The Night Visitor Page 11

  “Chub deb?” Rory asked.

  “Richard’s niece. Miss Kimberly Barrett Pengilly. The chubby debutante.”

  “Right. That’s here already. Time flies when you’re in a concussion-induced delirium.” Rory grinned.

  Donna smiled too, but the black humor was lost on Evelyn.

  “Mom, I’m not up to attending the debutante ball.”

  Evelyn brushed an empty bag onto the floor. She started in on another one. “No worries. Everyone will understand. Here’s more of the Crane thank-you notes and stationery you wanted. I thought these were feminine but not frilly.”

  “Thank you. I have scads of notes to write. I need my laptop. I’ll get Tom to pick it up. I want to do some work on Langtry.”

  “Please just try to get well,” Donna said.

  “I picked up this new thriller by…some writer.” Evelyn frowned at the book’s cover and tossed it onto the desk. “And the spiral notebook and the colored pens you wanted. Ro, this Friday I’m giving an intimate dinner party here to welcome you home. Just family and Tom and Leland, of course.” She didn’t look at her sister.

  “Rory might not be ready for social events, Evelyn.”

  Evelyn finally looked at her. “I realize that, Donna. If Rory’s not feeling well, she simply won’t attend and everyone will have to understand. Do you think I’m going to force her to go?”

  Donna pressed her lips together.

  With her fingernail, Evelyn scraped at the cellophane wrapper on the plastic bottle of valerian, growing frustrated when she couldn’t break it. “Ruining my manicure.” She opened a drawer in the secretary and began noisily rummaging in it. “No scissors?” She slammed the drawer shut. “Why do they seal these packages like this?” She chucked the bottle onto a sofa.

  Rory closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with her fingers.

  Donna picked up her purse. “I’ve stayed long enough.”

  Evelyn again didn’t look at her but busied herself with a box of skin cream. “Something I said, I hope.”

  “No, something you are.”

  “Stop it!” Rory pushed herself to her feet, keeping her hand on the chair back for support. “Just stop it, please. I can’t stand the way you two treat each other. Can’t you put your differences behind you? If you won’t do that, can’t you just be polite?”

  The two sisters looked at each other, neither one budging.

  “How can I?” Evelyn said. “See her face? It’s all there. She still looks down on me. No matter how hard I work or how much I’ve accomplished or how much good I’ve done, she’ll always accuse me of abandoning my girls.”

  “Because you did,” Donna said. “As soon as you saw those babies as a liability to your career and your chances of finding a rich husband, you dumped them.”

  “I left my girls with you for their own good. They needed a stable home. It was an act of love and it tore my heart out.” Evelyn pantomimed the action. “Why do you continue to harp on this? You’ve always said they were the daughters you didn’t have. Supporting them didn’t come out of your and Dave’s pockets. I paid for everything they needed. Even that extra bedroom and bathroom you added on to your house. When I married Richard and my life settled down, I was finally able to give the girls a stable home. It was Rory’s choice to stay with you and Dave.”

  “You still don’t get it, do you?” Donna said. “All these years and you haven’t changed one bit. You welcomed Anya into your life once she grew into a beauty. You loved being seen with your exquisite daughter. You loved the attention she brought you. You’ve always treated your girls like accessories. You did it with Anya and now you treat Rory the same way. Yes, it was Rory’s choice to stay with me and Dave, and we were delighted to have her. She was a joy. But you didn’t exactly make her feel welcome at the villa, did you?”

  Neither woman had noticed that Rory was crying. “Please stop,” she said. “What’s the point of going to those dark places and rehashing the same crap? Anya and I had our differences, but I try to focus on the good things. All the fun we had. The time I spent a month with her in her apartment in Manhattan. We’d stay up most of the night and laugh and laugh. She said she was so glad I was there with her. Even with all the people around, she sometimes felt so lonely.” Her voice trailed off as she stared into the distance. She’d stopped weeping. “At least you two have a sister.”

