by Patti Berg
It was the fifth of July—eight years and one day since Harrison Stafford died; sixty years and one day since Trevor Montgomery disappeared. She’d come every year on the Fourth to pay her respects... to remember. She’d never been late before, but this time work had interfered. Harrison would definitely have understood her need to take care of business first.
She ran up the circular staircase, the high heels of her black-velvet sandals clicking on the marble. Slowly she opened the door to Harrison’s rooms and stepped inside. This part of the house was off-limits to the public. This part of the house still belonged to her. She’d bequeathed all of the land to the state, from the top of the hill to the valley on one side and to the ocean on the other. She’d given them the magnificent mansion, too. But not all of it. This wing of the third floor she’d kept. Besides her, only Elliott, her closest friends, and the housekeepers were allowed inside.
There was a fifty-seat screening room where she’d sat with Harrison and watched old movies. There was a small indoor pool where she’d helped him exercise after the first of his three strokes. The library was filled with his favorite books, and framed photos of friends, acquaintances, and a huge assortment of pictures of Adriana—from age six to age twenty-one.
He’d been the best of friends, and she missed him terribly, especially when she remembered their days together.
“Come in. Come in,” Harrison had encouraged her the first time she’d sneaked into his suite. In the dead of night, after her father, the curator at Sparta, had drunk himself to sleep, she explored other rooms in the mansion, but it had taken months before she’d found the nerve to check out Harrison Stafford’s inner sanctum.
“I didn’t think you’d be awake,” she’d said, walking slowly across the room and standing close to his chair.
“I never was much of one for sleeping at night.” He’d folded his paper in his lap, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back into the soft, burgundy leather. “In the old days we had parties here till the wee hours of morning. When everyone was gone, then I’d sleep.”
“I’ve never been to a party,” Adriana whispered, fearing the old man might be falling asleep.
His eyelids jerked open. “Never? Surely you’ve had a birthday party or two?”
“No, sir. My father doesn’t like parties.” Adriana backed away. “He wouldn’t like me being here, either. I’d better go.”
She remembered the deep frown on Harrison’s face, and the way he brought one index finger to his lips. “I can keep a secret. Can you?”
Adriana nodded. She’d never tell her father she’d been talking to his employer, that she’d been wandering around the mansion. He’d told her not to, and he didn’t appreciate disobedience.
“Good. I get tired of sitting around this place at night with no one to talk to but Elliott. Besides, he doesn’t like the movies the way I do.” He leaned close to Adriana. “Do you like watching old movies?”
“My father doesn’t like...”
Harrison interrupted her with his laughter. “Does your father like anything?”
“Gin,” Adriana answered innocently.
Harrison’s laughter died just as Elliott, mussed hair, disheveled robe, and bare feet, pushed through the main door of Harrison’s suite.
“I heard noises in here. Is something wrong, Mr. Stafford?”
“Of course not. Do you think you could sneak downstairs and find us some cookies and milk. We’re going to have a party.”
“We?” Elliott questioned.
“We,” Harrison stated flatly. “All three of us.”
There were many such parties over the years, the only fun she was able to steal under her father’s watchful gaze.
Ten years later, Harrison stood by her side at her father’s funeral.
“What do you plan to do now?”
“I don’t know,” she’d said. “I have no family, no one else to stay with.”
Harrison had reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers. “Then it’s settled,” he said, wiping a tear from his cheek and clearing his throat. “You’ll stay at Sparta as you’ve always done. You’ve been like a daughter to me, so if you have no objections, we’ll make it all nice and legal.”
The unshed tears she’d wanted to cry for her father emptied from her eyes. Her throat tightened, and she pulled her hand from Harrison’s and threw both arms around his neck. “I love you,” she’d said, for the first time in her life.
“I love you, too,” he’d repeated. It was the first time anyone had ever said the words to her, and she tucked the moment deep in her heart.
