The Truth About Delilah Blue (22 page)

It was heartbreaking, Kieran’s inability to be a kid. Lila didn’t know what was worse, having your childhood hi-jacked without your knowledge or having never had one at all.

Elisabeth sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if I was born under a dying star.”

“That’s crazy. You have so much going for you.”

“I’m forty-three. I could have really done something with my life, you know? And now it’s so late.” She pushed
errant curls off her face and pointed. “See those lines between my brows? My forehead will never be smooth again. I worry I look old.”

Lila didn’t answer right away, busy as she was trying to flick away an ant making its way up her boot.

“I do, don’t I?”

“What? No. I just have this bug on me.”

“It’s all right. You can say it. I’m past my prime.”

“Not at all. You’re beautiful.”

“Soon I’ll be at that stage in life when men no longer look at me. Not that I even want a man right now, but still. It will be a shock when it’s gone. The only real mercy is my vision is going too. So I won’t see them not seeing me.”

Lila laughed.

“I’m modeling for Finn. Did you see that sculpture in his dining room?”

“I wondered if it was you.”

Elisabeth nodded. “Though I just did it the one time. Then he got into his slump.”

“Is that what he meant when he said you already pay him enough for the babysitting?”

“What a house to manage at his age, don’t you think? He’ll inherit the place one day. Sometimes I imagine what the place would be like if it were converted back to a single-family dwelling. I’ve always wanted to have an old mansion like that…”

“Mum, he’s really young.”

“Don’t worry, sweetie. I do realize he doesn’t see me that way. It’s a waste of time to dream, and yet I always do.” She laughed miserably and looked at Lila. “Do you want to hear something ridiculous? Since I was fourteen, I’ve wanted a thick gold necklace. Nothing fancy, just a chunky piece of
jewelry I could wear with everything—T-shirts, dresses. Something I would never take off. A trademark piece. My best friend had one and, I don’t know, that wish just stayed with me.”

The bracelet. Lila had to force herself not to smile.

Kieran was now inspecting the doorway to the girls’ change room, and Lila and Elisabeth went silent as they watched the man get up, dust off his skirted lap, and wander over to the door. He stood under the roof overhang for a moment before self-consciously rooting through his purse.

Lila said, “This can’t be good.”

“He might just be waiting for his child to come out of the restroom,” said Elisabeth.

When Kieran didn’t move away, Lila stood up. “Call 911.”

“Seriously?”

Lila ran toward the change room, watching as the man closed his purse, looked around, then wandered over to Kieran. Just as he bent down to speak to her, Lila pushed her way between them and picked up her sister, twisting her body to position the young girl behind her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Elisabeth on the phone, looking toward the street sign, giving directions.

The man smiled and tried to veer around Lila and head into the change room, but Lila stepped to the side and blocked his entrance. “You need to have a child to go in there.”

He smiled nervously and tried to squeeze past her. When he spoke his voice was high-pitched. “Excuse me. I need to use the facilities.”

“Show me your child or I scream bloody freaking murder.”

He seemed to lose his nerve, his eyes darted around, and he stepped backward. One hand touched his brow in distress, and he turned and sashayed toward an old Schwinn bike leaning on the fence. A lady’s bike. Lila watched as he dropped his pretty handbag into a wire basket strapped to the handlebars, swung a leg over like he was mounting a stallion, and pedaled off down the side street.

It wasn’t until he’d disappeared that it struck her. His bike had had a child seat on the back. He’d come with no child.

Had he been planning to leave with one?

She set Kieran down and gripped her shoulders. “He could have taken you, Kieran. Do you realize that? Do you know how devastated Mum would be? And me?”

Kieran said nothing. Just stared into her big sister’s eyes as if seeing straight back to the day Lila went missing.

Elisabeth jogged up, breathless and barefoot. “Police are on their way.” She blew hair out of her face, looking around and panting. “They thanked me for calling.”

The dog had proven to be good for Victor. Dogs need a certain predictability in their lives, and Lila was fairly sure her father was providing it. Up at seven for a short walk followed by breakfast on the back deck, a short game of fetch in the yard, and an hour in the playpen. Light snack at lunchtime, then a short pee and a long nap in Victor’s room.

While it might not compare to the career Victor had once had, the canine demands had meant he was having a good week. Only one forgetful episode involving his keys. No wandering too far. No repeating himself.

Of course there had been no mention of the past. Victor wasn’t offering and Lila wasn’t willing to upset the present state of balance by bringing it up.

