Immediate Family (14 page)

Why was she talking this way? She’d be crazy not to marry Keith.

“Do you love him?” Jay’s gaze held hers for a beat too long, sending her stomach into free fall.

“Lately, I don’t know if it’s my hormones or my heart talking.” All she knew was that these past few weeks she’d been feeling confused where before she’d been 99 percent sure about Keith. Could it have anything to do with Jay, all the time they’d been spending together? The thought was so disconcerting, she quickly pushed it out of her head. “I’ll know more when I see him. Did I tell you I’m flying out there for my birthday?”

“The doctor says it’s okay to travel?” Jay eyed her with concern.

“You heard him. I’m as healthy as a horse. As big as one, too,” she added, smiling as she glanced down at her belly.

“There’s always a risk,” he said, frowning. She knew he was thinking about the baby he’d lost.

“I don’t have to go, if you’d rather I didn’t.” The words just popped out, and immediately she wanted to kick herself. What on earth had gotten into her? She and Keith had been planning this for weeks.

“Nothing doing.” Jay straightened his shoulders, rearranging his features into a reasonable facsimile of a smile. “You’re not changing your plans because of my stupid fears.” He reached for her hand, bringing it to his mouth to deliver an affectionate kiss. Innocent enough, yet the brush of his lips against her skin sent a mild jolt through her. She drew back, confused.

What was going on? Why was she feeling this way?

Throughout the meal, it was all Franny could do to act as if nothing were out of the ordinary, as if she weren’t noticing how the sunlight streaming in through the windows brought out the glints of gold in his hair or the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed. How was it she’d never before been struck by how beautiful his hands were? It was as if the friend for whom she’d felt nothing but affection all these years had morphed into a complete stranger. Someone with whom she felt as self-conscious as if this were a first date, hoping she didn’t have onion breath or a piece of lettuce stuck to her teeth.

“How about we walk off some of this food?” she suggested, after they’d finished eating and were on their way out the door. She told herself that if she kept on pretending everything was fine, this temporary insanity would sort itself out eventually.

They set off in the direction of Central Park, only a few blocks away, Franny remembering when her mother used to take her and Bobby there on nice days in the summertime. They’d ride the F train from Kings Highway all the way to Fifty-seventh Street, nearly an hour-and-a-half trip. In the park, Mama would spread a blanket over the grass in some shady spot to eat the picnic lunch she’d packed. Central Park was for
everyone,
she’d say, in a tone that suggested she had just as much right to it as the Upper East Side ladies for whom she did alterations at Bergdorf’s. And now, strolling along a path under the canopy of trees, Franny took perverse pleasure in the sight of tourists and picnickers and moms pushing strollers catching the same cool breezes as the homeless people in their shabby clothes.

They walked until Franny grew tired, then settled on a bench overlooking the boat pond, where ducks glided alongside model sailboats powered by handheld remotes. It was so shady and peaceful where they sat; Franny was scarcely aware of the other people strolling by. Nor did anyone pay particular notice to them, except an older woman who smiled at them in passing, no doubt mistaking them for a couple expecting their first child.

When Jay reached for Franny’s hand, it was no different from countless times he’d done so. So why now was she so acutely aware of his fingers curled about hers? She watched him from out of the corner of her eye, taking in his relaxed expression. If he had any idea of the new and alarming shift in her feelings toward him, there was no sign of it.

“This is nice,” he said, looking up at the trees. “You can almost forget you’re in the city.”

Just then the silence was pierced by the distant wail of a siren. “Home sweet home,” Franny said with a wry smile.

“Where I come from, if your neighbors live less than a mile away, it feels crowded.” Jay toyed with a leaf he’d picked up off the ground, gazing out at the pond.

“Try living in Brooklyn,” she said. “You sneeze and twenty people say gesundheit!”

He turned to look at her, smiling in a way that made her heart go wobbly all of a sudden, like the model sailboat out on the water that had just capsized. “Funny, isn’t it? We come from such different backgrounds, but we always see eye to eye.”

“Yeah, I know.” She kept her voice light. “And here we are having a kid together.”

“Yeah. God must be having a good laugh right about now.”

She knew from the bitterness of his tone that he was thinking about the son he’d never know.

“Have you talked to Vivienne lately?” she ventured, after a bit.

“For what it’s worth,” he replied, wearing an odd, tight expression.

“You sound angry.”

