'Who?' They had barely exchanged two words in as many days, and her response was more insecure than curt.
' Evan,' Terri asked with studied patience.
'He's fine. Dennis says he's fine now.'
Terri nodded. 'I'm glad.'
Ann looked at her daughter strangely. 'I thought you and he were. .. on the outs.'
'I don't have to be in love with someone to be glad they're all right, do I?”
“No. No, I'm sorry.' Ann lifted the suitcase and set it on the floor.
'Marvella called me last night,' Terri said. 'She wants me to come to New York and help her costume Empire.'
'She's going to do it then.'
'Yes. She told me that it's all she has left now. At first she thought she'd give it all up, go somewhere else, the west coast maybe. But then she said she realized that…” Terri paused, spoke more softly. “… that Dennis's little entourage is all the family she has left.' Terri shook her head and gave a little snort of embarrassed laughter. 'She says she thinks something's wrong, that something or somebody is after Dennis, after all of us maybe. She thinks that whoever it was killed Whitney. And she says she won't be scared off.'
'What about you?' Ann said. 'Are you scared?'
Terri looked at her mother levelly. 'Shitless,' she said. 'But I want a career.'
I want something else too, she thought. Evan. She had nearly died herself when she heard about his attack, and had to restrain herself from jumping in her car and driving to Kirkland to see if he was all right.
He had stuck with her, no matter how she tried to drive him out of her head. After the night they had spent together, she had kept him at arm's length, refusing to go out with him again, going out of her way to avoid him, being unresponsive when he spoke to her, leading him and apparently her mother to think that they were indeed 'on the outs.'
She had told herself that the only reason she had slept with him in the first place was to annoy her mother and make her relationship with Dennis all the more complex. But there had been more to it than that. Evan was not at all what she had expected. Instead of being a celebrity brat, he had been kind and sweet and thoughtful. In bed he had been more interested in her feelings than his own, and though she had tried to tough it out, to pretend that all she wanted to do was fuck, by the time she went to sleep she knew that they had been making love. She was embarrassed when they woke up and he had his arm around her. She was not used to being cuddled, being held, and although she liked it, that was not what she was there for. She had disengaged herself and dressed before he was even awake. She had refused his offer of breakfast, and had left with barely another word.
But she did not leave so easily. His behavior toward her stayed with her, his initial shyness, then his tenderness. Still, she tried to get him out of her thoughts, her memory, telling herself that her concern for his well- being derived only from compassion. But she knew better. She had never before known love, and now that it had come to her, she feared it even as she desired it.
She hoped he would go to New York. She had almost lost him on the haunted stage of the Venetian Theatre, and she did not want to lose him again.
“… are you going up?'
Her mother's words intruded upon her thoughts. 'I'm sorry?'
'When are you going? To New York?'
'I don't know. Sometime next week, I guess. After the funeral. Marvella says I can stay at her place. It's just a few blocks away from the costume shop.”
“Do you… would you want to go up with us?'
'Us?'
'Dennis and Evan and me. They won't be here until three. You'd have time to pack.'
Terri shook her head, remembering Dennis in the costume room. 'No. Not with Dennis.'
'Terri,' her mother said, taking her hand. Terri looked down at her hand and her mother's in surprise. They had not touched for a long time. 'I'm going to tell you something. And when I do, I just want you to remember that I've never lied to you before.'
Ann told her then, an extraordinary story about a double of Dennis Hamilton, an imposter who had been responsible for the deaths, a man who Ann had seen with her own eyes while Dennis was in the same room. 'If you were seduced,' Ann closed, 'that was the man who did it. Not Dennis.' She let go of Terri's hand. 'Do you believe me?'
Slowly she nodded. 'If for no other reason than that no one would tell that involved and crazy a lie.' She sat down on the bed. 'You know, when I talked to him the next day… he didn't seem to know a thing about it. I thought he was just acting, but maybe he wasn't.'
'No. He wasn't. He was terribly upset about it.'
'But why didn't he tell someone? Why didn't he tell the police right away?'
'He didn't know at first. The police know now. They're treating it like a celebrity stalker case. And they're right. Someone's trying to destroy Dennis. By harming the people around him.'
'Then Sid… and Donna?'
Ann nodded. 'This… person killed Donna. Even though the evidence points to Sid.'
It was too much to fathom. 'My God. My God.'
'Come with us,' Ann said, a hand on Terri's shoulder. 'I don't want you to be alone. You can stay with me at Dennis's suite until after Monday.'
She felt unmoored, drifting on a sea of confusion and unreality, but her mother's hand was solid and real. 'All right,' she said. 'All right. I'll go with you.'
Dennis and Evan drove into the Deems's drive just after three o'clock in the spacious Lincoln they had rented for the trip, and were surprised to find both Ann and Terri waiting with their luggage. Terri smiled stiffly at both men, as if afraid the expression might crack her face. While Evan helped her take her luggage to the car, Dennis looked questioningly at Ann.
'I told her,' she said.
'About the Emperor?'
'Just about a double. She knows it wasn't you who… that night.'
He nodded. 'Evan knows too. But he knows everything. He's coming along,' he said with parental pride. 'To help.'
'That's good,' Ann said. 'Things are getting better.'
Still, they spoke little in the car. Ann sat up front with Dennis, and Terri and Evan were on either side of the wide back seat. Mostly they discussed A Private Empire. 'It'll be a race,' Dennis said, 'to get it ready in time. You and Marvella will have quite a job on your hands, Terri. The Empire costumes were disbanded after the last show, so you'll be starting from scratch. Except for my costumes.'
'I, uh, don't know,' Terri said. 'That might be a problem.'
'A problem?'
'Your dress uniform? The red one? It kept getting misplaced,' Terri explained. 'Marvella would find it on one rack, then another, and now… we can't find it at all.'
They stopped for dinner at a cafeteria on the New Jersey Turnpike. No one recognized Dennis. They spent a half hour backed up at the Lincoln Tunnel, and finally arrived at Dennis's East 85th Street apartment building just before nine o'clock. Dennis had not been there since before Robin died, but John Steinberg, with Dennis's approval, had had Robin's clothes and most of her personal possessions put in storage until her will was administered.
When Dennis walked into the foyer of the apartment, the others behind him, he was struck as never before with Robin's presence. The apartment had been as much hers as his, and he was reminded of her wherever his glance turned. There was the vase with the pussy willows she had bought in Paris, the Picasso etching she had given him for his birthday four years ago. She was everywhere. Her clothes may have been gone, but Robin, poor seduced Robin, whose only sin was loving him too well, was still there, an inescapable and ineffable spirit of the place. He could not help but feel that bringing Ann there was a betrayal.
Still, he ushered in his guests, and asked Evan, whose own room was still filled with his boyhood things, to