  Donna crossed the room and took Rory’s hand. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. This is the last thing you need right now. I’ll call you later, okay? Love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  Donna kissed her niece’s cheek and left without another word to her sister.

  Evelyn didn’t wait until Donna was out of earshot before saying, “I was not a bad mother. I was trying to do the best for you and Anya while trying to make a living to support you girls. You know Anya and you were both welcome in this house.”

  That wasn’t the way Rory remembered it, but she didn’t want to discuss it. She slowly lowered herself back onto the chair. Feeling woozy, she leaned her elbows against her knees and rested her head in her hands.

  “Mom, I don’t blame anybody. But please, my head.”

  “Darling, I’m sorry.” Evelyn retrieved the bottle of herbs from the couch and again worked at its plastic wrapping. “Have a valerian. It’ll make you sleep.”

  Rory sighed. “No, thank you.” She cocked her head. “Is the TV on?”

  Evelyn opened the door of the armoire that concealed the set. “It’s not on. What’s there to watch anyway? All you see is that Sylvia Torres and her big-haired attorney talking trash about us.”

  Rory smelled the acrid odor. It was happening again. She knew the odor was in her head. The sound of the TV was too. She was starting to see a pattern in her waking dreams.

  A face loomed before her, the nose and mouth swathed in yellow. The eyes belonged to a middle-aged Hispanic woman. It was a face she’d seen in the dreams before and it looked familiar. Rory now recognized the woman. It was Fermina, Junior’s mother. Of course it was.

  Rory’s heart surged with warmth. She closed her eyes to savor it. The genuine affection felt nourishing, especially now. As much as she feared the waking dreams, part of her didn’t want them to stop. The horror that they sometimes brought was counterbalanced by her heightened sense of perception, of being, of life. She found herself enduring the bad visions while craving the others.

  Was this how Danny Lara had felt?

  On the edge of her perception, she was aware of her own mother, still busy with her purchases.

  Rory started humming.

  Evelyn stopped fussing with her purchases and looked at Rory, who was staring into the distance but seemed calm and happy. She recognized the tune Rory was humming as “It’s a Small World.” She stood straight, recalling the time Rory had hummed it in the hospital. Beads of perspiration broke out along her back as she watched Rory behaving the exact same way as she had then.

  Rory was holding her hands in front of her face, grasping air between them. “It’s cute, Mom. Did you get it at Vroman’s?”

  “Get what, honey?” Evelyn was breathing through her mouth.

  “The toucan.”

  “Rory, stop it.” Evelyn grabbed Rory’s hands and held them down.

  Rory angrily pulled herself free. “Excuse me.”

  Evelyn took a step back, looking at her daughter as if she were a stranger. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll call Dr. Ballard.”

  Rory realized the dream had taken over her reality. The plush toy was still in front of her and she heard its electronic whistling and singing.

  It’s not there, it’s not there, it’s not there, she told herself. Go away, go away.

  Her mother tapped on her cell phone while shooting glances at Rory.

  Rory was desperate to stop the vision. She grabbed a lock of her hair and twisted it around her finger.

  Evelyn shrieked and dropped the phone.

  Rory had pulled out her hair by the roots.
She sat blinking, the pain bringing tears to her eyes. The acrid odor, the electronic music, and the stuffed toy dissipated, as if made of smoke.

  Evelyn gaped at her daughter.

  Rory examined the hunk of hair as if surprised to find it in her hand.

  “Darling. Baby. You’re okay. You were hallucinating.” Evelyn slowly took the lock of hair from Rory’s fingers and deposited it into a wastebasket.

  “Hallucinating? I guess I was. That was strange.” Rory made a snap decision not to deny what had happened. “Must be lack of sleep and those drugs I’m taking.” She tried to believe it.

  Evelyn retrieved her phone from the floor. “We’d best speak to the doctor, don’t you think?”

