Beautiful Lies (31 page)

Thomas didn't need a child, particularly not one from his marriage to Hope. He especially didn't need a child whose appearance might give away his long-held secret. But Thomas knew that if he refused to see Liana, the story would follow him. At the first phone call, he flew to Buf
falo, then drove the necessary miles to face and examine his daughter for the first time.

When Thomas strode in, Liana was drawing at a mahogany table in a dining room cluttered with ceramic knickknacks and crocheted doilies. She looked up and found a strange man examining her. To her childish eyes, he seemed very tall and old.

“Stand up,” he ordered. “Let me look at you.”

She really didn't know why she ought to. On the rare occasions when someone had told her what to do, she'd ignored it, since she knew people always moved on. And “Nancy,” for all the love she showered on her daughter, had trod the path of least resistance, allowing Liana to do nearly anything she pleased.

After a moment of indecision she decided to stand anyway, so she could get a better look at the stranger. He had thick silver hair and round black eyes, and the deep wrinkles on his cheeks made him look like a piece of unwashed clothing. “Who are you?” she asked, when he didn't say anything else.

“I'll ask the questions.”

“That's not fair.”

Thomas moved closer. “Be quiet.”

She fell silent, but only because she had already lost interest. Nothing much interested her since her mother had died. Not school, where the other children whispered about her, and not the landlady, who tried too hard to make her feel better.

Thomas stopped just in front of her, lifting her chin to stare into her eyes. “What's your name?”

“I can't tell you. I'm supposed to be quiet, remember?”

He tightened his hand around her chin, squeezing until she yelped with pain. “I said, what's your name?”

“Liana.” She tossed her head, and his hand fell away.

“Liana what?”

“Starke!”

“Well, it's not. It's Robeson. And I'm your father.”

Sometimes Liana had wondered if she had a father. So many men had drifted in and out of her mother's life, she had thought maybe she was a product of all of them. When she'd asked, Nancy had gotten upset, an occurrence Liana always tried to avoid, since Nancy sometimes wept for days once she started.

Now, for the first time, Nancy's reaction made sense. If this man was her father, there was every reason to be unhappy.

She narrowed her eyes as he narrowed his. “So?”

“I should have known Hope would raise a brat.”

“My mother's name was Nancy.”

“Before she married me, your mother's name was Hope Lynch. Nancy Starke is something she invented.”

Liana considered that. She wished she could invent her name. It would not be Robeson.

Thomas grimaced, as if he didn't like what he saw. “You'll be coming to California with me. And you'd better learn some manners, young lady, and fast.”

“I'm not going.” That seemed simple enough to Liana. She had never had a real home, but she already knew enough about Thomas to see that living with him wouldn't be the same as having a home anyway.

“Well, you have no choice. As a matter of fact, you'll have very few choices in the coming years. You'll live with me, and you'll behave. If you don't do exactly as you're told, you'll be punished.”

“If you touch me, old man, you'll be sorry.”

His dark eyes gleamed. “Do you think so?”

Liana had never really been a child. She had fended for
herself for so long that she had all the survival skills of an adult, with none of the safeguards. When Thomas attempted to clamp his hand on her shoulder, she sank her teeth into it. When he screeched and tried to slap her with his free hand, she kicked him.

She had never drawn blood before. She had never realized that victory had a sickening salty tang. She kicked him again, and he backed away, waving his injured hand in the air. She listened to him curse, all words she had heard a million times from her mother's friends.

“Fuck you,” she said when he quieted. “I told you not to touch me.”

“So it's to be a battle, is it?”

“Don't worry. I'm not going with you.”

But she did. Kicking and screaming, she was carried onto her father's jet by two burly men who had made the trip to New York with him. Liana took her very first airplane ride on the floor of the tiny galley, bound and gagged like a hostage.

 

Cullen knew Liana wasn't sleeping. Her chest rose and fell erratically, and her eyelids fluttered, as if she was struggling to keep them closed.

