Venom and the River (23 page)

“I have no doubt about that. My father is a charmer, with a long history of being kind to women. I just took a look at his contract with you. I know what you’re getting paid for this book. Kind, indeed.”

Enough of this. Leigh rose. “I hope you’ll make some suitable health care and housekeeping arrangements while you’re here. I’ve tried my best, but he’s hard to please. He’s been spoiled; Geneva is an exceptional human being. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to see your father about the book.”

Dana said, “You realize, of course, that this book will never be published. It’s as much a vanity project as Timmy Thompson’s memoir. All those books you’ve written for his friends? This is no different, really. A better story, perhaps, but it has exactly the same chance of being published by a real firm as
Prairie Lawyer,
or whatever Timmy’s was called.”

Leigh’s hands curled tightly around the back of the chair. “Terry said Random House was interested.”

“That’s what he’s been telling us too, but yesterday I called his agent because I was concerned about how hard my father was working. I needed to know if it was necessary to be pushing so. That’s when I heard there was no contract, no interest, nothing. When you think about it, why would there be? No one remembers him. Good lord, his agent only still takes his calls out of respect for his father, who was a classmate of Dad’s at Yale. But he didn’t see any harm in encouraging him. Maybe the book would be something, maybe not.”

“His life is a wonderful story,” Leigh said. “Your father has something worth sharing with the world.”

“Phil’s read part,” Delia said. “He says it’s good.”

Dana’s lip curled “And I’m sure we can trust Phil Chesney’s literary judgment.”

“I hope you haven’t told him what the agent said,” Leigh said.

“Of course not. Chances are he won’t live long enough to finish it anyway. Oh, wipe that panic off your face. You’ll get all the money he’s promised you.”

“I need to get to work,” Leigh said.

“One more thing,” Dana said. “We’ve decided to limit your work time with him to thirty minutes a day. Doctor’s orders.”

Leigh pushed open the swinging door. “Whatever you say, Dana. You’re the boss now.”

Terry quickly covered his face with his hands when she entered the study, then dropped them to his lap, pulling away a length of clear tube connected to a small machine on wheels.

“You’re on oxygen?” Leigh said. “That’s new since this afternoon. So the nurse came by.”

He made a face. “It was this or the hospital, she said. What sort of choice is that?”

“I met your daughters.”

“Dana rip you a new asshole?”

“Not quite. Congratulations on the new grandchild.”

He nodded, smiling. “Delia, a mother.” His eyebrows lifted and the smile widened. “I haven’t told her about you and Phil, in case you were wondering. I might if Dana weren’t hovering all the time. Delia would be happy for Phil, you should know that. She truly liked him and she always felt pretty bad about what she did to him. The affairs and all. Chip off the old block, I guess.”

“Affairs?” Leigh sat down. His hand hung by his side, tapping the curved top of the oxygen concentrator. The cannula and tubing had fallen between his thigh and the chair, and was already sinking out of sight. She leaned and tugged it all free, placing it on his lap.

He nodded. “You’ve made a date with a wounded man, Leigh. Be careful. Oh, I know what you’re going to say. There’s nothing to be careful about, right? Nothing more than the promise of a first date?” He leaned forward, eager to be contradicted, looking for a crumb of gossip.

“Actually, I guess it’s gone a bit further than that. We had the date. It was very nice. And then we spent the night together.” She glanced toward the door, wondering if anyone was listening on the other side. “Please don’t tell your daughter. Either of them.”

He dropped back into his chair, delighted.

A boy, she thought. A boy revealed in the man. He probably looked that way over seventy years before when some friend described a first glimpse of a girl’s breasts or shared a slug of daddy’s bourbon. Absolutely gleeful.

He picked up a tea cup and raised it. “To many more nights together.” He set the cup down. “To hell with this, let’s have some brandy.”

“I have thirty minutes, Terry. We can’t spend it drinking.”

“What do you mean, thirty minutes? Oh it’s Dana, right?”

“On the advice of a doctor.”

