Books by Maggie Shayne (165 page)

If it were another lawyer or bill collector, she thought breathlessly, she would hunt them down and kill them.

The wide staircase emptied itself into a huge room that must have been glorious once, a century or so ago. Now it was filled with nothing but heartbroken echoes and a tangle of bare wires sticking out of the domed ceiling, where some magnificent chandelier must have once been. Beyond that room, through a pair of double doors, was her room. Her…
office
. For the moment, at least. But only until she earned back her fortune and returned to L.A. in triumph.

Pretty much the opposite of the way she had left.

Her heart was pounding from exertion by the time she got that far, and she was out of breath, slightly dizzy, and pressing one hand to her chest. Ridiculous for a twenty-year-old woman to tire so easily, but there it was. She had never been healthy, and she knew she wasn't ever going to be. But at least her condition hadn't begun to worsen yet. It was too soon. She had so many things to do.

Finally Morgan snatched up the telephone, which was as antiquated as the rest of the place. The handset weighed at least two pounds, she guessed, and the rotary dial seemed to mock her high-tech tastes.

If her "hello?" sounded irritated, it was because she was dying to read more of those journals up in the attic, to find out more about their author. She might be on the verge of admitting that she was a talentless hack, but she still knew good writing when she read it, and what she had been reading upstairs was good writing. Painfully good.

"Morgan? What took you so long? I was getting worried."

Her irritation fled at David Sumner's familiar voice. Her honorary uncle—a title she'd stopped using long ago—was the only person who hadn't turned his back on her when she had gone from spoiled rich girl to penniless orphan in a matter of hours. He was the one person she didn't mind hearing from just now.

"Hey, David," she said. "I was just… exploring. This place is huge, you know."

"No, I don't know, never having laid eyes on it. You sound a little out of breath."

"Two flights of stairs will do that."

She noticed his hesitation. He tended to worry about her far more than he should.

"How is the place, anyway?" he asked at length.

"It's a wreck," she told him, her tone teasing, partly because she was trying to ease his mind and partly because she enjoyed teasing him. "Which serves you right for buying it sight unseen. Who does stuff like that?"

She could almost see his puckered face, the laugh lines around his eyes, his balding head. David had been her best friend for as long as she could remember. "A friend of the family," her parents had always called him. But it had seemed to Morgan that he'd barely tolerated
the family
.

Of course, he had known the truth about her parents all along. She had only learned it recently, through tabloid headlines and courtroom vultures.

"I bought it for the location, and you know it," David told her. "And I trust my real estate guru on such matters. The building is coming down, anyway."

"Yes, it is," Morgan said. "As we speak."

He was quiet for a moment. "That bad, huh?"

She could have slapped herself. Sometimes she could be such a self-centered little… "It's not," she said quickly. "I was joking." She looked around her at the room she had chosen to inhabit. It had been somebody's library or study once upon a time.

She thought of the little boy she had been reading about and wondered if it had ever been his. In his older years, perhaps, when he had decided to write his memoirs.

From the corner of her eye, she saw him. A dark, broad-shouldered form bent over the desk, with a quill pen in his long, graceful hand. Her heart jumped, and she caught her breath and turned toward him. But there was nothing. No man, no form, no quill pen. Just her computer with its electric blue screen. Whatever she had seen was there and then gone. A vision. A thought form. A little overactivity of her imagination, perhaps.

A shiver worked its way up her spine, but she shook it away.

"Describe it to me," David was saying.

"What?" she asked, dragging her eyes away from the old desk.

"The house. Describe it to me."

She flicked her gaze toward the desk again. No one there. Sighing, she tried to comply with David's request. "It must have been incredible once. The scrollwork around the fireplace mantle is worn and faded, but lavish. I think it's hardwood. You're going to want to take that entire piece out before you tear it down. And there's hand-tooled casing that borders every one of the tall windows. This place has… I don't know. Something."

"It's far from what you're used to, though," David said.

