For a few minutes, we just talked, and I felt the pain in my chest—the tension that had been giving me muscle cramps in my ribs for days—start to loosen. We chatted about fame, about Emma’s new movie, about what I was doing these days. “Nothingis not an answer,” she scolded me. “If you don’t want to act anymore, how about painting? You werereallygood, Miller. Even Annie had to admit that.” Her face dropped. “Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“I’m okay,” I said quickly, and seized the moment. “Em, I wanted to ask you about Harper.”
Emma frowned. “About…Harper?” she repeated. I told her about the break-in and the video. “But why would Harper be trying to get into your place?” Emma asked, bewildered.
“I don’t know. But I hoped you’d tell me about what went down between the four of you. Why you all stopped talking.”
Emma really didn’t want to talk about it. “It wasyearsago,” she hedged. “It couldn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Please,” I said softly.
She looked up at the ceiling as if arguing with some deity or other. “Listen, Anniejustdied,” she said when she looked back at me, “and what happened between the four of us doesn’t put her in a great light. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.”
“I won’t repeat it. And, well, I know what Annie’s like. What shewaslike,” I amended. I was still getting used to her being gone. “Nothing will shock me.”
It took a little more persuasion, but finally she spilled. The whole story, the reason behind the dramatic flameout of their friendships, the reason Harper Connelly had disappeared from town, and the reason Emma had stopped associating with Roxanne Rochford and my sister.
After we hung up, I sat there thinking it over. Emma had insisted again that it couldn’t have anything to do with Annie’s death, but I wasn’t so sure.
I needed Jack to come home so I could talk it over with him.
I heard footsteps coming up the stairs outside, and then someone pausing at the door, trying the handle. I’d locked it, though, like Jack had told me to, so I flew across to open it for him, throwing back the chain and clacking open the deadlock.
“You sure know when to make an entrance,” I babbled as I did. “I just got a wholebunchof intel from Emma Dempsey, and—oh.” I stopped dead as soon as I flung the door open.
It wasn’t Jack. It was some tall blond guy I’d never seen before.
“Can I…help you?” I said.
“Hello,” said the stranger, and smiled. It was an odd smile. It took me a second to place it, and then I had a vision of smiling at myself in the mirror, Annie standing at my shoulder and critiquing my efforts.Make it real, she’d said.It has to be real, or the audience won’t believe it.
I’d never really been a great actor. My smiles never convinced anyone because my eyes stayed dead. This guy? He was smiling like that. His mouth stretched, he even got the wrinkles around his eyes that were supposed to indicate a genuinely happy expression, but his blue eyes…
They stayed dead.
“I’m looking for Jack,” the stranger went on.
“Uh—”
“It’s alright,” the man said. He leaned in closer and said in a stage whisper, “I’m a Castellani.”
“I don’t know anyone by either name,” I said. “Sorry.” I started to shut the door, but the man’s hand shot out and stopped it.
“And that’s exactly the response youshouldgive,” he said approvingly. “But I happen to know thisishis apartment. And you’re Miller Beaumont, aren’t you?”
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“My name is Julianus Aurelius,” he said with a proud smile. “Butyoucan call me Julian.”
CHAPTER42
JACK
I tookmy time driving over to Cali Corn Grill. It just about killed me to leave Miller there alone, but I knew grief, and I knew that sometimes being alone was the only way to process it. I’d had my share of griefs, and I’d appreciated some alone time. Toomuchtime alone and it got overwhelming, of course. But the poor kid hadn’t had a moment to himself since the funeral, and before that?
Before that, it seemed like his father had taken out his grief on Miller’s face.
So I drove a ways into the next neighborhood along before I turned around and came back, heading for Cali Corn Grill. Then I pulled over in their tiny parking lot and sat for a while, letting my mind tick over.