  “No.” Rory was certain that no doctor could help her. She softened her tone. “Mom, I’m tired, that’s all. Let’s see how I feel after a good night’s sleep. I’m going to take a nap, okay?”

  “Okay, darling. I’ll check in later.” Evelyn brushed her lips against Rory’s forehead and left.

  32

  As soon as her mother had closed the door, Rory again sat down. She asked the question she’d not dared to voice before. “Am I losing my mind?”

  As her head injury improved, it seemed to fuel the dreams, making them more vivid and frequent. And as the dreams grew stronger, her energy waned. The dreams drained her, like an appliance drawing its charge from a battery. While she began to feel more alert mentally, she felt increasingly unwell in other areas of her body.

  Maybe she should go in for more medical tests. But she’d just had all the tests days ago—everything—and her neurologist had assured her that she was fine and making a great recovery. More tests weren’t the answer.

  Besides, she didn’t want anyone to know. What if people thought that what had happened to Danny Lara was happening to her? It would leak to the media; these things inevitably did. She shuddered, thinking about how her mother would overreact. And poor Tom had already been through so much. No. Rory had to deal with this on her own.

  The vision of Fermina Lara, her face half obscured by yellow, was still present in the background of her perceptions, as were the toucan and its hokey music.

  She closed her eyes and released her mind. The dream intensified, the love there enveloping her with warmth. She settled back into the chair and breathed deeply, giving in to the dream, letting the happiness and serenity well inside her. Its source was in that world, but she preferred it to the confusion she felt here.

  The dry late-summer air was heavy with the scent of night jasmine. As the sun dipped in the sky, crickets awakened. Their seesawing song seemed to tell her, a million times over, You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive…

  She had a powerful urge to see Junior. For five years, she’d thought of him as dead. It had been easier that way. Now her heart ached for him. She knew that the sexy, creative, and passionate man she’d loved profoundly was no more, but she felt a strange yearning to connect with him, whoever he was now.

  But she could never visit Junior, as much as she wanted to. It was out of the question. She had her business to consider and didn’t need bad publicity. It wasn’t because she was afraid that Junior had somehow glommed onto her mind. That was silly. Of course it was silly.

  She’d also been overwhelmed with yearning for her sister. She’d been mad at Anya all the years since her murder. If Anya hadn’t been so vain to want a nude portrait of herself and hadn’t thrown so much money at Junior that the job became too lucrative for him to pass up, the Five Points shootings wouldn’t have happened.

  Rory had confronted Anya. “Why are you after Junior to do this nude of you? You’ve never given a clue that you even like his work. You call him ‘the painter,’ like he’s a housepainter or something.”

  They were at Anya’s office in her house, going over photos from a shoot for Langtry Cosmetics’ new ad campaign. Rory was already ticked at Anya for being difficult, not liking the same photos that Rory did, and Rory’s simmering resentment about the nude portrait of Anya that Junior had agreed to do bubbled to the surface.

  Anya said, “I was just rattling your cage, li’l sis.”

  It was a nickname that Anya knew got under Rory’s skin. Anya was six minutes older and two inches taller. Growing up, they had called each other “li’l sis” and “big sis,” but Anya’s continued use of the nicknames as adults rankled Rory. To her, it felt like competitive Anya wanted to hammer home that Rory would always be the lesser sister.

  “I think Junior’s work is brilliant,” Anya said. “He’s got buzz in the art world. Of course I want to hire him. It makes me look cutting edge. Painting my portrait will raise his profile even more. He’ll land even bigger jobs. He needs the money, and you convinced him to do it. Are you jealous now or something?”

  They were arguing in circles, just like when they were kids.

  “Since finding out that you want Junior to paint you posed exactly like that nude he painted of me on the settee, I’m finding it sort of strange.”

  “That’s a great painting. What’s wrong with me wanting one just like it?”

