Girl of Lies (30 page)

“Really?” Brianna said. “How old were you?”

“Sixteen.”

“You must have been
really
good, why didn’t you go through the auditions?”

Adelina froze, her heart suddenly pounding. Richard’s eyes had darted to her, for just a second, then back to the Colonel. He was listening. And he’d warned her. More than once. She had a carefully reconstructed history, which started with an earlier birthdate.

“Oh,” she said, trying to cover with a lie. “My father passed away, and my um, mom, wanted me to come back to Calella…”

She trailed off, and Brianna said, “Oh, I’m so sorry about your father. I—weren’t you working at your father’s shop when you met Richard?”

A knock on the door startled Adelina. “Excuse me,” she said, standing up and walking quickly to the door.

Two men stood there. The first—short, balding, with a ruddy, freckled complexion, wore a rumpled suit. Next to him stood a much taller and younger man with dark hair and green eyes. The tall man wore an impeccably tailored suit.

“Welcome…” Adelina said, trailing off.

Richard came up behind her, gripping her upper arm in his hand. Tightly. Too tightly, it hurt.

“Good evening, gentlemen. Come in.” He released the pressure on her arm quickly. It had merely been a reminder. To watch herself.

Thompson presented the two men. “Adelina, Colonel and Mrs. Rainsley, may I present Prince George-Phillip, the Duke of Kent. Prince George-Phillip is with the British Foreign Service. And also this is Leslie Collins. He’s a good friend of mine who did some accounting work for the US Embassy in Islamabad when I was there.”

Colonel Rainsley and his wife stood.

“Pleasure to meet you, sir,” the Colonel said, shaking George-Phillip’s hand. Adelina watched as the two of them shook hands, each taking the measure of the other and liking what they saw. George-Phillip was clearly young, in his early twenties, but he had the confidence and bearing of a much older man.

George-Phillip turned to Adelina, his eyes widening a bit. He took her hand and bent over it with a quick kiss. “A pleasure, madam.” Colonel Rainsley frowned at the gesture, then frowned even more when George-Phillip turned toward Brianna Rainsley and did the same.

Before they were able to ask for drinks or anyone returned to their seat, the doorbell rang. A moment later, the final guests were admitted. Richard introduced them.

“May I present Prince Roshan al Saud? And his wife Myriam?”

Prince Roshan was in his early thirties. He wore a conservative grey suit with a muted green tie. His wife, Myriam, wore a smart looking red dress.

“If you would like, we can all move to the dining room,” Adelina said.

Five minutes later, the assembled company had taken their seats. Richard sat at the head of the table, of course, and Adelina at the foot. To Richard’s right, Prince Roshan. Prince George-Phillip was to Adelina’s right. Roshan had been seated in the place of honor by Richard primarily by virtue of his proximity to the throne of his country: Roshan was the Saudi Arabian king’s son. George-Phillip was a cousin—and a fairly distant one at that—to England’s Queen Elizabeth.

To Adelina’s left sat Colonel Rainsley, and Leslie Collins was to Richard’s left. The two wives, Myriam and Brianna, were in the middle of the table.

Moments after they were seated, a server poured wine around the table.

“Prince Roshan,” Adelina said, “would you prefer water or soda in respect to your faith?”

“Wine, please, madam. I am, of course, devout to Mohammed’s teachings, but I also live in the modern world.” He paused for a moment, and said, “Water for Myriam, though.”

“Of course,” Adelina replied as smoothly as possible. Roshan was a pig just like her husband. The drinks were poured as Collins, Roshan and Richard began to discuss political developments in Soviet occupied Afghanistan.

“I’m afraid I’m somewhat at a loss with regards to the minutiae of Afghanistan,” Prince George-Phillip said in an aside to Adelina.

“You’re very young for a Foreign Service officer,” she replied. “And a Duke at that.”

George-Phillip shrugged, a self-deprecating motion. “I achieved my seat through no skills of my own, of course—my father was killed in a car accident when I was seventeen.”

“My condolences,” Colonel Rainsley said. “Do you plan to continue his work?”

George-Phillip scoffed. “As head of his private club? Hardly. I have two more years to my Foreign Service commitment, then it’s Sandhurst for me.” Sandhurst was the Royal Military College.