It was November. The morning of Adam’s art meeting and the first time she’d seen him since taking off her clothes
in his studio. While nothing had happened, everything had happened. The feel of his eyes on her skin had left her barely able to breathe, and the thought of seeing him again had had her tossing in her bed every night since.

The question was—had he felt it too?

She had nothing to show this designer, as Lichty had neither returned her artwork nor breathed a word about her scholarship chances. It was okay. She’d give up selling all her work to the designer for a shot at an education.

Adam asked her to come anyway, for emotional support, he’d said on the phone.

With a napkin-wrapped fried egg sandwich in one hand, Lila set her coffee mug on the passenger seat of the Datsun and leaned over to lower her purse onto the floor, accidentally tipping the travel mug and soaking the seat.

Damn. She set her breakfast on the floor of the hatch area behind her and, leaving the door open, ran back to the house for a towel.

When she returned, she heard her phone ringing from her bag on the floor. She dropped into the driver’s seat, threw the towel on the spilled coffee, and reached for the phone in her purse, stopping when she realized the atmosphere in the car had changed. It felt warm, close, as if it were about to rain. Stranger still, was the scent of dirt, dander. Animal.

A low grumble came from behind her seat and she spun around to see a coyote’s face staring back at her.

Slash was in the car.

She froze, stunned by the very fact of him. She’d never been so close to a coyote and in broad daylight. His good ear pricked forward like a great velvet dish while the ragged ear listed sideways. The bottom of his tawny snout was pure white, impossibly clean, unstained by garbage,
compost, or bloodied neighborhood vermin. Most stunning of all, the eyes. Irises as pale gold as the pupils were black. With an expression of utter curiosity, but mixed with something else. A look Lila couldn’t quite grasp right away. Fear, maybe. Or resignation.

She fought her instinct to reach out and stroke his muzzle.

The sandwich lay between them; Slash was well aware of it. His yellow eyes darted from her to his prize and back again. Then he dropped down and took the edge of the bread in his front teeth, inching it back between his front legs.

It was the best time to bolt, while he was worrying about his meal. She scrambled out of the car and ran to the front end, slapped her palms against the hood to scare him off. The car wiggled beneath her hands and the coyote streaked out her door, egg sandwich between his teeth, and across to the neighbors’ yard. She stared at the spot in the bushes where he disappeared, watching the branches shiver in his wake. Shocking, his willingness to climb into a car and remain so calm when she dropped into her seat. Other than his concern about breakfast, he’d been completely unruffled by her presence, even with her body essentially cornering him in the back. She thought about Corinne Angel raising orphaned wolf pups in her Arizona kitchen and wondered—what becomes of an animal released into the wild after months and months of living on a bed of ragged towels in a warm kitchen?

A
DAM WAS WAITING
for her outside the building, leaning against a concrete planter and rubbing his jaw. He stood when he saw her.

She scanned his face for clues, but he seemed to be all business. His voice. Maybe his voice would reveal more. Throwing his arms in the air, he squeaked, “Where have you been? We were supposed to be up there six minutes ago.”

So much for sexual tension and pent-up desires. He might as well have been talking to his sister. “Sharing my breakfast. Where’s your work?”

“I had it delivered. Wouldn’t fit in the car.” He squinted up at the sun and started to pace. “Why’s it so freaking sunny today? It was supposed to rain. Jesus, I hate L.A. I can’t wait to leave.”

“What’s with you? You have to calm down.”

“You brought nothing? No word about the scholarship?”

“No.”

“That’s terrible. Lichty’s blowing a huge opportunity for you here.”

“It’s okay. The scholarship matters more.”

“Yeah, but you won’t be able to come to New York if you get it. Think what you’re passing up.”

Her eyes traveled from his battered, thrift-store desert boots up past his paint-spattered jeans and lumberjack shirt, to the red spot on his neck where he’d nicked himself shaving. She pulled a tissue from her bag and dabbed at the cut. “A girl can’t have it all.”

“I don’t know why I listened to her. No, I do. She said I look like a cult member when I take the other.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My sister. She convinced me to take DayQuil.” He reached for her fingers and pressed them to his neck. “Time my pulse. See if it’s the same as yours.”

She prodded the skin around his throat. “I can’t even find it.”

“What are you saying?” He started breathing fast and shallow. “Of course I have a pulse. You think I don’t have a pulse?”

“You have a pulse,” she said, louder. “I just can’t find it. Pull it together, Adam.”

“I can’t do this. Tell them I’m sick.”

She took him by the shoulder and led him inside the lobby. “No one’s sick. We’re going straight up there and you can stay perfectly silent. Let me do all the talking. We’ll say you lost your voice.”