“It won't be long, Lee.” He took her hand and rubbed it. Then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, he raised it to his lips and kissed it.

“What do you think you're doing?” she said through clenched teeth.

“If I make you mad enough, maybe you'll forget to be scared.”

“It didn't work the first time.”

He was puzzled. “First time?”

“Yeah, the first time I flew. I was furious.” She released a deep breath. “I was also so frightened I wet my pants.”

“You won't be doing a replay, will you?”

“No!”

He kissed her hand again. “What were you furious about?”

“That I was too little to fight back.”

He listened as she explained in a few terse sentences, and he wished Thomas Robeson were still alive so that he could kill him himself. “You never told me.”

“I didn't want to remember.”

He supposed not. For many years he had pushed away his own bleak childhood. For too many more, he had pushed away everything that had come afterwards.

“What made him such a bastard?” he said. “Do you know?”

Her tone was clipped and rapid, but talking seemed to help. “When he was four, Thomas was sent away from his mother and the only home he'd ever known. The ship he sailed on barely made it into port on the morning of the San Francisco earthquake. No one came down to the harbor to pick him up, of course, because the city was in flames. The woman who had escorted him abandoned him. Days later, a fireman found him in the ashes of a burned out building. No one really knows what happened to him during that time. I doubt he remembered himself.”

“It was a bad trot, certainly, but no excuse for what he did to you.”

“For years I told myself he wasn't to blame for being the kind of man he was. It was weeks of chaos before his grandparents located and claimed him. And he might have been better off if they hadn't, because they were cold, rigid people who probably made him ashamed of who he was. But none of that was my fault. And people have choices, don't they? Archer didn't have to kill my grandfather. Aunt
Mei could have stayed with Bryce and built a life in Australia. And Thomas Robeson could have loved his only daughter.”

Cullen rubbed her knuckles along his cheek. “It was worse at home than you ever let on, wasn't it?”

“Oh, I'm a quick study. I learned how to give Thomas the minimum without letting it touch me.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Only I guess it did after all. Because one day I woke up, and I was scared to death of everything. It got worse after I left you, because I had to crawl back to him, and for a while I had to face him every day. When Thomas died, he left me the pearl and a boatload of insecurities. Interesting legacies.”

“He didn't defeat you. We're on a plane. You're taking the tiger by the tail.”

“I'm dying inside! The tiger's trying to claw his way out.”

A bell tinkled, and the seatbelt sign flashed. Cullen knew they would be landing soon. “It's almost over. If we find Matthew, we'll drive back to the city. You won't have to do this again.”

“If we don't find him, I'll get back on this plane or any other plane until we do.” She opened her eyes. He wasn't sure which was stronger, the fear or the determination. “I won't let this defeat me.”

He didn't drop her hand. Instead, as she watched, he raised it to his lips once more.

 

By the time they picked up their rental car and bought food for the road, the sun was sinking. Liana felt as if every nerve ending in her body was exposed. She was bruised and bloody, but somehow, healing. She would never get on an airplane with joy. But next time, if she was lucky, the fear might not be as great.

Cullen was responsible, of course, as much as she hated to admit it. He had helped in every way. She had sensed…what? Compassion? Understanding? No, it had been deeper. Empathy, as if her suffering was familiar because he had suffered, too.

And he had. She realized it now. She had left Cullen to start over with nothing, knowing that he had made a complete failure of everything in his life up to that moment. She didn't feel guilty for leaving. She could not and should not have stayed with him. But she had never allowed herself to feel his desolation.

“When this is over,” she said tightly, “we'll talk about visiting arrangements, Cullen. Matthew needs to spend more than a month every year with you.”

She saw his knuckles tighten on the steering wheel. “Are you saying that because you got through the flight alive?”

“It needs to be said.”

“Will you be all right without him?”

“Are you all right without him?”

“Never. We should have had a bloody houseful of kids, Lee.”