Rainsley said, “Are you considering the military as a career?”

“I am, Colonel.”

“You could do worse.”

“I believe you’re correct. Plus—let me be frank—my father did nothing to bring honor to our family or country. I feel it’s my role to do my part.”

At the other end of the table, the three men, Richard, Collins and Prince Roshan, were speaking in low voices. Collins said something that caused the other two men to chuckle.

Adelina turned to Rainsley. “Richard tells me you are considering a run for the Senate, Colonel?”

“Not considering, ma’am. I’ve made the decision.”

“Please, call me Adelina.”

“With pleasure. I’m Chuck.” He smiled at her. Across the table and in the middle, Brianna Rainsley frowned at her husband.

“What are you plans for the Senate?” George-Phillip asked.

“I’ll tell you. I watched my men get butchered in Beirut six months ago, and there was nothing I could do about it, because of bullheaded, incompetent orders engineered directly out of the White House. I plan to make that my first priority.”

As he spoke the words, Rainsley’s eyes were bright. He was a man on a mission.

Adelina said, “I think that’s admirable.”

“Not admirable, Adelina, just my duty as an officer to take care of my men.”

George-Phillip leaned forward and said, “Would that all officers felt the same, Colonel.” Then he did something odd. At the opposite end of the table, Leslie Collins said in a low tone the name of a place—Wakan or Wack Hand or something like that, his voice at a low drone. George-Phillip stiffened just a little at the word, and his eyes narrowed slightly.

Adelina tilted her head. Something was going on there, but she didn’t know what. She wondered if it was something she could use against her husband.

“The thing was, Chrysanthemum was a basket case. We would date a month, and she’d break it off. No explanation. She’d make crazy demands. I had to show my love by skipping a class. Or kissing her in front of the Cathedral. Or… just… crazy stuff. She needed help.”

Sister Kiara said, “Why do you think that was?”

Jessica shrugged. “Drugs. She was abused. Broken home. Who the hell knows?”

Kiara shook her head. “How did she die, Jessica?”

“Last June and July she’d gone off the edge. Really crazy stuff, and in July I broke up with her. I just couldn’t take it any more, you know? I loved her, but…love can only go so far. Love can’t make someone not crazy.” Jessica sighed and leaned forward, resting her head on her hands.

“It was my fault,” she said.

“No, Jessica. Chrys’s mental health—whatever was going on with her isn’t your fault. She made choices. We all do.”

Jessica shook her head. “Yeah, but if I’d been there for her. I don’t know. I wasn’t. And in August, I went to stay with Carrie and Ray in Washington, along with Sarah. And… we got in the accident. Sarah was in the hospital, Ray died. I was out there for a long time.”

She sniffed. “Chrys left me a message. Saying she was afraid she was going to hurt herself. She begged me to call her back. And… I didn’t get the message. For days. When I got back to San Francisco she was dead.”

Kiara closed her eyes. Then she whispered, “What happened to her?”

“Overdose,” Jessica said. “It was intentional. She took a whole bottle of pills and drank it down with a bottle of vodka.”

Kiara shook her head. “I’m so sorry.”

Jessica remembered the blinding pain. She’d come home from Chrys’s house that night, her first night back in San Francisco. Her father had left her a note. He’d be out, probably all night, and there was forty dollars to order a pizza or whatever.

She paid a homeless man ten dollars to buy her a bottle of vodka and took it back to her room, where she drank herself to insensibility.

The next weeks were the darkest she could remember in her life. Her father was never home, or when he was, he locked himself in his office. They ate three meals together in as many weeks. She went to school, barely, but racked up an impressive number of detentions, stopping just short of what might result in a phone call to her father.

The house was deadly empty. They’d lived in San Francisco full time since she was six years old, when her father retired from the Foreign Service. The house had always been full of people—her father and mother, Carrie, Alexandra, Sarah, Andrea. But slowly they’d faded away. Carrie went away to college. Andrea went to live in Spain. Then Alexandra left for Columbia. For two years it had been just the twins and their parents, and that seemed awfully quiet.

But it was nothing like the tomb the house had become now. Sarah was in Bethesda, Maryland, staying with Carrie as they both recovered from the mental and physical injuries of the accident that had killed Carrie’s husband. Her mother had stayed on the east coast, leaving it to Richard Thompson to watch out for Jessica.

