The Wicked and the Wondrous (25 page)

And the memories came to take her back in time.

There was always the chanting when Vivian and her friends were together. Jessica forced herself to walk down the hallway, hating to go near them, but needing to find Tara’s favorite blanket. Tara would never go to sleep otherwise. Her heart was pounding, her mouth dry. Vivian’s friends frightened her with their sly, leering smiles, their black candles, and wild orgies. Jessica knew they pretended to worship Satan, they talked continually of pleasures and religious practices, but none of them really knew what they were talking about. They made it up as they went along, doing whatever they pleased, each trying to outdo the other in whatever outrageous perverted sexual ritual they could envision.

As Jessica moved past the living room, she glanced inside. Black heavy drapes darkened the windows, candles were lit in every conceivable space. Vivian looked up from where she sat on the couch, naked from the waist up, sipping her wine while a man lapped greedily at her breasts. Another woman was naked while several men surrounded her, touching and grunting eagerly. The sight sickened and embarrassed Jessica and she looked away quickly.

“Jessica!” Vivian’s voice was imperious, that of a queen speaking to a peasant. “Come in here.”

Jessica could see the madness on Vivian’s flushed face, in her hard, over-bright eyes, and hear it in her loud, brittle laugh. She made herself smile vaguely. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wentworth, I have to get back to Tara immediately.” She kept moving.

A hard hand fell on her shoulder, another hand clapped over her mouth hard enough to sting. Jessica was dragged into the living room. She couldn’t see her captor, but he was big and very strong. She struggled wildly, but he held her, laughing, calling out to Vivian to lock the door.

Hot breath hit her ear. “Are you the sweet little virgin Vivian is always teasing us with? Is this your little prize, Viv?”

Vivian’s giggle was high-pitched, insane. “Dillon’s little princess.” Her words slurred and she circled Jessica and her captor several times. “Do you think he’s had her yet?” A long-tipped fingernail traced a path down Jessica’s cheek. “You’re going to have such fun with us, little Jessica.” She made a ceremony of lighting more candles and incense, taking her time, humming softly. “Tape her mouth, she’ll scream if you don’t.” She gave the order and resumed her humming, stopping to kiss one of the men who was staring at Jessica with hot, greedy eyes. Jessica fought, biting at the hand covering her mouth, a terrified cry welling up. She could hear herself, screaming in her head, over and over, but no sound emerged.

She struggled, rolled over, the sound of ugly laughter fading into terrified weeping. She woke completely, sobbing wildly. She pushed the pillow harder against her face, muffling the sound, relieved it was a nightmare, relieved she had managed to wake herself up.

Very slowly she sat up and looked around the large, pleasant room. It was very cold, surprisingly so when Paul had turned on the heater to take the chill off. Pushing at her long hair, she sat on the edge of the bed with tears running down her face and the taste of terror in her mouth. She hadn’t come back to the island with the sole purpose of keeping the children safe. She had come back in the hopes of healing herself, Dillon, and the children, of finding peace for all of them. Jessica rubbed her hand over her face, resolutely wiping the tears away. Instead the nightmares were getting worse. Dillon wasn’t the same man she had known seven years ago. She wasn’t the same hero-worshipping girl.

She had to think clearly, think everything through. Tara and Trevor were her greatest concern. Jessica flicked on the lamp beside the bed. She couldn’t bear to sit in the dark when her memories were so raw. The curtains fluttered, danced gently, gracefully in the breeze. She stared at the window. It was wide open, fog and rain and wind creeping into her room. The window had been closed when she’d left the room. She was absolutely certain of it. A chill crept down her spine, unease prickling her skin.

Jessica looked quickly around the room, her gaze seeking the corners, peeking beneath the bed. She couldn’t stop herself from looking in the closet, the bathroom, and the shower. It would be difficult for anyone to enter her room through the open window, especially in a rainstorm, because it was on the second floor. She tried to convince herself one of the twins must have come into her room to say goodnight and opened the window to let in some air. She couldn’t imagine why, it didn’t make any sense, but she preferred this explanation to the alternative.

