Sweet Revenge (9 page)

“Like Duja?”

“Yes.” Fighting for calm, she looked down and managed another smile. “Yes, like Duja is to you. She’s going to help us.”

The terminal no longer interested Adrianne. She was afraid because her mother’s face was very white and her hand shook. “He is going to be angry.”

“He’s not going to hurt you.” Phoebe stopped again and took Adrianne by the shoulders. “I promise you that no matter what I have to do, he’ll never hurt you.” Then the tension of all the days and nights she had waited broke. With one hand pressed to her heaving stomach, she raced with Adrianne into the ladies’ room and was violently sick.

“Mama, please.” Terrified, Adrianne clung to Phoebe’s waist as she bent over the bowl. “We must go back before he knows. We will say we were lost, separated. He will be only a little angry. It will be my fault. I will say it was my fault.”

“Can’t.” Phoebe leaned against the stall door and waited for the nausea to pass. “We can’t ever go back. He was going to send you away, baby.”

“Away?”

“To Germany.” With an unsteady hand Phoebe found a handkerchief and dried her damp face. “I won’t let him send you away, to marry you off to a man who could be like him.” Steadier, Phoebe knelt and wrapped her arms around her daughter. “I won’t see you live your life the way I’ve had to live mine. It would kill me.”

Slowly, the fear in Adrianne’s eyes faded. In the narrow stall that still reeked of sickness, they crossed a new threshold in their lives. Gently, Adrianne helped Phoebe to her feet. “You are better? Lean on me.”

Phoebe was only more pale when they boarded, when at last they sat on the plane with their seat belts in place and listened to the whine of engines. Her heart had stopped beating too fast. Now it was only a drumming in her head, one that reminded her of the harem and the oppressive heat. The taste of sickness was still in her mouth as she closed her eyes.

“Madame? May I serve you and the mademoiselle a drink after we have taken off?”

“Yes.” She didn’t bother to open her eyes. “Bring my daughter something cool and sweet.”

“And for you?”

“Scotch,” she said dully. “A double.”

Celeste Michaels loved a good drama. As a young child she had made up her mind to be an actress—not just an actress, but a star. She had begged, wheedled, sulked, and cajoled acting lessons out of her parents, who indulgently believed their little girl was going through a phase. They continued to think so even when they drove Celeste to auditions, rehearsals, and performances in community theater. Andrew Michaels was an accountant who preferred to look at life as a balance sheet of profit and loss. Nancy Michaels was a pretty housewife who enjoyed making fancy desserts for church socials. Both of them believed, even after theater began to dictate their lives, that little Celeste would outgrow her love of greasepaint and curtain calls.

At fifteen Celeste decided she was born to be blond and had tinted her tame brown hair to a golden halo that would become her trademark. Her mother had shrieked, her father had lectured. Celeste’s hair had stayed blond. And she had won the part of Marion in her high school’s production of
The Music Man.

Once Nancy had complained to Andrew that she might have been able to handle it better if Celeste had been involved with boys and liquor rather than Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams.

The day after she received her high school diploma, Celeste moved from the cozy New Jersey suburb of her childhood to Manhattan. Her parents saw her off on the train with a mixture of relief and bafflement.

She auditioned, scrounging up enough to pay for her acting lessons and the rent on her fourth-floor walkup by
flipping hamburgers and frying eggs at a greasy spoon. She married at twenty, a relationship that began with a bang and ended with a whimper a year later. By then Celeste had stopped looking back.

Just over ten years later she was the reigning lady of theater with a trail of hits behind her, a trio of Tonys, and a penthouse on Central Park West. She’d sent her parents a Lincoln for their last anniversary, but they still believed she’d come back to New Jersey when acting was out of her system and settle down with some nice Methodist boy.

Just now, pacing the airport lounge, she welcomed the relative anonymity of the theater actress. If people noticed her, they saw an attractive blonde, sturdily built and of average height. They didn’t see the sultry Maggie the Cat or the ambitious Lady Macbeth. Not unless Celeste wanted them to.

She checked her watch and wondered again if Phoebe would be on the plane.

