Perhaps he’d built up an image of Daisy
that no actual woman could live up to

The golden-haired child basking in the sunlight of her father’s love had grown into an ethereal goddess…who had an ex-husband and a fourteen-year-old daughter and kept goats. And didn’t return his phone calls. Nick mulled this over for a while, tried to come up with some plausible reasons she might not want to talk to him. He sneezed. Difficult to think while sneezing.

He had lined up some other interviews, which he would do over the next few days. All peripheral to the biography, though. Truman’s relationship with Daisy as it reflected in his art was the central theme of the work; Truman was dead, so no one else really mattered but Daisy.

Dear Reader,

I sometimes think that if, in order to become a parent, we had to apply for the job, the world’s population would shrink considerably. I was very young when I had my children and, looking back, the only thing I knew at the time was that I wanted to be a mother. Many years later, with two beautiful and much-loved adult children—and a granddaughter—I wouldn’t have changed anything. But I still wish I’d been more prepared for the awesome responsibilities ahead.

In Out of Control, Daisy and Nick both struggle with the question of what it takes to be a good parent. Nick loves his daughter but is painfully aware of his shortcomings. Daisy, abandoned by her mother and raised by a decidedly offbeat father, wants her own daughter to feel the emotional security she herself never experienced as a child.

These days as I find myself caring for my ninety-year-old mother, I’m reminded of how cyclical the life process is. I hold my mother’s hand as we journey out, much as she once held my hand and as I held the hands of my own children. I haven’t always been the perfect daughter (just ask my mum!), just as I’m not always the perfect mother (just ask my kids!), so perhaps it’s just as well I never had to apply for the roles. But despite the mistakes I’ve made, the things I wish I’d done differently, I’m immensely grateful that I was given the opportunity. A life filled with love, compassion and a liberal sprinkling of humor is an invaluable ingredient for making it through the rough times.

I hope you enjoy Out of Control. I really do like hearing from you and do my best to answer every letter or e-mail. You can reach me at www.janicemacdonald.com or at PMB 101, 136 E. 8th Street, Port Angeles, WA 98362.

All the best,

Janice

Out of Control
Janice Macdonald

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Janice Macdonald is an author and freelance writer who divides her time between San Diego and Port Angeles, Washington, where she lives in a cabin on the edge of the Olympic National Forest and watches deer graze when she should be writing! She recently discovered the joys of Bach and now listens to his music constantly.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

PROLOGUE

October 6, 2003

Ms. Daisy Fowler

Chaparral Hills

Laguna Beach, California,

U.S.A.

Dear Ms. Fowler:

I am writing to let you know that I have been contracted to write a biography of your late father, Mr. Frank Joseph Truman.

I first became interested in your father’s work after seeing a painting in his Innocence series in a London art gallery. The portrait of a young girl on a sunlit bluff was exquisite; I recall standing in the wet chill of a November evening but feeling almost transported. For a moment, I’d felt the ocean wind that tangled the girl’s hair, tasted the tang of salt on my own lips. My captivation was complete when I learned from the gallery owner that this was a painting of the artist’s only daughter.

On a very personal note, having a daughter who is probably a year or so younger than you were when Mr. Truman painted you, I experienced what I can only describe as a connection to and a profound admiration for him as a father. I couldn’t help thinking that his love must have contributed to the magical beauty of the work.

I am the author of three previous biographies, most recently, Antonio Bongiovanni, the Italian Tenor, scheduled for publication later this year. I am also a frequent contributor to the London Times.

I hope you will agree that a well-researched, sympathetic biography of your father would be a tribute to his memory, and, to that end, I would like to schedule a time that we can meet to discuss this project. I will contact you when I arrive in Laguna the first of next month. I look forward to meeting you. For your information, I have also contacted Mr. Truman’s widow, Amalia née Rodrigues and his brother, Dr. Martin Truman.

Best Regards,

Nicholas Wynne

CHAPTER ONE

TRYING TO BE a good father was rather like trying to sing in key, Nick thought as he watched his twelve-year-old daughter pick suspiciously at her tandoori chicken. You could be close enough that almost anyone might recognize the tune, but no one was ever going to mistake you for Frank Sinatra. And, inevitably, you managed to strike a note that simply fell flat.

“I thought you’d like Indian food,” Nick said, trying not to sound reproachful. Their table was next to the window. Outside, the wet street reflected a string of red taillights and the neon sign from the cinema marquee. A waiter in black trousers and a white cotton jacket hovered nearby.

Bella set down her fork. She wore a yellow jumper that she’d coaxed Nick into buying on their last outing, and her hair was pulled back into a tight plait that came halfway down her back. “Did you ask me first?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Because if you had, I could have told you that Mummy already tried to make me like it, and I couldn’t stand it then and I still don’t like it.”

“Perhaps you should have said something before I ordered,” Nick suggested. “Even as we walked into the restaurant, perhaps.” Disappointment and a sense of failure made him feel churlish.

Bella seemed unaffected by his mood, her eyes—the same light green as her mother’s—conveyed her disdain. Set against the olive complexion she’d inherited from him, the impact was striking. He’d look at her and envy anyone with even a modicum of artistic talent. In his head, he could wield a paintbrush in a way that captured the subtle nuance of expression, the play of light across her face. In reality, he couldn’t even take a decent snapshot.

“But you enjoyed the art exhibit?” he asked. Please tell me I’m doing something right. Last week he’d read an article about a support group for divorced fathers. They met Monday nights in a church hall about a ten-minute walk from his North London flat. He might have made it a point to stop in, but he was leaving town—leaving the country, in fact. By the next meeting, he’d be in California, gathering material for the Truman biography that he was now under contract to write. The exhibit he’d taken his daughter to see had been a Truman retrospective.

“God forbid you’d waste a Saturday afternoon with your daughter doing something nonproductive,” Bella’s mother, Avril, had remarked.

He banished his ex-wife from his thoughts. “The girl in the picture was the same age as you when—”

“Her father painted it,” Bella filled in. “And her name was Daisy.”

“Sorry,” Nick said. “I forgot I’d already told you.”

“About a hundred and fifty times.”

“I’ve told you about two hundred and fifty times not to exaggerate,” Nick said, straight-faced. “And her name is Daisy.”

Bella looked at him.

“She’s still alive and kicking,” he said. “So her name is Daisy.”

“Well, it’s a very old-fashioned name,” Bella said, as though that justified using the past tense. “It’s like a name from a fairy story…. Or of somebody’s dotty old auntie.”

“Actually, she’s probably just a year or two younger than me.” He drank some water, and set his glass down. “Which I suppose in your books makes her an old crone.”

The glimmer of a smile broke across his daughter’s face. He watched her fight it. He’d angered her and, as far as she was concerned, done nothing to warrant her forgiveness. She desperately wanted to go to Laguna with him even though he and her mother, for once in agreement, had explained all the reasons why it wasn’t feasible. Nick suspected that she still thought he’d ultimately relent.

Having given up any pretense of eating her chicken, she was now watching him intently as if for a clue to his final decision.

“Stop it,” he said. “I know exactly what you’re doing and it’s not working.”

Her eyes widened. “What am I doing?”

“You’re trying to make me feel guilty.”

“No one can make you feel guilty.” Her voice sounded eerily like her mother’s. “Only you can do that.”

He regarded her with something close to wonder. How could a child almost a quarter his age sound so much like the parent? Still, she had a point. Of all the emotions he felt as a father, guilt was uppermost—he constantly berated himself for not spending enough time with her, for putting his work first, for not always being attentive when he was with her. Ironic, considering he’d been taken with Truman’s portrait as much for what it suggested about the man as a father as for his skills as an artist.

For a while he’d been almost obsessed with Truman, attributing to the artist all the fatherly qualities he himself seemed to lack. And then one of the ex-wives, now dead, had written a memoir portraying Truman as a bitter, angst-ridden man who practiced the piano incessantly in case his talent as a visual artist should abandon him, who obsessively hoarded everything from toilet paper rolls and fingernail clippings to cans of food. A man who was apparently incapable of conceding he was wrong about anything.

Truman’s second wife, Amalia, a one-time Portuguese fado singer, had offered a completely different perspective when Nick had reached her by phone. “Franky,” as she called Truman, had all but walked on water. Amalia had appeared on the scene when Daisy was about ten; Nick had found a picture of the three of them in the archives of the weekly Laguna Beach newspaper over a wedding announcement.

The identity of Daisy’s mother was still something of a mystery but one he expected to resolve once he got to the States.

“Daddy?” Bella treated him to her most soulful look. “Please?”

“Bella, I am going to Laguna to work,” Nick said. “I’ll be out interviewing people and, when I’m not doing that, I’ll be writing. There would be nothing for you to do.”

“I could watch television and go to the beach.”

“And the little matter of school?”

