Picture Perfect Read online

  Cassie sank down onto the pile of fallen clothes, clothes Alex had bought her, clothes that matched all the trappings of a life like this. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, trying to push away the image of the graveyard at St. Sebastian's, and what had driven her there.

  IT WAS THE NIGHT ALEX WAS SCHEDULED TO FLY TO SCOTLAND FOR on-location shooting, and he was in one of his moods. She had learned to gauge him by his eyes: the darker they turned, the further away she stayed. It had been months since the last time. She should have known.

  At dinner, Alex kept drumming his knife along the edge of the table. It made a dull, thudding noise against the tablecloth and Cassie's heart took up its rhythm. "How did it go today?" she asked.

  Alex clattered the knife against the edge of his plate. "It is over budget; it is being directed by a moron; it is barely a week into production." He ran his hands through his hair. "Thank you so much for bringing it up."

  Cassie sat back in her seat and concentrated on keeping her mouth shut and eating with the minimal amount of noise. She had found out today about the baby and she wanted to tell Alex before he left, but maybe this wasn't the time. She had to catch him at the right moment. She had to be able to make him see that it wasn't lousy timing; it was going to change their lives. It was going to give them a second chance.

  Alex pushed back his chair. "I have to pack. I've got less than an hour."

  Cassie glanced at his plate, full of food he'd pushed around but barely eaten. "I'll make a sandwich for you to take on the road," she said, but Alex had already left the room.

  In the three years since it had begun, Cassie had become very good at staying out of Alex's way. After all, it was a big house, and with the staff gone for the night no one would think it strange if she went down to her lab at three in the morning, or decided to finish a book in the library until the sun came up. But her instincts weren't sharp that night; she had spent too much time during the day drawing rosy images of a little boy with Alex's silver eyes. She walked to the bedroom and sat in the middle of the bed, where she could watch Alex pack. Looking at him would be like getting a glimpse of her baby. "Do you want me to get together your shaving kit?" Alex shook his head. She reached for a sweater he'd tossed into the bedroom. "I'll fold for you," she offered, and she started, arm over arm, but Alex's hand caught her wrist.

  "I said I'd do it," he muttered.

  Something was eating away at Alex from the inside, something that had been part of him long before she'd ever met him. It was what made him the consummate actor, although nobody else in the world knew it. They saw the pain, but after Alex had cloaked it in another character's actions. Only Cassie had looked at him when his open eyes went blind; only Cassie had pressed her hands to his chest and felt the skin stretched over a heart swollen with rage.

  She loved him more than anything in the world. Even more than herself--hadn't she proved that? She knew that even if she couldn't heal him this time, the next time he hurt she would be able to. That's why Alex had come to her. She was the only person who could make it better.

  But it was a double bind. She was the only one close enough to Alex to help, but that also brought her underfoot. It wasn't his fault that she got in the way. When it happened, she could only blame herself, forgive him.

  Alex sank down beside her on the bed. "I don't want to go to fucking Scotland," he said, his voice rough. "I want to take some time off. I want this goddamn Oscar broadcast to be over and I want to drop off the face of the earth."

  "So do it," Cassie urged, rubbing the muscles in his shoulders. "PutMacbethon hold, and come with me to Kenya."

  Alex snorted. "And what the hell will I do while you play in your sandbox?"

  Cassie flinched. "Read screenplays," she suggested. "Get a tan."

  Alex began throwing clothes in the suitcases that he'd laid open on the floor. "Today I found out about the pre-Oscar interview we taped with Barbara Walters." He sighed. "She's putting me on with some comedian and Noah Fallon." Cassie stared at him blankly. "For Christ's sake, Noah Fallon.He's up for Best Actor too." Alex sat on the floor, his knees drawn up to his chest. "She's airing me second. Fucking second. Fallon's going last."

  Cassie smiled at him. "At least you're in the broadcast," she said.