Nearly ten years, she thought as she took a seat and searched through her bag for a cigarette. They had become close friends quickly when Phoebe had come to New York to film on location for her first movie. Celeste had just ended her marriage and had been feeling a bit rough around the edges. Phoebe had been like a breath of fresh air, so funny and sweet. Each had become the sister to the other that neither had been born with, visiting coast to coast when possible, piling up huge long distance phone bills when it wasn’t.

No one had been more thrilled when Phoebe had been nominated for an Oscar. No one had cheered more loudly when Celeste had won her first Tony.

They were opposites in many ways. Celeste was tough and driven, Phoebe malleable and trusting. Without realizing it, they had given each other a balance, and a friendship each would always cherish.

Then Phoebe had married and flown off to her desert kingdom. Correspondence had become sporadic after the first year, then almost nonexistent. It had hurt. Celeste would never have admitted it to anyone, but Phoebe’s gradual termination of their friendship had hurt very much. On the surface she’d taken it philosophically. Her life was full and rich and progressing along the route she had mapped out as a girl in New Jersey. But there was a place in her heart that
had grieved. Over the years Celeste had continued to send gifts to the girl she considered her godchild, and had been amused by the quaint and formal notes of acknowledgment Adrianne had sent back to her.

She was ready to love the child. In part because she was married to the theater, arid that love affair would never produce children. And in part because Adrianne was Phoebe’s.

Celeste tapped out her cigarette before reaching into a shopping bag and taking out a red-haired china doll. It was dressed in blue velvet trimmed in white. Celeste had chosen it because she thought the little girl would enjoy having a doll with the same color hair as her mother. And she didn’t have any idea of what to say to the child, or to Phoebe.

When she heard the flight announced, she was up and pacing again. It wouldn’t be long now. The deplaning, the trip through customs. There was no reason for the nagging worry at the base of her skull.

Except that the cablegram had said so little.

Celeste remembered each word, and, like a good actress, put her own inflection on them.

She saw them the moment they passed through the doors, the tall, striking redhead and the doll-like girl. They huddled close together, hands joined, bodies brushing. Celeste found it odd that for a moment she couldn’t be certain who was reassuring whom.

Then Phoebe looked up. A range of emotions raced across her face, relief dominant. Before the relief, Celeste had recognized terror. Moving quickly, Celeste crossed to her.

“Phoebe.” Putting everything but friendship on hold, Celeste hugged her close. “It’s so good to see you again.”

“Celeste, thank God. Oh, thank God you’re here.”

The desperation concerned her much more than the fact that the words were slurred from drinking. Careful to keep her smile in place, she looked down at Adrianne.

“So this is your Addy.” Celeste touched a hand lightly to
the child’s hair, noting the shadowed eyes and signs of exhaustion. She was reminded of pictures of survivors of disasters, the same flat, vulnerable look of shock. “You’ve had a long trip, but it’s nearly over now. I have a car right outside.”

“I’ll never be able to repay you,” Phoebe began.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She gave Phoebe a last quick squeeze, then handed the shopping bag to Adrianne. “I brought you a present to celebrate your visit to America.”

Adrianne looked at the doll, stirring enough energy to trace a finger down the sleeve of the gown. The velvet reminded her of Duja, but she was too tired to cry. “She is pretty. Thank you.”

Celeste lifted a brow in surprise. The child sounded as exotic and as foreign as she looked. “Let’s get your bags and go home, where you can relax.”

“We don’t have any bags.” Phoebe nearly swayed, then steadied herself with a hand on Celeste’s shoulder. “We don’t have anything.”

“All right.” Questions could wait, Celeste decided as she slipped an arm around Phoebe’s waist. A look told her the child could stand on her own. “Let’s go home.”

Unlike her experience in Paris, Adrianne noticed little of her drive from the airport into Manhattan. The limo was quiet and warm, but she couldn’t relax. As she had during the long flight across the Atlantic, she carefully watched her mother. She tucked the doll Celeste had given her under her arm and kept Phoebe’s hand firmly in her own. She was too weary to ask questions, but was ready to run.

“It’s been so long.” Phoebe looked around as if coming out of a trance. A little pulse beside her mouth kept jumping as her eyes darted from window to window. “It’s changed. But it hasn’t changed.”

