“People,” Kelly tried. “Just—”
“Which people?”
She looked at her mother—and the pained, bruisey eyes. “Sterling Marshall’s daughter.”
Mom backed up a few more steps. Her lip trembled. Kelly could actually see it trembling, and when she spoke, her voice shook too. “I don’t want you spending time with that girl.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t need to give you reasons.”
“I’m seventeen years old, not three!”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“You don’t want me to have friends.”
“That isn’t true.” She took a breath. Closed her eyes for a moment. “What about Susie?”
“Who?”
“Susie Mitchell. The doctor’s daughter.”
Jesus. “Mom,” she said.
“I know what’s best for you.”
“You don’t,” she said, anger rising. “You don’t know anything.”
“Do you want to end up like your sister?”
“Yes!”
“Go to your room.”
Kelly stood up, every muscle in her body tensed, her blood rushing hot. She was taller than her mother by a few inches now, and for the first time, she felt it.
“Catherine isn’t dead because of Hollywood,” she said. “She isn’t dead because of the parties she went to or the friends she had, and she definitely isn’t dead because of Sterling Marshall or his daughter.”
“Don’t say another word.”
Kelly stared her down, the words coming before she could stop them, before she wanted to stop them. “Catherine is dead because of you.”
“How could you say that?”
“If you hadn’t hit her, she would have stayed home. She never would have gone off to Chantry Flats. She never would have been so angry and hurt and horrible-feeling that she jumped into the canyon.”
Mom said nothing. Her lip trembled.
“You killed her,” Kelly said.
Mom’s eyes narrowed. She spoke so quietly, it was nearly a whisper. “Pack your things.”
“What?”
“Pack your things.”
Kelly’s mother crossed her arms over her chest. Kelly’s palms began to sweat, the back of her neck. Sweat trickled down her ribs and the cocaine high drained out of her along with it, her shirt damp and clinging. She felt cold. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Pack your things.”
Kelly couldn’t argue. She couldn’t speak. She went into her room and grabbed a suitcase out of her closet and pulled what few clothes she had off her hangers, out of her drawers. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Once she packed it all, she slipped to the floor and reached under her bed, where she kept her stash of “trashy” magazines—Tiger Beat, Teen, Rona Barrett’s Hollywood. She threw those in too.
Kelly pulled herself up off the floor. “This can’t be happening,” she whispered, still shaking. For a few seconds, she felt as though someone was watching her. But when she whirled around hoping for her mother, she saw no one. Kelly was alone. Her cheeks burned. Her mouth was dry. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror—half made-over, half not. Pale, chapped lips, cheeks smeared with Passionfruit Shimmer. She felt lost.
As she passed her mother’s room, Kelly saw the framed picture of Catherine still on her nightstand, placed next to the heart-shaped box filled with stale, old candy. A coil of anger sprung out inside her. Without even thinking about it, she swiped up the box and the photo, shoved them into her suitcase, snapped it shut. She’ll miss these, she thought. Then she went back into her room and opened her nightstand drawer, took out Catherine’s necklace, and for the first time, put it on. She stared at her reflection, the delicate chain at her throat, the two diamonds glistening . . . Do I dare? She remembered the way her mother had looked at it when Catherine had first worn it home. Where did you get that? Answer me!
She undid the clasp, put the necklace into her shirt pocket.
When Kelly reached the living room, her mother was sitting on the couch, her head bowed.
She tried again. “I’m really sorry.”
“Are you still going to be friends with her?”
“Bellamy Marshall?”
“Yes.”
Kelly said, “She’s the only friend I have at school.”
She stood up, faced her. Mom’s hands were dropped to her sides now, and she looked softer now, less angry. “You’re high, aren’t you?” she said. “Coked up.”
Kelly shook her head. “Not now, Mom. Not anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Mom handed her a thick wad of twenty-dollar bills, then a slip of paper with an address written on it.
