Adored (51 page)
By the time the press figured out that she had mysteriously disappeared, Siena was already lying morphined up to the eyeballs, with her head completely bandaged like a mummy, in a windowless guest bedroom in Randall’s Nantucket house.
Her whereabouts, as far as Randall knew, were known only to himself, Dr. Sanford, and Melissa, the private nurse he had hired to care for Siena and escort her, via his private G4 jet, from L.A. to Boston and then on to the island. He had fed the media a story about Siena suffering some sort of breakdown from nervous exhaustion, and announced that he had suspended production on
1941
indefinitely.
After an initial flurry of interest, other, more exciting stories began to take over the headlines, especially once it became clear that no one knew where Siena was recuperating and there were no pictures to be had.
Hunter had called Randall at the house repeatedly in the first week to try to find out where she was, but he had been forced to give up when Randall made public a letter, quite clearly in Siena’s hand and signed by her, stating that she wanted time to recuperate in private and did not want her whereabouts to be disclosed to anyone other than her doctor and her boyfriend.
To Randall’s surprise and relief, it really had been as simple as that.
As far as the rest of the world was concerned, within about a month, it was almost as if Siena McMahon no longer existed.
Claire sat in the back of the little plane looking down at the tiny islands strewn just off the Boston coast.
She was dressed too warmly for the summer day, in a tweed skirt and a stiff white linen blouse, with her sleek gray-blond hair covered by a blue polka-dotted scarf, and her anxious, worry-lined eyes shielded by big Christian Dior sunglasses.
None of the other passengers in the little pond hopper of a plane gave her a second glance as they made the twenty-minute flight over to Nantucket. Later, at the airport, she would look like every other well-to-do Waspy matron, carrying her small suitcase to her nondescript rented Chevrolet, no doubt on her way to join the rest of her family in one of the sprawling Quaker summer homes that littered the island.
Gazing out of the plane window, she sighed. Deep down, she’d always known that she would do this eventually. That one day she’d wake up, walk out the door, and go and find her daughter.
Particularly since she’d hired Bill Jennings to start trailing Siena, she felt like her life had become one long emotional roller coaster. On the one hand, there was the torture of feeling so close to her child and yet being unable to reach out to her or make contact. This pain, combined with the constant terror of Pete finding out and leaving her, or doing something even worse, had frequently pushed her to the point where she considered calling the whole thing off.
On the other hand though, the PI’s reports had brought her such exquisite joy. She felt that on one level, she had been privileged to have a private, personal insight into her daughter’s life. Secreted away in her dressing room back home, she now had groaning files crammed with pictures of Siena on the set of her movie, as well as even more cherished, if grainier, shots of her relaxing at home alone. In some of these pictures—the earlier ones, taken just after her car accident—she seemed happy. And her happiness meant more to Claire than anything else in the world.
But then there were other shots, particularly recently, that had caused Claire indescribable pain. Pictures Bill had reluctantly given her that no mother should ever have to see.
She had known for months that Siena had become miserable and isolated living with Randall, but still she had vacillated, hesitated to make contact in case she unwittingly pushed Pete over the edge. Perhaps she had also, subconsciously, been hoping that in her all too evident unhappiness, Siena might have taken the initiative and reached out to her family herself.
In the end, though, it was Siena’s disappearance that had finally convinced her she couldn’t afford to wait any longer. Bill had very incomplete evidence about what might have happened, but he sensed that Siena might be in serious danger. It had taken him an agonizing three weeks to track her down at the house on Nantucket, and when he told Claire he’d found her, that was it.
It didn’t even seem like a choice anymore.
After six long years of separation, wild horses could not have kept her from boarding that plane.
Once they’d landed, she pulled out of the tiny airport and onto the single-track road toward Siasconset and checked her cell phone for messages from Pete. There were none.
Relieved, she began to take in the gray, weather-boarded houses lining the route, their immaculately kept dark green hedges and formal gardens adding splashes of color to an otherwise flat, marshy landscape.
Although real estate values on the island had skyrocketed since the eighties, so that even fairly modest homes were now worth upward of five million dollars, the plain Quaker architecture ensured that Nantucket retained its essentially humble charm. There were none of the vulgar edifices that defaced L.A. lining its beautiful beaches, and the villages still had the look and feel of real working communities, despite the fact that these days even the postman could probably have traded in his home for a cool million, bought himself a Ferrari, and moved off-island to Boston in luxurious retirement.