She crossed the sitting room and went down a hallway to the theater, the place where she and Harrison had spent a great amount of their time, where Harrison had recounted so much of his past. Adriana thumbed through the library of home movies and took out a favorite of his taken in 1936. It was one of many films shot at Fourth of July parties over the years.
She slipped the reel onto the projector, wound the 16mm film through all the proper twists and turns, then sat down in Harrison’s chair and flipped the switch built into the arm.
The room darkened and the projector light flicked on.
The screen seemed to glow the moment Trevor Montgomery stepped in front of the camera, flashing that picture-perfect movie-idol smile, and warmth spread through Adriana’s chest.
He tossed down a glass of champagne, then swept a beautiful woman into his arms, dancing across the floor, weaving elegantly around statues, up and down stairs, around marble planters overflowing with flowers, and amongst other couples. Trevor was so graceful—so perfect—and he smiled and laughed at every turn.
Harrison had been too big, too clumsy to be much of a dancer, so he hadn’t even tried. He preferred watching his friends. Adriana knew the feeling well. She’d been too tall and felt too awkward to dance, and she avoided every opportunity to learn that social grace. She’d had the desire, but she’d been too self-conscious.
Being a mystery woman and rarely going out into public had been such an easy role to assume.
Trevor Montgomery, however, loved being in the public eye. He was everything Adriana wasn’t, and he didn’t appear to have a worry in the world. For him, dancing, smiling, laughing, and having fun in life was as much a part of him as acting—and he did all of it effortlessly.
If Trevor Montgomery had been around when she was growing up, Adriana thought that she might have forgotten her fears and learned to dance.
She’d idolized Trevor Montgomery the first time she’d seen one of his swashbucklers. At six, she’d wanted to be a pirate, and Harrison had given her a sword, an eye patch, and a bandanna to tie up her hair. With rubber swords he’d fenced with her in the library and around the pool, and when they were quiet again, Harrison would talk about his friend for hours.
In her teens she’d fallen in love with Trevor. While others her age fell for rock stars, she was mesmerized by the gentleman who had looked debonair in either buccaneer breeches or black tie and tails. The man she saw on the screen was suave, worldly, and handsome. He was everything she’d wanted, and she’d constantly begged Harrison to relate more tales of their friendship. She felt she knew Trevor intimately, but she’d always longed to know more.
Where had he disappeared to, and why?
But no one could tell her. No one knew. There were only the rumors, stories Adriana refused to believe.
All she knew was that she’d been born in the wrong decade. She belonged in the thirties. She belonged to a time when women were graceful and elegant, and men were sophisticated and gracious. If she’d been alive back then, she might have found a man to marry. No one today suited her. She wanted the life that Harrison had introduced her to, a life that consisted of friends like Trevor Montgomery.
Sadly, that life no longer existed, except in her dreams.
When the last of the film flicked through the projector and clacked again and again, she flipped off the switch and stared at the blank screen. The movie was
over-—but the desire for a life she couldn’t have stayed with her.
She left Harrison’s suite, quietly went down the stairs, and out to the gardens. She wandered the paths around manicured lawns, beds of red and pink roses, fragrant white gardenia, and geraniums of many hues. She pictured the place as it had been sixty years before, bustling with stars and politicians, the rich, the famous and the infamous, and wished she could step back in time to meet the people who had become so familiar to her.
If she could, her life might be fuller.
In the distance, she heard voices, and knew she’d have to hurry if she wanted time alone before the next tour group arrived at her favorite spot. She stole a red rosebud from one of the many bushes as she traversed the paths and terraces. Trevor Montgomery had stolen a rosebud once in one of his earlier movies. He’d kissed the velvety petals and tossed it on top of the coffin of the woman he loved. He’d prayed for her to return, and Adriana had wept, just as she did every time she watched that scene. If Trevor Montgomery had a grave, she’d toss a rose and make a wish....
She let the notion wither away, and laughed at her thoughts. She had a life many could only dream about. She had no business feeling sorry for herself, or wanting something that could never be.