Kelly couldn’t speak. She thought of all the things Mom used to say about Catherine when they would fight. You’re not a star. You’re not an actress. You’re a party girl. Party girls are like party favors. They get used up and thrown out. And in the end, that’s all Catherine had turned out to be. A used-up, thrown-out party favor. A dead party girl at the bottom of a canyon.
Do you want to end up like your sister?
“I called you a cab while you were packing,” Mom said. “Should only cost about fifteen dollars.”
Kelly swallowed hard. A tear trickled down her cheek. “Mom, please.”
“You can come back,” she said, “if you promise never to speak to Bellamy Marshall again.”
Kelly stared at her. Tried it again. “She’s my only friend.”
“Good-bye, Kelly.”
“I can’t stop talking to her. You can’t make me. This isn’t fair.”
“You’ll be fine.”
She grasped the paper in her hands, throat tightening, tears coming. “Whose address is this?”
Mom smiled a little—a thin smile that didn’t reach her eyes—and then the cab pulled up outside their building, its horn tooting. “It’s your father’s,” she said.
CHAPTER 13
APRIL 22, 2010
Tell me about those last four months before John McFadden’s death,” Sebastian Todd said, once Kelly had swung the car onto the 10 without signaling, leaving the paparazzi vans behind. “The time you spent living with your dad.”
Kelly said nothing. She’d kept silent ever since he’d barged into her car. “I know you didn’t kill John McFadden,” he’d said, and she hadn’t offered so much as a “hmm,” instead allowing the self-described “literary journalist” to stare intently at the side of her face, nodding his head slowly as she drove, holding his trademarked pregnant pause all the way to its breaking point.
This was one thing Sebastian Todd had never gotten about Kelly. Unlike most other interview subjects, she had no need to fill conversational pauses. Kelly was fine with silence. She always had been.
Funny he hadn’t remembered that. Sebastian Todd was very proud of his interviewing skills, Kelly knew. In the preface to one of his books—she couldn’t remember which one—he’d compared them to the skills of a big game hunter. (Know your prey. Know their weaknesses and their strengths. Find the perfect ammunition and use it.)
Of course, that was a load of crap. Todd had no need for interviewing skills as his “groundbreaking” prison talk with Kelly—the one printed in his Pulitzer Prize–nominated book, Mona Lisa—was described by the author himself as “creative nonfiction,” which as it turned out was a fancy way to say “almost completely made up.”
She’d never said any of those things he claimed she did in the interview, never said John McFadden’s death was “meant to be.” Never said anything about a belief system and certainly never called herself “an agent of fate.”
In fact, Kelly couldn’t recall saying much of anything at all to Sebastian Todd, this “important journalist” she’d never heard of and who wore a white suit to a woman’s prison—a white suit and matching hair, like the Man from Glad. She still remembered thinking, I’m supposed to trust this guy?
Kelly had been between lawyers at the tim
e, no parents around to advise her, Dad half fallen apart already, Mom dropped off the face of the earth. Todd had written her a few letters that had read to her as fawning, almost psycho. Kelly hadn’t wanted to talk to him at all, but the warden had made it sound like a requirement.
“Why did you kill John McFadden?” he’d asked Kelly back then, after being ushered into her cell, after some inane foreplay about the weather, Todd telling her how bright and sunny it was outside, as though Carpentia didn’t have a yard. (“I go outside every day,” she’d said, confused.) And then, boom, the $64,000 Question, her first name at the end, just to make it personal. “Why did you kill John McFadden, Kelly?”
He’d tried the pregnant pause with her back then too. Kelly had stared Todd in the eyes until he blinked, until he cleared his throat. And then she’d looked at the guard and said, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Really, you’d think he would have remembered that.
“What was your father like during those months?” Todd was saying now, filling the silence yet again. “When you lived with him? Was he functioning then at all?”
“Functioning?”
“Yes. When he was questioned during your trial, your father said—”
“You know what I’d like, ST?”
Another pause. “I think I do.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You’d like your story told. The true story.”