“Maybe I am. But you have to admit it’s a pattern with her.” He was referring to all the times Vivienne had disappeared on him in the past. Back when they were dating, just when things would start to get serious, she’d always find an excuse to go abroad, often for months at a time.

“Did she give you any idea when she’d be back?”

He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Franny gave his hand a little squeeze. “Look, I’m sure it’s as hard on her as it is on you. She didn’t ask for this, either.”

He let out a breath. “I know. It’s just…” He shook his head. “I feel as if I’ve been abandoned.”

“She’ll be back. Give her time.”

In the meantime, you still have me,
she added silently. She’d go on doing her best to cheer him up. Wasn’t that what friends were for? If she was on shaky ground at the moment as far as her own feelings were concerned, Jay would remain none the wiser. It would be like in college, before they fell in with Stevie and Emerson. Just the two of them.

Make that three,
she thought, feeling the baby start to kick.

P
ulling up to the gates at Grant’s estate, Stevie’s stomach was in knots. It had been weeks since her last visit and she wasn’t sure why she was here now. It wasn’t to satisfy her curiosity; she already had a pretty good idea of what kind of man her father was: the kind who’d try to kill someone then lie to the police. If Stevie didn’t know exactly how it had unfolded, it was easy enough to fill in the blanks. In the version he’d given the police, they’d had too much to drink and Lauren had grabbed the gun, and it had gone off when he’d struggled to take it from her. But Stevie had since learned, along with the rest of the world, that it hadn’t happened that way, at least not according to Lauren. Stevie guessed they’d gotten into a fight, and it was Grant who’d reached for the gun. The rest was history.

So why had she come? She didn’t quite know. Maybe to find out if she wanted anything more to do with him. Or to see if he wanted anything more to do with her, given how she felt. The only thing she was certain of was that she owed him an explanation, and the chance to come clean. She smiled thinly at the thought as the gates opened and she was waved through. There was an almost cosmic irony in not being able to go public with what could be the biggest scoop of her career.

When she arrived at the house, she was met at the door by Victor. The bodyguard-slash-houseman was no friendlier than on her previous visits; in fact, if anything he was even more hostile. “He’s out back.” He jerked his head toward the hallway leading to the patio. As usual, he was wearing a suit and tie, which made a weird contrast to the tattoos snaking up the sides of his thick neck and shaved skull.

“I know the way.” Stevie started to walk past him but he moved quickly to block her path. She waited for him to step out of the way, but he didn’t budge. Looking into his eyes, as he stood there with his arms crossed over his steroid-enhanced chest, was like trying to see though a limousine’s polarized windows: flat, gray, impenetrable. In an attempt to lighten the mood, she cracked, “All right, just one more dance, then I really have to go.”

Victor’s broad face remained impassive. “He’s expecting you.”

“Probably because I phoned to let him know I was coming.” A note of impatience crept into her voice.

“It’s been a while. He figured you were pissed at him or something.”

“What gave him that idea?”

“You’re a smart girl, you figure it out.”

“I needed some time to sort things out, is all.” Why was she explaining herself to this thug? It wasn’t as if it was any of his business. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

This time he didn’t try to stop her. He merely murmured in his throaty growl, as she was brushing past him, “I wouldn’t bring it up if I were you. He’s a little touchy on the subject. It might set him off.” She didn’t have to ask what subject he was referring to.

Was he protecting his boss…or warning her? Somehow, despite Lauren’s conflicting version of events, Stevie couldn’t see Grant as a threat. Before this whole business, it had been just the usual rock-star stuff: trashed hotel rooms, wild parties, drunken binges. The man she knew, though peculiar in some ways, struck her as basically harmless. Whatever had set him off that night, she suspected it had been an aberration as opposed to any kind of pattern.

Still, you never knew…

She found Grant stretched out on a chaise longue by the pool with his nose buried in a book. He sat up at her approach, putting his book down on the table beside him and pushing his sunglasses up onto his head. She thought he looked pleased to see her. Even so, he greeted her somewhat cautiously, with an exaggerated drawl that bordered on parody. “Howdy, stranger.”

“Hey, Grant.” She spoke mildly, but her heart was pounding.

“Hot enough for you?”

“It’s supposed to rain later on, at least according to the weatherman.”

He glanced up dubiously at the clear blue sky. “I’ll take your word for it.”

She looked down at her shadow, stretched across the quarry paving stones like an accusing finger. The words balled in her throat wouldn’t come. “How have you been?” she asked instead.

