Public Secrets

by Nora Roberts

  STEVIE READ HIS in the sunlight, as he sat on a stone bench in the garden during his morning walk. It was a lovely spot, filled with tea roses and hollyhocks and bird songs. Little brick paths wound through it, under arbors of wisteria and morning glories. Both the staff and the patients at Whitehurst were given free rein there. Until the sturdy stone walls rose up.

  He detested the clinic, the doctors, the other patients. He despised the therapy sessions, the scheduling, the determined smiles of the staff. But he did what he was told, and he told them what they wanted to hear.

  He was an addict. He wanted help. He would take one day at a time.

  He would take their methadone and dream of heroin.

  He learned to be calm, and he learned to be cunning. In four weeks and three days, he would walk out a free man. This time he would be more careful. This time he would control the drugs. He would smile at the doctors and reporters, he would lecture on the evils of drugs, and he would lie through his teeth. When he was out, he would live his life as he chose.

  No one had the right to tell him he was sick, no one had the right to tell him he needed help. If he wanted to get high, he’d get high. What did they understand about the pressures he lived with day after day? The demands to excel, to be that much better than the rest?

  Maybe he’d gone too far before. Maybe. So he’d keep it a social thing. The frigging doctors swilled their bourbon. He’d do a line if he felt like a line. He’d smoke some hash if he had a yen for it.

  And fuck them. Fuck them all.

  He tore open the envelope. He was pleased that Emma had written him. He could think of no other female he’d had such pure and honest feelings for. Taking out a cigarette, he leaned back on the bench and drew in the scent of smoke and roses.

  Dear Stevie,

  I know You’re in a kind of hospital and I’m sorry I can’t visit you. Da says he and the others have been there, and that You’re looking better. I wanted you to know that I was thinking about you. Maybe when you’re well we can go on vacation together, all of us, like we did in California last summer. I miss you a lot and I still hate school. But it’s only three and a half more years. Remember when I was little and you always asked me who was the best? I’d always say Da and you’d pretend to get mad. Well, I never told you that you play the guitar better. Don’t tell Da I said so. Here’s a picture of you and me in New York a couple of years ago. Da took it, remember? That’s why it’s out of focus. I thought you’d like to have it. You can write me back if you feel like it. But if you don’t that’s okay. I know I’m supposed to have paragraphs and stuff in this letter, but I forgot. I love you, Stevie. Get well soon.

  Love,

  Emma

  He let the letter lie on his lap. He sat on the bench and smoked his cigarette. And wept.

  P.M. OPENED HIS LETTER as he sat in the empty house he’d just bought on the outskirts of London. He was on the floor with the ceilings towering over him, a bottle of ale by his knee and the cool blues of Ray Charles coming from his only piece of furniture, the stereo.

  It hadn’t been easy to leave Bev, but it had been harder to stay. She had helped him find the house, as she’d promised. She would decorate it. She would, now and then, make love with him in it. But she would never be his wife.

  He blamed Brian for it. No matter what Bev had told him, P.M. eased his pain by placing the blame squarely on Brian. He hadn’t been man enough to stay with her through the bad times. He hadn’t been man enough to let her go. Right from the beginning Brian had treated Bev badly. Bringing her a child from another woman, asking her to raise it as her own. Leaving her for weeks at a time while he toured. Pushing her, he thought viciously, pushing her into a lifestyle she never wanted. Drugs, groupies, and gossip.

  And what would Brian say, what would they all say, if he announced he was leaving the group? That would make them sit up and take notice, P.M. thought as he swallowed some ale. Brian McAvoy could go to hell and take Devastation with him.

  More out of habit than curiosity, he opened Emma’s letter. She wrote him every couple of months. Cute, chatty letters that he answered with a postcard or a little gift. It wasn’t the girl’s fault that her father was a bastard, P.M. thought, and began to read.

  Dear P.M.,

  I guess I’m supposed to say I’m sorry about your divorce, but I’m not. I didn’t like Angie. The sisters say that divorce is a sin, but I think it’s a bigger one to pretend you love someone when you don’t. I hope you’re happy again because when I saw you last summer you were sad.

  There are lots of things in the paper about you and Bev. Maybe I’m not supposed to talk about something like that, but I can’t help it. If you and Bev get married, I won’t be mad. She’s so beautiful and good you can’t help it if you love her. Maybe if she’s happy with you, she won’t hate me anymore. I know you’re not fighting with Da like it says in some of the papers. It would be stupid to blame him for loving Bev if you love her, too.