He shook his head. “I’m not dying that way, Leigh. I’m not going to be abandoned, left alone in this house with a nurse and an oxygen tank. Geneva’s gone. Don’t you leave me too. Dana does not make the rules. I’m the father, goddam it.”

“Then you tell her. I think Delia will back you up. But until you do talk to her, we have thirty minutes.”

He shoulders started twitching as he tried to breathe. He fumbled with the tubing, twisting it around a wrist. Leigh took it from him, straightened it out, and carefully looped it over his ears before letting him insert the prongs of the cannula into his nostrils. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

Should she ask him about the book? Ask him about the agent who took his calls only as a favor? Should she ask him to admit the world had passed him by?

You need to tell him, Phil had said. He needs to know.

She poured two small glasses of brandy. When she set his on his table, he opened his eyes. “Stingy drink.”

“Your daughter scares me.”

His laugh threatened to morph into gasps, but he soothed the spasm with a sip of brandy.

No, Leigh thought as she raised her own glass. He doesn’t have to know about Nancy Taylor Lee and he doesn’t have to tell me about the phantom contract. Some truths belonged in the shadows.

8.

Her daughter had departed to work at the convention’s morning sessions, and Leigh had exchanged several emails with Phil and drafted a new chapter by the time she finally heard Roberta’s door open and heard shuffling steps go into the bathroom. “You’re up,” she said cheerfully when at last Roberta appeared in the living room.

“And after last night that’s no small achievement for either of us, though you certainly look fresher than I feel.”

“Thanks to some high-octane coffee and ibuprofen.” Leigh pointed a finger at Roberta. “You know far too much about me.”

“I assume you’re referring to the lovely mother-daughter karaoke duets I witnessed last night. Imagine—the two of you discovering you both like Cher and that you know so many of her songs!” Roberta laughed and went into the kitchen and moved about noisily.

Leigh closed her computer, tapping the cover as it slowly whirred to a stop. She pressed a thumb against her forehead. This would be a beast of headache, all right, at least until the coffee and pills had kicked in completely. Too little sleep on top of too much alcohol and pizza consumed after midnight had all combusted into a fiery pounding.

Thinking about blackmail didn’t help, either. Even if it wasn’t quite clear how Ida May’s letter connected to Roberta’s novels, it was her only defense, the only way to stop Roberta from launching the news about Nancy Taylor Lee’s new ghostwriting job.

She closed her eyes and saw Terry’s nearly skeletal face with the oxygen tubing. Maybe she shouldn’t think of this ploy as blackmail but as way to buy time, and she probably wouldn’t need much of that.

Roberta reappeared with toast and coffee. She sat in the big brown chair and sighed. “I feel better already.”

Now or never. Leigh picked up her mug and backpack and moved to the rocker. “I’ve been telling myself not to mind the slight hangover and day-after embarrassment, because it’s been ages since I’ve spent that much time with my daughter.”

“You two were definitely having fun.”

“So it seemed. Apparently, however, I’ve used up my allotment of her goodwill. Want to know what she said to me first thing this morning? She said, ‘I heard you tell Marti you’d listen in on some of the sessions, but you shouldn’t go if you’re going to be this disdainful.’ Then she was out the door. Roberta, was I disdainful last night?”

“No, honey; just off key. I too made some rash promises for the afternoon. Handing out awards for dollhouses and dioramas, I think. But I’d much rather stay here, noodling with my speech and hiding in this heavenly chair.”

“Want to hear my theory about everybody’s beloved big brown chair? I don’t think Ida May ever sat in it, except perhaps after her mother died, when she came back to bury her. I think it was her mother’s chair, and it’s where her mother sat and thought about her messed up life as Bancroft’s lover in Pepin, Minnesota. What a life: hidden away in the woods, her daughter scorned by the other children in town, her lover available only on borrowed time. I think that’s where she sat and brooded, night after night. Years later, the daughter remembered her mother sitting in the big brown chair and only then realized what was probably going through her mother’s head. I think the storyteller decided to revise the truth. Fiction writer’s privilege, of course.”

