The Girl from Summer Hill (29 page)

It took Kit a few moments to recover, then he called for yet another break.

Casey went to the guesthouse to prepare lunch to be delivered to Jack and Tate. When Josh stopped by, she gave him the cooler to take for her. If she could avoid going to the Big House, she did.

Minutes later, he returned with a gift in his hand. It was the size of a shoe box and wrapped in shiny green paper with a pretty pink ribbon. “This is for you.”

She gave it a quick glance. “I don't want it.”

“It's not from the men. It's from
her
.”

Casey looked up from the pie dough she was rolling out. “Who is ‘her'?”

“Tate's sister.”

“Then I definitely don't want it.”

Josh sat down on a stool. “You wouldn't consider telling me what's going on with you and Gizzy, would you?”

“We broke up with some guys,” Casey said. “No biggie.”

“You four, along with Kit and Olivia, are sabotaging a play that benefits charity, but it's no big deal?”

“Sorry.” Casey rolled the dough over her pin.

“Casey!” Josh said loudly as he went to her. “Stop with the pies. You're putting the local bakery out of business.” He put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her. “I understand that you and Tate had a falling-out. It happens. But I just met his sister and his little niece and they don't deserve to be part of it.” When Casey was silent, he threw up his hands and stepped away. “Nina asked if you'd cook for them.”

“Of course. Tate already asked. But…” Trailing off, she took a breath. “You're right. I'm carrying this too far. I would be glad to cook for them.”

Josh picked up the prettily wrapped gift. “Open it.”

“I will.”

“No,” Josh said firmly. “Open it
now
.”

Reluctantly, Casey tore away the paper. Inside was a box filled with pink tissue paper. Buried in the middle was a little blue velvet case, the kind a ring came in. She dropped it back into the papers as though it were poison. “I'm not opening that.” She turned away.

Josh picked it up and flipped the lid back. Inside was a small 128GB flash drive. “I have never seen an emerald this big!”

“He'd better not—” When she saw what Josh was holding, she grimaced. “Cute.”

“Where's your computer? You're going to see whatever is on here now.”

“No, I'm not.”

“Casey,” Josh said, “I don't know what happened, but I do know there are two sides to every argument, and from what I've seen, you and Tate aren't sharing info. His sister gave me this in private. My guess is that her brother knows nothing about it.” He waited until Casey was looking at him. “Sometimes a man doesn't defend himself because he wants to keep his honor. I know that's an old-fashioned concept, and forgive us men, but we still feel it. I once had a girlfriend accuse me of something I didn't do. I walked away and let her think the worst about me rather than put myself on trial. When she found out the truth, she begged me to forgive her, but I couldn't do it. I don't want that to happen to you and Tate.”

Casey took a breath. “I'm the one who can't forgive.”

Josh went to the door. “I'm going back to the set and I'll tell everyone that you're sick, that for the rest of the day you can't rehearse or cook dinner or even take calls. I want you to swear to me that you'll stay here and see whatever is on that drive. Will you?”

She hesitated. Hearing what Rachael said had hurt a lot and she hadn't yet come close to healing. To see more of the fight within that family, to get more involved, would deepen the wounds.

On the other hand, maybe Josh was right and there
was
another side to what she knew. And besides, wasn't she already buried up to her neck in all of it?

“Okay. No pies, no tarts, no anything. I'll watch all of it.”

“Thanks.” He kissed her cheek, then left the house.

As Casey wrapped the dough and put it in the fridge, she thought of half a dozen other things she could cook. Of course, she'd have to go to the grocery first. Maybe after that, she could look at the drive. But by then she'd need to…

“Oh, hell!” She grabbed the flash drive off the island, went into the living room, and opened her laptop.

At first she didn't know what she was seeing. There were about twenty folders, each one containing documents, photos, and videos. She was glad they were numbered as to what order to open them.

The first folder was labeled
D
EATH
P
OINT
,
the name of Devlin's TV show that Tate had ruined. As she watched clips from the episodes, she saw Devlin playing a police detective—but he wasn't the handsome man Casey had met. His eyes were red and he was unsteady on his feet. She could believe that Devlin was drunk or on drugs. Great acting! she thought.