“I’ll catch up when I come back. It’s only six weeks.”

“We’ve gone over this so—”

“I hate this chicken.” She glared at him. “I hate this place.”

In a flash, she was up out of the booth, dragging the edge of the cloth in her haste to leave. Silverware and a water glass clattered to the floor. Nick quickly made apologies and paid the bill before going after her.

“Well, Nick, I’m sorry for stating the obvious—” his ex-wife said when he dropped a sullen and uncommunicative Bella off later that night “—but it was your choice to write about an artist who lived halfway across the world. I don’t suppose it occurred to you there might be subjects here in England…just a little closer to home?”

ON HIS FIRST DAY in Laguna, even before he’d unpacked his files and computer, he walked into the village and spent a great deal of money on two cotton dresses, a skirt and three shirts that the shop assistant said would be perfect for a twelve-year-old girl.

IN THE SMALL WAITING ROOM off the emergency department, Daisy Fowler tried to slow her breathing.

Amalia would be fine.

Daisy breathed deeply, sending healing thoughts to Amalia, who had just been wheeled off on a gurney, her head split open and her face the color of parchment.

Slow, deep breaths.

Amalia had called her last week, giddy with excitement. Someone was going to write Frank’s life story. Daisy had also received a letter from the biographer. Same letter, very different reactions. They’d had a huge fight, and Amalia hadn’t spoken to her since.

An hour ago, she’d got a call from the hospital that Amalia had fallen from her dune buggy and was in the emergency room.

There had also been a fight the night the house burned down with her father in it. “I hate you,” she’d screamed.

“Lighten up, Daisy,” her friend Kit was always telling her. “You’re too hard on yourself. You’re not responsible for other people’s behaviors.”

Like maybe her sixty-five-year old stepmother driving a dune buggy. Inebriated.

Deep breaths. Daisy closed her eyes and tried to meditate. She was learning the technique from a book she’d picked up last week, How to Forgive. The author, Baba Rama Das, pictured on the front cover, had dark, mesmerizing eyes that seemed to follow her around the room. No matter where she set the book, she’d somehow catch a glimpse of him. Yesterday, she’d felt guilty for watching Dr. Phil instead of meditating about forgiveness.

Forgiveness creates peace of mind, Baba said. It also helps heal emotional wounds and leads to new, more gratifying relationships. Hey, sign me up, she’d thought.

Suddenly, she felt frantic to talk to her daughter. Emmy had stomped off to catch the school bus that morning, mad over something or other. Her usual mood these days. Daisy couldn’t recall the last time she and Emmy had actually talked. Really talked. A heart-to-heart kind of talk like the kind Kit regularly had with her daughter. Lately, it seemed all she and Emmy did was fight.

Still, just hearing Emmy’s voice would make her feel better, more in control. She reached into her purse for the cell phone. As she punched in the number, she noticed the sign on the wall. A picture of a cell phone with a red line drawn through it. She ignored it. The answering machine came on.

“Hi sweetie,” she said. “I’m at the hospital with Amalia. She had some kind of accident with the dune buggy—”

“Mom?” Emmy had picked up the phone. “What’s wrong? Is she okay?”

“She’s in surgery right now. She was driving up the dirt road to the highway, God knows why. I’ve told her enough times—”

“Just tell me.”

“Well, she hit her head, which isn’t good, but she’s going to be okay. She will be okay. She’ll be fine.”

“Tell her I love her,” Emmy said.

“I will.” Daisy’s nose stung with tears. “I love you too, sweetie.”

Emmy had already disconnected. The cell phone rang before she had time to put it away.

“Hello, is this Daisy Fowler?”

“Yes.”

“Nick Wynne. We spoke on the phone a few weeks ago…about the biography I’m writing on your father.”

For a moment Daisy couldn’t think of what to say. Go away came to mind. “This is a bad time,” she finally managed. “I really can’t talk right now.” It was the same tone of voice she used on telephone solicitors. Rude and impatient, letting them know they’d intruded on her privacy. “

“I’d intended to call you in a day or so,” Nick said. “But I was supposed to meet your stepmother at noon, and it’s now half past one and I wondered if you might know—”

“She’s in the emergency room,” Daisy said. “Which is why I can’t talk.”

“Oh, no.” A pause. “Not serious, I hope?”

“I’m waiting to find out.”

“Well, look, I don’t want to pester you when you obviously have other things on your mind, but I’ll be here in Laguna for the next few weeks so perhaps you could give me a ring when—”

“Sure,” Daisy said.

“Shall I give you my number, or—”

“Go ahead.” Whatever else Nicholas Wynne said, she didn’t hear. The doctor had just walked into the room.

LATER THAT NIGHT, after she’d learned that Amalia’s injuries weren’t serious, after she’d cooked dinner and done the dishes, helped Emmy with her homework and tried to meditate for five minutes—it was all she could manage without her thoughts going all over the place—she started feeling bad about being rude to Nicholas Wynne.

Maybe she would call tomorrow and explain that she’d just been distracted because of Amalia and, even though she wasn’t that thrilled about the whole biography thing, she’d do her best to work with him.

She walked to the window and looked out at the grove of eucalyptus and beyond the trees to the clearing where she’d built the goat pen. One of the goats was trying to butt its way out, and she made a mental note to fortify the fence. The wind had picked up since the sun had gone down. Scattered about the property between tree trunks, she could see the roofs and wooden porches of the other cabins. At night, the lights from their windows twinkled like stars.

Her father had built the compound himself nearly fifty years ago, hand crafted cabins embellished with sculpture, stained glass, mosaics and wrought iron. Her father had been the consummate collector.

Her own cabin, the largest, had three bedrooms—one of which she thought of privately as her studio—and a wraparound porch. Winding gravel paths linked one structure to another. The occupants were all friends—like Kit, artists. Daisy found the sense of unity comforting. Martin, her uncle, saw it as another example of what he called her “naïve” generosity. “If they can’t sell their stuff, they obviously don’t have talent. They should take full-time jobs and support themselves instead of relying on you,” he’d point out ad nauseam.

Building developers were always trying to get her to sell the property, but Daisy preferred to believe that her father would have liked it that she was helping a bunch of struggling artists. Collectively, they referred to themselves as the Raggle Taggle Gypsies. She’d come up with the name from an old folk song about a noble woman who ran off with the gypsies. She thought it more romantic than, say, Undisciplined Artists Who Lived Mostly Rent Free.

Unlike Daisy, none of the other cabin dwellers had inherited substantial fortunes.

“You imbecile,” her father had shouted the night he died. “You stupid, stupid, girl. You utter fool,” he’d thundered, pointing an imperious finger at the door. “Out of this house. I don’t want to see your face again.”

“Oh, I had the most perfect childhood imaginable,” she pictured herself telling Nicholas Wynne. “Idyllic really. Yes, exactly. Just like the picture.”

CHAPTER TWO

NICK HAD ARRANGED to meet Truman’s brother Martin at the Hotel Laguna for a late breakfast. Still slightly jet-lagged, he had awakened at three, then stayed awake listening to the wind howling down the canyons. Now, five minutes early for his appointment, he strolled through the tiled lobby in the footsteps of Bette Davis, Judy Garland and Charlie Chaplin.

Laguna Beach, heart of the California Riviera, and a playground for the fabulously wealthy, a mix of artists’ colony and upscale resort, of rustic beach cottages and gated mansions. The water was blue, the sand was the color of milky coffee and he couldn’t look at either without thinking guiltily of Bella back in London. He would see how the work went and perhaps have her over for the last couple of weeks.

He wandered into the art-deco bar. The Grand Old Lady, as the pink stucco landmark on Pacific Coast Highway was affectionately known, had reportedly been the favorite trysting spot of Bogart and Bacall. Truman’s wife Amalia had told him that the artist had often enjoyed an evening cocktail on the balcony while he watched the sunset. He would send flowers to the hospital today, he decided.

“Nicholas.”

Nick turned to see a tall and imposing man with thinning gray-black hair dressed somewhat formally for hypercasual Laguna in tan trousers and a cream sports coat. He looked like his brother, or at least the pictures Nick had seen of Truman.

After exchanging pleasantries, they moved out to the balcony and sat at one of the white wrought-iron tables. Nick craned his neck to look around. In one direction, the curve of blue and silver shoreline, in the other dark green hills tiered with terra-cotta roofs. Purple bougainvillea sprawled down the walls, red geraniums spilled from several giant urns. Realizing that Martin was watching him, he grinned self-consciously.

“Just playing awestruck tourist,” he said.

“I’d like to think I never take it for granted,” Martin said, “but the truth is I do. After a while, you stop seeing all this.” He waved an arm to encompass the postcard-perfect scenery. “We get caught up in our lives. Have you seen much yet?”

