Lovegame

  I have to breathe.

  Grabbing my keys from the bowl where I keep them, I let myself into the garage without bothering to change out of the nightgown I wore to bed last night. To do that I’d have to go back into the bedroom and that’s not going to happen. I know I’ll have to face Ian eventually but not yet. Not now.

  The only problem? I have nowhere to go. No place I need to be today and no one I want to try to explain this mess to, anyway. I’ve been so careful not to talk to anyone through the years, not to show any chinks in Veronica Romero’s armor. I know some stars get professional help, but that was never an option for me. Not when it meant tarnishing my father’s legacy and my mother’s reputation. Not when talking to someone risked exposing what had happened so long ago to the world.

  Oh, the shrink I chose probably wouldn’t talk—patient-doctor confidentiality and all that. But the psychologist wasn’t the only one with access to his records. Office staff, transcribers, god only knew who else might get their hands on my records. And how much they would make if they sold them to the tabloids. More than enough to compensate for whatever job they might lose by doing so.

  I drive around for a while, but L.A. traffic is enough to make you nuts even when you don’t have somewhere to be. I don’t have my purse, so stopping at a restaurant isn’t an option—even if I wasn’t still in my nightgown—and eventually I find myself pulling into the driveway of the house most of the world thinks I live in.

  I’ve got clothes here, some money. There’s probably even food left over from last night’s party. I won’t have to leave until I want to.

  Because I’m not completely insensitive, before I get out of the car, I fire off a text to Ian letting him know that I’m going to be out of communication for the rest of the day. The fact that he doesn’t answer—and that I haven’t gotten a text from him yet this morning, tells me he’s probably still asleep.

  Or so freaked out by everything I told him last night that he decided good riddance…

  I don’t really believe that—he’s not the type—but I wouldn’t blame him if he decided that was the case. God knows, right now I’m far too much trouble for myself. I can only imagine what this whole mess looks like from where he’s sitting.

  I let myself into the house, making sure to close the door as quietly as possible behind me. The alarm system beeps and I’m on it in seconds, punching in the code before the beeping can wake my mother. She’s a late sleeper, so I’m hoping she’s still in bed. If my luck holds, I can sneak into the Picasso room and hole up in there before she even knows I’m here.

  But I barely make it out of the foyer before she finds me. She’s in a silk robe the same color as her eyes, her long blond hair curling gently around her shoulders. She looks every inch the aging but still beautiful starlet. Of course she does. Appearances are important, after all…

  For a moment—just a moment—white-hot rage fills me. I want to scream in her face, want to shake her until she understands what she did to me. What she did to all three of us, simply because she didn’t want anything to mar her perfect Hollywood image.

  But what would be the point? It’s not like doing so will change her. It won’t change her or me and it sure as hell won’t change the past. So what’s the use?

  —

  “Oh, Veronica, you got here just in time! I made breakfast for us. Why don’t you come in and sit down?”

  Breakfast? She wants to feed me breakfast? My stomach rolls at the thought of any kind of food right now. “No, thanks, Mom. I’m not very hungry.”

  “But you have to eat something,” she tells me, her lips puckered up in the same pout that made her famous all those years ago. “It’s my birthday.” She looks me over and for the first time seems to notice what I’m wearing. “Oh, sweetie, aren’t you just the most darling thing! You were so anxious to get here to celebrate with me that you didn’t even bother to change out of your nightclothes. Did you oversleep? I have to admit, I wondered what was taking you so long.”

  Oh, shit. Today’s her actual birthday. Every year since my dad died we’ve spent the morning together. Usually I’m the one who makes breakfast for her, but it’s nearly eleven. She must have gotten tired of waiting for me. How could I have forgotten?

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I did oversleep. Still recovering from the party, I guess. It was so much fun, but it totally drained me.” I force a little grin. “Plus I think I drank too much. I had a headache most of yesterday.”

  She laughs then, a tinkling little sound that grates along my nerve endings. “No wonder you overslept. But that’s the mark of a good party, so you won’t hear any complaints from me about it!”

  She puts an arm around my waist and guides me toward the kitchen like she doesn’t have a care in the world. Like she doesn’t notice that I’m drained and fragile and so, so sad.

  Then again, in her defense, maybe she doesn’t notice. My mother isn’t exactly known for her great observation skills—especially when it comes to other people’s feelings.

  “I made waffles, since they’re your favorite. And fruit salad, with coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice. Oh, and bacon.” She giggles. “I figure if we’re cheating, we might as well go all the way. Right?”

  “Absolutely.” I drop a kiss on her cheek as I let her propel me toward the kitchen table. The fact that I manage to do it without her knowing that my skin is crawling just being in the same room with her right now is more a testament to her self-absorption than to my acting ability. After everything that happened with Ian yesterday, to say I’m worn out is an understatement. And when I’m like this, it’s so much harder to ignore the past. So much harder to just let it all go and focus on the now. “This looks amazing, but I wish you hadn’t gone to so much trouble.” Especially since I’m not particularly fond of waffles, no matter what she thinks.

  “Oh, it was no trouble at all. How often do I get to see my daughter so much over one long weekend, after all?” Her tinkling laugh rings through the room.

