Nikki replayed the piece several times, watching the women she’d thought of as friends as well as herself, staggering under the weight of the task they’d undertaken. They’d survived and grown stronger. They’d helped Bella Flora become beautiful again. And then they’d crumbled under the weight of the disappointment that inevitably surfaced when one finally felt safe.
Thirty-six
A few days later Maddie lay on her mattress and watched the early morning sun filter in through the pool house blinds. On the futon beside her Kyra slept on her back, her stomach tenting the top sheet, her bare arms flung outward in complete surrender.
With Nicole and her mattress gone the tiny space felt conspicuously spacious. Her absence had blown a hole in their friendship that would be hard to repair, and although they rarely mentioned her, Maddie could sometimes hear Nikki’s wry tone or sly observation in her mind.
Beyond Kyra, Deirdre slept curled on her side with her back to the rest of them, her blonde hair cradled on her silk pillowcase. Whatever personal issues might exist in Deirdre’s life apparently didn’t dare intrude on her sleep; Maddie had never heard her toss or turn during the night or woken to find her staring up into the ceiling. Unlike her daughter, Avery, who was a tosser and turner of the first order.
Maddie checked her cell phone, which was plugged into the wall behind her head, but there was nothing from Steve or Andrew; no response to the messages she’d left. Stretching, she turned to her right and noted Avery’s empty mattress. Maddie didn’t know where in Bella Flora Avery had been sleeping, but she hadn’t slept in the same room as Deirdre since the intercepted phone call.
Although Maddie had been unable to get Deirdre voted “off,” she felt as if they were, in fact, on some sort of survivor program—the mother/daughter version—on which your relationship might improve or implode.
The renovation of Bella Flora had proven to be not a sprint but a marathon. As they limped toward the finish line she and Kyra maintained their truce over Kyra’s continued belief in Daniel Deranian’s love for her. Avery and Deirdre’s method of avoiding arguments was not to talk at all. Deirdre also kept her distance from Maddie since the night Maddie had told her off. Kyra thought it funny that Deirdre seemed so skittish around her big, tough mother, but Maddie knew she could have expressed her displeasure a little more diplomatically.
Maddie rose quietly and flipped on the coffeemaker. In the bathroom she washed her face and brushed her teeth, then pulled on work clothes. Taking a cup of coffee with her, she left the pool house and went out to stand on the seawall where she sipped her coffee and looked out over the pass as the sun continued its ascent over the bay.
By seven A.M. the temperatures had begun to rise. By nine it would be hot enough to suck the air right out of your lungs. Maddie was embarrassingly thankful that their painting days were over and the professional crew was only days away from completion. She turned to consider Bella Flora’s bright pink castle-like walls, the slender limestone-capped bell tower rising high into the blue sky. Deirdre had said that the pink would fade to a more delicate shade over time, but for now it was the same bright hue that had been applied during Florida’s Mediterranean Revival heyday to combat the Depression-era blues.
Too antsy to stand still, Maddie set down her coffee cup and took the path to the beach. The usual early morning suspects were already fishing on the jetty with their pelican and gull audience. On the beach, foot traffic was sparse, just the occasional jogger or speed walker with the more dawdling shell seekers doing their eyes-down pause, reach, and stroll. Up in the softer sand a darkly tanned older man skimmed a wand back and forth in search of dropped change. Walking at the tide line, her bare feet sluicing through the froth of warm water, Maddie breathed in the now-familiar scents and exhaled them slowly, beginning her beach mantra: Everything’s all right. Everything’s okay.
For a while she simply walked and breathed and tried not to think. At the Don CeSar she turned and began her walk back toward Bella Flora, but no matter how many times she breathed in and breathed out, everything did not feel all right and it most certainly didn’t feel okay. Though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t, Maddie speed dialed her home number and lifted the cell phone to her ear.
Andrew answered, out of breath. She gave him a moment to catch it.
“Sorry. Did I get you in the middle of something?”
“I just got back from a run and I heard the phone ringing.” He breathed for a few moments.
“I’ve been trying to reach your father. Is he near a phone?”
“He, um, well . . . actually he’s not here right now.”