“I just arrived two days ago, but I’d like to incorporate a bit of sightseeing.” A waitress in blue jeans, tight as a second skin, and a tourniquet of yellow spandex set down water and menus, treating him to the sight of full breasts, tanned and freckled like eggs. “I’ll probably wait until my daughter gets here.” He drank some water. “She’s incensed about having to stay in London while I’m gallivanting, as she sees it, in California.”

Martin smiled. “How old is your daughter?”

“Twelve.” When Martin said nothing, Nick rushed to fill the conversational void. “Child of divorced parents. Ever-present guilt.” He remembered that Martin was a psychiatrist and Nick decided the silence was intended to draw him out. A tactic he often used himself. He decided not to be drawn. “And you? Children?”

“Unfortunately, no. My wife, Johanna, is a pediatric psychiatrist and we were so involved in building our practices, the time never seemed right. And then it was too late.”

He took a pair of silver-rimmed glasses from the pocket of his blazer, put them on and studied the menu. Nick picked up his own menu but managed a few surreptitious glances across the table. Martin had a soft, full mouth, red-lipped and almost womanish. He’d removed the blazer, carefully draping it over the back of an empty chair. The cuffs of his off-white shirt were rolled just above the wrists, both at precisely the same length. Nick imagined him comparing them in the mirror, lining them up just so, using a tape measure perhaps. If he shared any of his late brother’s artistic temperament, it wasn’t evident.

The waitress arrived. Nick ordered huevos rancheros, described on the menu as fried eggs, chopped tomatoes, chili peppers, Manchego cheese and tortillas. It sounded exotic enough that he’d probably regret it later. Martin ordered half a grapefruit and a slice of whole wheat toast. Dry. They both had coffee, Martin’s decaf.

Martin cleared his throat. “Regarding my brother.” He aligned his knife and fork with the pale yellow linen napkin, studied the effect for a moment, then looked up, fixing his sight on a spot somewhere beyond Nick’s right shoulder. “I should preface this discussion by saying that my brother had detractors. I assume you’ve read the…” He pursed his full lips as he appeared to seek the right word. “The piece of spiteful, slanderous garbage that his first wife threw together in an attempt to cash in on his name.”

Nick nodded. This was the woman who’d written that Truman was given to raiding the bins behind supermarkets for edible discards, this after he’d amassed considerable wealth with his art.

“You’re suggesting that what she wrote was untrue?”

“I’m advising you that if, as you stated in your letter, you intend to write a sympathetic, well-researched and objective biography of my brother you’ll forget every word you read in that book.”

“What was her motivation for writing such a book, do you suppose?”

“A woman scorned. Frank, finally seeing the light, divorced her and—since she’d already been through half his money—saw no reason to provide for her any further.”

The waitress brought the food. Nick eyed his tray-sized platter. The huevos rancheros came with a small mountain of rice, bits of broken tortillas and something pale brown topped with cheese. He investigated it with his fork and glanced up at the waitress.

“Refried beans.” She smiled. “Enjoy.”

“You’d mentioned detractors,” Nick said. “Plural.”

Martin was working on his grapefruit, running a table knife around the rim of the fruit with the meticulous attention of a brain surgeon. “Amalia, his widow, while not precisely a detractor, isn’t always completely truthful.”

Nick looked at him.

“She has a drinking problem.” He set the knife down. “Do you know about her recent accident?”

“Yes. We were supposed to meet for lunch and when she didn’t arrive, I called Daisy. How is she?”

“Physically? Improving, I gather from my niece. Mentally?” He shrugged. “It all depends. She’s a very flamboyant, emotional woman. Given to embroidering the truth. When Frank met her she was singing in a café in Portugal. I’d take what she says with a grain of salt.”

Nick grinned. “Sorry,” he said when Martin gave him a puzzled look. “Usually when I write biographies, I have access to the subject’s papers. Letters, diaries, that sort of thing. In your brother’s case, everything was lost in the fire. Since he was somewhat reclusive, the number of people available to me to interview is somewhat limited. His first wife’s book is apparently a lie and now you’re saying his widow can’t entirely be trusted. It just struck me suddenly as funny. Although I should probably be gnashing my teeth.”

Martin smiled faintly. “Yes, well, Daisy will be an invaluable resource. She was closer to Frank than anyone, although Amalia would have you believe that only she held the key to Frank’s innermost thoughts.”

“How is your relationship with Daisy?” Nick asked. “Good?”

Martin patted the napkin against his lips. “Excellent.” He shrugged. “Her naïveté troubles me, but for the most part we get along.”

“Frank became a father quite late in life,” Nick said, moving on.

“He did. Like myself, he was focused on his profession.”

“And Daisy’s mother?”

“Daisy was adopted.” Martin glanced around for the waitress. “More coffee would be most welcome,” he muttered.

“Adopted between Frank’s first and second marriages?”

Martin frowned. His thoughts seemed suddenly elsewhere. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “You were asking?”

“Just trying to understand the chronology. He was divorced from wife number one—”

“And then he traveled to Portugal, where he met Amalia and brought her back to Casa Athena, his home. She was here for a number of years, supported by my brother, before returning to Portugal. In the interim, my brother adopted Daisy. Just after Daisy’s tenth birthday, Amalia came back to Laguna and she and Frank were married. She was with him until he died.”

Nick had stopped eating as he listened to the recitation. He watched now as Martin cut a slice of toast into precise triangles, full lower lip jutting. “Were you and Frank at all alike?” he asked.

“Very much so,” Martin said.

Nick tried to keep the surprise from his face. “In what ways, for example?”

“Honesty, integrity. A passion for our respective professions that precludes almost everything else.”

“But Frank had a daughter,” Nick said. “I know in my case, my former wife constantly complains that I put my work first. Was it difficult for Daisy, do you think? Being the daughter of a respected and prolific artist?”

Martin, having eaten his toast and grapefruit, folded his napkin and placed it on his plate. “I know nothing of your personal situation, of course, but Frank had a unique ability. I’d said his passion for art precluded almost everything else. The almost being Daisy. My brother had the unique ability to…how shall I put it, integrate the love he had for his daughter into his art.”

Nick thought of seeing Truman’s artwork for the first time. The rainy, London street outside, the sunlit cliff and the smiling girl on the canvas inside. “Yes. I saw that in his work,” he said truthfully. “Which is why I’m writing this biography.”

“TODAY’S LESSON in self-improvement, in case you’re interested, is about not feeling resentful and put-upon,” Daisy told Kit. “But Toby’s doing his usual shtick, Amalia’s calling every five minutes from the hospital, Emmy’s being impossible and I’m supposed to drop everything and sit patiently while some guy I don’t know from Adam asks me to reminisce about my father.”

“You sound resentful and put-upon,” Kit said.

“I guess I need to work a little harder, huh?”

They were drinking guava-flavored iced tea and watching for the school bus as it lumbered its way up Laguna Canyon Road to drop off their daughters. Daisy was wearing a shirt that read, I Live In My Own World, But It’s Okay, They Know Me Here. She and Kit were both wearing flip-flops. Daisy’s were a pink-and-white candy-striped rubber version with a pink daisy on the toepiece; Kit’s were lime-green translucent plastic. They’d picked up four pairs—a pair each for them and for the girls—the day before at the end-of-season sale at the Village Drug Store.

Daisy looked at their feet side by side on the wooden deck rail. Kit’s were a dark olive color, her toenails painted deep burgundy, which, in the dappled shade, looked almost black. Her own feet were freckled, her toes unpainted, although Emmy was always offering to paint them, or encouraging her to get a pedicure. Emmy, to her perpetual disgust, had inherited Daisy’s tendency to burn rather than turn lusciously caramel like every other kid in Laguna, or golden-brown like her father.

“So how is Amalia?” Kit asked.

“Doing okay, I guess.” A broken wrist and a cracked rib, but her alcohol level had been above the legal limit and a social worker had suggested counseling, which Amalia would never do in a million years because, of course, she doesn’t think she has a problem. “I’m trying to talk her into coming here for a few days. If she goes back to that cottage, she’s going to drag out all those old pictures of my dad, drink, get maudlin and…”

Kit looked at her. “She’s not suicidal or anything?”

“No, but when she drinks she starts thinking about my dad and… I mean, really, that’s one of the things that really irritates me about this whole biography thing. Not that I don’t have my own reservations, but Amalia knows damn well she can’t mention Dad’s name without getting teary eyed. But she and Martin voted me down when I said we should tell the guy no. Martin starts doing his psychiatrist shtick and telling me I need to confront my fears or some garbage and Amalia tells me I’m selfish. Even Toby gets in on the act and Emmy—”

“Hey.” Kit leaned over to wrap her arm around Daisy’s shoulder. “Deep, deep breaths. Everything happens for a reason. Remember that. Listen, I’m going to walk up to the road to meet the girls. Want to walk with me?”