"Yeah, well, it's not Beverly Hills, and we aren't having movie stars over for poolside parties… but I wouldn't be getting any work done that way, would I?"

"And are you? Getting any work done?"

Morgan looked at the glowing blue screen of her computer—which had only escaped the notice of the estate lawyers because it had been with her at UCLA when her parents had been killed and the true state of their finances revealed. They were broke, and so far in debt Morgan could barely wrap her mind around the actual numbers. She hadn't been able to make sense of it, at first. Her father was a successful director, her mother an actress who had reached her zenith a decade ago and had been doing smaller roles lately, but who had still seemed content with her life.

Or so Morgan had thought. She soon learned she had been living in a bubble. The level of cocaine in her parents' systems the night of the accident was so high the coroner wondered how they had even managed to drive.

They'd been addicts, their entire lifestyle a lie.

The house and everything in it had been sold to pay off a portion of their accumulated debt, and Morgan had to drop out of school. Her tuition had already been months overdue. And apparently her friends were as shallow as David had always tried to tell her they were, because once the truth came out, they had abandoned her like last year's wardrobe, while those she had always considered beneath her seemed secretly amused by her troubles. The last few days on campus, she had found tabloid pages tacked to bulletin boards in every hall, screaming about the secret, drug-infested life of the famous couple who seemed to have had it all. The nightmare behind the fairy tale, and the poor little rich girl left to pick up the pieces.

She had run from L.A. with her tail between her legs, with nowhere to go and nothing left besides the things she managed to take with her. She'd pulled into David's driveway with nothing but her Maserati—the registration in her name, thank God—and the stuff she had crammed into its minuscule trunk. He was her last hope, and she had half expected him to turn away from her in disgust, just like all the rest.

But he hadn't turned away. He'd helped her sell the car, buy a modest used one and pocket the difference. When she said she needed a hideaway where she could go to lick her wounds, he told her she could use this place in Maine, free of charge, for as long as she needed to.

Which wouldn't be long, she thought silently. She had always intended to become a wildly successful screenwriter. It was just going to have to happen a bit sooner than she'd planned. David was a producer. He would help her make the right connections, maybe even produce her screenplay himself. He'd promised to give her a shot. Help her all he could.

All she needed… was the material.

"Morgan?" David's voice jerked her away from the path her thoughts had been wandering. "Did you hear me? I asked, how's the script coming?"

She blinked at the blank computer screen. The blinking cursor. "Fine. Great. It's coming great." So great that she had decided to go exploring this ancient wreck of a house rather than continue the battle with the blank screen. The only key on her keyboard getting a steady workout was the one marked "delete." She'd been producing garbage since she had arrived here. Garbage.

"You know, it's only natural you might have some trouble getting started," David said. "Don't push yourself. You've been through a lot. Your mind needs time to digest it all."

Morgan shrugged. "That's not it," she told him.

"No?"

"Of course not. It's been six months. I'm completely over it."

"Completely over losing your parents, your fortune, your home, your education and what you thought was your identity?" He made a clicking noise with his tongue. "I don't think so."

"Well, I am. And to tell you the truth, finding out I was adopted explained a lot of things. I mean, you know my parents were never all that… involved."

"That was the cocaine, hon. Not the adoption. Not you."

She cleared her throat when it started to tighten up, gave herself a mental kick. "As for the rest of it… I'm going to get it all back, David. Everything I lost. And then some."

She heard the smile in his voice. "I don't doubt it a bit."

"Neither do I," she said, glancing again at the blank screen, feeling those doubts she'd denied nearly smothering her. Damn, why couldn't writing a blockbuster script be as easy as she had always thought it would be? She used to watch films with the feeling that she could do better in her sleep.

"So when can I expect the screenplay?" he asked.

Licking her lips, she wished to God she knew. "A masterpiece takes time… and it's… so unpredictable."

"I need a fall project. I'm saving a slot for you, Morgan. Three months. I need the material in three months. Can you do that? Write it over the summer and get it to me by September?"