“Nope,” she said. “What I’d like is to throw you out of this car.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Oh, I do. I’d like to reach over and open your door and push you out and over the side of this overpass. You’re not buckled in, so it would be easy.”
“Look,” he said. “I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye. I know you didn’t appreciate the facts I brought out in my book.”
“Facts? You put words in my mouth.”
He shook his head. “I put voice to your thoughts.”
“Jesus.”
“I know I hurt you.”
“You’re overestimating your importance in my life.” Kelly sped up the car, switched lanes. She heard the click of his seat belt and, in spite of everything, smiled a little. Scared him.
“Kelly, please,” Todd said. “Try and answer my questions.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because I can clear your name. People won’t be so quick to judge you over Sterling Marshall if they realize they’ve been wrong all along about John McFadden.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“Your dad was addicted to painkillers, wasn’t he? All those injuries he incurred as a stuntman. He was either in constant pain or dosed on pills. He could barely get through the day, even back then.”
“So?”
“So the movie he sustained so many of those injuries on. The one where he was burned . . .”
“It was some horror movie. I don’t know the name.”
“It was called The Demon Pit.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Very few people have. It was a B movie, put out by an Italian producer. It never saw the light of day, really.”
“Thanks for the cinema lesson. Now where can I drop you?”
“The Demon Pit was John McFadden’s first film.”
Kelly gripped the wheel. Why didn’t Dad ever tell me that? Why didn’t anybody . . . “So what?”
“McFadden never compensated him.”
“You think my father suddenly killed John McFadden and pinned it on me. Because of a twenty-year-old workman’s comp issue.”
He took another long, pregnant pause. Kelly let it sit there. “It isn’t me who’s saying it,” he said.
Kelly turned to him. There was an off-ramp coming up, and she veered onto it, pulled to the side of the road, screeched onto a residential street, and stopped the car. She had no idea where they were. Didn’t care. “Have you been talking to my father?”
He smiled a little. “Relax.”
“Don’t you dare tell me that.”
“Kelly,” he said. “I highly suggest you watch the movie. I think I can track down a copy for you, e-mail you a downloadable link. Go to the 1:23 mark. Easy to remember. One, two—”
“Listen,” Kelly said. “My father isn’t in his right mind. And if you’ve been agitating him I swear to God—”
“Hold up, hold up.”
“I’ll kill you. And I don’t give a damn how that sounds. It’s on the record. I will kill you.”
Todd put up both hands, spread his fingers. “I haven’t been speaking to your father,” he said.
“So you’re just full of crap then?”
His mouth twitched a little, his hands still up, as though Kelly were holding him hostage when really, it was starting to feel like the other way around. “I’ve been talking to the movie’s makeup artist.”
Kelly’s breath caught. “What?”
“The makeup artist on The Demon Pit,” he said. “Surely you know how your parents met. The makeup artist was your mother.”
Kelly turned to him. She couldn’t speak.
“Your mom looks great, by the way,” he said, grinning at his prey, triumphant. “You two should really get back in touch.”
HE MADE GOOD ON HIS WORD, KELLY THOUGHT, BECAUSE WHEN SHE arrived at her dark, empty house two hours after dropping Sebastian Todd back at his car, there was an e-mail from [email protected] in her in-box—a download of The Demon Pit. It was the only e-mail she’d received, and when she checked both voice mails, they were empty too. Well, the Hollywood Photo Archives voice mail was full of calls from reporters, but nothing from Shane. No message at all.
“What did I do to lose you?” She said it aloud in the dark empty kitchen as she turned the light on, and then her gaze landed on the dryer. She thought of the clothes inside, the bloodstains scrubbed and bleached away as though they’d never been there. It isn’t what you do that makes you lose people, she reminded herself. It’s what they think you’ve done.
She clicked on the link. While it downloaded, she went to the refrigerator, pulled out a can of beer, and popped the top. She let the cool bitter liquid ease down her throat and felt the way she always did when she drank alcohol after being deprived of it for the better part of twenty-five years. Free. And slightly queasy.