She swept her hand over marble statuary of water nymphs and mermaids, sea horses and dolphins, and stopped momentarily when she came in sight of the Poseidon Pool, with the sky and the mountains a backdrop to its beauty. She never tired of this spot. She’d been drawn to its splendor since she was a child. Back then she thought the pool was magical; she still saw it that way today.
She wrapped her arm around a column, placing her cheek against the cold, hard marble, and looked wistfully at the pool, the last place Trevor Montgomery had been seen. Sixty years ago a woman had claimed that she’d seen Trevor’s body lying facedown in the water. No one else saw it. No one else believed. Sixty years ago Trevor Montgomery had disappeared—and he was never seen or heard from again.
It was a long time ago, Adriana thought. She closed her eyes, knowing the vision of Trevor Montgomery’s body floating on the surface of the pool would come to her as it had over and over again, year after year. She’d never told anyone about the vision, not Harrison, or Elliott. Definitely not Stewart, her attorney. Not even Maggie, his wife, who would have believed. She’d never told anyone how vivid Trevor seemed when she saw him in her dreams—the ones she had when she was awake during the day and the ones she had asleep at night. They’d think she’d gone mad.
Secretly she enjoyed having him come to her this way. She’d lost Harrison, the only man she’d ever loved. If she didn’t have the dreams, she’d lose Trevor, too.
And dreams of Trevor were so much better than being with or loving anyone else. She’d dated a few men, but they’d been interested in her money, not in her, and they had no interest at all in her passion for the glamour days of Hollywood.
Life was so much better alone with her dreams.
She let go of the column and walked to the edge of the pool, looking down at the surface that glittered with sunlight. She closed her eyes to shut out the glare. “Why did you go away?” she asked. “My life might have been normal if you hadn’t.” She laughed at those words. Nothing had been normal about her life. How could she possibly think Trevor Montgomery might have made a difference?
She kissed the red rose she’d picked, tossed it into the pool, and watched it drift on the surface. It was a lot like Trevor dropping a rose onto a casket. Of course, he couldn’t wish his lover back any more than she could wish for Trevor’s return, but it didn’t matter. She liked to dream, she liked the movies, and that scene had been one of her favorites, especially Trevor’s words and the loving way he’d whispered them.
She closed her eyes and softly repeated Trevor’s lines. “Come back to me. Please. Come to me.”
Chapter 2
Trevor Montgomery shot out of the water, arms flailing, his chest tight, as if he were being pressed in a vise. His heart beat rapidly and he sucked in great gasps of air, fighting for breath, for control, for life.
The blessed darkness that had engulfed him had thrust him out of its grasp, into the bright light of day. What was happening? He’d wanted to end his life. He’d wanted all the horror and fear to disappear, so why was he trying to breathe? Had he been frightened of death and changed his mind at the last moment? Was self-imposed drowning impossible?
Oh, God! He didn’t want to live, yet his body was battling with his mind, and winning.
He swam, and when he reached the edge of the pool, he flattened his hands against his temples. The pain was unbearable. The alcohol he’d consumed made his head spin, and the sunlight glinting off the water and shining into his eyes caused even more pain. He couldn’t even think.
Sunlight? Why? How? It should be dark, he thought. Except for the sun in the sky, everything was the same, but where was the shattered bottle of whiskey?
A red rosebud floated in front of him, and he grasped it tightly in his hand. He put it to his nose, smelling its sweet fragrance. He thought he might be in heaven, or hell, or maybe even purgatory. He thought his attempt to blot out all memories might have worked, but the scent of the rose made him face reality.
He’d failed.
He tucked the rose into his pants pocket and climbed out of the pool, his shoes sodden, his dinner jacket and trousers clinging to his body. Water dripped from his clothes, his fingertips, his hair, even the end of his nose, leaving a puddle at his feet.
