Tempting Fate (22 page)

“Gambling,” he said, suddenly feeling reckless and malicious. “Like his father before him. A penchant for gambling runs in the family.”

Witt had remained rigidly seated in his high-backed chair. “You said your name was Pembroke.”

“That's right, Nicholas Pembroke.”

The older man's eyes became tiny pieces of black coal, fierce and intense. “Your grandfather was Ulysses Pembroke.” Jackson Witt's voice was high and hoarse with indignation. Without looking at his daughter, he'd said, “Mattie, this man has misrepresented himself to you. Please leave the room.”

She'd obeyed silently, but moved with such grace and steadiness that Nick instinctively knew she'd hoped this confrontation would happen—her secret Hollywood friend would shock and horrify her father and perhaps even help set her free someday.

“Ulysses Pembroke was a thief and a profligate,” Witt said, “and you are his grandson.”

“Yep.” Nick was on his feet. “And I make movies for a living.”

He'd left before Jackson Witt could throw him out.

The next morning Nick had returned to the bend in the river, assuming Mattie wouldn't be within miles. He'd behaved badly, no matter that her father was a rigid fanatic who justified his cruelty to his daughter through a corruption of his religious principles. Nevertheless, Nick had felt he had no right to judge another man's beliefs. But he'd thought of the lost dark-eyed girl he'd met on the Cumberland. What kind of life could Mattie and her younger sister hope to have with such a father?

The canoe had rocked silently in the water, insects humming nearby. His life back in California suddenly had seemed enormously empty. He made movies. He bedded women. He went to parties. Every day was something new, and yet the same. To what end? Where would he be in another ten years? Another thirty?

“Nicholas.”

Her voice was so soft and melodic he'd thought he must have imagined it. He'd opened his eyes but hadn't wanted to look, to have his hopes dashed.

Mattie had stood on the riverbank in a simple yellow broadcloth dress, a battered upholstered valise banging against her knees. Her dark hair was brushed out, hanging down her back, catching the morning sun. Nick had never seen eyes so huge and black.

“I want to go to California with you,” she'd said calmly. “Some of the best people I know are in Cedar Springs, but I can't stay here.”

Nick hadn't been able to speak. Jackson Witt would have the law after him. He'd be arrested before he could get to the train station in Nashville.

“I have money,” she'd said.

“Mattie.” Nick had been so overcome he'd feared he'd pitch headfirst from the canoe. “Mattie, you can't.”

Her knuckles had whitened on the handle of the valise. “I can and I will.”

“Your father—”

“I have no father.”

“You don't mean that.”

“He does. He disowned me this morning when I told him what I mean to do.” She'd spoken without drama or self-pity. “He won't change his mind.”

“But your sister…”

Her eyes had gone flat with unarticulated pain. “Naomi has her own life to live.”

“What is it you mean to do?”

She hadn't hesitated. “I mean to become someone else.”

They'd married on the train west.

Mattie had made her debut the following year in
The Gamblers
. Based on a romanticized version of Ulysses Pembroke's life, it was a film that launched her career, secured Nick's reputation as a director and turned his grandfather into one of the great American rakes.

Mattie had continued to work hard. She was popular with her colleagues. Invariably gracious, she never spoke ill of anyone and engendered remarkably little envy. Her one failing—if it could be called that—was a profound reluctance to speak to reporters. She was a private person and never discussed her past with anyone, but her reticence had only added to her aura of mystery.

Shortly before starting work on
Tiger's Eye,
her second movie, Nick had brought up the touchy subject of her sister, something he'd usually avoided. “Why don't we have her out here for a visit.”

“She won't come.”

“Sure she will. Come on, Mattie, your dad can't stay mad forever.”

“He isn't mad. He's disowned me completely. It's as if I never existed. Naomi—” Mattie's eyes had shone with tears, but not one spilled. “I asked her to come with me. I begged her to get away from him before he destroyed her, but she wouldn't. Nick, am I a bad person for having left her?”