  Alex turned away from her. "In the past three years, when Barbara Walters's Oscar special features a nominee in the third slot, that nominee has won. It's like a goddamn barometer of how the Academy's votes will go."

  Unsure of what to say, Cassie slipped off the bed and wrapped her arms around him. "I'm not going to win," Alex said, his words falling softly onto her shoulder.

  "You'll win," she whispered fiercely. "You're going to win."

  In the way that it usually happened, Alex changed in the space of a heartbeat. He stood, grabbing Cassie by her wrists and shaking her so hard her hair fell down around her face and her neck snapped back. "How do you know?" he demanded, his breath hot against her cheek. "How do you know?"

  Words caught in Cassie's throat, the ones she always wanted to defend herself with that never slipped past her clenched jaw. Alex shook her again, and then pushed her to the floor so she was at his feet.

  She tripped over the luggage as she fell, and struck her head against the closet door, feeling a wound open that did not hurt nearly as much as the shame that ran through her. She had just enough time to see Alex's foot coming at her, and instead of curling into a ball as she usually did, she rolled so he caught her square on her back, the pain running up her spine but sparing her stomach.

  "My baby," she breathed, and then her hands flew to her mouth and she prayed that Alex hadn't heard. But he was already facing away from her, his head in his hands. He knelt down at her side, cradling her the way he always did when the anger had subsided, his hands running over her with the tenderness that was a Siamese twin to his rage. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't mean to."

  "It's not your fault," she said, because she knew her lines, but for the first time she didn't believe her own words. Anger started to seep from a crack deep inside her that had been patched over too often to hold fast. Goddamn you,she thought.

  She knew Alex needed her, but she also realized she could not stay. She couldn't risk the safety of this child made by her and Alex. She would do for her baby what in three years she had not done for herself.

  When John buzzed in over the intercom, Alex left Cassie's side and threw all his clothes, suits included, into the suitcases. He dragged the luggage outside the door and then leaned over to kiss her. "I love you," he said, the words swollen. He laid his hand over hers where it rested on her stomach.

  She waited until she heard the car crunch out of the driveway and then she grabbed her jacket and walked out of Alex's house. The world swam, and she had to concentrate with every footstep to convince herself she was doing what had to be done. She told herself that if she went away now while Alex was out of town, maybe it wouldn't hurt him quite as much.

  She walked down the street with no destination in mind. She would have gone to Ophelia's but that was the first place Alex would look when he found her missing; and there was nobody else she could turn to. It was Cassie's word against Alex's gold-plated media image, and like her Greek prophetess namesake, no one would believe her when she spoke the truth.

  SHE HAD BEEN SO CLOSE. CASSIE'S FISTS WERE BALLED INTO HER LAP, she was crying, and she realized that she had betrayed herself by losing her memory. Otherwise, she would have been able to stay one step ahead of Alex.

  He had been supportive and considerate, probably because she hadn't started shrieking accusations to the press the minute she'd laid eyes on him at the police station. Not that she ever would do such a thing; Alex should have understood that much. She didn't mean to hurt him--she hadnever wanted to--she only wanted to protect herself. She'd never thought that the two were mutually exclusive.

  However, Alex did, so he had found her. But the life he had spread before her like a winning hand was not what i
t had seemed. She'd live in Alex's magnificent castles, smile into his smoky eyes while the cameras flashed, spend the hollow parts of the night blossoming under his touch, and still, it could happen again.

  In the past, even Alex's promises hadn't prevented a reoccurrence. She didn't have a choice. She wished he could see that as clearly as she did.

  He would be coming into the bedroom any minute to pack for the Friday night red-eye flight, but she was not going to Scotland. Cassie stood up, grabbing an old canvas tote bag with the name of a public television station written across it. She threw as many pieces of clothing as she could inside and then grabbed a handful of underwear and shoved it into the gaps. She pulled a baseball cap scrawled with the name of Alex's production company low on her head and she walked out the door of the bedroom.