  “What’s wrong?” Rory stomped across the room and wheeled around to face Anya. “You hire Junior because you admire his creativity, and instead of letting him follow his muse, you hire him to make a copy of another painting.”

  “What if his muse turns up something I don’t want?”

  When Rory and Junior had discussed the near copy that Anya wanted, Junior had been pragmatic. “Anya’s not creative. She just wants something pretty for her wall. You’re the one who said the money is too good to pass up. Babe, my property taxes on the Killingsworth Building are overdue.”

  Anya leaned back in her desk chair and crossed her long legs. “I want to make sure I get something I’m going to like. After all, I’m paying Junior enough.”

  Anya’s smug expression made Rory fume. She took a moment to compose herself before responding. “Anya, I agree with you on one thing: That nude that Junior painted of me is amazing. But there’s a big difference between that portrait and what he’ll paint for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I didn’t have to pay him for it.” Rory felt a glow of satisfaction when her comeback silenced Anya for a few seconds.

  Of course before long Anya devised a cutting response. “Lucky for me that I have the money to buy whatever I want, including your boyfriend painting my portrait.” Anya gave her that crooked, closed-lipped smile, thinking she’d won.

  Rory grabbed her purse and was storming out. At the doorway, she turned, tossing off the last barb. “Not boyfriend. Junior’s my fiancé.” She’d held up her left hand adorned with her engagement ring.

  “Whatever.”

  After Anya’s funeral, Rory had never gone back to her grave. And she’d distanced herself emotionally from Anya while exploiting her image and tragic end to build Langtry Cosmetics.

  Rory still wondered what had driven Anya to sometimes be so competitive with her. Had Anya been that insecure? Had they been just sisters fighting, like sisters sometimes do, or had there been something more?

  A thought entered her head. Go find out. It felt like a command.

  33

  Rory steadied herself on Tom’s arm as she crossed the living room in Anya’s Hollywood Hills home. They stood before a wall of windows that extended over the edge of a cliff, giving them the illusion of being suspended in air as they took in the city-to-ocean view. Rory could see the living room, reflected in the glass, and a blowup of Anya’s first Vogue cover behind her.

  Rory raised her arms in a V. “I’m queen of all I see.”

  Tom looked at her curiously.

  Rory managed to keep a straight face for a second before cracking up.

  “Inside joke?” Tom asked.

  “Anya used to stand here and say that. Just when you thought she’d meant it, she’d turn and wink.”

  “Why didn’t your mother ever sell this place?”

  “She talks abo
ut it but never manages to do it. The house is the way it was when Anya last slept here. Rosario sends a crew to clean, and the gardeners come once a week.”

  Rory saw him looking at a portrait of Anya. When he turned, she sensed there was something he was holding back.

  “I’ve been here before,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “It was just one of her soirées. You know I knew Anya casually.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know you knew her that well.”

  “I didn’t know her that well. She just invited me to a party here. A dinner party. She hired a chef. You know Anya. She invited these different types of people. I think she was trying to turn herself into a Hollywood hostess, mixing actors, writers…”

  “Entertainment attorneys?”

  “Rory, it was nothing. It seemed pointless to bring up something that would be painful for you.”

  “Did you bring a date?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many times were you here?”

  “Just once. Anya had a date. Jonah Donati, the hedge-fund manager.”

  “I still wish you’d told me.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” Tom changed the subject. “So, what happened between Anya and Jonah?”

  “They were an item when they both lived in New York. He sold his investment fund to another firm for megabucks and moved to L.A. to get into the wine business or write a novel or something. Then Anya sold her apartment in Manhattan and moved to L.A. I think she moved back to take her relationship with Jonah to the next level, but she wouldn’t admit to following him here. Said she was entering a new phase of her life. She’d been approached to do a reality show about modeling. She wanted to start her own clothing line and devote more time to Langtry. Marry a rich man. You know, the sorts of things that aging supermodels do.”