  I found this picture I took of you and Da a long time ago. I know you’re going to start the new album soon, so you can show it to him. I hope you’re happy, because I love you. Maybe I’ll see you in London this summer.

  Love,

  Emma

  P.M. studied the picture for a long time, then slipped it inside the folded letter, and the letter inside the envelope. Divorcing his wife had been one thing, he realized. Divorcing his family was something else again.

  JOHNNO SPENT HIS first day back in New York sleeping, and his second composing. He was living alone at the moment, and gratefully so. His last lover had driven him to distraction with obsessive cleanliness. Johnno was fastidious himself, but when it had come to washing all the bottles and cans that had come into the house from the market, even he had been baffled.

  He appreciated the silence—after the housekeeper had left. He thought idly about spending the evening out, but decided he was too lazy. It wasn’t jet lag as much as it was the strain of the last few weeks. The legalities and hassles of the new label, the difficult visit with Stevie at the clinic, and worse somehow, the time he had spent with Brian, watching his oldest friend snuggle down deeper into a bottle.

  Yet the music Brian was writing was better than ever. Stinging, lyrical, sharp-edged, dreamy. He wouldn’t speak of his feelings, of his hurt or anger over P.M.’s relationship with Bev. But it was there in his music.

  That was enough to keep Pete happy, Johnno thought as he stripped off his shirt. As long as Devastation kept rocking, all was right with the world.

  He took out the shrimp salad his housekeeper had made up, uncorked a bottle of wine, and pushed idly through the mail which had accumulated during his absence. When Emma’s handwriting caught his eye, he grinned.

  Dear Johnno,

  I’ve snuck away from the nuns for a little while. I guess I’ll do penance for it later, but I felt I might scream if I didn’t have a few minutes alone. Most of the sisters are cranky today. Three seniors were expelled yesterday. There’s a rule about smoking in uniform so Karen Jones, Mary Alice Plessinger, and Tomisina Gibralti stripped dawn to their slips in the locker room and lit up. Most of the girls think it was cool, but Mother Superior doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

  With a laugh, Johnno pushed aside the salad, lifted his wine, and settled into the letter.

  I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Da, and you and the others. I’ve seen the stories about Stevie, and I hate the things everyone’s saying about him. Have you seen him? Is he all right? The picture I have came from the London Times and makes him look so old and sick. I don’t want to believe that he’s a drug addict, but I’m not a child. Da won’t talk to me about it, so I’m asking you. You always tell me the truth. Some of the girls say that all rock singers are drug addicts. Some of the girls are complete asses.

  Gossip manages to get through the walls here, too. I have the article and the pictures of Bev and Da and P.M. from People. Jane was in the picture, too. I don’t want to call her my mother.
Please don’t tell Da that I wrote you about it. He gets so upset and it doesn’t change anything. I was upset at first, but I thought about it for a long time. It’s okay if Bev loves P.M., isn’t it? It almost makes it like she’s family again.

  I guess I’m really writing to ask you to look after Da. I know he pretends he doesn’t think about Bev anymore, that he doesn’t love her. But he does. I can tell. When I get out of school, I’ll be able to take care of him myself I’m going to have a base in New York with Marianne, and I can travel all over with him, taking pictures.

  The one enclosed is a self portrait. I took it last week. Note the earrings. Marianne pierced my ears, and I nearly fainted. I haven’t broken the news to Da yet, so keep mum, will you? Spring break’s just nine days off, and that should be soon enough for him to see the damage himself. Da says we’ll spend Easter on Martinique. Please come, Johnno. Please.

  I love you,

  Emma

  And what was he supposed to do about Emma? Johnno wondered. He could show the letter to Brian and say “Look, read this and straighten your ass up. Your daughter needs you.” And if he did, neither Brian nor Emma would forgive him.

  She was growing up, and growing up fast. Pierced ears, training bras, and philosophy. Brian wouldn’t be able to keep her in a bubble much longer.

  Well, he would try to be there when the blow came, for both of them. Tilting back his glass, he drained the wine. And it looked as though he’d be spending a few days in Martinique.

  WITH THE WHITE sand heating under him, and his rum growing warm, Brian watched his daughter cut through the surf. What was she racing against? he wondered. Why did she always seem to be in a hurry to get from one point to the next? He could have told her that once she reached the finish line the glory was only momentary. But she wouldn’t have listened.