Daisy shook her head. “I’m just going to stay here and veg…I mean breathe…. Meditate is what I’m trying to say.”

She watched as Kit made her way through the grove of eucalyptus and down the dirt road that led to the highway. It was warm for early November, even by Southern California standards, and the dogs were sprawled in whatever patch of shade they could find: under the thick growth of the pepper tree, beneath the steps of the cabin. Little brown Allie, Daisy’s favorite, was curled up beneath the Adirondack chair. The goats, five of them, had retreated to their shed, and the three cats were off somewhere doing their own inscrutable cat thing.

The wind was picking up. The Santa Anas, hot dry winds that blew in from the desert and made everyone feel cranky. They’d been linked to industrial accidents, lower test scores, kids misbehaving in school, heart attacks, all that sort of thing. They also whipped up wildfires like the one burning a few miles to the north.

The Santa Anas had been blowing the day her father had died in the fire that destroyed Casa Athena and everything in it.

The boom box on the deck was tuned to a country-western station. “I can feel it in the wind,” some guy was singing. “There’s trouble blowin’ in.” Weird, it had been playing on the truck stereo when she had driven home from the hospital last night. Signs are all around, she’d read in the Forgiveness book. You just have to be observant.

The winds freaked her though. She’d lived in California her entire life, and they were as much a part of the state as the ocean surf, but it was the same every year. As a child, she’d lain awake listening to them beat against the roof. Things would pry loose and blow away in this terrifying orchestra of sound that would send her shaking and sobbing into the safety of her father’s room where she’d burrow quivering beneath the blankets. The next morning, the sky was as innocent and blue as a child’s eyes, but the torn tree limbs and hurled garden furniture were witnesses to the nocturnal rampage.

The phone rang. She decided to let the machine pick it up.

From where she sat, she could hear the English accent. Nicholas Wynne.

“I hope your stepmother’s on the mend and, of course, I still very much want to talk to you. It’s quite incredible being here in Laguna, actually seeing the places your father painted. Please give me a call at your earliest convenience.”

A fly buzzed annoyingly around her face and she swatted it with her hand, then she got up, took the iced tea pitcher inside and stuck it in the sink. In the fridge, she found a carton of leftover Chinese takeout. She carried it into the living room and flipped on the TV.

Dr. Phil was talking about emotional eating, of all things. Of using food as comfort. Daisy feigned surprise. People do that? She watched as he reduced a fat woman in a red dress to tears, then decided watching other people’s pain when there was nothing you could do to help them was a sick kind of voyeurism. Kind of like being a biographer, when she stopped to think about it. Maybe she’d suggest a quid pro quo. “I’ll tell you about my life, if you tell me about yours.” But then what did she care about Nicholas Wynne or his life?

CHAPTER THREE

“WITH RISING TEMPERATURES and Santa Ana winds stoking fires throughout Southern California, the question on the minds of many in Laguna Beach is, Can it happen again?”

Nick slumped on the sofa, and gazed bleary-eyed at the TV. Late morning sunshine poured in through the French doors, heating the room to tropical temperatures. He sneezed, then sneezed again. He wore the white terry-cloth robe that had been in the bathroom, along with other niceties, such as shoe-cleaning cloths and lavender-scented body wash—compensation, he supposed, for the small fortune he was paying for an oceanfront apartment. A justifiable expense since this would be his definitive work. The work that would earn him a vast quantity of money, enough to take Bella on holidays to exotic destinations, indulge her every whim and, possibly, buy himself the silver Porsche Carrera GT he’d salivated over in the showroom window of Laguna Motors yesterday.

I should get up and open the doors, he thought. I should turn off the TV and start work. I should try to reach Daisy Fowler again. He was starting to feel mildly rejected by Daisy Fowler and just a bit disappointed in her.

He sneezed again. And again.

He’d awakened just before dawn, sneezing his head off. Allergies, apparently from the winds that blew like demons and kept him awake half the night. At one point, he’d been certain someone was breaking into his apartment. Grabbing a shoe, the only thing remotely weaponlike he could find, he’d crept into the living room. The noise, he’d discovered, was a plastic plate, probably blown from somebody’s rubbish bin, hitting the glass of the French windows.

On TV, a reporter was interviewing a fire chief.

The current weather, Nick learned, was eerily similar to conditions fourteen years ago when flames ravaged the local scenic canyons and hills, destroying hundreds of homes in and around Laguna Beach.

“It’s not a question of if fire will revisit Laguna Beach,” the fire chief was saying. “It’s a question of when.”

He would have to remember to tell Bella. “It’s a good thing you didn’t come, darling. No really. Fires burning everywhere. Entire hillsides blazing. No, no, the beaches haven’t burned up, but still…”

He sneezed. He got up from the couch, sat down at the table where he’d put up his computer. He thought about Daisy. Perhaps he’d built up an image of her that no actual woman could live up to. The golden-haired child basking in the sunlight of her father’s love, grown into an ethereal goddess…who had an ex-husband, a fourteen-year-old daughter and goats. And who didn’t return his phone calls. He mulled this for a while, tried to come up with plausible reasons why she might not want to talk to him. He sneezed. Difficult to think while sneezing. He returned to the couch.

He had lined up some other interviews over the next few days. A woman from the Laguna Historical Society who knew Frank from years ago; another breakfast, this one with a gallery owner who had worked with Truman. All peripheral to the biography, though. Truman’s relationship with Daisy as reflected in his art was the central theme of the work. Truman was dead, so no one else really mattered but Daisy. He would give her until this evening and if she hadn’t called, he’d leave another message. Sending more flowers might be overdoing it. He thought about driving past her house. He sneezed.

He was considering spending the entire day on the couch watching the telly when the phone rang.

Valerie, his girlfriend in England. She had also wanted to come with him to Laguna, but things with Valerie were rocky. Actually the entire six-month relationship had never been anything but rocky, rooted mostly in sex and a mutual fondness for tandoori takeout. He listened as she complained at length about the dreary weather in London and her life of late, also dreary.

“It’s horrible, Nick. I’m honestly not sure how much more I can take.”

“Maybe it would help if you got away for a bit,” Nick said. Actually, driving by Daisy Fowler’s house might not be a bad idea. He could be casually passing by just as she happened to walk out. Although her uncle had said something about her living in a compound off a dirt road, which might make casually passing by difficult to explain.

“D’you think so?” Valerie’s voice had brightened. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Absolutely.”

“Brilliant. Well, I’ll get started on it right away. How are things with you?”

Nick sneezed.

“Is that a good thing?”

“Allergies,” Nick said. “Wind’s stirring up dust and pollen and God knows what. It’s having a rather debilitating effect on me.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t read the review of your Bongiovanni book, then,” Valerie said, a note of hesitation in her voice. “It ran in this morning’s Times.”

Nick stared, unseeing now, at the TV. He steeled himself. “Favorable?”

“Shall I read it?”

“Broad strokes will do.”

“You’ll get angry…”

“I won’t get angry, damn it. Do you have the review there?”

“I’m looking at it right now. It’s not bad exactly.”

“For God’s sake—”

“It just says that you…it, the biography, doesn’t add anything to what we already know about Bongiovanni. That was a quote. It also said you held him, Bongiovanni, at arm’s length, that you never really got to the heart of who he was. Inconclusive, that’s another quote and, hold on, here it is. Shallow and superfici—

“Right.”

“More?”

“No.”

He carried the phone into the kitchen, took a carton of orange juice from the fridge and set it on the counter. He’d had his hopes set on definitive. Wynne has written the definitive biography of Bongiovanni. In this uncompromisingly honest work, Wynne has captured the soul of the tenor. He decided he didn’t want orange juice after all. He went back into the living room and collapsed on the couch.

“Nick?”

“What?”

“You’re not sulking, are you?”

“Don’t be so stupid,” he said sulkily. “Sulking about what?”

“The review.”

“Already forgotten about it.” Already mentally composing the vituperative letter he would write to the Times railing about the sheer idiocy of the reviewer who…or maybe biting sarcasm would be more the ticket. He’d think about it later.

“How’s the current project?” she asked.

“The daughter could prove to be something of a roadblock. I sense resistance.”

“The daughter?”

“Daisy. The child in the pictures, except she’s now about forty, has a daughter and runs a restaurant here in Laguna with her ex-husband.”

“Why is she resisting?”

“Well, I’d have to ask her, wouldn’t I? Which I would if she’d answer her bloody phone. I’ve lost count of the messages I’ve left. Ignored every one of them. Apparently she lives in a wooden cabin on the outskirts of town and keeps goats.”

“Goats?”

“Hires them out to homeowners who live in the hills.” He’d learned this from Martin, who had called earlier to check on his progress. “The goats eat the brush, which works to keep the fire danger down. That’s how Truman died. Burned to death in his home.”

“How ghastly. Maybe that’s why the daughter doesn’t want to talk. Maybe it’s all too painful for her.”