She crossed the room to the window, stared out into the forest, and watched the wind as it played roughly in the trees. There was something elemental, powerful about storms that fascinated her. She watched the rain for a while, allowing a certain peace to settle back over her. Then, abruptly, she closed the window and went to check on Tara.

The bedside lamp was on in Tara’s room, spilling a soft circle of light across it. To Jessica’s surprise, Trevor lay on the floor wrapped in a heap of blankets, while Tara lay on the bed beneath a thick quilt. They were talking in low tones and neither looked at all astonished to see her.

“We thought you’d never come,” Tara greeted, moving over, obviously expecting Jessica to share her bed.

“I thought I was going to have to go rescue you,” Trevor added. “We were just discussing how to go about it since we didn’t exactly know which room you were in.”

Warmth drove out the cold in her soul, pushing away her nameless fears and the disturbing remnants of old horrors. She smiled at them and rushed to the bed, jumping beneath the covers and snuggling into the pillow. “Were you really worried?”

“Of course we were,” Tara confirmed. She reached for Jessica’s hand. “Did he yell at you?”

Trevor snorted. “We didn’t see any fireworks, did we? If he yelled at her we would have seen the Fourth of July.”

“Hey, now,” Jessica objected. “I’m not that bad.”

Trevor made a rude noise. “Flames fly off you, Jess, if someone gets you angry enough. I can’t see you being all mealymouthed if our own father didn’t want us for Christmas. You’d read him the riot act, probably knock him on his butt and march us out of his house. You’d make us swim back to the nearest city.”

Tara giggled, nodding her head. “We call you Mama Tiger behind your back.”

“What?” Jessica found herself laughing. “Total exaggeration. Total!”

“You’re worse. You grow fangs and claws if someone is mean to us,” Trevor pointed out complacently. “Justice for the children.” He grinned at her. “Unless you’re the one getting after us.”

Jessica threw her pillow at him with perfect aim. “You little punk, I never get after you. What are you doing awake, it’s four-thirty in the morning.”

The twins erupted into laughter, pointing at her and mimicking her question. “That’s called getting after us, Jess,” Tara said. “You’re worse than Mama Rita was.”

“She spoiled you rotten,” Jessica told them haughtily, laughter brimming over in her green eyes. “All right, fine, but nobody in their right mind is up at four-thirty in the morning. It’s silly.
And
it was a perfectly
reasonable
question.”

“Yeah, because we’re not in some spooky old house with total strangers and a man who might want to throw us out on our butts or anything like that,” Trevor said.

“Taking you off upstairs to do some dastardly deed we’ve never heard of,” Tara said, adding her two cents.

“When did you two become such smart alecks?” Jessica wanted to know.

“We talked to Paul for a while downstairs,” Trevor said when the laughter had subsided. “He’s really nice. He said he knew us when we were little.”

Jessica was aware of both pairs of eyes on her. She caught the pillow Trevor tossed to her and slipped it behind her back as she sat up, drawing up her knees. “He and your father were best friends long before the band was put together. Paul actually was the original singer for their band. Dillon wrote most of the songs and played lead guitar. He could play almost any instrument. Paul played bass guitar, but he sang the songs when they first started out. Brian Phillips was the drummer and I think it was his idea to form the band. They started out in a garage and played all the clubs and made the rounds. Eventually they became very famous.”

“There were a couple of other band members, Robert something,” Trevor interrupted. “He was on keyboard and for some reason I thought Don Ford was the bass player. He’s on all the CD covers and in the old magazine articles written on
HereAfter.”
There was a note of pride when he said the band’s name.

Jessica nodded. “Robert Berg. Robert’s awesome on the keyboard. And yes, Don was brought in to play bass. Somewhere along the line, Paul picked up a big drug habit.”

Tara wrinkled her nose. “He seemed so nice.”

