“I didn’t sleep there last night.” Well, Leigh thought. Listen to me.
Emily’s eyebrows were perfect cinnamon-brown arches against pale skin, visible even in the dark. They popped up, then dropped as she puzzled over what she’d heard.
But why shouldn’t Emily know it all? Was there any other way to start over? “Phil and I went out last night. I called him. I wasn’t in the mood to work and I wasn’t ready to meet Roberta.”
The girl certainly had manners. Chase’s mother had drilled her well. Emily fixed a little smile; Leigh didn’t believe it was real. “You’re a big girl, Mom. I suppose you’ll be sleeping there lots now.”
“No.”
“Phil’s a one night stand? What a waste. But if you don’t care, why should I.”
“I don’t know what he is, Emily. Last night I just wanted—”
“This is not really an appropriate time or place to discuss your sex life, Mother. I’d better get going. I promised to help clean up after the refreshments.”
“Emily, wait. Roberta recognized me. I knew she would. You don’t have to lie to her. That’s not a problem now.”
“My lying has never been the problem. No, the good thing about Roberta knowing everything and maybe telling the world is that now you can stop hiding. Don’t you realize how dishonest that is? Don’t you ever get tired of being dishonest? This is good, Mother, because you can finally stop pretending you’re not Nancy Taylor Lee. You can forget Leigh Burton.”
“You don’t understand, dear: it’s been ten years, and that’s who I am now.”
Her daughter walked away.
Another round, Leigh thought. But it’s not going to you. She rose, followed, and grabbed Emily’s hand.
Emily tried to tug loose. Her hand dropped to her side and she faced Leigh with a stony expression. “I told you, I need to get going.”
“I’m going to Terry’s, but I won’t be there long. Pizza at Dee’s tonight after you’re done here?”
After a moment Emily nodded. Leigh leaned and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you.”
Emily backed away a step, but her hand lingered within Leigh’s grasp. She smiled slyly. “Karaoke?”
Leigh tucked a stray spiral of hair behind her daughter’s ear. “There’s not much I wouldn’t do for you, darling, but that’s pushing it.”
7.
Two women sat at the kitchen table in the big house. So both daughters had come. Leigh glanced at the younger woman. Phil’s ex.
The older woman rose and held out a hand. “Dana Sinclair, and this is my half-sister, Delia Abernathy.”
Half-sister. Had she been making that distinction for forty years? Leigh took the older woman’s hand and nodded without smiling. Dana Sinclair was obviously the alpha sibling, the one to watch. And she was Peach’s old playmate. Who had ruled in that sandbox?
Delia didn’t bother to rise from her seat. Instead, she smiled weakly as a hand rose and then dropped onto a slightly rounded belly. She caught Leigh looking and said, “Almost five months.”
“Terry never mentioned it. Does he know?”
“He does now. My husband and I decided not to tell anyone until the amnio was back. I’m forty-five, and we just wanted to be certain all was well.”
Forty-five. So maybe Phil had always had a thing for slightly older women.
“And all is well,” Dana said briskly. “A healthy baby boy, which is wonderful. Our father’s favorite daughter is finally producing a grandchild.”
“Dana,” Delia protested softly.
Dana Sinclair brushed the perfect edge of her silvery bob behind an ear and sat down. She gestured to an empty chair, her index finger snapping out to make the point. Dana was a commodities trader, Leigh recalled as she sat. Married to a pioneer in hedge funds, the third marriage for each. Dana had three grown children and assorted grandchildren.
“I’m sure my father has told you all about us.”
“We focus on his work, Dana.”
Dana smiled primly. “I doubt that. My father is a talker. Some women find it charming. His family finds it tiresome and it makes us nervous that he’s talking to you. He doesn’t always respect boundaries once he gets going.” She looked to her sister for support. Delia only sighed.
“How are you feeling?” Leigh said to her.
“Like crap.”
“I’ve been pregnant only once. I was nauseous nearly the whole nine months.”
“No shit?”