  Not often, but then, that’s how I’ve always liked it. How we’ve both liked it. It helps us maintain the illusion of closeness without actually being close.

  “Are you all right, darling?” she asks, pausing as she opens the refrigerator and looking back at me. “You look…peaked.”

  My acting must be worse than I thought if she got that while her back was turned, or she’s feeling a lot more sensitive than usual. I really hope it’s the former, because I can control that. If she’s having one of her rare “I’m-interested-in-your-life” days, then there’s no way I’m going to be able to do this today. Not when my stomach is still roiling from picking around in the past yesterday.

  And from trying to explain the inexplicable to Ian.

  When he’d calmed down—and it had taken a while—he’d demanded to know why I still had anything to do with her. Why I would throw her a birthday party and cater to her whims when what I should do is throw her out of this house and my life.

  I didn’t really have a reasonable answer to give him…and all these hours later, I still don’t. All I have is the truth. She’s my mother.

  Yes, when I was young, she did some really terrible things to me. Unforgivable things. But she was sick then, not really in touch with reality. Or at least, that’s what my father told me when he had her taken away. Institutionalized.

  He told me the same thing again when he let her come home nearly nine months later. That she’d been clinically depressed to the point of delusion and wasn’t responsible for what she’d done.

  It took me months, years even, but I finally managed to accept that he was right. After all, when people are physically sick, we don’t blame them for how the disease ravages their bodies. So how could I blame her when she’d spent close to a year in a mental hospital trying to get well? Just because we couldn’t see the disease, didn’t mean it wasn’t real.

  I figured, with what he knew—with what he did for a living—Ian would be the last person I had to explain that
to.

  “Sit down, darling,” my mother said as she carried the fruit salad to the table. “I’ve got this.”

  “I can help.” I go to the oven, take out the platter of waffles and bacon she has warming in there. “It’s your birthday.”

  “You really are the sweetest thing.” She pats my cheek before grabbing the carafe of juice off the counter. “Would you like coffee?”

  “ ‘Like’ is too mild a word for how I feel about coffee this morning.”

  She laughs. “I figured. That’s why I made a whole pot, just for you.”

  “Aren’t you having any?”

  “I think I’m going to stick with tea,” she says, holding up the small Limoges teapot she’d been using since I was a child. “Trying to flush out some of the alcohol from the last couple of nights; I went out to celebrate with some friends last night and the four of us went through three bottles of champagne. It was fun, but two nights in a row is a little much for me, I think.”

  “It’s a little much for anyone who isn’t twenty-one,” I tell her as I settle at the table. I try not to think about the fact that, just a few days ago, Ian was fucking me right here. “You know, maybe I’ll have tea, too.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! You’re still young. You can afford to indulge in a couple cups of coffee. It’s old women like me who need to be careful.”

  At that, my brows hit my hairline. Never in my entire life have I ever heard my mother refer to herself as old. In fact, from the time I turned sixteen, she’s talked about the fact that we look more like sisters than mother and daughter.

  My expression must give me away because she rolls her eyes at me, something else she never would have done even a few months ago as she’s convinced it causes wrinkles. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll be back to normal tomorrow. I guess I’m just feeling my age today.”

  “Fifty isn’t old,” I tell her, tongue firmly in cheek.

  “And it never will be,” she agrees with a laugh.

  We spend the first half of breakfast rehashing the party, as we always do. My mom loves to gossip over who was wearing what and who is sleeping with whom. I’m exhausted, but I try to keep up as my mom chatters on and on. Better to suffer through and get it all out now, than have to talk about everything again later. Still, the longer she prattles on, the harder it is to keep my eyes open.

  I pour myself a third cup of coffee, hoping it will help. I take a long sip, doing my best to look attentive, but she must notice because she stops mid-description of Cassidy Barber’s dress. “I’m sorry.” She puts her hand over mine. “Am I boring you, love?”

  I smother a yawn. “No, not at all. I just didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  And just like that, her eyes sharpen. “Were you with that writer?” she asks. “Ian Sharpe?”

  I’m tired enough that I don’t think before admitting, “I was, yes.”

  I expect her to be overjoyed—the lead actress hooking up with the esteemed writer weeks before the movie drops and Oscar noms come out? It’s a match made in publicity heaven. But she just sighs and looks concerned.

  “Oh, darling. Are you sure that’s wise?”

  “What do you mean? The movie’s been made for months, Mom. No one is going to think I slept with him for the part, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “Of course not! Anyone who thinks that is small-minded and petty and completely beneath your notice.”

  “As long as it’s not an Oscar judge.”

  She sighs again, even more heavily. “I was only trying to help, Veronica. But I understand if you need to be angry with me about it. Just like I’ll understand if you need to be angry with what I’m about to tell you.”

  Everything inside me freezes at the sadness in her voice. Someone who doesn’t know her might take it as genuine, but I can hear the manipulation in her voice. Can see it lurking in the depths of her eyes. Goddamn it.

  “I guess that depends on what you need to tell me, Mother.”

  “It’s about Ian.”