She'd always seemed so sure of herself that her uncertainty had caught Nick by surprise. “No—no, Mattie, no. You had to leave.”

“I could have stayed. I could have found a way to make a life for myself. Naomi stayed. She doesn't remember Mother as well as I do. Mother had her peculiarities, but she wasn't as rigid as Father. They were happy together in their own way. Father will never be happy with Naomi or me.” She looked away from Nick; she still hadn't cried. “I know there's nothing I can do, but still I think about my sister every day.”

Nick had offered to go to Cedar Springs and have it out with Jackson Witt, cart Naomi off himself. The kid would be better off living with her big sister in California than with that sour old bastard in Tennessee. But, claiming it would be useless to apply force, that Naomi knew the invitation to California stood, Mattie had refused Nick's offer to intervene. Eventually she could no longer bear to talk about Cedar Springs and the father and sister she'd left behind.

After she and Nick had a son, the gossip pages carried pictures of the happy Pembroke family. Given Jackson Witt's lurid interest in Hollywood's goings-on, Nick had assumed his father-in-law had known he had a grandson. There was no note of congratulations, no softening of the old man's hard heart, nothing from the much-missed little sister. Nick had felt like crying every time his wife returned empty-handed and white-faced from the postbox in the weeks after their son's birth.

Their relationship was honest and fulfilling, and he had remained faithful to her for four full years. The temptations came on a daily basis. Not long after Mattie had arrived in California, she'd laughingly told Nick she'd learned most of the stories about her husband's sexual adventures were true, but she'd claimed to believe in the transforming power of love and expected that meeting her—marrying her, having a child together—had changed Nick forever. And it had. But it hadn't changed his wandering eye.

His first affair occurred on an August trip to Saratoga Springs while Mattie stayed in their Beverly Hills home to play with their baby and take unnecessary singing lessons. She'd never have to sing in any of her films. Being back in Saratoga had proved more than Nick could handle. The money flowed, and the temptations abounded. He'd lost a bundle, and as he'd driven past the abandoned estate he still owned, he remembered his promise to his mother. No gambling, no turning out like his father and grandfather.

Guilt had undercut his elation at winning at the track, and yet that night, unable to stop himself, he went to a private lake-house gambling parlor. An attractive woman in her forties taught him poker, then invited him back to her room. He said yes.

Mattie found out through a mutual acquaintance. There was always someone, Nick had discovered, willing to bear bad news. He'd admitted everything. At first it was unclear whether the zest for gambling he'd just revealed bothered her more than his infidelity, but then she'd let him know in no uncertain terms that in her view, gambling and infidelity were part and parcel of the same basic corruption. Nick had tried to explain that he had no intention of self-destructing like his grandfather, that the woman had been nothing at all like her, just a stupid fling, he couldn't even remember her name. That only seemed to enrage her more.

“I had no idea monogamy meant so much to you,” he'd said, stung by her anger.

“Does it mean nothing to you?”

As far as his heart was concerned, he was uncompromisingly monogamous. Mattie was the only woman he truly loved.

She'd left him after his second meaningless affair, but came back. After the third she stayed away six months. They'd begun to argue. Less the polite, repressed daughter of Jackson Witt, Mattie had learned to hold her own in a good fight. After her husband's fourth affair, she'd moved out for good. She finished the movie she was working on, announced her “retirement” and headed to New York. She and Nick were divorced. Mattie was thirty years old. Everybody—especially Nick—had believed she'd come back to Hollywood once she cooled down.

She never did.

Nick had accused her of being as hard-hearted and unforgiving as her father, igniting another of their by then legendary fights. And yet, even as she'd bought a town house in Greenwich Village and enrolled their son in school, he'd remained hopelessly and forever in love with her. He'd look back on his repeated affairs in despairing wonder. None of the women he'd slept with meant anything to him, nor he to them. So why had he indulged in affairs?