It was amazing really, thought Claire, that more of the locals hadn’t cashed in on the property market and made a quick killing, leaving Nantucket exclusively to super-rich tourists like herself. But they hadn’t. Some of the old folks loved to tell the wealthy New Yorkers how they had lived in the same house for forty years and seen its value go from two thousand dollars to two million, but that they would never sell. There was a magic about Nantucket, it seemed, something that you could never put a price tag on. Not in dollars, anyway.
As she neared the village of Siasconset, the large homes were replaced by tiny dollhouse cottages, complete with white picket fences, climbing roses, and ornate topiary, many with ornamental hedges cut into the shape of a whale, in tribute to Nantucket’s whaling history.
Although Claire hadn’t been to the island since she was a teenager, the strict building codes meant the village had hardly changed at all since the sixties, and she found her bearings quite easily. The Chanticleer restaurant was still there, and still packed with wealthy East Coast honeymooners, sipping champagne and eating lobster salads out on the terrace. The store on the little triangular green was also just as she remembered it, although perhaps there were even more bicycles parked outside it than in the old days, drawn to the new sandwich and picnic shop that had sprung up next door.
Parking her car at the green, she picked up an official-looking sheaf of documents from the passenger seat and, leaving her suitcase in the trunk, began walking down the sandy track toward the beach.
The house, unless she was very much mistaken, was only a couple of hundred yards up on the right-hand side. Bill had told her that it was concealed from the road behind a massive yew hedge but that, this being Nantucket, there was no security presence or electric gates. She would be able to walk right up to the front door and, she hoped, within a few short minutes, be reunited with her daughter.
Her hands shook so much as she crunched her way along the gravel drive and up to the porch that she fretted she might drop her papers. Although hot, it was violently windy. If she let them out of her grasp for an instant, they would be snatched up and carried off like Dorothy’s house in
The Wizard of Oz
.
Suddenly, standing on the steps, she stopped. She found herself crippled with fear and self-doubt.
What was she doing here? Would Siena even want to see her? What if her daughter was furious and wanted nothing more to do with her? Claire could hardly blame her, if that was the case.
And then there was Pete. How was he going to react if he found out, or rather
when
he found out, what she was really doing in Nantucket?
She’d told him she was visiting an old school friend, but she sensed that he was already becoming suspicious. He’d be angry, of course, when he discovered the truth; furious even. But would he understand
why
she’d done it? Would he see that she just couldn’t stay away anymore, not now, not with Siena seriously ill and alone?
She forced herself to calm down and took two long, deep breaths, pushing the image of an apoplectic, wounded Peter from her mind. She couldn’t think about any of that now. All that mattered was getting into that house and finding her baby.
She pulled back the heavy brass knocker and banged it firmly three times against the wooden door with a lot more confidence than she felt. After what seemed like decades, a woman about her own age, perhaps a few years younger, opened the door a fraction and glared out at her suspiciously. “Can I help you?”
She was wearing a formal nurse’s uniform and reminded Claire of the strict old matron at her East Coast boarding school. Summoning up all her courage, and helped by a surge of adrenaline, she began her well-rehearsed lines.
“Can you help
me
?” She chuckled, as though the woman had made some inadvertent joke. “Aren’t you Melissa Evans?”
Caught off guard, the nurse confirmed it. “Do I know you?”
“Well, no,” said Claire, smiling broadly. “You don’t. But I hope you’re expecting me. I’m Annie Gordon, your relief support.”
Melissa looked blank.
“Hasn’t Mr. Stein called you?” said Claire, furrowing her brow in surprise. “Poor man, he must be out of his mind with worry. Here.” She handed over the documents to a wary-looking Melissa, who gave them a cursory read. “This should explain everything.”
“You’re a nurse?” she said eventually, frowning at the last page of Claire’s paperwork.
Claire felt her stomach give a nervous lurch. She hoped Bill hadn’t made any glaring mistakes on her false résumé and forged letter of employment from Randall.
“Why else would I be here?” She tried another smile, but Melissa still looked unconvinced. There was nothing for it, Claire decided, but to try and bluff it out. “Maybe we should give Mr. Stein a call?” she suggested. “I know how important security is to him. Perhaps you’d feel better if you checked things out with him yourself? I’m in no rush, believe me.” She turned away slightly and moved down a step, a calculated gesture designed to make the other woman feel less threatened.