Nick considered. “It’s been fourteen years.”

“It was her father, Nick,” Valerie said reprovingly.

He sneezed again and blew his nose. He felt like hell.

“Would it be better if I booked to San Diego?” Valerie was asking.

“Sorry?”

“When I come over. Would it be better if I book into L.A. or San Diego?”

“I thought you were talking about going to your sister’s in Kent.”

“Which sister?”

“How many sisters do you have?”

“Two. Neither of them lives in Kent.” She sighed. “Do you ever listen to anything I say?”

“I heard you say you needed to get away.”

“You said I needed to get away. That was your suggestion.”

“My suggestion?”

“Nick, have you been drinking? You sound…odd.”

“I’m unwell.” The television was showing pictures of orange flame rolling like molten lava down a hillside. The sight momentarily distracted him. “You should see this,” he told Valerie. “Houses burning all over the place, sheets of flame shooting up into the sky. It’s incredible. They’re showing someone leading horses down a hillside, and the fires look as though they’re just a few feet away.”

“That happens in California, doesn’t it?” Valerie asked. “It seems there’s always one disaster or another. The price of living in paradise, I suppose.” She paused. “Still, at least it’s warm. And it’s not raining, is it? There’s a lot to be said for nice weather. What are the beaches like?”

“Covered in ash.”

“Oh, come on. It can’t be that bad.”

“Look Val,” he said. “I told Bella she couldn’t come because I needed to work, and I’m telling you the same thing. I’m trying not to be superstitious, but I get here on the day Truman’s widow lands in hospital, so obviously I can’t talk to her for a while. Then the daughter, who’s central to the whole book, is proving difficult…..” He sneezed. “Excuse me. Let’s talk about something else, all right?”

But there wasn’t much else that Valerie wanted to talk about, and after they’d said their goodbyes Nick picked up the phone and punched in Daisy’s number again.

“My mom?” a young girl asked. “Sorry, she’s not here.”

Of course she isn’t. “I’ve left several messages,” he said. “She must be very busy.”

“Yeah, she is, kind of.”

“You must be…”

“Emily. Except everyone calls me Emmy.”

“And you’ve attained the ripe old age of fourteen.”

A beat of silence. “How d’you know that?”

“I’m omniscient,” he said. “It just came to me in a flash of lavender-colored smoke.”

“Seriously.”

“I’m a biographer. I snoop for a living.”

She laughed. “I’ll tell my mom you called.”

“Thank you, Emily. I enjoyed our little chat.”

“Me, too,” she said. “Bye.”

Nick was smiling as he hung up. He called Bella but got her mother.

“She’s next door at her friend’s,” Avril said.

“Isn’t it past her bedtime?”

“Not for a couple of hours. Anything else about your daughter I can fill you in on?”

Ran out of mood stabilizers, did you? “Just tell her I called, please. I’ll try again tomorrow, or she can call me here.”

“Actually, while I have you on the phone, Bella’s in love with this little cottage in Devon. We took the train down there last week just to get away from the city for a bit and—well, her disappointment about you know what—and lo and behold, there it was. A sweet cottage that we could use on weekends and school holidays…I did put in an offer, but now I’m having second thoughts. I haven’t broken the news to Bella yet, she’ll be devastated.”

Nick’s left eye had started to itch uncontrollably. He sneezed. Now his right eye was tearing. “Why are you having second thoughts?”

“It’s rather a stretch financially, I’m not sure—”

“Go ahead,” he said impulsively. “I’ll make up whatever you need.”

“Nick. My God, are you absolutely sure?”

“I got a decent advance for the Truman book,” he said.

“Bella will be over the moon. She was terribly disappointed about the Laguna thing—”

“Yes, I know,” he said. “Well, I hope this helps.”

THE VAGUE SENSE OF DOOM he’d felt after making the offer stayed with him for the rest of the morning. Daisy Fowler had no idea of course, but she had the power to make his life very, very difficult.

Later that night, he wandered down to the Hotel Laguna and had a couple of beers on the balcony while he watched the sun set over the Pacific. Instead of uplifting him, though, he found himself sinking into a morose gloom. The words of the Bongiovanni review lingered like an ill-digested meal “Arm’s length,” indeed. He sipped his beer. Gloom gave way to anger. He’d show them arm’s length. He was going to write the definitive biography of Frank Truman, and he would take no prisoners in the process. Darling Daughter Daisy be damned.

“YOUR GRANDFATHER, he was a very handsome man,” Amalia was telling Emily. “All the girls, they fell in love with him because he was so funny and so big and strong.”

“Dinner’s almost ready, you guys,” Daisy called from the kitchen of Amalia’s cottage. “Emmy, get those pictures cleared off the table so we can sit down.” She and Emmy had brought Amalia home from the hospital that morning. Predictably, Amalia had insisted on coming back to the place where she said Frank still lived in the walls and the shadows, and where the ocean that crashed onto the beach brought gifts of pale pink seashells that were also from Frank.

Daisy sighed. How could you argue with that? All you could do was case the cabin for booze bottles and accidentally on purpose hide the keys to the dune buggy so she wouldn’t take it into town until she’d recovered completely.

She set the enchilada casserole under the broiler in Amalia’s yellowing enameled stove, washed up the dishes she’d used in the deep, square sink, chipped and stained from years of use. On the draining board was a jelly jar of purple statice Emmy had picked to welcome Amalia home from the hospital.

As she took the plates from the cupboard, she spotted the fifth of vodka. She set the plates down, uncapped the bottle, poured it down the sink and stuffed it to the bottom of the trash can.

“It is very sad that you never knew your grandfather,” Amalia was telling Emily. “But a good thing that this man, Mr. Wynne, is writing a book about him because you will learn many things about him that maybe you didn’t know.”

Which is part of the problem, Daisy thought. There had been another message from Nicholas Wynne that morning. She checked the casserole—not ready yet. Amalia’s antiquated stove took forever to heat up.

She opened the back door to the balcony. A cool breeze off the ocean tossed her hair. Fog had obscured the moon. The surrounding cottages, empty in the winter months, were dark. Amalia’s cottage was at the end of a cluster of twenty that lined Dolphin Cove’s crescent-shaped beach. Before she was born, her father had used the cottage as his studio, and he and Amalia had spent summers there—fairly wild summers, she’d gathered from bits and pieces dropped by Amalia over the years. Above the fireplace was a painting of Amalia in a 1950s-era bathing suit, draped against a fin-tailed Cadillac convertible bristling with old wooden surfboards.

Pictures—of Amalia, of Amalia with Frank, of Amalia and Frank with other handsome, windblown, sun-kissed friends—lined every square inch of wall space. All were taken in the first half of her father’s relationship with her stepmother. Before Daisy, or B.D., as she often thought of it. Something had happened right before she was born, and Amalia had left.

The second phase of the Frank and Amalia relationship began on the day of her tenth birthday. She’d come down to breakfast, excited about the presents she knew would be waiting for her and found only this exotic-looking woman with huge gold rings in her ears and a red chiffon scarf tied around her head. “Say good morning to Amalia,” her father had said. “She’s made flan for breakfast.”

“It’s my birthday,” she’d blurted. “Where are my presents?”

Frank had pointed to Amalia. “Happy birthday. Meet your new mother.”

And that was it. No explanation. No little talk beforehand. “Honey, a very dear friend has come back into my life. I hope you will learn to love her as much as I do…but if for any reason you’d rather she left, just say the word. You’re always first in my life.”

Hah. Amalia had taken over the kitchen, always making dishes with too much spice and big chunks of unidentifiable meat. She’d play this weird, sad music that nothing drowned out, and she and Frank were always kissing and giggling and tickling each other.

“Either she goes or I do,” she’d told her father about six weeks after Amalia appeared at the kitchen table. “I was here before she was and it’s not fair.”

“Amalia was here long before you were,” he’d responded. “And life’s not fair.”

“Where’s my real mother?” she’d screamed. “I’m going to live with her.”

“Write me,” her father had said.

Years later, long after she’d accepted Amalia as a stepmother, she’d asked again about her real mother. Amalia claimed not to know. “I came back to your father and found him with a daughter. Frank never wanted me to ask questions.”

“Your real mother?” her father had smiled. “Who would you like her to be? Mother Teresa? Dolly Parton? Mae West?”

“Hey, Mom.” Emmy appeared on the balcony. “What’s burning?”

“Damn.” She darted inside and opened the oven. “Caught it in the nick of time.”

“Nick,” Emily said, following her.

Daisy looked up from the casserole.

“That just reminded me. Nick called.”

“The biographer?” Daisy raised an eyebrow. “Since when has he been Nick?”

Emmy rolled her eyes. “Jeez, Mom. That’s what he said his name was. He sounds nice. Kind of like… Hugh Grant. You know, in Bridget Jones’s Diary.”

