Secrets (11 page)

Althea laughed. “On Monday you told me it was
The Last Good-bye
. On Tuesday you said it was
First and Always.
On Wednesday, you said—”

His laugh cut her off. “And every word of it was true. I'll see you tomorrow morning and tell you everything.”

“I love that idea.”

“Yes, I've noticed that you are quite good at getting ‘everything' out of people while giving ‘nothing' in return.”

“Not vertically, anyway,” she said, then hung up the phone.

Thomas smiled all the way up in the elevator.

“
I
PROMISE THAT
we'll have separate rooms,” Brent said, his eyes pleading. “I swear it. On my honor as a knight.”

Cassie smiled. Brent was promising that if she spent the weekend after next with him in a cabin on a lake he wouldn't make a pass at her. It was certainly an honorable promise, but a big part of her wished he was saying that he couldn't wait to get in bed with her. But then, if he did that, she knew she'd refuse to go with him. A true dichotomy, she thought.

“Althea wants me to go up there and check on the place,” Brent said. “She had a dream that it was infested with mice and bad men, so I have to go take a look at it.”

They were in Althea's attic, Cassie with the clipboard on her lap, and he had interrupted her cataloguing to do whatever he could to persuade her to go with him to the cabin. She had her head down, so he lifted her chin to force her to look at him. Althea wasn't the only one who can act, he thought.

The truth was that Althea had hinted that she wanted Brent to do a little spying. When she'd asked him, she'd given a little pout that made Brent feel good. What she was really saying was that he was doing his job of guarding her so well that she'd come to depend on him.

It hadn't taken much for him to agree to go. To do some
real
work! he thought. He was still reeling from the bawling out he'd received from Ames, so he was anxious to show that he would someday make a good agent.

Althea gave him directions and the keys to a lakefront cabin and told him that he needed to watch what a Mr. Norton was doing. Brent was told to arouse no suspicion, so if he had a girlfriend he should take her with him. Since he was given just twenty-four hours' notice, there was no way his long-term girlfriend could get down from Massachusetts in time to go with him, so that left Cassie. He didn't want to screw up his first real assignment—other than the job of guarding Althea, that is—so he
had
to get Cassie to go with him.

“It's just overnight. Two nights if we're having a good time. I have the whole weekend off, and so do you. Please,” Brent said, reaching for Cassie's hands.

She hesitated. She felt like she should stay with Elsbeth. She'd told the child on Monday that she was leaving, and Elsbeth had hardly reacted. In fact, her silence had been almost eerie. But three hours later, she threw a plate across the room. Cassie had done everything to get Elsbeth to talk to her, but the child had just sat there with glazed eyes and stared.

As for Thomas, she didn't have to tell him. Somehow, he already knew. He didn't say anything, but he looked at Cassie with eyes full of sadness. It seemed that every time she looked up, there was Thomas with his big, sorrowful eyes.

Between Elsbeth and Thomas, Cassie had spent the week on the verge of tears.

It was only Jeff who was unaffected by any of it. He was as oblivious to the turmoil inside the house as he was to Skylar's spitefulness. Jeff left the house early, came home late, but when they saw him, he was cheerful and smiling. He didn't say a word about Cassie's leaving, and when she mentioned—four times—that she was going out with Brent again, Jeff said he hoped she had a good time.

By Friday, Cassie didn't know if she wanted to run out of the house and never return, or tell them she'd never leave. She did know that every time she thought of never seeing Elsbeth and Thomas again, she had to reach for a tissue.

As for Jeff, she hoped he would fall into a vat of oil and be fried.

“Please,” Brent said again. “I've seen the place, and it's a very nice cabin.”

“All right,” she said at last. Maybe it would strengthen her for the coming final week if she got away from the tears and guilt for two days. What she couldn't understand was why Thomas and Elsbeth were upset with
her
. Why weren't they lashing out at Jeff? “What should I take?”

“Hiking clothes,” he said, grinning broadly as he stepped back from her and looked about the attic. “Don't worry about anything else. There's a grocery just down the road from the cabin. We'll stop there and get everything we need. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this. I was dreading going by myself.” He waited a moment, then said, “Is everything set then?” He looked anxious to leave the attic, and Cassie was glad for him to go. She wanted some time alone to think. After he left, she went back to cataloguing the contents of Althea's attic.