What could happen, after all? Jessica had it together. She was the goody-two-shoes. She had perfect grades. She watched in derision as her sister Sarah got in scrape after scrape. She was better than that.

Jessica came and went to and from that tomb of a house every day. She called her mother twice a week to let her know she was doing fine, even though it was a lie. She went to school when she had to, she ate when she had to, and she sank into a dull but terrifying depression, her only company the sound of echoes as she walked through the house.

The week after Thanksgiving, she went out for the first time since Chrysanthemum’s death. A party. Mick Babcock was hosting it, which meant it would be a drunken bash, but she was on the hunt for something more. She wanted to be held. She wanted to be touched. Chrysanthemum’s death had left her disastrously lonely. Jessica Thompson wandered into that party a disaster waiting to happen.

Forty minutes after her arrival, she found herself sitting on a couch next to Rob Searle, another senior. Rob had shoulder length hair, long in the front and swept back with gel like a pop star, and a ridiculous peach fuzz mustache. She’d drunk three glasses of vodka-laced punch and smoked a joint, and was feeling almost giddy. That’s when he said, “I think we’ve got something, babe,” and grabbed her, bringing his lips down on hers.

Jessica wriggled her arms and legs in shock for just a moment. Then her hand closed on an irregularly shaped object on the table. A
fork.

In a swift motion, she clenched the fork in her fist and swung it, stabbing Rob in the back.

He screamed, jerking back from her, his eyes wide.

“The fuck! Did you just fucking stab me?”

She stood up, her whole body swaying, and said, “Keep your hands to yourself.”

“Jesus Christ, and I thought we had something. Agggh, that hurts!” He bent, reaching over his shoulder, trying to remove the fork from his back. It had penetrated his shirt, driven right through, and opened up a wound in his shoulder that was going to hurt a lot worse when he sobered up.

“Dude, what the fuck happened to you?” It was their host, Mick.

“Bitch stabbed me,” Rob said. Then he burst out laughing. Mick let out a loud belly laugh, then reached around and grabbed the fork. A little bit of blood spattered when he pulled it out, and Jessica stood and backed away.

“Fucker,” she muttered. Rob just laughed more. She rolled her eyes and walked away. As she headed for the door, Marion Chen blocked her way.

Marion was a pretty girl. Or used to be. She’d have been a senior in high school if she hadn’t dropped out in September. Now she worked waiting tables at the Fisherman’s Wharf and was saving money to take her GED and start college. Jessica knew her. Or knew
of
her rather—they hadn’t moved in the same circles when Marion was still in school, except the last couple of months of junior year.

Marion didn’t look so good now. She’d always been pretty, but slightly overweight, at least by unrealistic American magazine standards. Now, the Korean-American girl’s face had leaned out, her cheeks slightly concave. Dark circles bordered the bottom of her hollow eyes.

“Jessica.” Marion crossed her arms over her chest like a couple of drumsticks.

“Hey, Marion. You doing okay?”

Marion’s eyes narrowed. “What the fuck are you asking that for?”

“Just curiosity,” Jessica said. “Hadn’t seen you in a while.”
Not to mention, you look like a fucking concentration camp victim.

“Yeah, I’m doing fine.”

“I’m glad,” Jessica said. She started to steer around Marion.

“Hey,” Marion said. “I gotta ask you something.”

Jessica sighed. This party was a bust. She should just go home. “What?”

“Chrysanthemum told me she kept trying to call you, and you wouldn’t answer. She was all fucking broken up about it. That was right before she offed herself. Is it true?”

Jessica closed her eyes. And she couldn’t control it, even though she wanted to. A tear ran down her face. “Yeah, it’s true. I was in a bad car accident, and my brother-in-law died, and my twin was in the hospital for months, and I didn’t return her call for a couple days. Fucking sue me.”

Marion winced. “Jesus. That’s the fucking breaks. Sorry.”

“Shit,” Jessica said. “Just… whatever. Anything else?”

Marion shook her head. “You want to blow this place? Let’s go get high.”

Jessica blinked. Was Marion serious? She looked at Marion’s full lips, at her pretty, high cheekbones, and said, “Yeah, let’s go.”