He stopped her from getting on the elevator. Slithered one hand beneath her hair to rest it on the back of her neck and grinned, his eyes scanning her face. “Delilah Blue?”

A jolt shot through her. “Yes?”

“Hi. Just hi.”

T
HE DESIGNER STOOD
face to cheek with Lila’s nearly naked and glowing bottom, then reached up to touch the faint stain that was the birthmark on her upper hip. If Lila had ever imagined being touched by another female, she could not have conjured up a more unlikely participant. Norma Reeves was less than five feet tall, all boxy torso, banged mahogany bob, and cat’s-eye glasses with blue-tinted lenses. She wore silver lipstick and a black unitard under a pleated pastel mini that looked as if it had been peeled off the underside of a muffin. As much as Adam’s nude of Lila, titled
Nude with Denim
, fascinated Norma, she seemed to have no idea the model stood right next to her.

There was something both sensuous and ordinary about this particular nighttime nude. Adam’s talent was obvious
in the intense shadows, the lines of Lila’s body, and the luminosity of her skin in the milky moonlight that trickled through the windows, but it was more than that. The true mastery was more commercial, in the way he’d positioned the pair of faded jeans across the curve of her hip. Perfect for a denim designer.

Norma hadn’t spoken to them except to nod a silent hello. Adam and Lila had been ushered by an assistant into a boardroom with leather walls lined with several nudes. The assistant had offered them espresso, which Adam wisely refused, and they’d waited for the great Ms. Reeves herself to arrive. When she had, she’d walked straight over to the artwork, pausing for three or four minutes in front of each. Adam’s pieces weren’t the only pieces being considered, Norma’s assistant had made that perfectly clear. He was just one of about five artists invited to submit works, and probably the only student.

At the far end of the room, a monster-size wall clock ticked with all the drama of a bomb. Other than the sound of Adam trying to slow his own heartbeat, the room was completely silent.

Five more minutes of silence and it was over. Norma turned away from Lila’s lunar-lit bottom and marched toward the door. Just before she vanished, she called back, “I’ll have the one titled
Nude with Denim
. Tell my assistant to cut you a check.”

There he was, marching across campus, his stinger leading the way past the water fountain and toward the parking garage. Lila, on her way to a third-year sculpting class where she would re-create the same pose she’d been holding for five classes straight now, broke into a run. It was mid-November. It had been more than three weeks since she’d turned in her pieces. Part of her didn’t want to ask—why hurry bad news? But mostly she could no longer take the waiting. Wondering.

Just as he was about to step out of the sunlight and into the darkness of the garage, she called out, “Lichty!”

If he heard her, he didn’t react, disappearing into the three-story structure. She followed him up the stairs, which smelled faintly of urine and beer, calling his name and blinking hard to adjust to the dim light. There was no sign
of him on the second floor, so she raced up to the third and saw him climbing into a little yellow Beetle.

“Lichty, wait!”

The car sputtered to life and started to back out of the narrow spot. It was about to speed past her when she jumped in front of it, holding up her hands and shouting, “Stop!”

The car skidded to a stop and Lichty poked his head out the window. “A very good way to get yourself killed, Miss Mack.”

“Sorry.” She struggled to catch her breath. “It’s just that it’s Friday, and I couldn’t stand the thought of going through the weekend without knowing.”

He nodded, shifting the car into park. “The scholarship.”

“The scholarship. Yes. You said it would take three weeks and it’s been longer.”

“If you’ll stop by my office on Monday, I’ll give you back your pieces.”

“So that means you’ve made a decision.”

He let out a long sigh. “In the end, we all felt the same way. I showed them the spider drawing and we all agreed the four other pieces lack the focus and clarity of that one. It’s almost as if it wasn’t done by the same person…”

It wasn’t, she wanted to say. It was done by the girl who hadn’t yet been kidnapped, hadn’t yet learned her life was total bullshit. “They were. I swear, I did all of them.”

“I believe you. But the others suffered from a certain lack of sureness. A lack of confidence and artistic sense of ‘this is who I am.’”

“Yeah, but…”

“Don’t get me wrong. We all felt you showed promise. But you’re just not ready yet. Maybe you’ll try again next
year. Right now, you need to solidify a few things, develop your sense of groundedness. Some consistency. I need to know, from one quick glance at your work, the truth about who you are.”

Her eyes grew hot and she fought to keep her bottom lip from giving away her emotions. “I’m not sure I’ll ever figure that out.”

He looked at her, his face unsympathetic. “That, Miss Mack, is a terrible shame.” The yellow car thumped into gear and sped away.