Leigh nodded. “People were so obnoxious about giving advice. They all kept telling me their remedies; none of them worked. The ones who didn’t have a nausea cure just told me it would end in a few days and I should hang in there. That was all wrong too. The only person who ever told me anything worthwhile was my mother-in-law—now my ex-mother-in-law.”
Both Bancroft daughters leaned forward. Leigh said, “Once I was in my final two months and still nauseous, she told me to go ahead and have a tiny glass of red wine at lunch each day.”
“Wine!” Delia sat erect, suddenly cheerful.
Dana swiveled in her chair to face her sister. Half sister. “No, Delia. Never.” She aimed her glare at Leigh. “Surely you joke.”
Leigh smiled. “Not a joke.”
Dana said, “That sort of irresponsibility doesn’t surprise me.”
Leigh said, “I beg your pardon?”
“With the housekeeper gone, you were the only employee around. You should have made sure we had a clearer picture of our father’s declining health. Or were you trying to keep us away? Now that Geneva is out of the picture perhaps you thought you’d settle in and get your share of the fortune. He’s vulnerable that way, as I’m sure you’ve figured out. He’s always been very susceptible to the charms of women.” Once again she looked to her sister for support.
Delia closed her eyes, rubbed her brow, and gave her half-sister the finger.
“I’m sorry you were surprised by your father’s condition,” Leigh said. “Sometimes it’s hard to see someone’s decline when you’re with him every day, so perhaps I misjudged how serious things are. He’s definitely gone downhill quickly since Geneva left. Her absence has been hard on him, and he’s been worried about her too. He’s an empathetic person. He’s been very kind to me.”
“I have no doubt about that. My father is a charmer, with a long history of being kind to women. I just took a look at his contract with you. I know what you’re getting paid for this book. Kind, indeed.”
Enough of this. Leigh rose. “I hope you’ll make some suitable health care and housekeeping arrangements while you’re here. I’ve tried my best, but he’s hard to please. He’s been spoiled; Geneva is an exceptional human being. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to see your father about the book.”
Dana said, “You realize, of course, that this book will never be published. It’s as much a vanity project as Timmy Thompson’s memoir. All those books you’ve written for his friends? This is no different, really. A better story, perhaps, but it has exactly the same chance of being published by a real firm as Prairie Lawyer, or whatever Timmy’s was called.”
Leigh’s hands curled tightly around the back of the chair. “Terry said Random House was interested.”
“That’s what he’s been telling us too, but yesterday I called his agent because I was concerned about how hard my father was working. I needed to know if it was necessary to be pushing so. That’s when I heard there was no contract, no interest, nothing. When you think about it, why would there be? No one remembers him. Good lord, his agent only still takes his calls out of respect for his father, who was a classmate of Dad’s at Yale. But he didn’t see any harm in encouraging him. Maybe the book would be something, maybe not.”
“His life is a wonderful story,” Leigh said. “Your father has something worth sharing with the world.”
“Phil’s read part,” Delia said. “He says it’s good.”
Dana’s lip curled “And I’m sure we can trust Phil Chesney’s literary judgm
ent.”
“I hope you haven’t told him what the agent said,” Leigh said.
“Of course not. Chances are he won’t live long enough to finish it anyway. Oh, wipe that panic off your face. You’ll get all the money he’s promised you.”
“I need to get to work,” Leigh said.
“One more thing,” Dana said. “We’ve decided to limit your work time with him to thirty minutes a day. Doctor’s orders.”
Leigh pushed open the swinging door. “Whatever you say, Dana. You’re the boss now.”
Terry quickly covered his face with his hands when she entered the study, then dropped them to his lap, pulling away a length of clear tube connected to a small machine on wheels.
“You’re on oxygen?” Leigh said. “That’s new since this afternoon. So the nurse came by.”
He made a face. “It was this or the hospital, she said. What sort of choice is that?”
“I met your daughters.”
“Dana rip you a new asshole?”
“Not quite. Congratulations on the new grandchild.”
