Fade to Black (47 page)

And Manny, who has a whole two-room suite with a bath in a corner of the second floor …

And his grandmother, who’s perfectly content in the small efficiency apartment above the garage, overlooking the large vegetable garden she planted this summer.

“Is he still sleeping?” Mallory asks Harper, who nods knowing, of course, who she means.

“I’m going to wake him when I go inside. We’re going fishing. I don’t suppose you feel like coming along?”

She considers it. She’s still jet lagged, having flown in from the premiere in L.A. just last night.

But fishing with Harper and Manny …

That sounds like heaven.

“I’d love to come,” she tells him.

“Good. I’ll go get Manny moving and put the coffee into a thermos.”

She smiles, watching him head toward the house.

Then she turns back to the article, scanning the part that discusses Martin de Lisser’s past film credits, and her own.

…
We can only wonder what is next for this multifaceted actress who has proven with this comeback that she is well worth the reported thirteen-million-dollars she was paid for this film …

“Twelve million,” she murmurs, shaking her head.

Enough to buy the house …

And pay for Gretchen’s plastic surgery …

And buy a small condo in Chicago to ensure that Becky O’Neal will never be forced to live on the streets again.

She knows that isn’t what her mother had had in mind, but it’s the best she could do for a woman who wasn’t there when she should have been.

Maybe someday Mallory will change her mind, will be able to give Becky O’Neal more than a roof over her head and small monthly checks to cover her living expenses.

And maybe not.

She certainly won’t change her mind about Brawley Johnson. The big oaf had the gall to come begging for another chance at a relationship—and for money. Seemed he’d dug himself in a little too deep with his credit cards. And according to him, she owed him, after the way she’d dropped him when she made it big.

She sighs and turns away from the ocean, begins to walk slowly toward the big gray house in the distance.

It’s a far cry from the Malibu mansion she had once called home.

Different, too, from the small white Cape Cod tucked at the end of Green Garden Way.

She had driven by the place a few weeks ago, feeling nostalgic. A young family is living there now, and she was happy to see the place looking lived-in, the front yard littered with tricycles and sand shovels and toy trucks.

As for the house next door …

There was a for sale sign on the lawn.

Harper, who had bumped into Pamela Minelli one day in town, had told Mallory that she and her children were moving up to Maine, where her parents have a house. She filed for divorce from Frank shortly after he was released from prison, and he had moved to California to live again with his brother.

Mallory has almost, but not quite, forgiven him for what he did to her that night. After all, if it hadn’t been for him, she might still be living alone behind tightly drawn blinds, constantly looking over her shoulder.

Thankfully, those haunted days as Elizabeth Baxter are over.

And so is Mallory Eden’s career.

She did the de Lisser film because she had to. Because twelve million dollars was too much money to turn down.

It was enough, with careful investing, to ensure a sizable monthly income so that she will never have to work again.

Manny’s college education is paid for …

As is the Hawaiian honeymoon she and Harper will take next month, after they are quietly married by the justice of the peace with only Manny as a witness.

That seems fitting, that it will be just the three of them, since his adoption will become legal that same day.

Mallory gives the newspaper article one last glance as she reaches the screen door at the back of the house.

She’s Back, and Better Than Ever Before

Oh, well.

She tucks the paper under her arm.

They’ll figure out soon enough that the de Lisser film was her swan song …

Her way of letting go of one dream to make way for another.

Enter the thrilling world of Wendy Corsi Staub

Watch for

The Good Sister

Launching a new series

Fall 2013

And keep reading for an excerpt from Nightwatcher

The first book in her latest trilogy

Nightwatcher—September 2012

Sleepwalker—October 2012

Shadowkiller—February 2013

September 10, 2001
New York City
7:19
P.M.

A
llison Taylor has lived in Manhattan for three years now.

That’s long enough to know that the odds are stacked against finding a taxi at the rainy tail end of rush hour—especially here, a stone’s throw from the Bryant Park tents in the midst of Fashion Week.

Yet she perches beneath a soggy umbrella on the curb at the corner of Forty-second and Fifth, searching the sea of oncoming yellow cabs, hoping to find an on-duty/unoccupied dome light.

Unlikely, yes.

But
impossible
? The word is overused, in her opinion. If she weren’t the kind of woman who stubbornly challenges anything others might deem impossible, then she wouldn’t be here in New York in the first place.

How many people back in her tiny Midwestern hometown told her it would be impossible for a girl like her to merely survive the big, cruel city, let alone succeed in the glamorous, cutthroat fashion publishing industry?

A girl like her…

Impoverished, from a broken home with a suicidal drug addict for a mother. A girl who never had a chance—but took one anyway.

And just look at me now.

After putting herself through the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and working her way from an unpaid post-college internship at Condé Nast on up through the editorial ranks at
7th Avenue
magazine, Allison finally loves her life—cab shortages, rainy days, and all.

Sometimes, she allows herself to fantasize about going back to Centerfield to show them all how wrong they were. The neighbors, the teachers, the pursed-lipped church ladies, the mean girls at school and their meaner mothers—everyone who ever looked at her with scorn or even pity; everyone who ever whispered behind her back.

They didn’t understand about Mom—about how much she loved Allison, how hard she tried, when she wasn’t high, to be a good mother. Only the one girl Allison considered a true friend, her next-door neighbor Tammy Connolly, seemed to understand. She, too, had a single mom for whom the towns people had disdain. Tammy’s mother was a brassy blonde whose skirts were too short, whose perfume was too strong, whose voice was too loud.