Maddie stopped walking. A dolphin jumped out in the Gulf and a small boy standing near the water’s edge pointed and shouted for his mother. “What’s going on?”
“Dad took Grandma up to North Carolina. To Aunt Emma’s.” Emma was Edna’s sister and their relationship had always been prickly.
Maddie’s feet began to move of their own volition. It had never occurred to her that if Steve found the strength to leave the house, he’d head somewhere else. Still, she felt her first real glimmer of hope. “When will they be back?” Maddie asked.
“I don’t know, Mom,” Andrew said, sounding about twelve. “But Grandma’s house is ready to go on the market. Dad said when he got back we’d come down and he’s . . . better than he was. Grandma got really flipped out when he told her her house was going to have to go. But he didn’t let her talk him out of it.”
Maddie thought about this as she walked. It wasn’t the home run she’d been hoping for. Steve and Andrew weren’t here. Or even on their way at the moment. But Steve was no longer lying on the couch unable or unwilling to move. It was an elephant bite, a definite something. For the moment it was something to cling to.
By the time she got back to Bella Flora the painters were working and a fleet of vans and trucks were parked at the curb. A custom cabinet company truck had been backed into the driveway, its rear doors open. Two men were making trips in and out of the kitchen under Deirdre’s supervision while Chase and Robby stood in the foyer discussing the powder room, which was too small to hold both of them at the same time.
Maddie walked through Bella Flora, delighted with all she saw, but found no sign of Kyra. In the master bedroom, Avery and the room’s designer were mounting the room’s original wrought-iron window valances, which were now repainted black with fabulous gold tips and bronzed bull’s eyes.
When the designer was satisfied, Avery joined Maddie on the landing where Malcolm Dyer’s effigy had once hung. “Have you seen Kyra?” Maddie asked as they stared down at the activity below.
“Sure have,” Avery said. “A big white limo came to pick her up about twenty minutes ago. She said she’d been invited out for brunch and would be back later.” Avery smiled, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I took a peek when the chauffeur opened the door for her.” Avery’s smile broadened. “I’m pretty sure the person waiting in the back seat was Daniel Deranian.”
Maddie had pretty much decimated what was left of her fingernails by the time the limo pulled up in front of Bella Flora two hours later. The shiny white vehicle looked incongruous in the midst of the pickup trucks and design company vans. Everyone stopped working to watch it glide to a stop on the brick drive. The silence was complete as the driver jumped out and walked around to open the back door.
Kyra emerged first, beaming with happiness and looking quickly over her shoulder to watch Daniel Deranian emerge from the vehicle with the ease of long experience. Kyra looked like a happy, albeit pregnant, child in her white baggy capris and oversized white blouse. Daniel Deranian looked like what he was—a Hollywood megastar—tall and lithe with dark intentionally unruly hair over wide-set dark eyes. His skin was a golden brown—a testament both to California living and his Armenian ancestry—and rakishly unshaven. His white T-shirt was almost as bright as his smile and clung to a well-defined chest and abs and skimmed over low-slung jeans. He was forty, almost twenty years Kyra’s senior, barely a decade younger than Maddie, but he could and did play midthirties. Everything about him shouted “look at me!” Everybody did.
Drawing a calming breath, Maddie speed walked down the stairs and pulled open the front door. Daniel followed Kyra inside and when Maddie extended her hand, he took it in his. Kyra practically levitated with happiness. She smiled a delighted “I told you so.”
“Mom,” she gushed. “This is Daniel Deranian. Daniel, my mom, Madeline.”
He flashed perfect white teeth. The realization that his hand was softer and better manicured than hers registered briefly, but there was a personal magnetism that made this seem unimportant. It was slightly surreal to see the face that she’d seen splashed across a wide screen and in Technicolor this up close and personal. They just stood there shaking hands until she realized what she was doing and disconnected. He smiled in amusement, but not surprise. This was a man who was used to disconcerting people, especially females. His gaze lifted to the landing where Avery still stood in her Daisy Duke shorts and bodice-hugging T. The flare of sexual interest in the actor’s eyes was immediate and unmistakable. Maddie had to look away from it; Kyra was too busy smiling to notice.