Rachael, playing his girlfriend, came into the scene and started talking to him earnestly, but it was as though she was unaware that he wasn't at full capacity. Maybe that was part of the story, Casey thought.

In the next clip, Devlin looked worse. Bleary-eyed, distracted, pausing between lines.

It began to dawn on Casey that this was
real
. Devlin had played the role while he was high on something.

There were eight clips, each worse than the one before. The last one was for the season finale, and poor Rachael was killed in it. In Devlin's scene, where he was supposed to show grief, he seemed like he couldn't wait to get away. The tears rolling down his cheeks looked as if they were from a bottle of eyedrops.

Besides the clips from the TV shows, there were videos from the set. They appeared to have been taken on a cellphone. Three were of Devlin loudly arguing with crew members. One was of him groping Rachael's backside and her telling him to go screw himself. It was clearly not a happy work environment.

The videos were followed by documents. There were four jeering, laughing newspaper articles about Devlin Haines on the set of
Death Point
. Two
TV Guide
articles speculated on the future of the show. Would it be picked up for season two? Then came a notice saying the show had been canceled and that Devlin was going into rehab.

The next documents were receipts for payments made to Long Meadow, a drug-rehabilitation clinic in Minnesota. They totaled a couple of hundred thousand dollars. The patient was Devlin Haines, and the man who paid the bill was Tate Landers.

Casey got up and walked around for a while, trying to let what she'd seen sink in. This was completely different from what she'd been told!

She sat back down and opened the next file. It contained papers from Nina and Devlin's divorce. Casey felt that these things were none of her business, but she couldn't stop. In return for hundreds of thousands of dollars, Devlin had agreed not to sue for custody of his daughter.

Next was a file labeled
R
ACHAEL
. In it was a video of her talking to someone off camera.

“It was the worst thing I ever did,” Rachael said. “And he wouldn't even pay me! That night he came by the hotel and tried to get me to go to bed with him. I slammed the door on his hand and I hope I broke his fingers.”

Rachael looked at the camera. “Casey, if you're seeing this, I'm sorry. I've never met Tate Landers and I lied about him. The gossip around L.A. is that he's a really nice man. And as for that story about the publicity stunt, I don't know anything about it. Haines gave me the photos and said he'd pay me to do some acting. I thought it was all a joke—until I saw your face. Devlin Haines is a real bastard.”

Rachael glanced over at the interviewer. “Sorry. I know you used to be married to him.”

“I've called him worse,” said a woman's voice. “Anything else you want to say?”

Rachael looked back at the camera. “Casey, you're not fat. Haines told me to be sure to say that. And again, I'm very sorry for lying to you.”

Casey closed the file and got up to make herself a cup of tea. As she reached for the mug, her hands were shaking.

It took hours to go through all the folders. Whoever had put them together—probably Nina—had done a thorough job. The mother of the little boy on the roof had been interviewed. She got very angry when she was told that someone had said the whole thing was a publicity stunt and that the child wasn't hers. Her language became quite colorful!

The man who took the photos of the rescue was interviewed, and he told how he'd been paid twenty grand for them. He had no affiliation to any news media and no one had hired him to take the pictures.

It seemed Tate had told Nina about Devlin's gift to Casey, for there was a sales receipt for the recent purchase of an antique chocolate mold. “So much for his grandmother,” Casey murmured.

At eight, she made herself a sandwich and poured a large glass of wine. There was one more file.
T
O BE SAVED FOR LAST
was the name on it.

Casey didn't know how much more she could take. What kind of person did the things that Devlin Haines had done? The lies, the twisting and turning of facts and history, were beyond what she could comprehend.

She drank half the wine before she opened the remaining folder. What horrible thing had Nina saved for last?

But what she saw on the video was her own house, and what she heard was a little girl giggling.

Casey leaned back on the pillows, pulled the computer onto her lap, and watched Tate Landers put on a silent movie of his war with a peacock.