“You didn't want even one.” She remembered what he had said about that. “I'm sorry.”

“I'm ready now.”

“Is Sarah going to be the lucky woman?”

He gave her a side glance and raised an eyebrow. “I meant I'm ready to spend more time with Matthew.”

She analyzed her own reasons for bringing up Sarah again. She was in no state to lie to herself, but she didn't like the truth. The thought of Cullen with another woman upset her. Why should he succeed with someone else when they had failed?

Miles of gently sloping plains dotted with burro weed and creosote bush passed for scenery along the uncrowded interstate. Washes, outlined with ironwood and mesquite, and small settlements of trailers or concrete-block houses broke the monotony until the sun touched the horizon and a breathtaking variegated sky stole the spotlight.

She closed her eyes and saw carnelian and coral, hematite and lapis lazuli. She opened them again and concentrated on the road in front of her.

They stopped for gas and toiletries about forty-five minutes from Tillman. Liana leaned against the side of the pale blue Pontiac while Cullen filled the tank under the glare of artificial light. “What did the clerk say?”

“He doesn't know any place to stay, but he claims he's never paid much attention. And he thinks we'll have a problem finding Brittany tonight.”

“He knows her?”

“Nothing like that. But there's not much to Tillman. And the petrol station closes early in the evening, so he doubts there'll be anyone to give directions. There's a pub a bit up the road, but he advised us to stay away. He doesn't think the blokes will be much help.”

“You're planning to go anyway, aren't you?”

“Too right.”

She felt something old, something rancid that should have rotted a long time ago, rising inside her. “Maybe you'll find a good game of craps while you're at it.”

He looked up, still balancing the gas nozzle. “Maybe.”

“Not that dice was ever your best game.”

“Not if there was something better.”

“And now?”

He pulled the nozzle away from the car, shaking it carefully before he hooked it back on the pump. “Well, I run a
book with myself that you'll bring this up every chance you can, Lee. But that's it for gambling, from go to whoa.”

“You don't gamble at all anymore?”

“I take it a day at a time. I don't use words like ‘all' and ‘anymore.'”

“Why? Are you afraid to make the commitment?”

“No, I'm afraid to sound like a whacking idiot.”

“How long, Cullen?”

He shoved his hands in the pockets of jeans that clung to his slender hips. “Long enough and not long enough.”

“Days? Months? Years?”

The line of his jaw hardened. “It doesn't matter. What I do today? That's what matters. I'm not betting I'll get a pay-off somewhere down the track. This isn't a two-up game. It's my life.”

“What about the rest of it? The drinking? The running around?”

“I
never
ran around. When we were married, I never had another woman. I never wanted one.”

She was silent. She knew she ought to be ashamed she had pushed him. She ought to be more ashamed that she'd cared.

“And since we're having a bash at clearing the air, I'll tell you this,” he continued. “I don't have a problem with drinking, but I figured out that it does make it harder not to put paid to my gambling. So most of the time I'm a real wowser, a dinky-di teetotaler. But my mates like me anyway.”

Since coming to California, Cullen had held her hand as she faced her worst fears. For the first time since the dissolution of their marriage, she was sorry she hadn't been there to help him.

She tried to put that into words. “I know this is probably the wrong thing to say and the wrong time, but I'm proud of you. I know this can't be easy.”

He didn't answer.

“And I know it shouldn't matter to me so many years later, but…I'm glad you weren't…that there wasn't another woman. But you were gone so often, and I was alone, and I didn't…”

He smiled sadly. “I always loved you. Even a fucked-up bastard could see what he had, Lee. I didn't want another woman. I just wanted to be the man you deserved.”

Tillman, Arizona

I
f there were any locals at the Shady Lady Bar, they didn't own up to it. Four eighteen-wheelers took up half the parking lot, and the license tags of the remaining cars and pickups were equally divided between California and Arizona. One of the truckers—better-humored than his cohorts—told Cullen that the “Lady” was the only bar for thirty miles. But either Brittany and her whereabouts were a mystery to the men who had driven the distance, or they were suspicious of this foreigner who was asking questions about her.