“I hope you find what you want in life,” Mattie had told him in one of her more charitable moments.

Too late, he had.

What he wanted—all he wanted—was the dark-eyed girl he'd found gazing at the Cumberland on a warm, quiet Tennessee morning.

But as his cab arrived at the busy Los Angeles airport, Nick pulled himself out of the past. He couldn't undo his mistakes. What he could do, he thought, was to try to save his son and his granddaughter from them.

A
lively discussion of the ailing Yankees had been going on for the past hour on Mattie's front stoop. She was right in the midst of it, fiddling with one of her handmade kites as she maintained that pitching was to blame for the team's latest ills. Not that she knew a thing about baseball. From argument over the years, however, she'd learned that a cry for more pitching was generally a creditable position to take.

She only half listened to the debate. A cab had turned down her street and slowed in front of her town house.

Before it came to a full stop, Dani jumped out.

Mattie quietly asked everyone on her front stoop to leave.

They complied. Nick had called a little while ago. She knew their son was now in the hospital in Saratoga.

A dark-haired man who had to be Zeke Cutler climbed out of the cab after Dani. He looked like his father, whom Mattie had known as a little boy. And like Joe. Naomi must have sent him, she thought.

Their eyes met. He was definitely a Cutler, and Zeke was the only Cutler left.

He came up onto the sidewalk. “It's good to see you, Miss Witt,” he said.

“Hello, Zeke.”

Dani stiffened visibly. “So you do know him.”

Zeke looked at her, and Mattie instantly felt his attraction to his granddaughter. “I'll leave you two alone to talk,” he said.

To talk, Mattie thought. Of course. She'd have to tell Dani everything.

“No. Don't leave.” Mattie set her kite down. “This concerns you, too, Zeke. Come inside. Both of you.”

Her front room was cool, the ceiling fan whirring, and she served fresh-squeezed lemonade she'd bought from a small grocery around the corner and a few butter cookies she pulled from the freezer and let thaw on a plate. Zeke sat on the couch. Dani sat across from him. There was one other chair, but it was uncomfortable, and Mattie had no intention of going through this ordeal on an uncomfortable chair. She sat next to Zeke on the couch.

“How's John?” she asked.

There was a moment's silence as Dani and Zeke exchanged glances, obviously debating who was supposed to answer. Finally Zeke said, “He's doing fine.”

“It was an accident?”

“He told the doctors he tripped and fell.”

Mattie suspected he'd told Zeke more. But Dani blurted, “Which isn't true.”

“I see,” Mattie said, setting down her lemonade glass, untouched. “John doesn't know anything of what I'm about to tell you. I didn't want him to have to be in the position of holding back from his own daughter….” She inhaled deeply through her nose, just wanting this done. “I thought this information was no one's business but my own.”

Dani didn't say a word. That concerned Mattie, since her granddaughter had always been one to speak her mind.

“Zeke and his brother, Joe, came to see me in Saratoga about a week before Lilli disappeared. I gave them an old tent and let them camp out on the grounds—they chose a spot near the bottling plant, which of course was abandoned in those days.” She looked at Zeke. “You were what, thirteen or fourteen?”

“Thirteen.”

“And Joe was eighteen. I remember that.”

The room was so silent. She wished she'd turned on the radio in the kitchen or even had a grandfather clock, although she'd refused to have one in her house since leaving Cedar Springs. A ticking clock always reminded her of her father's oppressive home. But the silence now was awful.

“He thought you were something,” Zeke said gently.

Mattie smiled, appreciating his gesture. “I'm afraid I wasn't the glamorous movie star he expected to find. I dressed in Nick's old clothes half the time, I said and did as I pleased—and I wasn't as young as the woman he'd seen in the movies. Then again, maybe he wasn't expecting Mattie Witt the film star. Maybe he was expecting Jackson Witt's older daughter, I don't know. But what he got was me.” She waved a hand. “Well, none of that matters. Joe was a tolerant young man.”