At noon, she called Dana and told her most of the story. “I thought I'd just go ahead and resign before I was fired. I've told them I'm leaving and that I've accepted Althea's job. I'm going to get my own place, but for now I'm going to be living in her house.” She didn't tell Dana how she'd told Elsbeth over and over that she'd be “just next door.” Her words hadn't made a dent in the child's cold anger. I've never betrayed anyone before, Cassie thought, and I start with a five-year-old.

On the phone, Cassie could hear Dana's breathing. This is what she's waited for, Cassie thought. Jeff is going to marry Skylar, and Dana will get to take care of Elsbeth on a regular basis. Would she decorate one of the many bedrooms in her house for a fairy princess? If she did, Elsbeth would hate it.

But that was no longer Cassie's problem or concern. “Could you take care of Elsbeth this week?” she asked Dana. “I'm at Althea's all the time, and I think she'd like to be alone with Thomas.”

“Of course. I'd be happy to,” Dana said, and Cassie could hear that she was trying to keep the excitement out of her voice.

“Unless you have other plans,” Cassie said, knowing she was being a brat. But the last week had been so bad that she couldn't find it in herself to be nice to anyone.

“No, nothing,” Dana said quickly. “I'll see what's going on in Colonial Williamsburg and maybe Elsbeth and I will go. No! Wait! Busch Gardens. Or maybe Presidential Park.”

“Or Yorktown or Jamestown,” Cassie said tiredly, trying to stamp down her jealousy. She'd taken Elsbeth to all those places and many more and they'd always had a great time. Such a great time, that even the thought of going on a semi-romantic weekend with a man she liked wasn't cheering her up.

“Dana?” Cassie said.

“Yes?” she asked cautiously.

“Did you ever think about putting all the men in the world into a great big hole and covering it up?”

Dana took a moment before answering, as though she were considering her response carefully. “My husband has a wife who gets seasick just looking at a boat, yet he bought a forty-footer and spends three weekends a month on it. What do you think?”

“I think you'd make a great backhoe driver.”

They laughed together, then set a time for Dana to pick up Elsbeth.

 

It was Althea who brought Cassie back to life. Thomas had begged off from another week of going and doing with the indefatigable Althea, and Cassie knew that it was her fault. Her leaving had made Thomas too depressed to go out.

Cassie tried to keep her mind on the cataloguing, but she couldn't. She found a box of clippings from the murder of a starlet back in 1941, but Cassie wasn't interested. She made a note about it on her list, then closed the box.

Even when she found a big box containing photo albums of a very young Althea with her daughter, Cassie couldn't work up any interest. The world had always been curious about Althea's child and so was Cassie, but her own personal problems overrode everything else.

On Monday Cassie reported to work at Althea's with a packed bag containing the extras she'd accumulated in the last year. She'd spent the weekend alone in Jeff's house. Jeff, Thomas, and Elsbeth had gone somewhere, and they didn't tell Cassie where they were going or invite her to go with them. For the first time since she arrived, she was treated as an employee, not a member of the family. All weekend, she'd packed her belongings and tried to keep from crying as she told herself that she was just moving next door and she'd see all of them often.

Althea met her at the door on Monday morning. “You look awful,” she said. “So what torture has Jefferson been putting you through?”

“None,” Cassie mumbled. “They've all been very nice. Which room is to be mine?”

“Any you want,” Althea said, shutting the door.

Cassie started toward the stairs, but Althea caught her arm. “Let Brent take that upstairs. I want you to come with me.”

Listlessly, Cassie followed Althea down the hall toward her bedroom and into a small room that she hadn't seen before. It was long and narrow, and from the look of it, it was Althea's private office. “I want to know everything that's going on,” she said when they were seated. “I don't want you to skip a word.”

When Cassie didn't answer right away, Althea pushed a full box of tissues toward her. “Now start!” she ordered, and Cassie obeyed as the words came tumbling out of her.

Althea listened without comment until Cassie had finished. “Since you were twelve years old?” she said at last.

