Endless Fear (23 page)

At a loss for words, April bit into the turkey and cheese, but the unexpected lump in her throat made swallowing impossible.

Her stepmother continued. “I’m not expectin' instant approval. But, I love your daddy very much. I hope someday you and I might be friends—for the sakes of the loved ones we share.”

It was quite a speech, April allowed, one she would dearly love to believe. However, at this stage, she didn’t trust her own judgment enough to be certain she wasn’t being naively drawn into the wrong web. Every internal sensor she owned had to be set on alert and kept there until her memory block was penetrated. The incidents in the garage, the basement, and the wine cellar could not be shrugged off. Someone had been trying to get rid of her.

At the moment, all she could offer Cynthia was a nod and a smile.

“
Sugah, might I ask you a large favor?”

A favor? Was that what this was all about, Cynthia wanting something from her? There was an odd twitch in her stomach. Disappointment? “What favor?”

“
Please don’t be angry, hon. March told me you’d found some old poems?”

“
What about them?” She braced herself for whatever was coming.

“
I’m askin’ you not to mention them to anyone else. If certain people—like your daddy—found out about ‘em, they’d be ever so hurt.”

“
You know who wrote those poems, don’t you?”

Cynthia’s hand went for the missing cross again, came up empty again, and went instead to her dark brown hair. She loosened a pin from her chignon, reanchored it, then bent her head and stared at her folded hands. “Yes, yes, I do know who authored that dreadful prose.” There was a genuine touch of shame in her voice.

April’s pulse surged unsteadily. “Tell me.”

Her stepmother’s head lifted with aching slowness until their eyes were on a level. “Only if you promise to forget they ever existed.”

Put like that, April knew it was a promise she couldn’t make, let alone keep. However, she could agree not to mention the poems again to another soul. “I can promise that daddy will never learn of their existence from me.”

Cynthia studied her face for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I believe I can trust you.”

April’s mouth felt as dry as ashes. Somehow she managed to ask, “Which one of the twins wrote them?”

Chapter Thirteen

Cynthia’s deep set eyes widened. “So, you know that much, do you?”

And more, April thought, but didn’t say it. “Yes, I know that much.”

“
Then may I assume you also know a little somethin’ about your mama?”

April nodded. The dryness in her mouth worsened. “I won’t be shocked by whatever you have to tell me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

For a long moment, Cynthia studied her with appraising eyes. “No, I don’t suppose you would after all the truths you’ve had to face. I was terribly wrong to ask you to lie to July about the sanitarium. My reasons were purely selfish, and considerin’ my background, not well thought out, but I swear I won’t put that kind of burden on you again.”

“
Thank you.” April took a swallow of water from the glass on her bed tray, then tried to steer Cynthia back to the subject. “About the poems….”

“
Before I explain about those, I think there are a few other things that need clarifyin’.” She leaned into the chair’s back, locked her arms across her chest, and sighed. “My sister Davina had been friends with your mama in the years before Lily became famous. They stayed close even afterward, and when Lily realized the nature of her illness, Davina was one of the few people told the truth. That’s how I came to be at Calendar House, through Davina’s recommendation. At the time, I’d been widowed less than a year—my boys were three-years-old—and I’d nearly depleted the piddly insurance compensation awarded by their father’s death. I was desperate for anythin’ that would give the boys and myself a home.”

“
I know all that.” Impatience slithered through April and into her voice.

Cynthia unlocked her arms, hunkered forward and swiped her palms on her red skirt. “And I dare say you believed I was only your mama’s social secretary.”

Taking a bite of potato salad, April nodded.

“
Well, it wasn’t the whole truth.”

April continued chewing, grateful that the food gave her an excuse not to talk.

“
I was, in fact, a registered nurse hired to look after Lily and later, you.”

Surprise brought April’s full attention to the woman seated across from her. A registered nurse? How easily the pieces of a puzzle fell into place when you held the right framework. She’d been a fool not to see it herself considering how often in the past few weeks she’d been subjected to Cynthia’s gentle nursing, her knowledge of first aid.

And a woman with Lily’s debilitating illness, a woman emotionally incapable of caring for her child had definitely needed the services of a nurse. Thinking back, April realized what a good cover the social secretary guise had been. Lily hadn’t needed constant watching or nursing, but she had thrown loads of parties, sent tons of invitations and answered all fan letters.

She finished the bite of salad without tasting it. How strange it felt to view someone in a whole new light, to have everything you thought you knew about them wiped away in one sweep. “I didn’t know.”

“
Few did, hon. The greatest role your mama ever played was pretendin’ she’d chosen to retire at the peak of her success rather than fade into obscurity portraying agin’ matriarchs as other film legends had. It couldn’t‘ve been easy—makin’ like Farraday Island was her idea of heaven on earth when it must’ve felt like a prison, one she couldn’t even fake the courage to escape. Eventually, it got to the point where she couldn’t step outside the door. Do you remember?”

April nodded. The twinge of sympathy she’d felt for her mother the other day in the attic came again, harder. “I’m only starting to appreciate the horror of it. Do you know how restrictive even a house this size would seem?”

Cynthia nodded. Her smile was mirthless. “It was why both wings of the house were kept open, although there was no need for all that space. And, Lordy, how she came to resent others’ ability to come and go as they pleased. I will give her credit though—she was sly enough not to take her anger at her sickness out on her friends. They wouldn’t have returned. Instead, Lily vented her spleen on you and me.”