“Why did he come see you?” Dani asked.

“I'm getting to that. I want…” She swallowed, twisting her hands together in her lap. “I want to tell everything. Not long after Joe and Zeke arrived, Lilli came up to the cottage while they were there. I introduced them. There was an instant rapport between Joe and Lilli—nothing romantic. Lilli was confused about what her life was supposed to be, what she wanted it to be. When her mother died, her whole world came apart. She didn't know if she wanted to be what she'd seemed destined to be. Joe understood. He helped her get some distance from herself and her problems—he encouraged her to see not just the obligations and responsibilities and restrictions of her life, but also its joys and meaning.”

Mattie paused. Dani stared at the fireplace, her eyes shining. Zeke watched her, and Mattie wondered if he knew how close her granddaughter was to crying. She hid her vulnerabilities so well. But so did her grandmother.

“Did he know about
Casino?
” Dani asked without looking at her.

“Yes.”

“Did you?” she asked, her dark eyes on Zeke.

Mattie looked at him, too, and he answered, “No.”

“When Joe found the gold key out at the pavilion near the old bottling plant,” Mattie went on, “he decided to give it to Lilli. He could have kept it for himself, but he didn't think that was right.”

“And she wore it ballooning with you,” Dani said.

“That's right. She had it with her when we landed. Our trip took longer than she'd anticipated. We got a ride to the Pembroke estate, and I offered to drive her back to North Broadway, but she insisted on walking. She was already late. Why fret about a few more minutes?” Mattie's voice cracked, and she had to fight off tears herself. It wasn't easy. “I never saw her again.”

Dani's hands, she noticed, were twisted together, shaking. Beside her on the couch, Zeke impassively sipped his iced lemonade. Yet Mattie sensed his anguish.

She forced herself to continue. “Before I realized she'd disappeared, I felt quite smug. I'd thought Lilli needed to give her father a good jolt, remind her family not to take her for granted. I remember every detail of that night. I took a bath and put on baggy jeans and one of Nick's old sweaters—it came to my knees. It was cool, and I lit a fire.” She sighed. “Then Joe knocked on my door.”

“What time was that?” Dani asked.

Still no eye contact, Mattie said, “Around ten o'clock.”

“We'd decided to leave Saratoga,” Zeke added.

“Why?”

“Because Joe said so.”

Mattie shot him a look, sensing there was more. Her heart pounded. Did Zeke know something she didn't? But he didn't continue, and she had to get this next part done. “I knew he'd come to tell me why he'd traveled a thousand miles to see me. There had to be a reason.” She shut her eyes, feeling the tears hot against her lids. “He told me my father was dying of cancer. He'd been to see Doc Hiram—I knew him when he was a little boy—and he said the cancer was all through him. So I asked Joe—” Her voice broke, and she didn't think she'd be able to go on.

Zeke placed his hand over hers. He didn't squeeze or pat, just left it there. “You asked Joe if your father had sent him.”

She nodded, blinking back tears. She hadn't cried because of her father in years. Decades. Even before she'd left Cedar Springs, she hadn't permitted him to make her cry. “He hadn't. He was an old man and dying, and still as far as he was concerned, I had never been his daughter. It wasn't even as if I'd died at eighteen. It was as if I'd never lived at all. I was a stranger to him.”

“Your sister sent him?” Dani asked. Her voice was carefully controlled. She hadn't moved. If she did, Mattie thought, she'd shoot up like a too tightly coiled spring.

“No. No, Naomi didn't send him. It was Joe's idea to come. He said he owed Naomi because she'd been a friend to him and Zeke, encouraged Zeke in his studies. He—Joe said his brother wanted to become a doctor.”

Dani's eyes met Zeke's, just for an instant. Then they were back on the fireplace.