“I know,” Cassie said, sniffing. “It's stupid. How could anyone fall in love at twelve? Or if they do, they have the good sense to fall in love with a movie star. My mother once told me that when she was a girl, she was mad for James MacArthur. Did you know him?”

A noncommittal “Mmmm” was all that Althea said as she leaned back in a leather chair that looked as though it had been made for her. “You can't help love,” she said. “Try as you might, you can't control it. I once lived with a man who was the perfect match for me, but I never could love him. The man I loved was the one I shouldn't have, the forbidden man.”

“Mr. Ridgeway?” Cassie asked as she blew her nose.

Althea gave a snort of laughter. “I never came close to loving him. No, I loved the father of my daughter.”

That statement made Cassie look up with wide eyes. Never in any interview had Althea talked of her daughter. When she was asked questions about her, she just smiled and said nothing. If it was done on live TV, it was called “dead air” and it made the interviewer frantic.

“Have you seen the photo albums?” Althea asked, and Cassie knew which ones she meant. She nodded. “Then go and get them and meet me in my bedroom.”

Cassie ran up the stairs to the attic, grabbed the box, and hurried down the back stairs to Althea's bedroom. Even as she ran, it went through her mind that Althea knew that Cassie had made a lifelong study of Althea's life and career, and as a true fan, the prospect of revelations about Althea's only child would take Cassie from her own problems.

In the bedroom, Althea was sitting in the middle of her bed, and for a moment Cassie didn't know where to go. If she sat on a chair, she'd be too far away for both of them to see the albums. But Althea patted the bed beside her and Cassie climbed up next to her.

“This is me when I was pregnant,” Althea began. “Wasn't I the fattest thing you ever saw?”

“Yeah, but you looked great in the Elizabethan dresses.”

“And why do you think I agreed to wear them all through my pregnancy?”

Cassie and Althea laughed together.

“What happened?” Cassie asked softly, and they both knew what she meant. What had happened between Althea and her daughter?

Althea took a while to answer. A lifetime of keeping quiet about the subject was ingrained in her. “She didn't like me. My daughter just plain didn't like me or my life or what she grew up with. But I understood. It was the same with me. When I was a child I never fit in with my mother's relatives. They loved routine. Their idea of excitement was having lemon pie on Sunday after church. My mother and I were born wanting endless excitement.”

While Althea said this, Cassie could hardly breathe. She was being told things that no one else knew about this famous woman.

“I think we do reap what we sow,” Althea said, “because my daughter was like them. All she wanted was a middle-class life. Nothing I did impressed her. No one I introduced her to impressed her. She didn't want fabulous clothes or a house with marble bathrooms. She wanted…” Althea waved her hand in dismissal. “I never figured out what she wanted. Growing up with me, she was like a nun living in Las Vegas, and she couldn't wait to get away from me.”

Cassie turned a page of an album and looked at the little girl in the photo. It was of Althea with Cary Grant. The adults were laughing and clowning for the camera, but the little girl in the background had a serious face, unsmiling. Cassie thought it was what Elsbeth would look like if she had been born into a rowdy family of children who liked to run and yell and tumble all over one another.

“Where is she now?” Cassie asked.

Althea closed the album and got off the bed. “Midwest. One of those states I've never wanted to visit. I have great-grandchildren, but I've never seen them. I have a private detective who sends me photos of all of them every six months, but my daughter is the only one of them I've ever seen in person.”

“Have you contacted them?”

“I used to write my daughter letters,” Althea said. “But not anymore. A person can only take so much rejection. Isn't that right?” she asked, her eyes boring into Cassie's. She knew what Althea meant. Cassie had been rejected by her mother since the day she was born, and somewhere along the way, she'd stopped trying to please the woman. There was never going to be a time when her mother liked who she was or what she did.

“Maybe now that I'm on my own I should try to become the president of some company,” Cassie said jokingly.

But Althea didn't laugh. “If you'd like to open a business around here, I'd back you. Spending a week with a house full of people has made me realize how bored I am.”

“A business?” Cassie said. “What kind of business could I open?”

“I wouldn't recommend dress designing,” Althea said in a way that made Cassie laugh.