“It’s a beautiful house,” he said to Maddie. “I’ve been watching Kyra’s postings on YouTube but even her video didn’t do it justice.”
So he’d been watching and obviously waiting. But for what? “Thank you. We’ve all fallen in love with Bella Flora. We’re hoping that someone who can appreciate her will want to own her.” Good grief, she sounded like a sales brochure.
He continued to smile at her. Maddie smiled back.
“Mom,” Kyra said, still levitating with happiness. “Daniel and I would like to talk to you about something. Can we go outside where we can have some privacy?”
“Oh. Sure.”
She turned and led them down the central hallway, keeping to the protective runners. Behind her Kyra described the house’s “before” to Daniel and stopped to show him the Casbah Lounge. They passed the arch that opened to the kitchen and Maddie caught a glimpse of Deirdre on a stepladder holding up two different knobs in front of a cabinet, and she wondered whether the woman would be reporting this visit to her contacts in Hollywood. If Deranian was worried about being spotted, he didn’t show it. Neither did he pant after Kyra in any noticeable way.
At the pool they sat in one of the wrought-iron groupings with a view out over the pass. Maddie tensed briefly when a wave runner zoomed parallel to the seawall but relaxed when it kept on going. If the paparazzi were aware of Daniel’s arrival in the Tampa Bay area, they hadn’t yet tracked him this far.
“Daniel wants to take me back to California with him,” Kyra said. “His private plane is at the Clearwater Airport.” She reached a hand out to squeeze Daniel’s. Maddie hadn’t seen her happier since the Christmas morning when she got her very first video camera.
Maddie wasn’t quite sure how to respond. “Will he be divorcing his wife and marrying you first?” seemed a bit aggressive. “That’s great, and what will happen to you and your child when he moves on?” seemed a tad negative. She settled for “Oh” while wishing that Steve—the old Steve—were here to help her navigate the potential minefields. Then again, Deranian had shown up just as Kyra had insisted he would. Maybe what Maddie said or didn’t say wasn’t all that critical; maybe Kyra was going to get her happily-ever-after after all.
“Look, I know you have to be worried about Kyra,” the actor said. His delivery was smooth and perfectly sincere. If this had been a movie, she would have bought it completely. But this wasn’t a movie; this was her daughter’s life. “Anyway, I want you to know that I’m going to make sure that she and the baby have their own place. And a car. Well, you know Kyra will have the car, not the baby.” He smiled ruefully, but earnestly, with good intention. “I’ll take care of anything they need.”
Maddie nodded. Kyra beamed.
“That way I can see both of them whenever my, um, schedule allows.”
Kyra stopped beaming. Maddie wasn’t sure whether to nod or not.
Kyra turned to Daniel. “But where will you live?” she asked, surprised.
“Why, in my house,” he said as if this were obvious. “In Laurel Canyon.”
“Well, why wouldn’t we just live there with you?” Kyra asked. “I don’t get it.”
Maddie didn’t want to “get it” but was afraid she did. Daniel shifted uncomfortably in his seat and for a moment he seemed at a loss, as if he’d arrived with the script memorized and now some of the lines had been changed. He turned to Maddie for help, and she felt her heart twist painfully in her chest as she watched the confusion wash over her daughter’s face. Would Kyra really want her here when comprehension finally dawned?
“I’m going to let you two discuss this further on your own,” Maddie said, rising. “I’ll just be inside.” She shot Kyra a bracing look. She had no idea what kind of look to send Daniel Deranian.
“Come on, Kyra,” he said. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Maddie watched them head toward the path to the beach. Kyra’s face was turned up to Daniel’s in question, but the admiration was still there. Maddie went into the house, afraid to think about what kind of look Kyra would be wearing when they returned.
Inside she paced the central hallway dodging frantic designers, stopping for just a few minutes in the kitchen where Deirdre was supervising the cabinet and counter installation before moving into the salon where a young slimhipped designer hung deep fuchsia curtains while his partner unfurled a brightly patterned area rug. At any other time Maddie would have savored the outstanding culmination of all their hard work—the house was practically preening under all the attention—but she couldn’t seem to focus and instead moved from window to window, watching anxiously for Kyra’s return.