glass cage, pale and incomplete, broken by the green ferns of the three-story atrium that slid down as she ascended. Who was this plain young woman? Without makeup, without the elaborate hairstyling, without the expensive wardrobe, she looked just like any other woman. Nothing special. Not even as pretty as the ladies who sold shoes in the Jimmy Choo store, or the stylish professional women who moved through the elegant foyer below.
Certainly not the kind of woman men died for. If only Kenny Boggs had seen her like this, maybe none of the horror would have happened. A vision of his bleeding body superimposed itself onto her reflection, and she closed her eyes, suddenly sick.
How could he be dead? How was it possible that a human being had died merely so that she could live? Who was she? What made her life more valuable than his?
Logically, she understood that there were rational answers. Kenny Boggs had tried to kill her. People had a right to protect themselves. But the emotional truth was more complicated, like a dark, twisted knot inside her heart. The questions remained, ghosts that followed her around, pale and quiet in the daytime, stronger and louder at night.
But she repeated the mantra she’d used every sleepless night for the past eight weeks. Kenny was dead. She couldn’t go back and change the past.
Now all that was left was to change the future, if she was brave enough to do it.
The elevator finally stopped. She walked to her own door, took a deep breath and put her key into the lock. She was ready, her speech prepared, her shoulders squared—so why were her knees suddenly just a little too soft? She wasn’t afraid of her own mother, was she? Surely, after the initial shock wore off, her mother would—
But this was just more worrying. More procrastination.
She turned the key. The rest of her life lay, green and shining, like Oz, just across the long bridge of this one conversation. She couldn’t afford to lose her nerve now.
“Mom? I need to talk to—”
But for a second, as the door to her apartment swung open, she froze. Had she opened the wrong door?
She didn’t recognize anything in this room.
Except her mother. Karla rushed over, cupping Lara’s chin in her hand and kissing her on both cheeks, an affectation she had picked up recently, as if they were from Italy instead of Mobile, Alabama.
“Oh, good, Lara, you’re here! Ignore the mess in the living room. Remember, it’s a work in progress. It’s going to be magnificent! Maxim, she’s here! Show Lara the plans!”
Lara touched her mother’s hand. “Plans?”
Her mother adjusted a strand of platinum-blond hair behind her delicate ear and knitted her freshly waxed eyebrows. “The decorating, darling. Remember? I told you last week.”
Lara shook her head slowly. She didn’t remember anything about decorating. And besides…this was decorating? The living room looked as if it had been ransacked.
Her mother laughed merrily. “Oh, Lara, you never listen to me. I must have talked to you about it ten times, and you said it was fine. You’ve been needing to do something with this place, and now that you’re—”
Maxim came over, wearing an olive-green suit with gold braids at the shoulders. He had redecorated Karla’s apartment last year, while Lara was in England filming The Highwayman. Lara had met him once or twice on visits home, and he’d scared her to death. With his black eyes and black moustache, he looked like some sadistic headmaster at a horror-movie military school.
“You must change. You must change everything.” He drew his imposing black brows together. In spite of his outrageous clothes, Maxim defied every stereotype about the effeminate interior decorator. He didn’t just redecorate your rooms, he went to war with them. “Everything.”
“Hi, Maxim.” Lara tried not to resent his presence. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. And it certainly pointed out that her mother, at least, wasn’t trapped in a mental maze of guilt and bloody memories, trying to make sense of Kenny Boggs’s death. Her mother was moving on, picking out paint and fabric and furniture.
Of course, she hadn’t been on the dais that day. She hadn’t seen Kenny’s body.
Lara forced a smile. She was always pretending these days, trying to be like other people. “Maxim…I think maybe we should put the redecorating off a little while. I need to talk to my mother—”
Maxim growled. “You cannot put this off a minute. Not a second.” He let his black gaze sweep the room angrily. “There is no style here, there is no ambiance. There is no you. Not the real you.”
If only he knew how true that was. The real Lara hadn’t ever set foot in this apartment. The real Lara hadn’t been seen for years. In fact, in some ways, she felt that the real Lara hadn’t yet been born.
“Maxim has such wonderful things planned, Lara. All white, very modern. With little explosions of color, like…” Karla put a pale pink fingertip against her dazzlingly white teeth. “Oh, show her the lamp, Maxim.”
“Yes. The lamp is the masterpiece.” Maxim picked up a long, cherry-red, twisted-glass thing from behind the sofa and held it out like a javelin. It was at least six feet long. It looked like…Lara searched her memory for what it reminded her of….
It looked like a Twizzler.
Maxim ran his hand along the twisted, ropy surface lovingly.
“Picture,” he commanded. “It glows, top to bottom. Very red. Dramatic. It stands behind a virginal white sofa. The sofa has purple pillows. Perhaps one is yellow, to startle the eye. And then…” He held the Twizzler erect. “Fire!”
Lara hesitated, wondering whether Maxim might be insane.
“Oh.” Without warning, his face crumpled. Even his moustache seemed to wilt. “You don’t like it?”
“Yes, of course,” she assured him, though it shocked her to see how vulnerable he was under that military surface. How could she have forgotten the one immutable truth of Hollywood? Everyone in this town was playing a role, apparently even Maxim. “It’s…unforgettable.” He frowned, unconvinced, so she went on. “I love it, honestly. It’s just that I really need to talk to—”
She suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked over to see Karla plucking at the cotton sleeve of Lara’s T-shirt and frowning.
“My God, Lara,” her mother said. “Please. Tell me you didn’t wear this out shopping.”
Lara stiffened, but she kept her voice calm. “Yes, I did.”
“Oh, honey, noooo.” Her mother sounded as distressed as if Lara had confessed to walking naked down Rodeo Drive. “And no makeup? No mousse?” She fingered Lara’s hair desperately, as if she could salvage her after the fact. “Oh, honey, honey. Not even any lipstick?”
Lara tried to keep smiling. “It’s okay, Mom.” She held up the shoe bag. “As you can see, they were willing to take my money, anyhow.”
“But what if people had seen you?”
“People did see me. Lots of