By the time he got to the pajamas on the floor, Casey was laughing. Tate's pantomimed throat-cutting made her laugh harder.

She heard his stomach growling and saw him scoop up the pie with a big spoon. The look on his face at the taste of the pie she'd made was possibly the most honest, heartfelt compliment she'd ever received.

When she saw herself enter the kitchen and start bawling Tate out, Casey was holding her stomach from laughter. She was like the straight man in a comedy routine. The anger on her face when she saw Tate's shirt hanging from the roof sent her into spasms. And Tate's innocent expression when he asked if she could sew on his button nearly did her in.

It was late when she closed her computer and went upstairs. She needed time to think about all she'd learned.

How do you recover from embarrassment so deep that you never again want to be seen in public? Casey wondered.

The next morning, at barely daylight, she was outside in the herb garden. It was Sunday, so rehearsals wouldn't start until two—and she didn't know if she could bear to go.

How did she face Tate after seeing what she had? What could she possibly say to him? “I'm sorry”? That's what you said when you accidentally stepped on someone's toe.

What words could adequately apologize for the things she'd said? For all that she'd accused Tate of? There were none that could cover it.

Last night, after she'd recovered from her laughter over the Peacock War, she returned to reality and saw her part in the…well, the evil of Devlin Haines. Why hadn't she seen through him? Why hadn't she checked out his story? Some of the clips on the drive had been from YouTube, so she could have found them. When Devlin told her Tate had ruined his show, why didn't she look online to verify that?

The answer was, of course, that normal humans weren't used to people who lied on the scale that Devlin Haines did. And there was Casey's assumption that a man who was a movie star must be out for whatever he could get. She had dismissed Tate's talk of staying together, but she'd believed every lie Haines had told her.

Before she went to bed, she'd sent an email to Gizzy:
I
WAS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING.
T
HE RESCUE WAS REAL.
I
AM AN IDIOT.
W
E HAVE TO TALK TOMORROW
.

She didn't tell Gizzy about what was on the flash drive and knew she wouldn't. So much of it was private. Nina had entrusted those personal documents to Casey, and they weren't to be shared.

She picked some parsley and put it in her trug. Tate's sister and niece had arrived, and she planned to cook them the best food she'd ever made.

As she moved to the little patch of chives, she thought how Nina knew everything. She knew Casey had believed every word Haines said and had assumed that Tate was lying. How was Casey going to face the woman?

At worst, Casey imagined, Nina would sneer at her, curse her, tell her what she thought of her. And Casey deserved it all. She—

“Hello.”

She turned to see a pretty little girl with dark hair and eyes that were exactly like Tate's. She had on pink tights, a pink-and-white dress, and sparkly pink shoes. “You must be Emmie.”

She nodded. “Uncle Tate said it was okay for me to visit you. Can you really cook? He says you can make dirt and rocks taste good.”

“I can,” Casey said. “My secret is that I put fried worms on top. I tried red ants but they were too crunchy. I didn't want to compete with the rocks.”

Emmie blinked a few times, then smiled exactly like Tate did. “I like sand better than rocks.”

Casey laughed. She looked like her uncle and she had his sense of humor. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” Emmie said.

“Then come inside and I'll make you some breakfast.”

Inside, Emmie peered around the kitchen. “Did you really put jam in those jars?”

“I did.” Casey was looking in the refrigerator, trying to decide what to cook for this child, who she'd heard was a picky eater.

“I saw the jars when Uncle Tate chased the peacock. He hates that bird! Mom let me buy him a big mug with a peacock handle. It'll make him laugh.”

“Has he seen it yet?”

“No,” Emmie said. “What's that?”

“Pie dough. I made it yesterday. You wouldn't like to help me make some tiny pies, would you? We can fill them with bacon and cheese, or blackberries, or we can make up a filling. Pizza is nice, or I have some South Carolina peaches we can use.”

With every word Casey spoke, Emmie's eyes grew bigger. It took a few minutes to get hands washed, aprons on, and hair tied back before they were ready to begin. Casey showed her how to use the round biscuit cutter to shape the dough and how to put the filling in the middle.