  “I figured as much.” There’s nothing she can tell me about Ian that I want to hear from her and part of me thinks I should just get up and walk out right now. And yet, experience has taught me that it’s better to hear her out than to try to avoid it. Otherwise, she’ll just keep dragging whatever she wants to say out again and again until I finally listen.

  “I’m so sorry to tell you this, but Ian isn’t what he seems.”

  I stifle another yawn against the back of my hand. God, I’m just so tired. Too tired to deal with her shit right now. “Oh?” I reply, a little more sarcastically than I intended. “He’s not an award-winning true-crime writer whose every book has been optioned for film?”

  “Of course he’s that. But…” She sighs. “Do you know what he’s working on now?”

  “I don’t know if he’s working on anything, actually. I mean, besides the Vanity Fair article.”

  “Oh, he’s working on something. It’s why he wanted to do the Vanity Fair article to begin with. Why he had his agent go after it months ago.”

  “I think you’re confused. They went to him and he had to work to fit it into his schedule.”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “He didn’t tell me anything. The editor of the piece told me that.”

  “Yeah, well, my sources tell me that’s not quite how it went down.” She picks up the coffee carafe, delicately refills my cup.

  “And what sources are those exactly?”

  “When I realized you were interested in him, I asked around.”

  “When exactly did you realize that? We haven’t even spoken about him, Mom.”

  “I’m your mother, Veronica. We don’t have to speak about a man for me to know when you’re interested in him. And considering who you are—and who he is—it seemed better to make sure his interest in you was real and not because of some hidden agenda.”

  My coffee cup slips from my suddenly clumsy fingers, hits the table with a bang and spills everywhere. I start to get up to get a towel, but my foot catches on the leg of my chair and I stumble a little. “Don’t worry about it,” my mom says, and she’s already across the kitchen, pulling a rag from the towel drawer. “I’ve got it.”

  I watch in silence as she cleans up my mess, my thoughts a little muddy as I try to figure out exactly what’s going on here. After she’s done wiping up the coffee, she crosses back to the sink and rings out the wet rag. Then she grabs a folder from the other counter and carries it slowly back to the table.

  “I didn’t want you to have to see this,” she says as she slides it across the wood toward me.

  I make no move to take it. “What’s in it?”

  “Information about Ian’s latest project. He’s already sold it—in fact, according to Publisher’s Marketplace, he got a major deal for it.”

  “A major deal?”

  “More than five hundred thousand dollars.”

  “So? He’s a major author. That doesn’t seem out of the realm for someone whose books sell worldwide and regularly get optioned for film.” I stifle another yawn.

  “No, but maybe it will strike you as strange when I tell you what the book is on.”

  She wants me to ask. I can see it in her eyes, in the way she’s poised like a jungle cat ready to pounce. So I don’t. Instead, I deliberately wait her out.

  It doesn’t take long. Big surprise. “He’s writing about the Red Ribbon Strangler, Veronica.”

  The name sounds vaguely familiar, but…“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  “It should,” she answers, reaching for the folder and flipping it open. “This is him.”

  I glance down at the picture more to make her happy than because I have any interest in it, but the second I see it, everything inside of me freezes. “That’s…”

  “Yes, it’s William Vargas. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”

  Shock holds me in place, makes my thoughts even more sluggish. “I don’t
understand.” And yet I can’t look away from the picture—or from my mom’s bright red fingernail pointing straight at the man who spent so many months molesting me. Raping me.

  “Oh, Veronica.” She looks so sad as she shakes her head. “Everyone knows Ian Sharpe is the best at what he does. So what do you think the odds are that he’s writing this book about this man, and doesn’t have a clue who he is to you? His name might be different now—Liam Brogan not William Vargas—but in today’s age? It can’t be that hard to trace an alias, especially if you’re as good at what you do as Ian is. He knew, sweetheart. He wanted that interview with you, wanted to meet you, because he wanted to talk to you about what happened when you were young. He wanted to find out exactly what happened between you and William Vargas.”

  “No.” I push back from the table, climb to my feet. But I stumble again, nearly fall. I catch myself on the edge of the table, but can barely hold myself up. The room is spinning around me. “That’s not true. That’s not…”

  “I’m so sorry, darling.” My mother is on my side of the table in seconds, pulling me into her arms. “I’m so sorry he hurt you.”

  I sag against her, too tired and worn down to do anything else. There’s a part of my brain that keeps telling me Ian wouldn’t do this. That he wouldn’t lie to me, wouldn’t use me as research for his book. Not when he held me so tenderly last night. Not when he took such good care of me.

  I reach for the folder, scatter the contents drunkenly across the table. There’s not much there. Just the announcement of the book deal, several pictures of Liam Brogan who is obviously William Vargas, pictures of a few of his blond-haired, blue-eyed victims. Young girls, all of them, many of whom looked an awful lot like I did when I was young. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

  “I’m going to be sick,” I say as I lurch away from my mother and half-stagger, half-run across the kitchen to the sink. I barely make it in time.

  My mom stands right there through it all, rubbing a soothing hand up and down my back. When it’s finally over—when I have nothing left to vomit up—she gets me a glass of water. Helps me rinse my mouth.