“You can always count on New York.” Celeste blew out a stream of smoke, noting that Adrianne watched her cigarette with dark, fascinated eyes. “Maybe tomorrow Addy would like to walk in the park or do some shopping. Have you ever ridden on a merry-go-round, Adrianne?”

“What is it?”

“It’s wooden horses you can ride around in a circle to music. There’s one in the park across from where I live.” She
smiled at Adrianne, noting that Phoebe jumped every time the car stopped. If the mother was a mass of nerves, the child seemed a tower of control. What in God’s name was she going to say to a kid who didn’t know what a merry-go-round was? “You couldn’t have picked a better time to come to New York. All the shops are decorated for Christmas.”

Adrianne thought of the little glass ball and her brother. All at once she wanted to lay her head in her mother’s lap and weep. She wanted to go home, to see her grandmother and her aunts, to smell the smells of the harem. But there was no going back.

“Will it snow?” she asked.

“Sooner or later.” The urge to gather the child up and comfort her surprised Celeste. She’d never considered herself particularly maternal. There was something so sad yet strong about the way Adrianne stroked Phoebe’s hand. “We’ve been having a warm spell. I doubt if it’ll last much longer.” Good Lord, she was talking about the weather. With some relief she leaned forward as the car slowed. “Here we are,” Celeste said briskly when the limo cruised to the curb. “I moved here about five years ago, Phoebe. It suits me so well, they’ll have to blast me out.”

She led them past the security guard into the lobby of the elegant old building on Central Park West. She moved quickly, sweeping both Phoebe and Adrianne into the paneled elevator. To Adrianne it was like a slow ride to nowhere as fatigue weighed down her limbs. On the plane she’d fought off sleep, dragging herself out of fitful dozes to be certain no one separated her from Phoebe. Now, enervated, she walked mechanically between the two women into Celeste’s penthouse.

“I’ll give you the grand tour when you’re not so exhausted.” Celeste tossed her coat over the back of a chair and wondered what in the hell to do next. “You must be starving. Shall I send out or whip up an omelette?”

“I couldn’t.” With care Phoebe sat on a sofa. She felt as if every bone in her body would break if she moved too quickly. “Addy, are you hungry?”

“No.” Even the thought of food had her stomach roiling.

“Poor thing’s dead on her feet.” Celeste moved over to wrap an arm around Adrianne’s shoulders. “How about a nap?”

“Go with Celeste,” Phoebe said before Adrianne could protest. “She’ll take care of you.”

“You won’t go away?”

“No, I’ll be right here when you wake up.” Phoebe kissed both of her cheeks. “I promise.”

“Come along, love.” Celeste half carried the exhausted child up a long sweep of stairs. Talking nonsense, she stripped off Adrianne’s coat and shoes and tucked her into bed. “You’ve had a long day.”

“If he comes, you will wake me up so I can take care of Mama?”

Celeste’s hand hesitated as she started to stroke Adrianne’s hair. The skin beneath her eyes was bruised with fatigue, but the eyes themselves were awake and demanding.

“Yes, don’t worry.” Not knowing what else to do, she kissed Adrianne’s brow. “I love her too, honey. We’ll take care of her.”

Content with that, Adrianne closed her eyes.

Celeste drew the drapes and left the door ajar. By the time she left the room, Adrianne was already asleep, as was Phoebe when Celeste came quietly downstairs.

The nightmare woke Adrianne. She had had the same dream sporadically since her fifth birthday: the dream of her father coming into her mother’s room, of the crying, the shouting, of glass shattering. Of herself crawling under the bed with her hands over her ears.

She woke with her face wet with tears, biting back a cry because she was afraid to disturb the other women in the harem. But she wasn’t in the harem. Her sense of time and place was so jumbled that she had to sit very still for several minutes before events fell into an ordered progression in her mind.

They had gone to Paris on the little plane and she had been frightened. The city had looked like a storybook with its oddly dressed people and its banks of flowers. Then there had been the shops, all the colors, the silks, the satins. Mama had bought her a pink dress with a white collar. But they had left it behind. They hadn’t gone to the top of the Eiffel Tower. But they had gone to the Louvre. And they had run. Mama had been frightened, and sick.