Throughout it all, Emmie kept up a steady stream of talk about everything. Her mother was asleep, Uncle Tate was reading, and Uncle Jack had left the house early that morning. “It was still dark,” Emmie said. She said she'd thought about climbing into bed with her mother, but instead she got dressed and went in search of the “food lady.”

She and her mother had arrived late the afternoon before. “I wanted to come see you then, but Uncle Tate said no, that you were busy. Do you cook a lot?”

“Lately, I've cooked too much,” Casey said. She was putting the first batch of the little pies in the oven. “I thought I'd make a big breakfast and take it over there. When do you think your mother will be awake?”

“Not for a long time.” Emmie sighed. “Mom and Uncle Tate talked all night. I went down once and Mom was crying.”

“I'm sorry,” Casey whispered, and truly hoped she wasn't the cause of Nina's tears. “Do you know why she was crying?”

“My dad,” Emmie said. “It's always him. She's unhappy when he's around. Can I use this turtle cutter?”

“I think that's a perfect shape. Want to dye the peaches green?”

“Pink!” Emmie said.

“Good choice.” Casey got out her food colorings. She knew she probably shouldn't ask a child, but her mind was so full of what she'd read. How had this lovely child dealt with all that had happened? “When your dad lived with you and your mom, was he gone a lot?”

“Yes, but my mom and I liked it better when he wasn't there.” Under Casey's direction, Emmie put a few drops of red coloring on the peaches and turned them pink. “Dad drank whiskey and yelled at us, and that made Mom cry. Uncle Tate was working on movies so we didn't see him except on the computer. Mom said that when he called us we had to lie and say we were really happy. She didn't want Uncle Tate to be sad.”

“That must have been difficult.” Casey helped Emmie press the edges of the dough together.

“Yeah. It was hard not to tell him the truth. Mom had to put me in another school because Dad wouldn't pay the bill. He said I had to go to school with regular kids, but they weren't nice to me, because my uncle is a movie star. But I couldn't tell Uncle Tate that.”

“What happened when your uncle came home?”

Smiling, Emmie used a truffle cutter to make a tiny diamond in the turtle's back. “Uncle Tate went crazy. He was really, really mad. He broke some dishes.”

Casey looked up, alarmed. “Were you afraid of him?”

“Naw. It was exciting. Uncle Tate said he was going to murder my dad, but Mom said he couldn't because of the police. He went to my old school and smiled at all the ladies and they let me back in. Uncle Tate is really good at smiling. But my mom said it isn't Uncle Tate's face that makes him a hero, it's that he knows how to pay bills.”

Casey laughed. She already liked Nina. “What happened after that?”

“Dad quit being on TV. He said he was glad, because he hated the show. Then he went to a real have.”

Casey remembered what she'd read. “Right. Rehab. Did it work? Did he quit drinking?”

“No. My mom said he and his girlfriend were still drinking whiskey. We saw them at a movie. They were kissing and they slid down in the seat. Mom won't let
me
do that at the movies! When we got home, she called Uncle Tate and he came over right away. Mom said we didn't have to lie anymore, so I told him the things Dad said I had to keep secret. When I stayed at his house, there was lots of whiskey and lots of girlfriends.”

The child's voice softened. “That's when Uncle Tate started hugging Mom and she cried. The next day she left me with a babysitter, and she and Uncle Tate went to see Mr. Simpson. He's a lawyer and I met him. He has ice cream in his office. He said it kept us brats busy so we wouldn't hear the mothers saying bad words. He was funny.”

“Your parents got a divorce.”

“Yeah. Lots of kids at school have them, so I wasn't scared. But Mom was really mad. She said it wasn't right that Uncle Tate said he'd pay Dad, that he didn't deserve it.”

“Pay him for what?”

“I don't know. His bills, I guess. Uncle Tate bought Dad a red car. And a house. But Dad didn't like them. He said they were cheap and he deserved better.” She looked at Casey. “My mom says Uncle Tate is the greatest person alive on the earth.”

“I think she might be right.”