Daisy nodded. They’d rented the video last week. “But Hugh Grant wasn’t really nice, was he? He was deceitful and—”

“Jeez, Mom. Chill out,” Emmy said.

Daisy carried the casserole to the table, where she had to shove aside a gigantic vase of yellow roses to make room for it. As she did, a card fell out.

To Amalia. I hope that doesn’t strike an overly familiar note, but on some level I feel as if I know you already. In any event, I wish you a speedy recovery and am looking forward to meeting you in person and learning all about your late husband. Warmly, Nicholas Wynne.

“Emily!” Daisy yelled to her daughter, who had wandered outside. “Are you going to help me, or do I have to do everything around here?”

CHAPTER FOUR

THAT NIGHT DAISY couldn’t sleep. In his book Baba talked about forgiving and how, when you did, the heart opened like a bud. But sometimes, even now, when she thought about her father she could feel her own heart snap shut. Or maybe it was more like the lid of a trunk slamming down on all the things you never wanted to think about again. All the things, good and bad, jumbled in there together. What was she supposed to do? Just hand them all to this biographer and say, “Here, you sort it all out”?

Lately, there were days when she saw her father’s face in everything. This morning it had been the pair of black rubber Wellington boots, hers, aligned neatly on the cabin’s back porch next to a pot of red geraniums.

She’d just finished feeding the goats and had started up the path to the cabin when she happened to glance down at the front step. And there was her father with his sun-faded blue eyes and year-round tan and the gleeful expression of a child as he rambled on about something he’d done that he wasn’t going to tell her about because he wanted it to be a surprise. And he was wearing a big, clomping, olive-green version of the boots he’d bought her in Paris at a shop near the Pompidou Center, where they’d also sold chickens and rabbits in cages. He’d made her put on her boots and they’d gone tromping down to the fields to check out his surprise, which had been an old wrought-iron birdcage that he’d hung from the bare branches of an almond tree. Inside, he’d perched a yellow plastic bird of indeterminate species. It was the incongruity that had delighted him.

A good memory. And then there was the one about rain.

She’d been in the bathroom getting dressed for school and she’d called out to ask if it was raining. He’d said it wasn’t, but when she’d looked outside it was pouring down. He’d flown into a rage when she questioned him. His definition of rain was obviously different from hers, he’d yelled. This was just a heavy mist, nothing more than a drizzle, and why did she even ask if she didn’t want his opinion?

Maybe it would have been funny if he hadn’t been so furious.

Would that be a memory to share with Nicholas Wynne?

She glanced at the bedside clock. Two-thirty. God, she was going to be a basket case tomorrow. She got up, pulled on a sweatshirt and padded barefoot to the kitchen. The refrigerator, a more reliable source of emotional solace than Baba—she felt guilty thinking that, but it was true—yielded only cheese, milk, peanut butter and some yellowing broccoli. But then, hidden away behind a tub of nonfat yogurt, she spotted a bag of chocolate chips.

She would hate herself for this when she got on the scales tomorrow, she thought as she finally drifted off to sleep.

The next time she opened her eyes, it was nine-fifteen.

Damn. She jumped out of bed and headed for the kitchen. And found Toby, her ex-husband, sitting there with Emily, both of them laughing.

Emmy laughing. Daisy shook her head. It was a sound she hadn’t heard in weeks. They were so deep in whatever was making them laugh that neither of them saw her in the doorway. There was a box of Cocoa Krispies on the table, two blue bowls and a gallon of milk. Emmy finally glanced up, saw Daisy and her smile faded to a scowl.

“Our little girl wants to go to culinary school,” Toby said. “What do you think about that, Daze?”

Daisy grunted something noncommittal. She and Toby ran a restaurant together, Wildfire. He was the chef, she made desserts. When they opened it last year and she’d let it slip to Martin that she’d financed it, he’d told her she needed to have her head examined. “Just don’t come complaining to me when Toby acts up, as he will,” he’d warned. “The restaurant business is notoriously fickle, and going into partnership with your ex-husband, much less a character like Toby, is just asking for trouble.”

“I was telling Emmy, it’s about time she started dressing up to show off how good-looking she’s getting,” Toby was saying.

And I’ve been telling her just the opposite, Daisy thought. She noticed that Emmy, who flew into a rage at even the mildest criticism of what she was wearing, was carefully avoiding her eye.

Toby, after a few more unsuccessful attempts to engage her in conversation, announced that he’d better get going. He left—cereal bowl filmed with milk and glued-on bits of Cocoa Krispies still on the table. Emmy had retreated to her room.

Daisy carried the bowl to the sink, put the cereal away and wiped off the table. An image came to her of her father at the stove. He’d never slept well, often getting up around dawn to make breakfast, an activity that involved hollering and playing marching music and singing at the top of his voice—just in case she might still be sleeping. None of it had bothered Amalia, who could sleep through anything.

On that particular morning she remembered, he’d been wearing a chef’s hat, brandishing a wooden spoon like a conductor’s baton as he’d belted out tunes.

She’d got her camera and snapped off half a dozen shots before he realized what she was doing. After the film was developed, he’d critiqued the pictures. “Not bad, not bad. But notice how the spoon is slightly out of focus and you’ve got all this clutter in the background and, this is just constructive criticism, honey, but see the way the clock on the wall seems to be coming out of my head….”

It had been the same with every picture she’d taken. She’d examine them for hours before she submitted them to him, convinced she’d finally mastered perfection. She’d never even come close. After a while she’d lost interest in photography all together.

Another memory to share with Nicholas Wynne?

The phone rang. She took a deep breath and picked up the receiver.

Nicholas Wynne.

“My God, I was beginning to think you were a figment of my imagination,” he said. “Either that, or you were avoiding me.”

Daisy sat at the kitchen table. This guy sounded a tad too chipper for the mood she was in. “A lot of stuff going on,” she said.

“How is your stepmother, by the way?”

Sober, I hope. And taking her asthma medicine. And staying off the dune buggy. “Improving,” she said.

“I’ve left a couple of messages, but haven’t heard back,” he said.

“You’re kind of batting zero all around.”

“Sorry?” He paused then laughed. “Oh, right. I’ve left one or two with you, too, haven’t I? Anyway, I wondered if we could meet for lunch in the next day or so. I thought perhaps the Ritz Carlton. A favorite of your father’s, I understand.”

“So was Tio Taco’s,” Daisy said.

“Would you like to meet there, then?”

“It burned down ten years ago.”

“Right… That’s out then. Back to the Ritz?”

“The Ritz isn’t my kind of place,” Daisy said. “The Ritz stuff was before my time…before I was born, I mean.”

“Do you have a suggestion?”

Go back to England. “Why my father?” she asked.

“Why do I want to write about him specifically?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, as I explained in my letter, I was intrigued by something in his painting. I’m not much of an art enthusiast, I’m the sort who buys a picture because it goes with the couch. But I’d seen your father’s painting and I felt more hopeful somehow.”

“Kind of a lot to take away from a painting,” Daisy said.

“You’ve never felt that way? Moved in a way you can’t explain by a piece of art or music…”

Daisy shrugged although obviously he couldn’t see her. Chopin did that to her, but she wasn’t about to say so. “That was it? You saw the painting and decided to write a book about him?”

“Well, I did some research, of course.”

“How?”

“Newspaper articles, other published works about him.”

“His first wife’s book?”

“Uh…I’m taking all that with a grain of salt,” he said.

Martin had probably told him to take it with a whole saltshaker full. Except a lot of it was actually true. “So, how is a biography different from gossip?” She could hear a tone in her voice that sounded exactly like her father. Not just questioning but truculent, spoiling for a fight. She couldn’t stop herself. “I mean, you read this juicy stuff about him written by an enemy, say. How do you even know it’s true? Who even decides it’s true?” Her voice went up a notch. “Maybe she’s lying through her teeth.”

“That’s entirely possible,” Nicholas said. “Which is why I talk to as many people as I can.”

“Even so. Memories are so…circumstantial. Say I was in a bad mood, maybe some little thing I told you would make him sound dark and gloomy, or not a very nice person. But say I’d just made this incredible pot of salsa, and the smell of it was like a bouquet of flowers and the sun was shining through the door. I could tell you the same story and it would come out completely different.”

“I’ll just have to catch you on a day when the cooking’s going well,” he said.

Daisy gave up. Baba talked about creating false obstacles—reacting to your thoughts instead of to real situations. Maybe this guy would just ask a bunch of puffball questions. She’d give him warm, fuzzy answers and that would be that.

“I own a restaurant in town with my ex-husband,” she said. “Wildfire. I’ll be there tomorrow around five if you want to drop by.”

As soon as she hung up, she wanted to call back to say she’d changed her mind. What if he wanted real information? Could you simultaneously yearn for the truth but be so terrified of looking too closely that you were always averting your eyes?