“Okay. You?”

“Working too hard, but what else is new.”

“Help yourself.” He gestured toward the cabana, where a pitcher of lemonade stood on the tiled wet bar. Years of exposure to the sun had left his skin the color and texture of cowhide. In his baggy swim trunks, with his gray ponytail snaking down his back, he might have been an aging beach bum.

“Thanks.” She walked to the bar and poured herself a glass, carrying it over to the pool, where she slipped out of her shoes and rolled up her pant legs, lowering herself onto the edge. As she dipped her legs into the water, her reflection rippled on the surface, seeming to mock her in some way.
Some father and daughter reunion,
she thought. A burned-out rocker with a past and a woman who couldn’t seem to embrace the future.

But today wasn’t about forging bonds. She had to find out, from Grant’s own mouth, what had
really
happened the night Lauren was shot. Or how could she ever learn to trust him?

“You’re probably wondering why you haven’t heard from me in a while,” she ventured after a bit.

“Yeah, well. I know you’ve got better things to do than to hang around keeping your old man company.” His tone was nonchalant, but she sensed he was hurt. “Besides,” he added, with a dry chuckle, “If I get lonely, I can always catch you on TV.”

She put her glass down and turned to face him. “The thing is…” She swallowed hard and heard a clicking sound in her ears. “We need to talk.”

He remained very still. With the sun at his back, his face was in shadow. All she could make out were the unhappy lines of his mouth. “I guess I don’t have to ask what about,” he said.

“No, I guess not.”

His lips curved in a mirthless smile. “Funny, ain’t it? Phone’s been ringing off the hook these past few weeks. Every reporter in the universe has been trying to get hold of me—except you.”

“I’m not here as a reporter. I’m here as your daughter.”

“So you want to know if your old man’s the Antichrist, like everyone’s saying?” He gave a bitter laugh.

“I’m not casting any stones. At least, not until I’ve heard your side of the story.” She could see from the obstinate set of his shoulders that this wasn’t going to be easy. “The
real
story. Not just what you told the police.”

His eyes narrowed. “You think I was lying?”

“Frankly, I don’t know what to think anymore.”

Abruptly, he got up off the chaise and padded over to the bar, reaching underneath and pulling out a bottle of vodka. He poured a hefty slug into a glass and downed it.

“I thought you quit drinking,” Stevie said, feeling a brush of unease.

“I did.” He poured himself another one and knocked it back in one swallow.

She got up and walked over to him. “What are you so afraid of? I already told you, this is off the record.”

He stood there frowning, as if lost in thought. She saw something dark in his eyes that she didn’t like the look of and felt a light chill skim her over, raising goose bumps. “Whatever’s done is done. Talking about it ain’t gonna help,” he said in a hard voice.

She recalled Victor’s warning and once more felt a brush of unease in her belly. “It would help
me,”
she said quietly.

“What, knowing your old man’s a fuckup?”

“If you are, that makes two of us.” She seized the bottle from his hand as he was getting ready to pour himself another drink, placing it out of reach. “You want to know why my boyfriend dumped me? Because I wouldn’t marry him, even though I’m crazy about him. So you see, I’m as fucked up as you. I don’t know if it was growing up without a dad or because I inherited your genes, but either way, I’m damaged goods.”

His frown deepened. “I thought this was about Lauren.”

“It is. But it’s all wrapped up in who
I
am, too. I didn’t just grow up without a father. I invented one to take his place. This prince who was going to show up one day and whisk my mom and me off to his castle.” Stevie fought down the lump swelling in her throat. “If it was nothing more than a stupid fantasy, where does that leave me?”

In the scowl Grant wore she caught the dull gleam of something deeper, frustration perhaps. Or regret. After a long, tense moment, he sighed. “You want the truth?” He came around to where she stood, scooting onto a bar stool facing her. “Okay, I’ll tell you. I don’t know what happened. I was so out of it, I could’ve mowed down an entire village and I wouldn’t remember.” He went on in a slurred voice, “We’d been drinking and doing blow all night. We were both pretty high. The last thing I remember was taking our clothes off and going for a dip in the pool.” He squinted toward its shimmering blue expanse, as if half-expecting the youthful Lauren Rose to rise dripping from its depths. “The next thing I knew she was lying on the floor inside the house, bleeding.” He brought his gaze back to Stevie, and she saw from his ravaged eyes, those of a man haunted by a memory he couldn’t quite recapture, that he was telling the truth. “I don’t know. Maybe I did pull that trigger. Maybe I’m the danger to society they say I am.”