He nodded, smiling. “Delia, a mother.” His eyebrows lifted and the smile widened. “I haven’t told her about you and Phil, in case you were wondering. I might if Dana weren’t hovering all the time. Delia would be happy for Phil, you should know that. She truly liked him and she always felt pretty bad about what she did to him. The affairs and all. Chip off the old block, I guess.”
“Affairs?” Leigh sat down. His hand hung by his side, tapping the curved top of the oxygen concentrator. The cannula and tubing had fallen between his thigh and the chair, and was already sinking out of sight. She leaned and tugged it all free, placing it on his lap.
He nodded. “You’ve made a date with a wounded man, Leigh. Be careful. Oh, I know what you’re going to say. There’s nothing to be careful about, right? Nothing more than the promise of a first date?” He leaned forward, eager to be contradicted, looking for a crumb of gossip.
“Actually, I guess it’s gone a bit further than that. We had the date. It was very nice. And then we spent the night together.” She glanced toward the door, wondering if anyone was listening on the other side. “Please don’t tell your daughter. Either of them.”
He dropped back into his chair, delighted.
A boy, she thought. A boy revealed in the man. He probably looked that way over seventy years before when some friend described a first glimpse of a girl’s breasts or shared a slug of daddy’s bourbon. Absolutely gleeful.
He picked up a tea cup and raised it. “To many more nights together.” He set the cup down. “To hell with this, let’s have some brandy.”
“I have thirty minutes, Terry. We can’t spend it drinking.”
“What do you mean, thirty minutes? Oh it’s Dana, right?”
“On the advice of a doctor.”
He shook his head. “I’m not dying that way, Leigh. I’m not going to be abandoned, left alone in this house with a nurse and an oxygen tank. Geneva’s gone. Don’t you leave me too. Dana does not make the rules. I’m the father, goddam it.”
“Then you tell her. I think Delia will back you up. But until you do talk to her, we have thirty minutes.”
He shoulders started twitching as he tried to breathe. He fumbled with the tubing, twisting it around a wrist. Leigh took it from him, straightened it out, and carefully looped it over his ears before letting him insert the prongs of the cannula into his nostrils. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
Should she ask him about the book? Ask him about the agent who took his calls only as a favor? Should she ask him to admit the world had passed him by?
You need to tell him, Phil had said. He needs to know.
She poured two small glasses of brandy. When she set his on his table, he opened his eyes. “Stingy drink.”
“Your daughter scares me.”
His laugh threatened to morph into gasps, but he soothed the spasm with a sip of brandy.
No, Leigh thought as she raised her own glass. He doesn’t have to know about Nancy Taylor Lee and he doesn’t have to tell me about the phantom contract. Some truths belonged in the shadows.
8.
Her daughter had departed to work at the convention’s morning sessions, and Leigh had exchanged several emails with Phil and drafted a new chapter by the time she finally heard Roberta’s door open and heard shuffling steps go into the bathroom. “You’re up,” she said cheerfully when at last Roberta appeared in the living room.
“And after last night that’s no small achievement for either of us, though you certainly look fresher than I feel.”
“Thanks to some high-octane coffee and ibuprofen.” Leigh pointed a finger at Roberta. “You know far too much about me.”
“I assume you’re referring to the lovely mother-daughter karaoke duets I witnessed last night. Imagine—the two of you discovering you both like Cher and that you know so many of her songs!” Roberta laughed and went into the kitchen and moved about noisily.
Leigh closed her computer, tapping the cover as it slowly whirred to a stop. She pressed a thumb against her forehead. This would be a beast of headache, all right, at least until the coffee and pills had kicked in completely. Too little sleep on top of too much alcohol and pizza consumed after midnight had all combusted into a fiery pounding.
Thinking about blackmail didn’t help, either. Even if it wasn’t quite clear how Ida May’s letter connected to Roberta’s novels, it was her only defense, the only way to stop Roberta from launching the news about Nancy Taylor Lee’s new ghostwriting job.
She closed her eyes and saw Terry’s nearly skeletal face with the oxygen tubing. Maybe she shouldn’t think of this ploy as blackmail but as way to buy time, and she probably wouldn’t need much of that.