It worked.
Melissa hesitated. Then, looking at Claire’s naturally open and honest face, she smiled and said, “Oh no, I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Annie. You must be absolutely exhausted after all that traveling. Come in, come in.”
Claire stepped over the threshold and tried to stifle her sigh of relief. She’d made it. She was here.
Inside, the house looked elegant but low-key, not at all what she had pictured Randall’s taste to be and certainly nothing like the pictures Bill had shown her of the opulent Malibu mansion. Not that she was really concerned with her surroundings. She wondered where Siena was but didn’t want to overplay her hand by asking too many questions too soon.
As it turned out, she didn’t have to.
“I’ll get you a cup of coffee and show you around in a minute,” said Melissa. Now that Claire had won her trust, it seemed she was glad of some company to talk to after being cooped up in the house, effectively alone, for weeks. The information came pouring out of her like water from a sieve.
“Siena is up there.” She pointed to a room directly opposite the top of the staircase. “Sleeping. She’s still sleeping an awful lot, thanks to the painkillers, up to seventeen, eighteen hours a day.”
That didn’t sound good. Claire tried not to look shocked. “What painkiller is she on?” she asked as nonchalantly as she could.
“Still on the morphine, but the doctor wants us to bring it down in the next few days, move her onto codeine,” said Melissa. “Don’t you have a suitcase, by the way?”
“Oh yes,” said Claire absently. Morphine? What the hell had happened to her? Bill had told her about the facial bandages, but Claire had assumed they were for something cosmetic. You didn’t take morphine for a nose job.
“I parked at the green,” she managed to explain. “Thought I’d walk around a bit, get my bearings.”
“It’s beautiful here, don’t you think?” Melissa enthused, drawing the reluctant Claire away from the hallway and Siena’s room and into the kitchen, where she began reheating the already brewed coffee. Claire sat down at the table and tried to concentrate on what the nurse was saying. “Although I haven’t had much chance to enjoy it yet, since obviously I can’t leave her. Milk? Sugar?” Claire nodded. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to get out and have a break now that you’re here.”
“Hopefully,” said Claire.
The next ten minutes, spent sipping the unwanted coffee and listening to Melissa prattle on about everything from the grocery deliveries to Randall’s paranoia about outsiders and his miserliness as a boss, were sheer torture. It was all she could do to restrain herself from rushing up the stairs two at a time, breaking down the door, and taking her daughter in her arms. But she knew it was wise to bide her time.
At last though, her patience was rewarded when Melissa offered to walk down to the green and get her suitcase for her.
“If you give me the keys, I’ll drive the car up as well if you like,” she said helpfully. “To be honest, I’m dying to get out of this house. You don’t mind staying here and holding the fort, do you? We’ll find a room for you when I get back.” She was already buttoning her cardigan against the wind and preparing to leave. “The phone won’t ring, but if it does, don’t answer it. Randall and Dr. Sanford always use the second line, which is in the study. Then they hang up after three rings and call back, so you know it’s them. Honestly, it’s like working for the CIA around here.” She rolled her eyes to heaven, as if she and Claire were already old friends who regularly shared little jokes about their employer’s eccentricities.
Claire assured her that she was more than happy to stay behind and watched as, miracle of miracles, the nurse waddled off down the driveway toward the village, leaving her alone in the house with Siena.
As soon as the heavy old front door had clanked shut, Claire bolted up the stairs, pausing for a moment outside the door to Siena’s room.
She realized that once she opened it and stepped inside, there could be no going back, with either her daughter or her husband.
She thought of the loneliness of the past six years; of the countless times she had watched Siena from the shadows, longing with every atom of her being to reach out to her, but never quite finding the courage.
She thought of Pete, of how much she loved him, but also of how futile the sacrifices she had made for him had been. She had lost those years with Siena for his sake, but he remained as paranoid, frightened, and embittered against the world as ever he had been. What had it all been for?
And she thought, for a moment, of old Duke McMahon, and how much he had to answer for.
It seemed to Claire that Duke’s ambition, his ruthlessness, and his casual cruelty had been passed down through the generations of his family like some inescapable genetic disease. Even his love, the very great love he’d had for Siena, had somehow turned into something toxic. And Claire’s own love, for both her husband and her child, had been utterly powerless against it.
She would never forgive herself for those terrible, wasted years.