“Is that why you quit drinking?” Stevie asked, looking pointedly at the empty glass in his hand.

He eyed the bottle longingly before lowering his glass onto the bar. “I haven’t touched a drop since. Until today.
That
much I can swear in a court of law.”

“I believe you,” she said, after a moment.

“What, about the drinking, or what happened with Lauren?”

“Both.” She gave him a stern look. “What I still don’t get, though, is why you lied to the police.”

“Your old man’s a coward, that’s why. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life behind bars.” He glanced around him, smiling a little as if at the irony in it: He’d merely traded one prison for another.

“I’m glad you told me.” It wasn’t what she’d expected, but she’d learned through the years that the real story seldom was.

“So I guess this is it then. The part where you say sayonara, it’s been nice knowing you.” His bloodshot eyes were sorrowful. He looked as if he’d aged years in the span of a few minutes. “Sorry your long-lost dad turned out to be such a disappointment.”

Stevie thought about her mother’s struggle to get sober, with the help of AA; how Nancy had likened it to clawing her way up the face of a cliff with her bare hands. The person Nancy had been back then was nothing like the one Stevie knew. Maybe it was that way with Grant, too; his dark side only came out when he drank. Not that he was entirely blameless. But neither had he been in his right mind.

Abruptly she came to a decision. “Get dressed,” she told him.

“What for?” He blinked at her in confusion.

“Go on, you heard me. We’re going for a little ride.” She took him by the elbow, pulling him off the stool and marching him toward the house. Hopefully the effects of the alcohol would wear off some by the time they arrived at their destination.

“You still haven’t told me where you’re taking me,” he protested.

“I think it’s about time you met my mother,” she said.

The visit with Nancy went surprisingly well. Other than her initial shock at how altered he was, she’d welcomed him as if they were old friends. Within minutes she was bustling about the kitchen, putting on a pot of coffee.

When it was brewed she poured some into a mug and plunked it down in front of Grant. “Here, drink this. You’ll feel better.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He cast her a faintly sheepish look.

“Stevie tells me you don’t get out much.” Nancy settled into the chair opposite him at the table while Stevie took the one at the end.

He nodded, as if ruminating on it, before replying, “Yeah, it’s been a while.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here. You like zucchini?”

“Uh, sure.” He spoke hesitantly, as if not quite sure why she was asking.

“Good. I’ll send you home with some.” She nodded toward the fresh-picked zucchini on the kitchen counter. “This time of year I have more than I know what to do with. Try it stir-fried, with a little basil and olive oil. I find what works best with most food is to keep it simple.”

“I’m not much of a cook,” he confessed.

“What
do
you do with yourself all day?” Her eyes crinkled with something close to amusement. In the jeans and man’s button-down shirt she had on, both liberally streaked with clay, she looked anything but the starstruck flower child he’d once singled out of the crowd.

“Read, mostly,” he said blowing on his coffee before taking a careful sip. “I never finished school, so I have some catching up to do.”

“I make pots,” she told him, nodding in the direction of her studio out back.

“So I hear.” He sat back, stretching his legs out in front of him. “You any good?”

“I make a living at it.” Nancy was too modest to mention that her ceramics fetched top dollar in high-end galleries across the country. “What about you? Writing any new songs these days?”

“Hell, no, I haven’t in years. Though I still pick up my guitar from time to time. The old ’caster hasn’t let me down yet.” His face relaxed in a smile. Nancy seemed to have a calming effect on him, as she did on most people.

“I remember the night you played the Forum,” she recalled. “I thought a riot would break out after that last number. No one wanted to believe it was the final stop of your farewell tour.”

“You were there that night?” Stevie asked her, surprised that this was the first she was hearing of it.

Nancy smiled at her. “You were, too.”

“I was?” Stevie sat up straighter.

Her mother nodded. “You were only three at the time, that’s why you don’t remember. I’d pawned my grandmother’s brooch to pay for the tickets. But it was worth every dime. We witnessed history that night.” Nancy smiled faintly as she stared off into space, toying with the end of her braid.

“It was Stark,” Grant explained, referring to bassist Rick Stark. “He was sick of me bagging out on gigs. He gave me an ultimatum, either clean up my act or he was throwing in the towel.”