Fade to Black (43 page)

She remembers the way Rae had seemed to be keeping an uneasy eye on the rearview mirror during the drive up here. As though she were making sure they weren’t being followed …

Or as though she thought someone was trailing them.

When Mallory asked her about it, she said she was just being cautious, keeping an eye out for the nosy press.

And that’s probably all there was to it
, Mallory tells herself.

Probably.

H
arper has driven the winding highway up the coast only once, with Carolyn, on the way to her parents’ home in Carmel. But that had been in his trusty Ford Explorer, in the daylight. And even though Carolyn, daredevil that she was, had urged him to step on the gas, he had taken the curves slowly and cautiously. She had complained that it had taken them twice as long to get there as it did when she drove it alone.

Now, in the middle of the night, in an unfamiliar rental car, feeling almost numb from exhaustion, Harper finds himself practically creeping along the road through the thick mist drifting off the sea.

Several times he’s had to pull over so that tailgating headlights can shoot past him. Anyone driving that fast on a road like this must be in a real hurry to get someplace …

Not that he isn’t.

He just wants to make sure he gets there alive.

Ever since he pulled off the freeway, got to a phone, and dialed the number that had paged him, he’s been filled with a sense of urgency …

Because he’s about ninety-nine percent certain that it was Mallory who called him.

The man who answered his call had told him he’d reached a pay phone at the Treetop Inn in Big Sur. He was a guest who happened to have been in the lobby, heard it ringing, and picked it up.

Harper had swiftly gotten the inn’s main number from directory assistance and called it, intending to find out whether there was anyone registered by the name of Elizabeth Baxter or Mallory Eden.

But he had gotten the inn’s answering machine, telling him to try back tomorrow morning.

Just as well. Harper doubts that she would be using either of those names.

But he’s certain she’s there.

He’s certain, because the closer he gets to Big Sur, the more anxious he feels. It’s almost as though he can sense her presence. She’s nearby, waiting for him, needing him.

This is lunacy
, he thinks, stifling a yawn and noticing that the sky in the east is showing the first twinges of pink.

You flew all day and drove all night, chasing a woman you barely know, a woman who might not want you to find her …

But she had paged him.

It
had
to have been her.

Unless it was a wrong number …

It
could
have been a wrong number.

Harper sighs, blinking his weary, strained eyes, struggling to stay focused on the narrow road that snakes ahead, tracing the rocky coastline above the sea.

Just a few more miles to the Treetop Inn.

A few more miles, and he’ll know.

But I know already.

She’s there, and she needs me
, he thinks, staring out into the night.

G
retchen turns off the car engine and is instantly aware of the hushed night sounds filtering through the darkness outside.

Crickets, and a rustling breeze that stirs the stand of redwoods overhead, and distant waves crashing on rocks.

She stares out the window at the sky in the east, where a faint, milky sign of dawn is creeping through the trees.

Then she glances at the dark building looming at the end of the narrow, gravel-covered lane. The Treetop Inn looks deserted, not a flicker of light spilling from the shuttered windows.

Someplace inside, Gretchen is certain, Mallory Eden is sleeping.

Is it a deep, peaceful sleep, the kind of sleep that has evaded Gretchen for so many years?

Or is she tormented by nightmares, thrashing restlessly in her hotel bed?

Gretchen leans back against the headrest and sighs.

She’s exhausted.

Not just from the long flight and the endless drive up the coast on a fog-shrouded mountain road.

She’s exhausted, too, from the months, the years, of loneliness. Of resentment. Of bitter hatred.

And helplessness.

Until now, there was nothing she could do about her situation. No vent for her anger, no hope of changing what her life had become.

Gretchen closes her eyes, yawns.

When daylight arrives, she’ll confront Mallory Eden.

For now …

Sleep.

M
anny jerks upright and rubs sleep from his eyes at the sudden sound of a voice nearby.

Where am I …?

Oh.

The hospital.

Sitting on the uncomfortable couch in the tiny lounge. His grandmother is beside him, just as she has been for hours, rosary beads and a wet handkerchief clutched in her hands.

When he looks at her, he sees that she’s looking at someone else.

A man wearing one of those blue surgical jumpsuits is standing in the doorway. His eyes, behind his round glasses, are serious. Manny realizes this is the doctor, and that he’s finally come to them with news about Gramps.

“Mrs. Souza? Would you like to speak to me in private? Without …” He glances toward Manny.

“I want to stay,” Manny speaks up, holding his grandmother’s hand. “I want to hear.”

He can’t leave her alone now. Not the way his mother had. After calling 911, she had simply left, scurrying out the back door like a rat dodging a broom. There was no one but Manny to ride with his grandmother in the ambulance to the hospital, no one but Manny to try to convince her that everything is going to be okay.

When, of course, it isn’t. Nothing is ever going to be okay again.

“Mrs. Souza …” the doctor says.

His grandmother heaves a shudder and a little moan, as though she knows what’s coming.

And then the doctor is speaking quietly, professionally.

About Gramps.

About how they tried, but they couldn’t save him.

Manny’s arms are squeezed around his sobbing grandmother, tears are gushing from his eyes, and he can’t think of anything to say.

Not to her.

Not to the doctor who told them Gramps is dead.