  It was not a prison, at least not in the usual sense of the word, so the people Cassie passed on the way out did not think of stopping her and asking where she was going. She walked by the pool and the maze and the flower gardens. She went out a back gate of the scrolled iron fence and cut across a neighbor's lush yard, trespassing until she came to a street.

  She walked faster and faster, wary of being followed. After a while, she started to run. Her footsteps grew heavier, but she forced herself to keep going. And hours later, when she thought she was safe, she sank to her knees, and she made herself remember.

  1989-1993

  PETRELS, hearty Arctic birds, live on the highest parts of the cliffs. From their proud perches they can swoop down on the birds that are not nearly as overweening, calling out songs of their magnificence which carry over the freezing seas.

  Once, there lived a petrel who was so arrogant he could not find a mate among his flock. He decided that he would marry a human, and conjured a spell to give himself the form of a man. He sewed together the thickest sealskins to make a stunning parka, and he preened until he was remarkably handsome. Of course, his eyes were still the eyes of a petrel, so he made himself dark glasses to finish his disguise, and looking like this, he set his kayak into the water to find a wife.

  At the same time, a widower lived on a quiet shore with his daughter Sedna, a girl so beautiful that word of her form and features spread far beyond the tribe. Many men came to woo her, but Sedna would not marry. None of their pleas could break through her pride to reach her heart.

  One day a handsome man arrived in a splendid sealskin parka. He did not drag his kayak onto the beach, but hovered at the edge of the breaking waves and called to Sedna. He started to sing to her. "Come, love," he chanted, "to the land of the birds, where you will never be hungry, where you will rest on soft bear skins, where you will have feathers to clothe you and ivory necklaces, where your lamps will always be full of oil and your pot full of meat."

  The song wrapped itself around Sedna's soul and drew her closer to the kayak. She sailed with the stranger over the sea, away from her home and her father.

  For a while she was happy. The petrel made their home on a rocky cliff and caught fish for her daily, and Sedna was so enchanted with her husband that she never thought to truly look around her. But one day the petrel's glasses slipped off his nose and Sedna looked into his eyes. She glanced away and saw a home built not of thick pelts but of rotting fish skins. She slept not on a bear skin but on the tough hide of a walrus. She felt the icy needles of the ocean spray and knew she had married a man who was not what she had thought he was.

  Sedna cried with grief, and although the petrel loved her, he could not stop her tears.

  A year passed, and Sedna's father came to visit. When he reached the cliff where she lived, the petrel was out hunting for fish, and Sedna begged her father to take her back home. They ran back down to his kayak and set out into the sea.

  They had not been paddling long when the petrel came back to his nest. He shouted for Sedna, but his cry of pain was swallowed by the howl of wind and sea. Other petrels found him and told him where Sedna was. He spread his arms, his wingspan blotting out the sun, and flew toward the boat that held Sedna and her father.

  As he watched them paddle even more furiously, the petrel grew angry. He beat his wings into the wind, creating currents, forcing a surge of icy waves. A storm raged up at his cries, and the sea became so frenzied the boat rocked from side to side. Sedna's father realized the bird was so powerful that even the ocean was furious at the loss of the petrel's wife. He knew that to save himself, he had to sacrifice his daughter.

  He threw Sedna into the frigid water. She sputtered and splashed, her skin blue with the cold. She managed to grab at the side of the boat tightly with her fingers, but her father, terrified by the thunderous beating of the petrel's wings above his head, hit at her hands with the kayak paddle. Sedna's fingertips broke off and fell into the sea, where they turned into whales and dove away. Resurfacing, Sedna caught hold of the gunwhale again, but her father struck out a second time. The middle digits of her fingers shattered like ice and fell into the water to become the seals. One more time she managed to reach the boat, but her father batted at her hands until the third joints broke off and became walruses, and Sedna sank heavy to the bottom of the sea.

  Sedna became a mighty spirit who controls the sea creatures that were born of her fingers. Sometimes she whips together storms and crashes kayaks against the rocks. Sometimes she causes famines by luring the seals away from the hunters. Never does she break the surface of the water, where she might again encounter the petrel.

