Prologue, Part 2

Immediate Family
by Eileen Goudge

(Page 2 of 2)

She hesitated before replying, "No. I'll stay over at my place." It was closer to her mom's. Besides, she hadn't been home in over a week.

"All the more reason to move in with me," Ryan said, after she'd explained about needing to water her plants and collect her mail. He spoke lightly, but she caught a note of impatience. He'd been urging her to take this next step, reasoning that it was silly to pay rent on her own place when she was almost never there, but so far she'd resisted. Not that she wasn't crazy about him. She had been since the day they'd met, when she'd interviewed him following his Oscar nomination for best documentary. It was commitment itself that caused her to break out in a cold sweat.

Stevie sighed as she hung up. Her friends thought she was crazy, period. Franny, whose biological clock was ticking loudly enough for everyone within a mile's radius to hear, had stated with her usual bluntness that she'd be happy to take Ryan off Stevie's hands if she didn't want him. Emerson, a single mom, had no illusions about romance, but even she thought Stevie was being unnecessarily cautious. And Jay . . . what could you expect from him, with a wife and now a baby on the way? Naturally, he was prejudiced.

But what if she took the plunge and found herself in over her head? Drowning in shattered illusions. Sure, it was all hearts and flowers in the beginning. But things changed. People changed. With all the uncertainty she'd had in her life, Stevie didn't need any more. Also, Ryan wanted a family, and how could she promise him that? All her years growing up, moving from one place to the next, Nancy struggling to make ends meet, selling her pots in local galleries, Stevie had fantasized about her mystery dad swooping in to the rescue. Never mind that he probably didn't even know she existed. How could she bring children into the world when she didn't even know her own place in it?

Fifteen minutes later she was pulling up in front of her mother's cedar-shingled bungalow, on a wooded slope in Topanga Canyon, only to find it dark. Odd. There was no light burning, either, in the converted garage that housed Nancy's studio. Could she have gotten the dates mixed up? No, Stevie thought. She'd spoken to her mother only last night, Nancy informing her that she was making her famous zucchini fritters and asking her to pick up a jar of mayonnaise.

She let herself in with her key, placing the jar in its bag on the painted Tibetan cabinet by the door and calling out, "Mom?" Her heart was pounding and her mouth suddenly parched — too many years of listening to what came in over the newsroom's police scanner. In her mind, an intruder lurked in every darkened hallway and at any given moment a medical emergency was but a heartbeat away.

She found Nancy stretched out, fully clothed, on her bed, eyes closed and her foot in its cast, an abstract montage of doodles drawn on with colored Magic Markers — her mother never met a blank canvas she could resist — propped on a bolster. Stevie let out the breath she'd been holding. Not a 911 call after all; Nancy must have taken a nap and overslept.

Stevie was reaching for the light switch on the wall when Nancy said, "Don't." Her voice was small and pained.

"Are you okay?" Stevie asked, thinking her mom's foot must be bothering her and wondering if that ancient jar of aspirin was still in the medicine cabinet. Her mother didn't reply. The pair of overalls she had on were crusted with bits of dried clay. Her hair that had once been the rooster-red of Stevie's, now faded to the color of old pennies, fell in crinkly waves down her narrow, freckled shoulders. The TV was on, its sound muted, and in the flickery glow her face had the bluish-white cast of someone underwater. When she opened her eyes at last, it was only to stare sightlessly at the vintage Fillmore poster on the wall opposite the bed, with its swirly psychedelic print advertising a long-ago Big Brother and the Holding Company concert. Nancy had been there that night, close enough to feel the sweat off Janis Joplin's brow.

"I was wrong to keep it from you," she said in that same small, pained voice. "I should have told you."

Stevie sank down on the bed, taking her mother's hand in hers. It was cool and dry, with ridged calluses on her palm from her potter's wheel. "Told me what?"

"About your father."

Stevie's heart bumped up into her throat. "But I thought — "

Her mother didn't let her finish. "I was only trying to protect you, you have to believe that." Tears leaked from the corners of her pale blue eyes to trickle down her temples and into her hair. "I was afraid of what would happen if it got out. Reporters hounding us everywhere we went, people staring and making assumptions . . . and worse." She shuddered, closing her eyes again. "But I should have told you. You had a right to know."

Stevie stared at her, shock pounding in dull waves against some distant shore inside her head. All this time she'd been led to believe that Nancy knew little more than she did.

"If I wasn't sure at the time," Nancy went on, "I'd know now just looking at you." She turned toward Stevie, a faint, mirthless smile on her lips. "You're the spitting image of him."

Stevie felt the blood drain from her face. Her voice seemed to come from another room as she croaked, "Who?"

Nancy turned her gaze to the TV, where an old clip of Grant Tobin, in concert with Astral Plane, was playing on CNN — a slightly built young man flashing like quicksilver across the stage, his dark hair whipping about his head, his Rasputin eyes that had captivated a generation afire in his pale, fine-boned face. She lifted a trembling finger to point at the screen.

Copyright © 2006 by Eileen Goudge

About the Author

Eileen Goudge is the New York Times bestselling author whose novels include Otherwise Engaged, One Last Dance, Garden of Lies, and Thorns of Truth. There are more than three million copies of her books in print worldwide. An avid baker, she is the author of a cookbook entitled Something Warm from the Oven: Baking Memories, Making Memories. She lives in New York City with her husband, entertainment reporter Sandy Kenyon.