The phone rang again. It was Amalia.

“Your father came to me in my dream last night, Daisy.” She sounded shrill, almost hysterical. “He is very, very angry about the book.”

“The book? You mean the biography?”

“He said no. No book.”

Daisy walked outside and sat down on the porch steps. The dogs stopped chasing squirrels to join her. Amalia was always having dreams about Frank telling her what to do. “Did he say why?”

“Frank does not explain himself,” Amalia said. “When he says no book, he means no book. He has always been that way. He says terrible things will happen if it is written.”

Daisy imagined tomorrow’s conversation with Nick. “Sorry to disappoint you, but my father said no book.”

“He was very, very angry,” Amalia said. “He doesn’t want this stranger to write about him.”

“Amalia…” Daisy sighed. “Look, the guy has come all the way from England. I mean, I’ve never been that jazzed about the biography, but you and Martin both wanted it. I can’t tell him it’s off just because you had a dream.”

“This dream was very, very real. I saw Frank as if he was standing in front of my eyes. He said bad things will happen.”

“What kind of bad things?”

“You don’t want to know,” Amalia said. “But very, very bad. I was wrong. Daisy, please, you have to tell this Nicholas no.”

“Okay.” She hung up the phone. It rang almost immediately. Amalia again. Even over the phone she could hear her stepmother wheezing.

“Okay, okay. Use your inhaler. I’m going to meet him tomorrow. I’ll tell him. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later.”

As she grabbed her keys and started for the door, the phone rang again. Guessing it was Amalia, she grabbed it.

“This is American Express,” a woman said. “We’re calling to make sure you actually made a purchase that’s about to be charged to your account. It’s a little out of the ordinary for your spending habits and…”

“What’s the purchase?”

“A salamander.”

“A what?”

“Thirty-five hundred dollars. From the Culinary King.”

Daisy scratched her head. A salamander was some kind of reptile, right? Then enlightenment dawned. Toby had apparently ordered another expensive toy that Wildfire couldn’t do without. “No,” she said. “Don’t approve it. I need to talk to the buyer first.”

As she sprinted to the truck, she glanced up at the sky. “Okay, what gives? Have I offended someone up there, or something?”

CHAPTER FIVE

NICK WAS SO RELIEVED at not only making contact with Daisy, finally, but actually setting up a time to meet her that he couldn’t focus on anything that required sitting quietly at the computer. Laguna was still waiting to be explored, and it seemed a perfect time to find out more about the world Frank Truman had once inhabited.

He left the apartment, strolled around the tree-lined streets for half an hour or so, people-watched the bronzed and beautiful from the vantage point of a sidewalk café and walked some more. On a side street off Pacific Coast Highway, he came to the restaurant Daisy had mentioned. He walked into the courtyard filled with a jungle of greenery. The front door was locked, but he could see through into the sleek glass and chrome dining room and part of the kitchen beyond where a chef was working.

The chef saw him and waved. In one of those bits of serendipity that occasionally brighten the day, the chef, it turned out, was none other than Toby Fowler, and he was only too glad to help in any way he could.

Thirty minutes later, Nick had drawn at least one conclusion about Daisy’s ex-husband. After listening to him hold forth on everything from the most flavorful wood to use for smoking meat (apple) to where in Laguna to meet “the hottest chicks,” (Main Beach), Nick had decided that, for all the talk about other women, Toby was still struggling with unresolved feelings for his ex-wife.

One clue was his apparent inability to stop talking about her. No matter the topic, everything eventually led back to Daisy. He watched Toby sharpen a lethal-looking knife—Daisy hadn’t wanted him to buy it, of course, which was further proof, according to Toby, that she knew nothing about running a restaurant. As Toby talked, Nick tried hard to reconcile Daisy, the golden child in the paintings, with Daisy the ex-wife of this stocky, muscled man with the bleached blond crew cut. Somehow he couldn’t quite manage it.

Toby was rattling on about how Daisy never did this and was always doing that. Why, Nick wondered, were solutions to the romantic agonies of others (get over her, for God’s sake, she’s clearly not worth it) so much more obvious than one’s own? Perhaps he should consult Toby on whether or not to encourage Valerie’s visit.

“The thing with Daisy is, if she believes something’s good or bad or whatever,” Toby said, “no way can she accept there might be another way of looking at things.”

“How exactly do you mean?” Nick asked.

“Like her father, for instance.” He stopped. “Look you didn’t hear this from me, okay? I don’t want Daisy coming down on me for dissing her father, but everyone knows he was nutty as a fruit cake. Would Daisy admit that though? Uh-uh. He was eccentric. Different. Emotional. Nuts? Not a chance.”

Nick was interested. “Did you know him?”

“I stayed out of his path as much as I could. Didn’t want to be around him. Daisy put up with stuff from him that no one in their right mind would take. I was the one who had to calm her down after he’d yelled and screamed at her for something or other. He was this famous artist though, so it was okay for him to yell and scream. Anyone else would have the police knocking on the door.”

Nick wondered if Martin considered Toby one of Frank Truman’s detractors. Maybe the truth lay somewhere between Martin Truman’s version and that of the mendacious first wife.

Toby brought the blade down with a hard thwack. “You know what else drives me nuts about her? That bunch of freeloading hippy friends she’s got living up on her property.” He disappeared behind the door of a massive stainless-steel refrigerator, emerged with a tray of steaks. “Well, she calls them friends. Problem is, they’re all on the take. You ever been up to her place?”

Nick said he hadn’t.

“She lives in this cabin on about three acres of land off Laguna Canyon Road. It’s worth millions, but Daisy doesn’t care. Her father built the cabins back in the fifties for these big-time artist friends from Los Angeles who came down to Laguna on weekends. Not a load of deadbeats like Daisy’s got living there.”

“Do they pay rent?”

“‘Oh Daisy,’” he said in a mincing voice, “‘my kitty cat got sick and I had to take her to the vet and now I don’t have enough money to pay the rent.’” In another falsetto, this presumably Daisy’s, Toby said, “‘Just pay me when you have the money.’ Right.”

“Maybe she thinks of it as carrying on her father’s legacy,” Nick said. “Helping struggling artists, that sort of thing.”

Toby made a dismissive gesture. “If what they do is art, then I’m Chef Boyardee. They call themselves artists, but none of them has ever sold a damn thing.”

Nick imagined himself approaching Daisy, who apparently had a blind spot for a sob story. Tin cup in his outstretched hand. Please Miss Daisy, talk to me. This biography will put food on my table. I haven’t eaten for months.

“The thing you gotta know about Daisy is she has a heart as big as all outdoors. She kind of went to pieces after her father died. Gained a ton of weight. She’s dropped it, but she doesn’t look the way she did when I first knew her. It’s like she’s, I don’t know, gone into herself.”

“So she doesn’t talk about her father to you?”

Toby shook his head. “Doesn’t talk about him to anyone. After he died, she just stopped talking about him, period.”

“How long have you known her?” Nick asked.

Toby shrugged. “We grew up together, like, but I didn’t really get to know her until about a year before the old man died. She was kind of lonely then, no one else to turn to.”

He’d started cutting the meat into wafer-thin slices, every move careful and exact. A muscle twitched in his cheek, his jaw was tense. Anger offered another clue that Toby still had a thing for his ex-wife. People got incensed at those they didn’t love, of course, but there was a certain quality to the kind of anger that was all mixed up with having once loved the person who has caused your wrath, making it burn with a particular intensity. Toby was clearly smoldering.

“Naturally, she forgets all that now. She’s got all her hippy friends who are happy to listen to her. Hell, it’s cheaper than paying rent, right?” He shook his head. “To be honest with you, Daisy drives me nuts, but…I dunno, sometimes I think it’s too bad we can’t just make things work again. I mean, we have a kid and everything…but Daisy’s so damn stubborn.”

And you’re in love with her, Nick thought. Was it mutual? Maybe just a sticky patch on the matrimonial road? His own experience had proved, ultimately, to be less sticky patch than insurmountable block. He realized that he felt sorry for Toby. If he could have come up with some words of wisdom, he would have.

“You haven’t met Daisy yet, right?” Toby asked.

“Tomorrow.”

Toby rolled his eyes. “Good luck. She’s not the easiest person to be around these days.”

WHY HAD SHE AGREED to meet the guy? Why? It was four o’clock and Daisy was in the kitchen on the phone with a hysterical Amalia, mindlessly devouring a bowl of Wacky-cake batter. She put the bowl in the fridge, leaned against the door and breathed slowly.

“Amalia, listen to me, okay? Just listen.” She moved to the table and sat down. “I don’t understand why you’re getting so worked up over this dream—”

“I tell you, Daisy, it was so real. You should have been there to see your father’s face. Please promise me you will tell Mr. Wynne there is no book.”