Jessica pushed back her hair. “He is nice, Tara. People make mistakes, they get into things without thinking and then it’s too late to get out. Paul told me he began using all the time and couldn’t remember the lyrics to the songs during their live performances. Your father would step up and sing. Paul said the crowds went wild. Paul was on a downward spiral and eventually the band members wanted him out. He was doing crazy things, tearing places up, not showing up for scheduled events, that sort of thing, and they said enough.”

“Just like you read in the tabloids,” Trevor pointed out.

There was a small silence while both children looked at her. “Yes, that’s true. But it doesn’t make the things they wrote about your father true. Remember, this was all a long time ago. Sometimes when people become famous too fast, have too much money, they have a hard time handling it all. I think Paul was one of those people. It overwhelmed him. Girls were throwing themselves at him all the time, there was just too much of everything. Anyway, Dillon wouldn’t give up on him. He made him go into rehab and helped him recover.”

“Is that when they picked up another bass player?” Trevor guessed.

Jessica nodded. “The band really took off while Paul was cleaning himself up and they had to have another bass player, so Don was brought in. Dillon’s voice rocketed them into stardom. But he wouldn’t leave Paul behind. Your father gave Paul a job working in the studio and eventually made a place for him in the band. And when Dillon needed him most, Paul came through.”

“Did Paul know Vivian?” Tara’s question was hesitant.

Jessica realized Vivian still managed to bring tension into a room years after her death. “Yes he did, honey,” she confirmed gently. “All of the members of the band knew Vivian. Paul didn’t do all the tours with them so he often stayed here, seeing to things at home. He knew her better than most.” And despised her. Jessica remembered the terrible arguments and Vivian’s endless tirades. Paul had tried to keep her under control, tried to help Rita and Jessica keep the twins safe when she brought her friends in.

“Does he think my father murdered Vivian and that man she was with, like the newspaper said?”

Jessica swung her head around, her temper rising until she saw Tara’s bent head. Slowly she let her breath out. How else was Tara going to learn the truth about her father if she couldn’t ask questions? “Honey, you know most of those tabloids don’t tell the truth, right? They sensationalize things, write misleading headlines and articles to grab people’s attention. It wasn’t any different when your father was at the height of his career. The tabloids twisted all the facts, made it sound as if Dillon found your mother in bed with another man. They made it sound like he shot them both and then burned down his own house to cover the murders. It didn’t happen like that at all.” Jessica curved her arm around Tara’s shoulders and pulled her close, hugging her. “Your father was acquitted at the trial. He had nothing to do with the shooting or the fire. He wasn’t even in the house when it all happened.”

“What did happen, Jess?” Trevor asked, his piercing blue gaze meeting hers steadily. “Why wouldn’t you ever tell us?”

“We’re not babies,” Tara pointed out, but she cuddled closer to Jessica’s warmth, clearly for comfort.

Jessica shook her head. “I would prefer your father tell you about that night, not me.”

“We’ll believe you, Jess,” Trevor said. “You turn beet red if you try to lie. We don’t know our father. We don’t know Paul. Mama Rita wouldn’t say a word about it. You know it’s time you told us the truth if someone is sending us newspapers filled with lies and calling us on the phone telling more lies.”

“It’s the three of us, Jessie,” Tara added. “It’s always been the three of us. We’re a family. We want you to tell us.”

Jessica was proud of them, proud of the way they were attempting to handle a volatile and frightening situation. And she heard the love in their voices, felt the answering emotion welling up in her. They weren’t babies anymore, and they were right, they deserved to know the truth. She didn’t know if Dillon would ever tell them.

Jessica took a deep breath, then she began. “There was a party at the house that night. Your father had been gone for months on a world tour and Vivian often invited her friends over. I didn’t know her very well.” The fact was, Jessica had never understood Dillon’s relationship with his wife. Vivian had left the twins with Rita from almost the moment they were born so she could tour with the band. She rarely returned home the first three years of their lives. Yet during the last year of her life she had stayed home, the band’s manager refusing to allow her to travel with them due to her violent mood swings and psychotic behavior.