Back in the Pontiac, Cullen flexed his fingers and reclined in his seat, closing his eyes. “Unless some bloke lifted my wallet, I still have every cent I went in with.”

Liana made a face he couldn't see. “I'm sorry I grilled you, Cullen. It was none of my business.”

“There's a tourist camp not far away. Sounds like a right scenic spot. Somebody built it during the thirties, for mi
grants on their way to California. My mate at the Lady claims it hasn't changed much since Steinbeck's day. We could keep driving until we find something better, but I reckon the camp will put us closest to Tillman.”

“It can't be worse than the house at Pikuwa Creek.”

“You'd have a surprise if you saw it now.”

“Would I?”

“I've tinkered with it a bit.”

Like most of his countrymen, Cullen rarely bragged about his accomplishments. She guessed that the fact he'd even mentioned the house was like announcing it had won first place awards for design. “I hope you didn't tinker with the view.”

“You liked that, did you?”

“That was one of the things I liked, yes.”

“There was more?”

“Not the heat, and not the mozzies,” she said, unconsciously choosing the Australian slang for mosquitoes.

“Shall it be the tourist camp, Lee? Or shall we drive the back roads and hope we find someone who can lead us to Matthew?”

She had already resigned herself to not catching up with Matthew tonight. It would be better to casually question people tomorrow at the service station that was the heart of Tillman.

“Tourist camp,” she said. “And who knows, maybe the people there can tell us where to find Brittany.”

They drove in silence, turning off the highway on to a road marked only by a small wooden sign. Half a mile down, Cullen slowed, and Liana got her first glimpse of their accommodations.

She whistled softly. “Ma Joad probably told old Pa to turn around right about here.”

“Have a look at the cars.”

He was right. The tourist camp, a ramshackle collection of camping sites and cottages, was bustling. She lowered her window to get a better look. “Just don't sign us up for horseshoes.”

Cullen pulled into a gravel driveway and turned off the engine in front of a cabin with a sign designating it as the office. “Coming in?”

She measured the space that separated them from the door. Even though she was in a place she had never been, her heartbeat was as sedate and regular as the ticking of the clock in the tower at Ghirardelli Square. She supposed the flight had used up her panic quota for at least the next few hours. “Sure.”

He grinned. “That's my missus.” The grin faded, and he grimaced. “Sorry. Old habit.”

Once “that's my missus” had been his highest praise. She knew better than to make anything of it now. She shrugged, as if it hadn't meant a thing. “I may have to be your missus tonight. We may not be able to get separate accommodations.”

As it turned out, they weren't. The overweight woman in a fifties housedress and foam rubber slippers fiddled with keys on a pegboard, turning each one to peer at the number on the back. Liana glanced at Cullen. She could tell he was preparing to charm the woman into offering them a broom closet.

“Got one cabin left. Not our best, so I'll give you a discount.” The woman shuffled forward and set a key on the peeling laminate counter.

“We'll take whatever you have,” Cullen assured her.

“We're remodeling. Haven't gotten to yours yet. It's clean, but that's all I can say.”

“It'll do.” Liana watched as the woman shuffled off to get the registration book. “By the way, we're looking for a local girl. Brittany Saunders. She's a friend of our son's, and we told him we'd try to see her on the way through Tillman. But we don't have her address.”

“Can't say as that sounds familiar.” The woman brought the book back with her and opened it. “Darn shame I can't leave this on the counter, but people try to make off with it.”

Cullen gave his warmest grin. “So you don't know Brittany?”

“Used to be some Saunders over in Yuma. No, they was Sanders, I think.”

“And you know most of the people in Tillman?”

“Used to. Last few years, though, I don't get around much. Check at the post office in the morning. It's over at the store—that's over at the station. She's around here, they'll know.”