  A teenager. Sweet Jesus, how had she come to be a teenager? And how had he come to be a thirty-three-year-old icon?

  At thirteen it had all seemed very simple to him. His goals had been perfectly defined. To get out of the slums, to play his music, to be someone. He’d accomplished all of that. So where was the thrill? He picked up his glass and drank deeply. Where the hell was the thrill?

  He watched Emma dive under a wave, then come up, sleek as an otter, on the other side. He wished she wouldn’t swim out so far. It was so much easier to worry when he could see her. The months when she was tucked away in school, he never worried. She was a good student, well mannered, quietly obedient. Then the holidays would come, and she would pop back into his life. That much more grown-up, that much more beautiful. He would see that look in her eyes, that dark, determined look he recognized as his own. It frightened him.

  “God, what energy.” Johnno dropped down beside him. “She doesn’t slow down much, does she?”

  “No. We getting old, Johnno?”

  “Shit.” Johnno adjusted his panama and tried a sip of Brian’s rum. “Rock stars don’t get old, son. They play Vegas.” Grimacing, he screwed the glass back into the sand. “We ain’t there yet.” He settled back on his elbows. “Of course, we ain’t Shaun Cassidy, either.”

  “Thank Christ.”

  “Keep that up and you’ll never get your picture in Tiger Beat.” They sat in silence a moment, listening to the whoosh of the waves. Johnno was glad he’d come. The quiet of the private villa and beach was the perfect contrast to the crowded rush of New York, or the rainy spring in London. The villa behind them was three stories, with terraces jutting out over the sea—high walls and hedges on three sides and the white curve of beach on the fourth. The pretty pastel stones glinted in the sunlight, and there was the scent of water and hot flowers everywhere.

  Yes, he was glad he’d come, not just because of the sunshine, but because of the time it had given him, the quiet time, with Brian and with Emma. The time he knew would come all too quickly to an end.

  “Pete rang up a little while ago.”

  Brian watched Emma stand in thigh-high water, lift her face to the sun. Her skin had warmed—not tanned, he thought, not browned, but warmed. The color of apricots. He worried about how soon some hungry young boy would want a taste. “And?”

  “Things are set for next month. We can start recording.”

  “And Stevie?”

  “They’re going to put him on some kind of outpatient program. He’s a registered junkie now.” Johnno shrugged. “Methadone program. If you can’t get drugs from the street, you get them from the government. Anyhow, he’ll be ready. Will you?”

  Brian picked up his glass, drained it. The rum had been heated by the sun and ran mellow down his throat. “I’ve been ready.”

  “Glad to hear it. You don’t intend to take a punch at P.M., do you?”

  “Give me a break, Johnno.”

  “I’d rather see you smash his nose than spend the next months freezing him out, or working up to killing him in his sleep.”

  “I’ve got no problem with P.M.,” Brian said carefully. “It’s his life.”

  “And your wife.”

  Brian shot Johnno a vicious look, but he managed, barely, to control the ugly words that sprang to mind. “Bev hasn’t been my wife for a long time.”

  Johnno glanced over to be certain Emma was still out of earshot. “That line’s all right for anyone else. Not for me, Bri.” He put a hand on Brian’s wrist, squeezed, then released. “I know it’s going to be hard for you. I just want to make sure you’re ready.”

  He lifted his glass, remembered it was empty, and set it down again. Despite the breeze off the water, he was finding the heat oppressive. “You can’t go back, Johnno. And you can’t stand still. So you keep going forward whether you’re ready or not.”

  “Oh, that was great!” Emma dropped to her knees between her father and Johnno, her hair streaming. “You should come out.”

  “In the water?” Johnno said, tilting down his blue-lensed sunglasses. “Emma, luv, there are things in the water. Slimy things.”

  Laughing, she leaned over to kiss his cheek, then her father’s. She caught the sharp scent of rum and fought to keep her smile in place. “Old people sit on the beach,” she said lightly. “Middle-aged people sit on the beach.”

  “Middle-aged?” Brian caught a hank of her hair and tugged. “Just who’re you calling middle-aged?”

  “Oh, just people who sit on the beach all morning with umbrellas at their backs.” She grinned. “Why don’t you two sit right here, rest yourselves. I’ll fetch you a cold drink. And I’ll get my camera. I can take pictures so you can look back and remember your nice, restful vacation.”