Roberta reappeared with toast and coffee. She sat in the big brown chair and sighed. “I feel better already.”
Now or never. Leigh picked up her mug and backpack and moved to the rocker. “I’ve been telling myself not to mind the slight hangover and day-after embarrassment, because it’s been ages since I’ve spent that much time with my daughter.”
“You two were definitely having fun.”
“So it seemed. Apparently, however, I’ve used up my allotment of her goodwill. Want to know what she said to me first thing this morning? She said, ‘I heard you tell Marti you’d listen in on some of the sessions, but you shouldn’t go if you’re going to be this disdainful.’ Then she was out the door. Roberta, was I disdainful last night?”
“No, honey; just off key. I too made some rash promises for the afternoon. Handing out awards for dollhouses and dioramas, I think. But I’d much rather stay here, noodling with my speech and hiding in this heavenly chair.”
“Want to hear my theory about everybody’s beloved big brown chair? I don’t think Ida May ever sat in it, except perhaps after her mother died, when she came back to bury her. I think it was her mother’s chair, and it’s where her mother sat and thought about her messed up life as Bancroft’s lover in Pepin, Minnesota. What a life: hidden away in the woods, her daughter scorned by the other children in town, her lover available only on borrowed time. I think that’s where she sat and brooded, night after night. Years later, the daughter remembered her mother sitting in the big brown chair and only then realized what was probably going through her mother’s head. I think the storyteller decided to revise the truth. Fiction writer’s privilege, of course.”
“What a cynical theory. And entirely plausible.”
“Feel free to share it with the Little Girls during your talk tonight, though I suspect you’d do so at some risk to your personal safety. You’re a very good sport, Roberta.”
“Please, call me Robbie.”
“I suppose I should. Considering we’ve spent time naked in a hot tub.”
“To say nothing of me witnessing your singing.”
They exchanged smiles. Oh shit, Leigh thought. She did like the woman. She rubbed one hand with another, wishing for her o
wn set of Little Girl talons or claws. “Hearing my singing is more like grounds for blackmail than intimacy. That’s how Marti got me to let you stay here, have you figured that out? Blackmail. I had no desire to see you again. I knew you’d recognize me and spread the word.”
“I did recognize you.” She sipped coffee. “I’ve not spread the word.”
“Not yet. But reporting runs too hot in your veins to pass up this story. I’d be the same. Neither of us would pass up the chance to break a good story, even if it’s just a story shared in a call or email to good friend.”
Roberta shrugged.
“Unless we had reason to stay quiet.”
“That sounds ominous. What do you mean?”
Leigh pulled the letters out of a red folder in her backpack. She tipped her head toward the Seville on the wall. “That’s not the only treasure I’ve unearthed. There were also some notes from Ida May to her mother’s lover. When did you move to Maine?”
“About ten years ago. Why?”
“Dara Seville used to vacation in Maine.”
Roberta’s head dipped once. Her eyes were fixed on the envelopes in Leigh’s hand. “Yes, I know. I’ve read Windsor’s memoir.”
“Windsor?”
“Ida May’s editor, Sally Windsor. She was a famous children’s book editor. She’s the one who hired Seville for the Little Girl books. She was briefly a lover of Seville’s.”
Leigh laughed. “This gets even better. Does she mention any other lovers of Seville’s?”
“Where’s this leading, Leigh?”
“I’m not entirely sure.” She pulled one envelope from the bunch. “Read this, and you tell me.”
A short while after she began reading, Roberta’s hand flew up and covered her mouth. Her eyes closed, and she made a noise—a sharp, whispered curse.
Ah, thought Leigh. Just as she suspected: the card she’d been holding was the ace of trump.
Leigh went to the kitchen for a coffee refill and a fourth ibuprofen. When she returned, Roberta looked at her with dull eyes. Leigh sat down. “There’s one thing I especially want to know: What’s this Julia’s last name?”
Venom and the River Page 17