“I’m meeting him in an hour.” She scratched a spot of hardened candlewax from the tabletop. “Look, don’t get mad, okay? This whole dream thing? You just seem to be, I don’t know, overreacting a little. Are you sure something else isn’t bothering you?”

Amalia started crying. “You didn’t hear Franky’s voice. You didn’t see his face. Oh, Daisy, please—”

“Okay, okay.” God, next she’d be driving Amalia to the emergency room. “Look, it’s okay. I’ll tell him it’s off. I promise. Just calm down. And use your inhaler. I’ll call you later.”

She put the phone down. From Emily’s bedroom, she could hear the thump, thump, thump of the stereo. It matched the thump, thump, thump of her heart. She had a headache. The parrot squawked, regarding her, head to one side, with its bright, beady eyes. It squawked again, a shrill, ear-piercing demand for attention.

“You do that one more time,” she said, “and I’ll chop off your head.”

On the counter Baba looked up at her reproachfully from the cover of Forgiveness. She’d left the book there after speed-reading a chapter following an argument with Emmy earlier.

She regarded the parrot. “I didn’t mean what I just said. I’m sorry. Really. I know you’re hungry. I’d squawk, too.” She walked to the hallway. “Did you clean Deanna’s cage?” she called.

But, of course, Emmy couldn’t hear her over the stereo. She went back to the kitchen and fed the parrot. Deanna was a green Amazon. Emmy had wanted her so desperately that she’d promised to stop asking whether she could, please, use makeup like everyone else she knew. In the three months since Deanna had taken up residence in the corner of the kitchen, the parrot had heard Daisy nag Emmy so often that it had started squawking, “Clean the damn cage.”

Emmy appeared in the kitchen. “What’s for dinner?”

“Heat up the soup if you’re starving, otherwise wait till I get home. I’ll do that baked chicken and potato thing you like.”

Amalia was always telling her that she should get Emmy to cook for herself, which was true. But food, good food, was a big deal with her, and she enjoyed cooking for other people. As a child, she’d grown to endure the weird combinations her father had mixed up like the paints in his artist’s palette. Broccoli with maple syrup, eggs scrambled with cranberry sauce. He didn’t like being bound by convention; just because salmon wasn’t usually served sprinkled with powdered sugar was no reason why it couldn’t be served that way. “If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat it.”

She glanced around for her keys. “I have to go meet Nicholas Wynne.”

“Why d’you say it like that?” Emmy had hopped up onto the counter and was swinging her legs. “Nicholas Wynne,” she said, imitating Daisy’s voice.

“Isn’t that his name?”

“Yeah, but when you go to Kit’s, you don’t say, ‘I have to go meet Kit Niemeyer.’”

“Well, it’s different.”

“How?”

“Emmy, don’t bug me, okay? I’ve got stuff on my mind.”

“Want a peanut?” Deanna inquired. “Want some toast?”

“And you’ve got to start feeding her,” she said, with a glance at the parrot which was hanging upside down from her perch. “It’s not fair to leave it all to me.”

“Did Dad talk to you about me living with him?” Emmy said, her voice elaborately casual.

Daisy’s hand tightened around her purse, but she forced herself to remain calm. She figured Emmy had probably been rehearsing the words for some time. “He said he was going to,” Emmy added.

“Well, he didn’t,” she said carefully. This topic came up periodically, usually after they’d disagreed about something, and then it was dropped. She was fairly certain Emmy had no wish to live with her father, fairly certain, in fact, that it was mutual—Toby didn’t want a fourteen-year-old daughter cramping his lifestyle. Still, she had a knot in her stomach.

“He said he was going to,” Emmy repeated, popping a grape into her mouth. “He promised.”

Daisy glanced at the clock. She was going to be late. She looked at her daughter. “What’s the reason this time?”

Emily sighed. “I’ve told you like a hundred times. It’s only fair. You’ve had me for fourteen years. Now it’s his turn.”

“Quit banging your feet against the cabinet,” Daisy snapped. “And get down off the counter. What’s another reason?”

“He has air-conditioning in his apartment?”

The question mark at the end of the sentence and the faint smile on her daughter’s face told Daisy this wasn’t anything to lose sleep over, but she felt irritated anyway. Last week, Toby had asked her for a loan because the brakes had gone on his truck and one of his fillings had come loose, so he’d had to fork out money for the dentist and he was coming up short on the rent. But he’d pay her back, no problem.

She suspected him of putting Emmy up to this. She should call his bluff.

“Emmy.” She studied her daughter. “Maybe it seems like nothing to you when you talk about wanting to live with your father, but it gets me right here.” She poked a finger at her chest. “I know we’ve been fighting a lot lately and I’m not always the easiest person to live with, but I love you and I honestly try my best….” Her nose stung with tears and, not wanting to win a sympathy concession from Emmy, she just stopped. In an instant, Emmy was off the counter, her arm around Daisy’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you too, sweetie, more than anything else in the world. And don’t be sorry. You have a right to feel the way you do.”

“It’s just that Dad asked me to ask you.”

Daisy kept her mouth shut. I am going through a difficult time right now, she told herself as Emily walked her to the truck. But adversity tests character.

Still, it wasn’t the perfect frame of mind for meeting her father’s biographer. And she probably shouldn’t have worn a shirt that proclaimed, Doesn’t Play Well With Others.

Deep breaths. She started the ignition. Everyone comes into our lives for a reason, Baba said. Maybe Nicholas Wynne had come into her life to teach her tolerance. His job in the cosmic universe was to be the fly in her serenity. She would be firm, calm and polite. But there would be no biography.

HIS HAIR DAMP from the shower, Nick took a look at his clothes, lined up on hangers and still slightly wrinkled from their transatlantic voyage. Linen this, cotton that. Served him right he supposed for refusing to buy synthetics. He’d got most of the things on vacation in Nice last year and brought them, thinking they looked somewhat Californian. Now, inspecting himself as he left the apartment, he could see that they didn’t. Pity.

Out on the street, he eyed the never-ending flow of traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, waited for a lull, then made a dash for it. As he reached the other side, he heard the screech of brakes and a hurled epithet from one of the vehicles. Assuming it had been directed at him, he turned toward the road. As he did, a flurry of movement caught his eye. He looked down to see a small, bedraggled and trembling white dog.

He squatted beside it and felt around for broken bones.

“Idiots like you shouldn’t be allowed to have animals,” a woman called out from the open window of a battered gray truck that had stopped for a red light. “You’re lucky it wasn’t killed.”

The woman’s pale oval face was partially obscured by a lot of long red hair, but he didn’t have to see her expression to know that she was angry. “It isn’t my dog,” he said politely, his hand still on the dog’s back. “But if I locate its owner, I’ll pass along your sentiments.” Bad-tempered shrew.

“You need to keep him on a leash,” the woman yelled.

“You need a leash around your neck,” Nick muttered, and then the light turned green and the truck roared out of sight, long hair trailing like a ribbon through the window. He checked the dog’s neck. No collar. It licked his hand. Now that he’d taken a better look, the dog was probably the ugliest little animal he’d ever seen.

The dog licked Nick’s hand again.

“Don’t get attached,” Nick said.

CHAPTER SIX

“LOOK,” DAISY MUTTERED to the waitress, “I’m not here, okay? This guy with an English accent is going to come in and ask for me but I’m not here.”

“Huh?”

“Long story. I nearly killed a dog and I’m too shaken up to talk right now, and I don’t really want to talk to him anyway, so just tell him I’m not here.”

“Is he, like, a boyfriend, or something?”

“God, no. I’ve never even met him—”

“Then how do you—”

“Leah.” She grabbed the waitress by the shoulders. “Puh-lease. I’m not here. What you see is a figment of your imagination.”

Leah, slowly shaking her head, left the kitchen. Daisy turned back to the crème brûlées. Her hands were still trembling from the near miss with the dog, and she was overdue for a showdown with Toby over the money he was spending. She felt too scattered to break the news to Nicholas Wynne that the biography was off. No. Avoidance was the only way out.

As she finished the desserts, she remembered she had to pick up Emmy from school. She peered through the serving window that opened into the dining room and saw a youngish guy sitting alone, his back to her. Could that be him? A bald guy talking to the hostess? Nicholas Wynne? Maybe. Damn. She was stuck in the back of the restaurant with no escape route. Thankfully, Toby wasn’t around—they’d run out of heavy cream and he’d gone down to the corner market for more—or she’d have to deal with him, too. Think, she commanded her brain. Her glance fell on the torch she’d been using. Sacrificing one of the crème brûlées, she scorched it until it began to smoke. Then to speed things along, she lifted it up just under the detector, which obligingly began to screech. For good measure, she yelled “fire” and dropped a pan on the floor. Three of the wait staff ran into the kitchen and in the ensuing commotion she slipped out of the restaurant.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.