Tammy had her own cross to bear, as the church ladies would say. Everyone did. Mom was Allison’s—hers alone—and she dealt with it pretty much single-handedly until the day it ceased to exist.

But going back to Centerfield—even to have the last laugh—would mean facing memories. And who needs those?

“Memories are good for nothin’,” Mom used to say, after Allison’s father left them. “It’s better to just forget about all the things you can’t change.”

True—but Mom couldn’t seem to change what was happening to them in the present—or what the future might hold.

“Weakness is my weakness,” Brenda once told a drug counselor. Allison overheard, and those pathetic words made her furious, even then.

Now Mom, too, is in the past.

Yes. Always better to forget.

Anyway, even if Allison wanted to revisit Center-field, the town is truly the middle of nowhere: a good thirty miles from the nearest dive motel and at least three or four times as far from any semi-decent hotel.

Sometimes, though, she pictures herself doing it: flying to Omaha, renting a car, driving out across miles of nothing to…

More nothing.

Her one friend, Tammy, moved away long before Mom died seven years ago, and of course, Dad had left years before that, when she was nine.

Allison remembers the morning she woke up and went running to the kitchen to tell her mother that she’d dreamed she had a sister. She was certain it meant that her mom was going to have another baby.

But that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. In the kitchen, she found the note her father had left.

Can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry. Good-bye.

God only knows where he wound up. Allison’s only sibling, her half brother, Brett, wanted to find him for her sake after Mom died.

“Well, if you do, I don’t want to hear about it. I never want to hear his name again,” she said when her brother brought it up at the funeral.

It was the same thing her mother had told her after her father left. Mom considered Allison’s deadbeat dad good for nothin’—just like memories. True as that might have been, Allison couldn’t stand the way the towns people whispered about her father running off.

The best thing about living in New York is the live-and-let-live attitude. Everyone is free to do his or her own thing; no one judges or even pays much attention to anyone else. For Allison, after eighteen years of small-town living and a couple more in college housing, anonymity is a beautiful thing. Certainly well worth every moment of urban inconvenience.

She surveys the traffic-clogged avenue through a veil of drenching rain, thinking she should probably just take the subway down to the Marc Jacobs show at the Pier. It’s cheaper, arguably faster, and more reliable than finding a cab.

But she’s wearing a brand-new pair of Gallianos, and her feet—after four straight days of runway shows and parties—are killing her. No, she doesn’t feel up to walking to Grand Central and then through the tunnels at Union Square to transfer to the crosstown line, much less negotiating all those station stairs on both ends.

Not that she much likes standing here in the deluge, vainly waiting for a cab, but…

Lesser of the evils, right?

Maybe not. She jumps back as a passing panel truck sends a wave of gray-brown gutter water over the curb.

“Dammit!” Allison looks down at her soaked shoes—and then up again, just in time to see a yellow cab pulling over for the trench-coated, briefcase-carrying man who just strode past her, taxi-hailing arm in the air.

“Hey!” she calls, and he glances back over his shoulder. “I’ve been standing here for twenty minutes!”

More like five, but that’s beside the point. She was here first. That’s her cab.

Okay, in the grand scheme of Manhattan life, maybe that’s not quite how it works.

Maybe it’s more …
if you snooze, you lose
.

And I snoozed.

Still…

She’s in a fighting mood. The Jacobs show is huge. Everyone who’s anyone in the industry will be there. This is her first year as—well, maybe not a Somebody, but no longer a Nobody.

There’s a seat for her alongside the runway—well, maybe not
right
alongside it, but somewhere—and she has to get to the Pier.
Now
.

She fully expects the businessman to ignore her. But his eyes flick up and down, taking in her long, blond-streaked hair, long legs, and short pink skirt. Yeah—he’s totally checking her out.

She’s used to that reaction from men on the street.

Men anywhere, really. Even back home in Center-field, when she was scarcely more than a kid—and still a brunette—Allison attracted her share of male attention, most of it unwanted.

But as a grown woman in the big city, she’s learned to use it to her advantage on certain occasions.

Oh hell … the truth is, she made the most of it even back in Nebraska. But she doesn’t let herself think about that.

Memories are good for nothin’, Allison. Don’t you ever forget it.

No, Mom. I won’t. I’ll never forget it.

“Where are you headed?” The man reaches back to open the car door, his gaze still fixed on her.

“Pier 54. It’s on the river at—“

“I know where it is. Go ahead. Get in.”

She hesitates only a split second before hurrying over to the cab, quickly folding her umbrella, and slipping past the man—a total stranger, she reminds herself—into the backseat.

A stranger. So? The city is full of strangers. That’s why she moved here, leaving behind a town populated by know-it-all busybodies.

Anyway, it’s not the middle of the night, and the driver is here, and what’s going to happen?

You’re going to make it to the Marc Jacobs show, something you’ve been waiting for all summer.

After the show there’s an after-party to launch Ja-cobs’s new signature fragrance. It’s the hottest ticket in town tonight, and Allison Taylor is invited.

No way is she going to miss this—or arrive looking like a drowned rat.

She puts her dripping umbrella on the floor as the stranger climbs in after her and closes the door.

“I’m going to Brooklyn—take the Williamsburg Bridge,” he tells the driver, “but first she needs to get off at Thirteenth and West.”

“ Wait —that ‘s
way
out of your way,” Allison protests.

“It’s okay. You’re obviously in a hurry.”

“No, I know, but…” Jacobs is notorious for starting late. She can wait for another cab.

“It’s fine.”

“Never mind,” she says, unsettled by this stranger’s willingness to accommodate her. What, she wonders uneasily, does he expect in return? “Listen, I’ll just—”