From somewhere near the pool he heard voices and wondered if his friends were coming to look for him. He couldn’t and wouldn’t let anyone see him this way. They’d seen him drunk before, but never disoriented and disheveled. He had to get away quickly so he ran, hiding behind a statue of Poseidon surrounded by half a dozen mermaids.
He peered around the sea god’s muscular back and watched a group of men, women and children heading toward the pool. People on tour, he assumed, snapping photos of the statuary, the ornately tiled pool, the magnificent temple. He’d never known Harrison to allow strangers on the grounds, but maybe they were friends, people Trevor didn’t know. Still, it seemed so odd.
The woman at the head of the group cleared her throat and the twittering among the others hushed. “I’m sure you’ve all heard the rumors about Trevor Montgomery.”
She was speaking about him. Him? But why? Her words came out in a hushed but dramatic tone, and he listened intently. “This is the spot where he was supposedly seen floating. Of course, no one ever found his body, and no one’s seen him since. That, as some of you might recall, happened sixty years ago”.
Trevor frowned at the woman’s preposterous words. What had she said? Sixty years ago? He must not have heard her correctly. It was only last night.
He plowed his fingers through his hair, digging them into his scalp. Pain pulsated in his head, the whiskey grabbing hold of his senses. There was no logical reason for anything that was happening. God, he’d wanted to die. Had he gone insane instead?
Finally, the woman ceased talking about him, about the pool, and through blurry eyes he watched the group file away to a different part of the estate.
He sat down on the cold, hard marble and rested his head against the wall behind him. He thought about the woman’s words. Trevor Montgomery disappeared. Sixty years ago. He had to be dreaming, that was the only explanation, and he wished he had a bottle of whiskey so he could try to drown out one more nightmare. He’d never had hallucinations, never created people in his mind who spoke of crazy, insane things. This was a first.
But it was the first time he’d tried killing himself, too.
What on earth had happened?
Pulling himself to a standing position, he tightly grasped the curving fin of a mermaid for balance.
Maybe it was for the best that his friends and acquaintances weren’t around. He could find his car, drive home, clean up, and no one would ever know what had occurred, what he had attempted to do
. And then he wondered if the police would be waiting at his home when he returned. Would they take him to jail? Would he stand trial for murder?
“Dear God,” he prayed, even though he wasn’t sure he believed in God. “Let me remember what happened.”
Releasing the fin, he tested his balance by putting weight on his legs. He felt steady enough, although the nausea hadn’t subsided, or the throbbing in his head. In spite of how he felt, he had to get away. He had to.
He started out slowly, edging his way around the pool, then willed himself to go faster before anyone saw him. He took the stairs two and three at a time, ran across terraces, down rose-lined paths. Things seemed so different, lush, overgrown, not like they’d looked yesterday. But he’d consumed too much whiskey. Things were bound to look different.
When his breath came in short gasps, when he thought he could run no more, he found his car. At least he remembered where he’d left it. Thank God one thing in this crazy nightmare he was living through seemed familiar.
Reaching into his pockets for the key, he found a handful of loose change, his money clip with a dozen or so folded bills, and his cherished gold doubloon from Jack Warner. What had he done with the keys? He checked the ignition, hoping he’d left them in the car. But it was empty.
He had to get home. He could think better there, figure out what was going on.
He went to the other side of the vehicle and searched the glove box. An eyeglass case. A white handkerchief edged in lace. Things that did not belong to him. And no keys. Gripping the edge of the windshield, he pressed his forehead against the warm metal frame. He rested there for a moment, trying to think of something else to do, some other way of starting the car. But it was useless. All he could think of was the pain in his head and his desperation.
The sweet scent of a woman’s perfume wafted up from the car’s interior. He thought he might have found the wrong vehicle, but he tilted his head to the left and through blurry eyes he saw the gold nameplate in the middle of the Duesenberg SJ’s dash: Custom built for Trevor Montgomery—1932. At last, something familiar, something that was his.