Desperately, he longs for someone to come and put comforting arms around him, to make it better somehow.

I need you, Elizabeth. I need you so bad....

Please, Elizabeth, please call me
.

B
ecky opens her eyes, wrenched out of her restless sleep as she has been countless times since she went to bed.

She yawns and wonders what time it is.

Sitting up in bed, she reaches over toward the bedside table. Her fingers strike the unfamiliar surface hard and she winces, then feels around until she finds the lamp and turns it on, illuminating the small hotel room.

The clock says that it’s four thirty-nine
A.M.

Too early.

Laura had arranged a wake-up call for six.

With a sigh, Becky leans back against the plump pillows, leaving the lamp on so that she can look around the room.

Laura had said she was disappointed with the accommodations, but that it wasn’t easy to find something in Monterey on such short notice.

But never in her life has Becky stayed anyplace so luxurious.

In addition to the bed, table, and clock, there’s a little table with two chairs, a telephone, and a television set with a remote control.

Becky hasn’t watched television since the old days, growing up with Vera. How her mother had loved to sit and watch her programs. She used to talk about the actors and actresses as though she knew them personally. Lucille Ball and Fred Mac-Murray and Eva Gabor …

Becky sighs, putting Vera out of her head.

Of course she won’t go, the stubborn old bag. She’s there, telling Becky that she’s just like her father, Vera’s ex-husband, Ralph, who had run off and left them when Becky was a baby. Becky had his drab brown hair and thin lips and scrawny frame, and his wild, foolish streak, too, according to her mother.

“If you don’t settle down and straighten out, young lady, you’ll never be anything but a loser, like your father.”

How many times had Becky heard that, growing up?

One time too many.

And that one time was the night before she took off for good, telling herself she never wanted to see her mother again. Vera had ripped into her for going out to a high school dance, breaking her curfew, and wearing “sleazy” clothes and makeup.

“What kind of a mother are you?” Vera had demanded. “What kind of example are you setting for that daughter of yours?”

“What kind of mother are
you
?” Becky had lashed back. “I’m taking my baby and I’m leaving.”

“Go ahead. Get out. But you leave that little girl here with me,” Vera had said. “No sense throwing two lives away.”

Becky had realized, in that instant, that her mother wouldn’t care if she left. She would probably be glad to get rid of the daughter who was a constant reminder of the husband she loathed.

She had planned to take little Cindy, just for spite. But then she thought better of it. Realized she could have a lot more fun on her own than she could dragging a kid around the country.

Cindy.

In a few more hours Becky will be seeing her again.

It’s been such a long journey.

Not just the two flights yesterday—the first on that jumbo jet from Chicago to Los Angeles, the second on a prop plane from Los Angeles to San Jose—followed by a boring drive down the coast with Laura and the film crew.

But it isn’t just the past twenty-four hours that have seemed so endless.

She’s been waiting her whole life, it seems, to reclaim her firstborn.

When Laura had told her last night that it was too late to go down to where Mallory was staying, Becky had been devastated. But then Laura had explained that it would be better to get a good night’s sleep, to collect her thoughts so she’d be fresh for the reunion in the morning.

Now morning is almost here.

Now she’ll know whether her daughter is going to forgive her this time …

Or reject her again.

Whether she’s going to start paying back what she owes Becky, who, after all, brought her into this world.

You owe me, kid. All I need is to get my hands on some cash, I’ll have a chance to really turn my life around. You’ve got to help me
.

Becky draws a deep breath, lets it out, and stares, brooding, into space.

F
lynn shivers in the chilly predawn mountain air, vaguely thinking he should probably have put up the top of the Jaguar. He had left it down hoping that the cool breeze would help keep him alert, help knock some of the booze out of his system.

But maybe that’s not such a good idea—to let the buzz wear off. Maybe he needs a little something to help wake him up, he decides foggily.

He reaches toward the passenger seat beside him and feels around for the flask he’d thought was there.

Or did he leave it behind when he’d stopped at that bar for a couple of drinks a few hours ago?

Fuzzily, he tries to remember the last time he saw it.

He remembers now that he’d carried it out of the bar with him, after bribing the bartender to fill it with single malt scotch.

“I hope you’re not getting behind the wheel in your condition, bud,” the guy had said as Flynn walked out of the bar.

But he had known damn well that Flynn was going to drive away.

After all, he’d come in alone, and the bar was in the middle of nowhere, some rinky-dink town south of Morro Bay, where Flynn had stopped to gas up and quench his thirst with a couple more drinks.

But he’s fine to drive.

He’s made it all this way, hasn’t he?

Has managed to keep the Jaguar between the lines even when he has to squint to make out the blurred, winding path ahead.

He’d actually considered stopping for the night after leaving the bar. But there’s nowhere to stop on this lonely stretch of highway.

And anyway, he’s eager to find Mallory. To talk to her about her future.
Their
future. As a team.

Never mind that he has no idea where she is. How many hotels can there be in Big Sur? He’ll find her.

“You can’t hide from me, Ms. Eden. I’ll find you,” he says aloud, taking one hand off the wheel to shove a cigarette into his mouth as he steers around a curve.

The tires hit the right shoulder and for a moment he struggles with the skidding car, just missing the rock ledge running along the road.