Cullen thanked her and took the key. The woman gave instructions on how to find their cabin and warned them again. “Plumbing's kind of touchy. You have to flush a couple of times. And the hot water don't last long.”

Outside, Cullen held the car door for her. “Just like our honeymoon, Lee.”

She felt surprisingly optimistic, and she allowed herself a smile. “We didn't have a honeymoon.”

He started the car and pulled it along a narrow dirt path, stopping frequently as children darted back and forth in front of them. “Funny, I thought that was you.”

This was forbidden territory. She changed the subject. “How many beds does the cabin have?” She realized she hadn't changed the subject enough.

“The lady didn't say.”

She raised a brow. “Will you be comfortable in the car?”

“Why? At the end of our marriage we had a fair go at sleeping in the same bed without touching each other. We could do it again.”

She winced. “Ouch.”

“It's true enough, I reckon.”

She wondered if he was challenging her. “Well, I'm used to having a bed all to myself these days.”

“Is that right?” He grinned at her.

“Let's just see what the cabin looks like. I'll stop borrowing trouble.”

“I should think the real trouble is waking up every morning in a bed by yourself.”

“Why? It beats waking up with somebody who makes my life miserable.”

“What about somebody who doesn't?”

“Is there a man like that?”

“You hate men, Lee?”

She didn't, but sometimes she wished she could. “I'd have to love somebody passionately to try again, Cullen.”

“The first time was that bad?”

“For both of us.”

He examined the faded number on the last cabin before a stand of evergreens, then he parked in a space just in front of it. He faced her. “No. Not for both of us.”

“Our marriage didn't sour you on the institution forever?”

He didn't answer. He leaned across her to open her door. Then he got out and walked up the path to the cabin. He was jiggling the key in the lock when she joined him, carrying the plastic bag from the convenience store.

The door swung open, and they stared inside. She was the first to hoot. “I'd say a little renovation's not a bad idea.” They had been warned for good reason. The cabin was a shambles. And there was only one bed. Any additional fur
niture had been removed. “It has a roof. I guess we can't complain.”

Cullen strode inside and pointed to a space where a window had once resided. It was now covered by planks with wide spaces between them over which some thoughtful carpenter had nailed a rotting screen. But the narrow spaces between the planks in the wall were open to the elements, as if someone had stripped away the inside paneling.

He stuck his finger through one of the cracks. “If you don't like enclosed places, this is the spot for you. I've thrown my swag under the stars where there was less fresh air.”

“And where there's fresh air, can the spiders and centipedes and scorpions be far behind?”

“You're certain you want me to sleep in the car?”

He sounded dubious. She tried to summon some backbone, but she was wilting fast. “Maybe I'll sleep in the car. At least I can roll up the windows.”

“And suffocate. Look, I'll stay on my side of the mattress, Lee. But I'm not leaving you alone in here.”

She really didn't want to be alone. She was melting into a warm puddle of emotion.

He took her silence as assent. “Do you mind if I take my turn in the loo first?” He disappeared through the only possible door and closed it behind him. “As charming as an outback dunny,” he called.

“I've got the picture, Cullen. Australian desert is better than American desert. Well, you've got a hell of a lot more of it than we do, so you've had more practice!”

He stuck out his head. “That's my missus.” He winked at her, then disappeared back into the bathroom.

“Not anymore!”

“Don't tell the lady at the desk.”

She had forgotten how splendidly Cullen could make
roses out of rat tails. His charm was a magic wand he waved over everything, and when he was finished, everything always looked better.

She turned down the comforter and sheets, and grimaced at the mattress. But it seemed solid enough, and there was nothing crawling on the bottom sheet to give her pause. She measured the distance with her eyes. The bed was queen-sized and large enough for two. But unless Cullen had changed, he was a sprawler and a cuddler. She sat on the edge, and it didn't sag. She bounced, and it didn't creak.