She reached to touch April. April flinched and Cynthia pulled back. Lacing her fingers together, she laid them in her lap. “Oh, how I pitied you. I was an adult with some good ole Southern steel in my spine. Your mama couldn’t bend, much less break me, but you were a different matter, sugah.”

Anger as old as her childhood and as fresh as her memories flooded through April, washing away every ounce of compassion. Why didn’t realizing her mother was ill alleviate the impotent rage she felt whenever she thought about the way Lily had treated her? Her stomach contracted. The savory aromas rising from the food on the bed tray suddenly sickened her. April grimaced, and attempted to lift the tray from her lap.

Leaping to her aid, Cynthia placed the tray on the dresser, then returned to the chair. This time there was no hesitancy when she reached for April’s hand, and April made no attempt to pull free from the comforting touch. The three people she loved best in the world adored this woman. So why hadn’t she even looked for any redeeming quality in Cynthia, instead of automatically condemning her like some jealous fourteen-year-old who'd lost her father to his new wife…?

The thought gave April serious pause, and as she studied Cynthia’s concerned expression, she realized her stepmother wasn’t solely responsible for their getting off on the wrong foot. She also had been jealous, jealous of all the yeas Cynthia had had with her father and Spencer. Years she could never retrieve.

Cynthia said, “I can only guess at the emotional scars your mama inflicted on you, but surely in therapy you discovered what a sick woman she was?”

Until this moment, she had discussed this aspect of her past with no one but Dr. Merritt. The thought of opening herself up to someone else felt alien, and yet the time seemed right. “I tried to be so good, to do everything she wanted me to do, thinking that would make her love me. But I was never quite good enough, or smart enough, or pretty enough.”

“
Sugah, you’re wrong. You succeeded and then some. That was the problem. Lily didn’t just suffer from agoraphobia you know; she also had the actor’s disease: fear of growin’ old. To Lily, every candle on your birthday cake was like a nail in her coffin, an annual party in honor of her dead reign as queen of the cinema. As you entered your teens and your potential beauty began to emerge, Lily grew obsessively jealous of you. Why do you think she insisted you wear those silly clothes that were years too young for you?”

And undermined my confidence at every turn? And brainwashed me into thinking you—who had probably changed my diapers and rocked me to sleep—were worthy of nothing but my scorn?
April stung with self-contempt.

“
Don’t blame yourself, hon. Can’t do anythin’ but pity an actress who believes she’ll forever be able to play ingénues.” Cynthia patted her hand, then brushed an errant strand of hair from April’s eyes. “Once, I actually screwed up the courage to confront your daddy about the way she was treatin’ you, but he—well, you know how he is. He spent every possible minute in that workshop of his. In his own way, he was in as severe a state of denial as Lily.”

For some unfathomable reason, April couldn’t stir up any anger at her father. Perhaps because he’d been as much a victim as she, or perhaps because even in his normal preoccupied state, he’d always managed to convey his love for her. Tears stung the back of her eyes, but she willed them not to fall.

“
August has lived to regret his inaction more than you know, hon. In one fell swoop, he lost both Lily and you. He blames himself for your illness. And deep down inside I can’t say he’s wrong. Perhaps you might have withstood the shock of your mama’s death if you’d had your daddy to lean on.”

April felt the heat drain from her face. If she’d killed Lily, all the support in the world wouldn’t have helped. She sank back on her pillows and stared at the ceiling. She could hardly tell Cynthia that. However, if she kept on indulging this new found vulnerability she might divulge more than was wise. “Could we get back to the poems?”

“
Certainly, I didn’t mean to get so carried away.” Cynthia sounded hurt.

April instantly regretted her bluntness and the necessity of it, but offered no excuses or apologies. She didn’t dare.

Her stepmother was once again seeking and not finding the gold cross. More than ever, it struck April that she relied on the thing for emotional support.

Twin dots of color stained Cynthia’s cheeks. “Agoraphobia is extremely destructive on a person’s self-confidence. And to that Lily’s fear of agin’ and you’ve got trouble in capital letters. Lily needed constant reassurance of her attractiveness to the opposite sex. At first she encouraged the flirting of her friends’ husbands, but then a couple of the women refused invitations to other parties and she smartened up.

“
She turned her attention to the men who did the maintenance work Jesse Winston couldn’t handle, or the appliance repairmen, and I had my suspicions about a couple of your father’s business associates. I don’t know how many of these flirtations went beyond the battin’ eyelashes stage. I can only speak of one such case with any authority.”

The way she said that, April knew she meant one of the twins. Her heart crawled into her throat and dread pressed in on her.

Gazing at the floor, Cynthia seemed to be speaking to herself. Resentment and pain vied for dominance in her deep set gray eyes. “He was only eighteen-years-old. What young man at that age wouldn’t be flattered by the attentions of a beautiful older woman? A movie star, no less! Poor Thane, he never knew what hit him.”

Thane, not Spencer. Oddly, knowing the truth did nothing to ease the tightness in April’s stomach. After the memory of Spencer’s betrayal with Lily, learning he hadn’t written the poems felt anticlimactic.

Unexpectedly, Cynthia laughed, a nervous laugh. “Well, you read those sappy poems. I don’t need to tell you how hard Thane fell. But after a few weeks of thinkin’ with the wrong end of his anatomy, he realized how much August would be hurt by his actions. It shamed him back to his senses. Lily was furious enough to smack him. The ring she was wearing left a tiny crescent shaped scar near his left eye—a permanent reminder of the harm lust can inflict.”

“
Did you know about the affair while it was going on?”

“
No. Thane told me about it afterward.”