the reservations desk.