The download was complete by the time the can was empty. She moved back to the computer, and clicked on it. When the black rectangle appeared, she hit the full screen icon, then “play.”
The opening credits popped up immediately, artlessly—lurid, dripping red, floating over the terrified face of a voluptuous young woman, bound, gagged, and blindfolded.
THE DEMON PIT
A JOHN MCFADDEN FILM
Kelly stared at the name, JOHN MCFADDEN, at the bleeding letters. She remembered how much she’d liked him at one point in her life, how much she’d envied Vee for having a man like him for a father—clean and clear-eyed and responsible. The way a father should be, she’d thought, back before she found out who John McFadden really was.
And here, her parents had met on the set of a McFadden film . . . Yet another thing my mother never told me.
Kelly tried to push the thought of her from her mind—Rose Lund, or whatever she was calling herself these days, behind the walls of that place she lived in . . . Commune? Cult? It was somewhere simple and safe and it was a place to start over, Rose had said in a letter sent to Kelly twenty-seven years ago. And she had called it Home.
I love you, Kelly. I’m doing the best thing for us both. Don’t think of me as leaving. Think of me as going Home.
For a moment, Kelly let herself try to imagine what her mother must look like now: Sebastian Todd had said she had white hair and full, rosy cheeks and it was hard to picture her with any of those things. The Rose Lund she knew had been sinewy and strawberry blond, expertly made up for the bright lights of I. Magnin, ten years younger than Kelly was now . . .
Please don’t leave me, Mom, Kelly ha
d written back, her heart beating so hard her handwriting jittered on the page. I don’t have anybody else. She had never received a response.
She’s alive. Kelly had always assumed she was. But assuming and knowing were two different things. “She has been living in the same place all these years,” Sebastian Todd had said. “Would you like to know where?”
“Absolutely not.”
Kelly focused on the screen, where names of actors she’d never heard of scrolled by, a shadow falling over the face of the blindfolded woman, her back arching in that type of ecstatic terror that doesn’t exist in real life, only in bad movies—more a pose than an emotion. Some of the buttons on her shirt popped open.
God, Kelly didn’t know how much more of this crap she could take. Go to the 1:23 mark. Easy to remember. One, two . . .
She moved the cursor to the forward button on-screen as a claw ripped the young woman’s blindfold off. A large tribal tattoo had been drawn between her terrified eyes—a big reveal of an elaborate, bloodred pentagram adorned with stars, ancient letters. The painstaking work of Kelly’s mother, the makeup artist . . .
The woman’s lips quivered around the gag. She shrieked as the demon pulled her shirt open to show the whole of a black lace bra, eyes going huge as its claws slit her throat . . .
Kelly froze. The demon was leering at the camera now and so she scrolled back several seconds—not to see the bloody B movie actress, but to reread the final credit, rolling up the screen.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER . . . STERLING MARSHALL
Kelly shook her head. He had funded the film. “You gave John McFadden his start.” She said it to the screen. To the dead Sterling Marshall. To the darkness. Then she scrolled up to the 1:23 mark. Watched her father burn.
SEBASTIAN HAD CALLED HER ROSE LUND IN HIS FIRST NOTE. ROSE Lund—a name she hadn’t used in nearly thirty years. It had made her stop breathing for a few seconds—her old, sad name written out in swirling, unfamiliar handwriting on a hot pink envelope and then again on the note inside.
Her name was Ruth Freed now. She’d chosen it herself thirty years ago when she’d given up her meager worldly goods and her far more significant worldly mistakes and moved in with Zeke and the group. Everyone here in the compound chose new names upon arrival—a decision both practical and symbolic—and the former Rose Lund hadn’t taken that choice lightly. She’d taken it somewhat dismally, in fact. How was she supposed to choose a name for herself when all the choices she had made in her life had been so consistently wrong?
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