“What a cynical theory. And entirely plausible.”

“Feel free to share it with the Little Girls during your talk tonight, though I suspect you’d do so at some risk to your personal safety. You’re a very good sport, Roberta.”

“Please, call me Robbie.”

“I suppose I should. Considering we’ve spent time naked in a hot tub.”

“To say nothing of me witnessing your singing.”

They exchanged smiles. Oh shit, Leigh thought. She did like the woman. She rubbed one hand with another, wishing for her own set of Little Girl talons or claws. “Hearing my singing is more like grounds for blackmail than intimacy. That’s how Marti got me to let you stay here, have you figured that out? Blackmail. I had no desire to see you again. I knew you’d recognize me and spread the word.”

“I did recognize you.” She sipped coffee. “I’ve not spread the word.”

“Not yet. But reporting runs too hot in your veins to pass up this story. I’d be the same. Neither of us would pass up the chance to break a good story, even if it’s just a story shared in a call or email to good friend.”

Roberta shrugged.

“Unless we had reason to stay quiet.”

“That sounds ominous. What do you mean?”

Leigh pulled the letters out of a red folder in her backpack. She tipped her head toward the Seville on the wall. “That’s not the only treasure I’ve unearthed. There were also some notes from Ida May to her mother’s lover. When did you move to Maine?”

“About ten years ago. Why?”

“Dara Seville used to vacation in Maine.”

Roberta’s head dipped once. Her eyes were fixed on the envelopes in Leigh’s hand. “Yes, I know. I’ve read Windsor’s memoir.”

“Windsor?”

“Ida May’s editor, Sally Windsor. She was a famous children’s book editor. She’s the one who hired Seville for the Little Girl books. She was briefly a lover of Seville’s.”

Leigh laughed. “This gets even better. Does she mention any other lovers of Seville’s?”

“Where’s this leading, Leigh?”

“I’m not entirely sure.” She pulled one envelope from the bunch. “Read this, and you tell me.”

A short while after she began reading, Roberta’s hand flew up and covered her mouth. Her eyes closed, and she made a noise—a sharp, whispered curse.

Ah, thought Leigh. Just as she suspected: the card she’d been holding was the ace of trump.

Leigh went to the kitchen for a coffee refill and a fourth ibuprofen. When she returned, Roberta looked at her with dull eyes. Leigh sat down. “There’s one thing I especially want to know: What’s this Julia’s last name?”

“Tabor.”

“And you have the outlines?”

Roberta nodded.

“How and when did you get them? I’m interested in that. And I’d also love to know the answer to the question I always hated hearing: Why did you do it? Oh, never mind. I know, of course. It was the pressure, the pressure to produce. It must have been fierce, that pressure. The famous columnist makes a very public switch to fiction—you needed to come up with something good. Maybe writing fiction was tougher than you thought, right? Maybe these outlines fell into your hands, and the story was too tempting. Maybe—”

Roberta swore. Leigh said. “Sorry. I don’t really enjoy doing this, you know.”

Roberta swore again.

“You’re the only one who can hurt me,” Leigh said. “I have no choice.”

“Not your daughter, not Marti? Surely they can hurt you too.”

“Emily wouldn’t, not this way, at least. You see, she may not respect who I am or how I’m going about my new life, but at some level she knows if she makes things worse for me, it will only mean more public shame for her and her father and his family, and she does care about them. As for Marti, it’s business. She’ll honor her promise if I honor mine. The deal. That’s all she cares about.”

“My husband…” Roberta grimaced and made a pained noise.

“He doesn’t know you stole someone’s story? Your editor? Your kids? Your friend at the
Observer
who is interested in good journalism?”

Screw me, she thought as Roberta drilled her with a look. Screw me big time. Leigh reached and lifted the letter from Roberta’s limp fingers and put it with the others in the folder. “Well then, you must be dying to tell someone.”