  --Eskimo Indian legend

  CHAPTER TEN

  I'M going to tell you the truth.

  But the story starts long before I'd ever met you, long before anyone had ever heard of Alex Rivers. It begins on the day that Connor Murtaugh moved into the house next door--the same day I went home to dinner and told my mother that when I grew up, I planned to be a boy.

  I was five years old, a prim and proper little girl in training to be a southern lady. The fact that we lived in Maine hadn't kept my mother from schooling me to become the finest Georgia peach. I could read a little, and out of necessity I could even cook simple things like soup and grilled cheese and, of course, strong black coffee. I had mastered the art of tossing my hair over my shoulder and lowering my lashes to get what I wanted. I smiled without showing my teeth. Most adults found me charming, but I had no friends my own age. Bringing them home to play was unthinkable, you see, which made most of the kids in school think I was strange or stuck-up. And then Connor's family moved from an apartment across the lake to the house beside mine.

  I spent that first day helping him carry boxes and lamps, answering his questions about my birth date, my most hated food, and where you could find fat worms for bait. He overwhelmed me, and for the first time I began to see there was more to living than keeping your knees pressed together when you sat on a chair, and brushing your hair one hundred strokes each night. So I traded my Mary Janes for an old pair of Connor's sneakers that fit when I jammed rolled-up socks into the toes. I learned the fine arts of sprinkling salt on slugs to dry them out and skidding belly-first across mud puddles.

  I credit Connor for many reasons in my decision to become an anthropologist, but especially because he was the first person to show me how wonderful the earth feels when you squeeze it through your fingers. These days my hands are almost always dirty, and although Connor has been dead for seventeen years, he's still on my mind.

  I don't believe in UFOs, or reincarnation, or ghosts, but I do believe in Connor. All I can say is that from time to time, I feel him. He shows up whenever things are going wrong. I think it is probably my fault that he never got to fly off to heaven, or wherever old souls go, since he spent his childhood taking care of me and apparently still feels compelled to do so.

  So, you see, I was expecting him that hot Monday in August when I was pacing the halls of the anthropology department, waiting to hear about tenure. I had been an assistant professor at UCLA for two years now, after having received my B.S., M.A., and Ph.D. there. I wanted tenure. People w
ho had been there less time than I had made associate prof. I had finally threatened Archibald Custer, the head of the department, with a bald-faced lie about alternative options at an eastern college.

  I wasn't really expecting to receive tenure, because at twenty-seven I was still younger than even the adjunct profs and the lecturers. But it wasn't my fault it had taken them longer to get to the same place I was. I was proud of the fact that I had decided thirteen years earlier what I was going to do with my life, and then stuck fast to my original plan.

  I was leaning against the water cooler that stood outside the departmental secretary's office when I felt the light pressure on my spine that I knew meant Connor was watching. If he was here, I reasoned, the news couldn't be good. "They're going to pass me over," I whispered. There--I had said it, and as I admitted to my lack of success, the words fell to the floor in front of me, heavy and sluggish like failure always is.

  "I hate being affiliated with a university," I said quietly, running my hand down the wall.

  It was not the truth. I hated the political bullshit, but I fully embraced the money and the grants. I loved the way the red tape magically disappeared when I tried to open an excavation in another country. And I knew that in a week I'd forgive Custer, and all the people who received promotions. I'd forgive the whole board that voted me down. This year, I'd have to figure out what it was that I was doing wrong, and work a little harder.

  "You know what I wish," I said, "I wish the good things in life weren't all clustered together when you were little."

  They weren't, for most people. When was the last time I'd walked across the campus barefoot? Or missed a class because I had overslept? When was the last time I had gotten dead drunk or awakened in a stranger's bed or come up short of cash at the supermarket?

  Never. I didn't let myself live on the edge, although I didn't really think I was missing anything. Spontaneity made me uncomfortable. My single-mindedness was what was going to get me a promotion.