“Naomi had my address here in New York,” Mattie said. But she didn't care to explain the rest, how she'd tried through the years to get her sister to join her, first in California, then in New York. Her letters home were returned unopened, presumably but not necessarily by their father, and then Mattie heard her sister had married Wesley Hazen, a vice president at the mill, and finally gave up. A few years later Nick went to Tennessee, and he and Naomi had had their affair, and Mattie had tried one more letter. Naomi had sent back a postcard.
You can relax now, Mattie,
she'd written.
I'm free.

“She told Zeke he was wasting his time because I'd never return to Cedar Springs.” The tears had vanished, and Mattie sniffled, removing her hand from under Zeke's. She went on in a strong, clear voice. “She was right. As I stood there talking to Joe, I knew that if I didn't go home soon, I'd never see my father again. That chance would be gone forever. At first I didn't know what to do. For years when I'd think of home, it seemed as if nothing should have changed since I'd left. If I went back, I'd still be eighteen, Naomi would be eleven, and our father would still be strong and unyielding. But he was dying, and I knew I'd never be able to step back into Cedar Springs—into my childhood—as it had been. Everything had changed after all. Time hadn't stopped. I'd left home at eighteen and had never gone back.”

Dani, she saw, was staring at her with her wide, black eyes as if seeing her for the first time.

Mattie didn't have it in her heart to feel guilty. “I thought leaving home would make everything perfect, and of course it didn't. But it made living possible.”

She paused, again aware of the silence. Even in the distance—and here they were in the city—she couldn't hear the wail of a siren or the honking of cabs.

“I know I must sound heartless—I don't expect anyone to understand. But Cedar Springs is quicksand for me. If I'd gone back to see my dying father, I'd never have extricated myself again. I'd have suffocated. So I told Joe to say hello to Naomi for me, to tell her I'd missed her. And I told him to tell my father—if he'd listen—that I'd never judged him. That I'd always loved him in my own way. And I did. And do.” She didn't know if Dani or even if Zeke beside her heard her last words. She added, “I wrote and I tried to call, but the letters were returned and he refused to take my calls.”

“Joe wanted to make things right between you and your father and Naomi,” Zeke said. “He just couldn't understand what had gone wrong and stayed wrong between you. It didn't make any sense to him that a father would disown two daughters. Do you wish we'd never come?”

She shook her head. “No. Never. Joe wrote to me after he enlisted. He sent me a copy of my father's obituary—and the photograph of Lilli and me in the balloon.” It was her turn to touch Zeke's hand. “I came to care about him a great deal. I'm sorry about what happened to him.”

Zeke nodded but said nothing.

Dani jumped to her feet, almost didn't land before she started to pace. “So you know about Quint Skinner's book?”

“I read it in one sitting at the New York Public Library when it came out. I refused to have such a book in my house.”

“Did you believe what it said about Joe?”

“It doesn't matter what I or anyone else believes. It only matters what Joe was. To me, he was a friend.”

But that answer didn't satisfy Dani, and she continued to pace, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Zeke stretched out his long legs, watching her without comment. Her volatility didn't seem to bother him in the least.

“And until this week I'd never even heard of him.”

Mattie leaned back against the soft cushions of the couch. “Darling, I was in my forties when you were born,” she said, hearing the rhythms of her southern upbringing in her voice. “In my fifties when Lilli disappeared and Joe was killed. I'm eighty-two now. I've had many years to develop the habit of not talking about certain parts of my life. I don't like to think of myself as keeping secrets, but simply as keeping my silence.”

“Maybe,” Dani said, “if you'd told someone about Joe Cutler twenty-five years ago, before he was killed—” But she stopped herself. “I'm going to do everything I can to get to the bottom of whatever's going on. I don't run away from my problems.”

Mattie was stung by her granddaughter's anger, but she understood it. She said quietly, “Be glad you've never faced a problem that left you no choice but to run.”

Without replying, Dani banged out of her grandmother's town house.

Zeke stayed put. “Are you all right?” he asked.

Mattie nodded. “I knew I'd have to face this day at some point. It's better off behind us.”

“You told her everything you know?”