She heard the sound of a shower, then, a moment later, Cullen's howl. “The hot water's gone!” he shouted.

“You were warned,” she muttered, trying not to smile.

He emerged a few minutes later. He had slipped back into his jeans, but he carried the shirt he'd worn that day over his arm, and his T-shirt was nowhere in sight. “My shirt's hanging in the shower. I reckon you'd like me better in the morning if I washed it tonight.”

“And I'll bet you wore it into the shower and soaped it before you took it off, outback style.”

“It got the job done,” he said with a grin.

“My turn, I guess.”

“I'd wait a bit for the hot water.”

“I'll take my shower in the morning, thanks.” She wanted to be done with this intimacy, to get under the covers and turn her back to Cullen. She shut the bathroom door behind her and brushed her teeth with her new toothbrush. Then she washed her face with cold water, brushed her hair and then, although she hated herself for it, took a good look at the woman in the mirror in the harsh glare of a fifty-watt bulb.

She had dark circles under her eyes, but that was no surprise. Her hair was lank, and the few strands of silver
seemed especially prominent tonight. In the yellowish cast of the bulb, her skin seemed sallow and unhealthy.

“He wouldn't want you anyway,” she mouthed silently, but somehow that only made her feel worse. She grimaced; then she stripped off her wrinkled linen shirt and pants, followed by her underwear. She washed that and the shirt in the sink, hanging them next to Cullen's shirt to dry by morning. Finally she donned the extra-large Arizona Cardinals T-shirt that she'd bought in the aisle devoted to Native American artifacts—made in Taiwan. It fell nearly to her knees, but she wished she had been able to buy panties to go with it.

When there was absolutely nothing else to do, she pulled the chain on the light bulb and opened the door. Cullen was under the covers, his back turned. She doubted he was asleep, but she wasn't going to ask. She crossed the room in her bare feet and slipped in beside him.

“Just a couple of rules,” he said without turning. “You can't hog the covers, and you can't snore. And no nookie tonight, no matter how badly you want me.”

“You are such a jerk.”

“I've moved up that far in your estimation, have I?”

She punched her pillow, which whooshed in defiance. “You always did that, you know. Resorted to humor or charm to get what you wanted.”

“Too right. And have a look how far it's gotten me.”

She thought about that as she lay in the surprisingly comfortable bed with Cullen, careful inches away, trying to fall asleep beside her. There had been a time when she had thought that nothing they did together could fail. She had been twenty-one to his twenty-two, and she had loved him with a single-minded intensity that eclipsed all reason.

Everything that had come afterwards, even this mo
ment, had begun such a long time ago. She thought about those days now, as she hadn't allowed herself to think about them for many years. She wondered if Cullen was thinking about them, too.

 

Liana had been born into a world of total acceptance and no security. Her life with Thomas had been exactly the opposite. But she was an intelligent child who had realized after the terrifying flight to California that silent rebellion was the only kind that would not turn her new world upside down. So she settled into the monotony of toeing the line, while inside she plotted revolution.

Liana learned quickly that her stepmother, Sammy, and Graham, a chubby preadolescent with stress-induced asthma, would never be on her side. Until Mei came into her life, Liana quietly resigned herself to battling the world alone. But with Mei as a refuge, more endearing qualities took root inside her. Mei was the first person who recognized her artistic ability. And in her adolescence, when a course in jewelry-making turned into a passion, it was Mei who encouraged her to follow her muse.

The counterculture movement that had nourished Liana's childhood had peaked early in the Bay Area—perpetual well-spring of the untried and truly weird. By the time she was sixteen, nearly all that was left was a crass commercialization of the Age of Aquarius. Street vendors in tie-dyed T-shirts still sold crafts from the backs of aging VW buses, and the smell of marijuana at Golden Gate Park remained as commonplace as cypress and eucalyptus. But California cuisine was fast replacing macrobiotic diets, and disco was replacing acid rock.