Midnight Voices

people, but of made-up ones, and for my work to be believed, I, too, must be no more than a role. It is perhaps why my relationships have failed, but it is why my career has succeeded. I am nothing more than those I play on the stage; there is no one else. Do not search for my past nor predict my future, for neither of them exist. Nothing is real except what you see beneath the lights.’

Caroline read the quotation twice more, then began moving through the other sites devoted to Virginia Estherbrook. Everywhere it was the same — no hint of where she’d come from nor when, no mention of any family at all. But the quotation was always there.

’… do not search my past or predict my future…’

She went back to the search engine, this time broadening the search to the single name of Estherbrook. Other than Virginia, there were very few references at all.

Then the answer came to her, so obvious that Caroline felt like an idiot. If everything about Virginia Estherbrook was a fiction, then why wouldn’t her name be a fiction, too? She was an actress, for heaven’s sake — didn’t they all change their names? Or at least hadn’t they in Virginia Estherbrook’s heyday? Frances Gumm had turned into Judy Garland. What if Virginia Estherbrook’s real name had been something like Hortense Finkleman? Who wouldn’t have changed it? But even if she had, someone somewhere must have known. She went back to all the sites carrying information about Virginia Estherbrook’s career, not sure what she was looking for. One of the sites — by far the biggest — held not only all the information Caroline had seen half a dozen times before, but a compilation of reviews of nearly every play in which Virginia Estherbrook had ever performed. One of the earliest was a production of Romeo & Juliet from nearly fifty years ago:

’Seldom have Broadway audiences been treated to a Juliet of the depth presented by Miss Estherbrook, who succeeds brilliantly in her first attempt at a role in which several more experienced (and far better known) actresses have failed; one must reach back nearly four decades to the incomparable Faith Blaine in order to find a Juliet of such strength. Indeed, it appears to this critic at least, that Miss Estherbrook may well be the heir to the mantle of Blaine, who retired some five years ago, vanishing from the stage into her apartment in The Rockwell.’

The Rockwell?

What on earth was going on?

She searched the web once more, this time hunting for more information on Faith Blaine, whose name rang a bell in her head, but stirred no memory at all of what the actress might have looked like.

When an image popped onto the screen a few moments later, Caroline was certain she’d made a mistake, that she was back at one of the sites devoted to Virginia Estherbrook. But the caption beneath the picture was very clear: Faith Blaine as Juliet in the legendary 1914 performance that made her a star.

The picture was a vignette, everything about it testifying to the date of its origin. The actress was wearing a diaphanous costume — one that would have been considered perfect for a dramatically tragic death back in the days of melodrama when performances were far less realistic than now. Faith Blaine’s hands were clasped over her breast, and her face was tilted up as if she were gazing into paradise itself, and finding her lost love there. The image was faded and slightly out of focus, but even under the heavy makeup the actress wore, Caroline could see the resemblance not only to Virginia Estherbrook, but to Melanie Shackleforth as well.

Coincidence?

Or had Faith Blaine and Virginia Estherbrook been related?

Melanie Shackleforth’s words echoed in her mind: ‘… there are times when I suspect I’m really Aunt Virgie’s daughter…’

Was that it? Was Melanie really Virginia’s daughter?

Could Faith Blaine have been her mother? That had to be it — nothing else made sense. And it would account for the mystery in which Virginia Estherbrook had shrouded her past. It wasn’t all the mumbojumbo about ‘living the roles’ at all — it was keeping the family secret that certainly would have destroyed her mother’s career, given the time.

And the pictures Ryan had seen — they must have been old pictures of Faith Blaine.

She felt a great wave of relief flood over her, but as quickly as it came, it ebbed away.

What about the pictures of Tony?

Tony, wearing ‘old-fashioned clothes.’

Was it possible that Tony looked as much like his great-grandfather as Melanie Shackleforth looked like her grandmother?

If Faith Blaine was her grandmother, Caroline corrected herself. Which was a very, very long reach. Simply the fact that both Blaine and Virginia Estherbrook had lived in The Rockwell didn’t mean a thing. And the resemblance could as easily have been a function of make-up as anything else — how many actresses had she seen who could make themselves look so much like someone else as to be utterly unrecognizable?

Or was she once more simply being paranoid?

So Rebecca Mayhew and Virginia Estherbrook had gone on trips, and the niece who was staying in Virginia’s apartment looked a lot like her? So what?

But even as she tried to dismiss it, she kept coming back to the pictures Ryan had seen.

The pictures that were in an album on the low shelf of the lamp table by the fireplace. The shelf upon which she herself had seen a dust-free rectangle where something the same size and shape as a photo album had been.

If the album truly held nothing but old family photographs, why hadn’t Tony simply put it back on the shelf?

Why had he hidden it?

Why had he locked it away in the desk that was in turn locked away in the study from which he’d banished not only Ryan, but herself as well?

Her eyes went to the huge ring of keys that hung on the wall next to the door to the main shop. There were at least a hundred keys on the ring; keys of all description, some so large that Caroline could barely imagine a lock they might fit into, others so tiny they must have come from a doll’s house. “Lord only knows where they all came from,” Claire had explained on the first day Caroline had worked for her. “Whenever I find a key, I add it to the ring. Most of them came in with furniture, and you’d be amazed at how often I’ve had to use them to unlock something when the owners lost the key. I doubt there’s a drawer in Manhattan — desk, dresser, or anything else you can think of — that I couldn’t open with something on that ring. Not if it’s over a hundred years old, anyway.”

The desk in Tony’s study was a lot older than that.

Making up her mind, she took the key ring off the wall and dropped it in her shoulder bag.

“Come on, Ryan,” she said. “We’re going home.”

“Aw, Mom,” Ryan groaned. “Do we have to? Can’t I stay here and help Kevin?”

“No, you can’t,” Caroline snapped. “And don’t argue with me — just do what I tell you!”

“Well, that was charming,” Claire Robinson observed acidly after Caroline had vanished through the front door without so much as a nod to her employer.

“Come on, Claire, give her a break,” Kevin said, emerging from the back room. “She just lost one of her best friends—”

Claire gazed coldly at Kevin. “And she just got married, had a honeymoon on Mustique, and moved into one of the most fabulous buildings in town. Why am I having such a hard time feeling sorry for her?”

Kevin dropped his voice into a perfect parody of the kind of insincere concern Claire usually offered her customers. “I’m so sorry, darling — I forgot! In order to know how it feels to lose a friend, you have to actually have a friend, don’t you?”

Claire’s jaw tightened, and for just a moment Kevin wondered if she was going to fire him. But as the seconds ticked by he could almost see the wheels turning in her mind, and finally — when she realized that if she fired him she’d have to close the shop just to go to lunch — she forced her lips into what he supposed was her idea of a sympathetic smile.

“I suppose you’re right,” she offered. “She does look at the end of her rope, doesn’t she? I suppose I can be patient with her for another day or so.”