Lifting her chin, swallowing hard, she said, "Yes. I'll have it finished by September. No problem."

Big problem.

"Great," David said. "You're gonna be fine, Morgan. You can get through this."

"Of course I can."

"Do you need anything?"

"No, no, I'm fine."

"Your funds still holding out?"

She licked her lips, forced the lie out. She'd cleaned out her accounts on David's advice, before the lawyers and creditors could get hold of her money, and she'd had the cash from the car. But while she had no rent here, there were other expenses. The phone, the electricity, and she had to eat. Truth to tell, the money in her checking account was dwindling.

"I'm fine," she said again.

"Good," David said softly. "Good. You let me know if there's anything you need."

"I will, David."

He was quiet for a moment. "How about your health?"

Drawing a breath, she sighed. "You know how I hate being thought of as sickly."

"Did I say you were sickly?"

"No."

"Well?"

She pursed her lips. "The brisk clean air up here is working wonders on me," she lied. What could she tell him? The truth? That it was cold and dreary and damp here, and that she resented having to think of a sixty-degree day in late April as a heat wave, when she would be basking in eighty-degree heat beside her parents' pool, working on her tan by now, if she'd been home?

But it did no good to wish for what she couldn't have.

"I ought to go, David," she whispered around the lump in her throat. "If I'm going to have this done by fall, I ought to get at it."

"Okay, hon. You just call if you need anything."

"I will, David. Thanks."

Morgan replaced the old receiver on its hook and gnawed on her lower lip. She turned the rickety wooden chair toward the computer screen, assured herself once again that no one was in it, and finally sat down. She poised her hands over the keyboard, told herself to write something, now, today, or else give up for good and go out and find a job. The problem was, she couldn't
do
anything.

Writing was the only thing she had ever wanted to do, and she'd been good once. Or… she thought she had. In school, her essays got raves. The theater group had even produced one of her plays. Everyone loved it. The campus critics, the local press…

But that was when she'd been Morgan De Silva, the brilliant daughter of a famous director and a beloved actress, the girl leading the charmed life and destined for success. Now she was Morgan De Silva, disgraced has-been, penniless, homeless, practically run out of town and staring into the face of a future more bleak than she could have imagined a year ago.

Now… now she just didn't know if her talent had ever been real, or if it had been her name winning her praise all this time. She didn't know anything anymore, not who she was, or what she was doing or why the words had just stopped coming. It was as if the well inside her had been a part of the illusion her life had been. As if it had dried up when that illusion had been shattered.

She lowered her hands, having put not one word on the screen. Outside, the wind howled; the lights dimmed, then came back. The old house groaned when the wind blew. Probably, if she was as old as it was, she would groan, too, she thought. And then she wondered just how old that was.

Those journals… there had been no dates inscribed, but it was obvious they'd been written long, long ago. At least a century… and maybe closer to two.

That thought brought her back to the one she'd had earlier, about the journal writer. Dante. Had he lived here, that man who'd been a Gypsy boy, entranced by his outcast aunt? Had he been in this very room, perhaps, pacing before a fire, his quill pen lying untouched on some polished antique desk? Had he courted his muse as impatiently as she did, grown frustrated when the words wouldn't come?

Drawn as if by an unseen hand, she rose and walked out of the office, through the ghostly front hall and up the wide staircase. She traversed the hallway, ignoring the doors that lined either side. She hadn't even ventured into most of the rooms up here. There were so many.

But her goal was none of them. Her goal was beyond, up the back stairway into the attic, where spiderwebs held court and dust ruled the day. She knelt as she had before and fished the book of matches from her jeans pocket, then lit the candles in the gaudy candelabra she'd found downstairs. As their soft yellow glow spread, she lovingly opened the hand-tooled chest, took out that first volume, stroked its cover and opened it slowly, careful not to break the brittle pages. Turning to the place where she had left off, she began to read. And once again she lost herself in the words.