Temptation Road



  Temptation Road

  Book One

  The new and last Mary…

  BY

  Kimball Lee

  Copyright 2013 Kimball Lee

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

  *

  The house on the bend of Temptation Road came to be Reagan’s quite by chance, or by destiny, perhaps. If she hadn’t overheard a location scout telling her soon to be ex-husband about the Victorian confection he just couldn’t get out of his head, she might not ever have known about Seven Devils, North Carolina. But the young man was captivated by the rambling, crumbling, curly-cued good witch’s house, and he felt that it had to be immortalized on film. She was at a wrap party for Carlo, the brilliant director’s latest movie, another block-buster without a doubt. Carlo was her husband, and he wasn’t listening at all, he simply peered over the young man’s head. His gaze lingered on his soon-to-be-next-wife lounging poolside, wearing nothing more than a body-paint bikini and a desperate look. But Reagan stepped up and listened to the story of the Mary’s house and packed her Louis Vuitton luggage that very night. She introduced herself to the location scout and asked about the house and the town with the frightful name.

  “Oh, not frightful at all!” he gushed, “entrancing, captivating!”

  That was all she needed to hear, she set out to find that ruin of a house as she left her ruin of a marriage without shedding a single tear. She boarded a flight at LAX and flew across the country, toward anything auspicious.

  When she landed in Knoxville it seemed she’d only just boarded the plane. Had she slept or even blinked in so short a time? Maybe she’d entered a time warp or traveled through a wormhole, it seemed she’d dreamed she was flying and suddenly she had arrived. Such happenings would become commonplace once she inhabited the Mary’s house, things that were beguiling and whispered of love and magic and enchantment. But all of that was yet to come.

  She called her mother and then her best friend, Alana, from the Crowne Plaza, it wasn’t the type of hotel she preferred, but it was the best the city had to offer. She told them she was flushing her cell phone down the toilet along with the last ten years of her life and she’d let them know her new number as soon as she had one. She said she could no longer stand the sight of Carlo, or to be loved by Sean, and that she didn’t want to be admired by the world. She was disappearing into the mountains, to a different life, to something that was still hidden from her but she was certain it would make itself known. She didn’t flush the phone, she just let it swim for a while in the pristine white potty, then fished it out and crushed it beneath the heel of her Hermes boot.

  Both her mother and Alana were concerned over her abrupt flight from Los Angeles, but they were glad she’d left Carlo. Reagan assured them she could feel happiness and meaning beginning to grow and take shape in her soul by the minute, so they were glad for her, in spite of their concern.

  She bought a pearl white Yukon SUV the next morning and paid for it with her titanium American Express card, then she drove into the Blue Ridge Mountains. She wound up and around and into banks of fog that threatened to engulf the SUV and her along with it, she was, it seemed, vanishing into oblivion. The road was so narrow in some places and the visibility so poor, that she wondered what on earth had possessed her to run away. Why had she wandered into this remote part of the world, what had drawn her so urgently? Several times she nearly slipped off the edge of the road, the car’s tires spinning and sending small rocks tumbling down the mountainside.

  When she came to a scenic overlook and pulled over, she stared ahead at the most beautiful cloud-shrouded mountain vista she could ever have hoped for. She started to get out then noticed a large black bear rustling through a trash bin, it looked her way and made a mewling cry. She locked the doors as if the creature might dare to climb in with her, she began to shake violently with fear of wild things and her future, as she inched along the perilous road. She pulled into the first motel whose sign caught her headlights and rested her cheek against the steering wheel before going into the office. At the front desk she asked how far she was from Seven Devils and if there had been any incidence of bears wandering the motel property.

  Housekeeping woke her early in the morning, banging on the cheap metal door. She peeked out and told the maid to give her half an hour. When she stepped into the world outside, it was dazzling sunlight with an electric blue sky and a hundred shades of green and pine trees that pierced the roving clouds then reached to heaven and beyond. The mountain world was sharply green, not only as a color but as an all-encompassing smell. It inundated the senses, a saturated aroma of pine bark and sap and needles and fallen cones, sprightly and scintillating. It spoke to something locked inside her, something as old as the beginning of the very particles she was made of. Whispering its secrets softly, beckoning and calling wordlessly, “rest in me, here is where we all began, come into me and exist.”

  *

  She drove down the main street of Seven Devils and along the few side roads. It was a ‘drawing-in-a-children’s-book’ kind of town, with old storefronts, a wee little grocery store and a café/bar called the “Snakebite.” There was a clapboard church, signs for the Everclear Ski Area, and more and more sky piercingly tall trees. Hydrangea bushes bent over split-rail fences with enormous blue flower heads against shiny foliage, yet another shade of green. The wind blew leaves and fallen petals and old newspaper pages along the streets and sidewalks as if in slow motion, and even though the sun was still high, owls hooted, hidden among the tree branches.

  The Blue Ridge Mountains rose up all around the little town and multi-colored valleys dipped and rolled down and away. On a side street she crossed a rickety wooden bridge over a shallow creek that was so clear she could see the lustrous pebbles lining the bottom. The Yukon’s tires crackled on the gravel drive that wound past a wishing well to an old log building. The sign over the porch was a single, rough wooden plank. The painted letters were faded and she could barely make them out. She stood on the first porch step and peered up, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. The sign must have been colorful once and the letters said, “Wander Inn.”

  The porch overflowed with ferns and ivy’s that tumbled out of cheap plastic pots and had as many dead leaves as living. An army of skinny cats with patchy fur skittered away from the front door and the only redeeming fixture was an inviting porch swing made of bent willow branches and piled with cushy pillows.

  A woman in her mid-forties leaned against the front desk reading a magazine, she was harsh looking in the way that Reagan’s mother had once been. She had a hardened, artificial look about her, as if she’d been too wild for too long and was paying for it now.

  “Good lord above, you’re the DeLuca girl, I’d know you anywhere,” she said.

  Reagan handed over her driver’s license and a credit card and said she needed a room.

  “Doesn’t matter what your ID says, you’re her, alright. There’s a picture of you in this magazine right here, see? You’re all dolled up and going to some fancy-shmancy somethin’ or other out in Los Angeles. I got a friend who thinks the sun rises and sets with that face of yours, he don’t say so, but everybody knows he thinks it. I’m Dody Watts and that’s my girl Coco, over there. You want our best room? Hell, I’m gonna go ahead and put you in it, I’m not expecting nobody else this week. You’ll like the view from the little deck up there; it looks out toward Grandfather Mountain.”

  “I may need the room for several weeks, will that be alright?” Reagan asked.

  “Sure thing, it’s real quiet this time of year, before the snow skiers come. My girl and I live right down here on the first floor. Mr. Campion, he owns the place, he fixed us up a handy little apartment. It’ll be nice
to have somebody else in the house, maybe we can visit if you have the time.”

  Reagan picked up a few of her bags and climbed the split-log stairs and when she was nearly at the top Dody called after her.

  “You’re even prettier in person, softer looking and so fresh and young. Can I ask what you’re doing way up in these mountains and it’s not even ski season yet?”

  Reagan set her bags on the top step and said, “I’m looking for a house to buy, a certain house. It’s an elaborate Victorian on Temptation Road, do you know the one?”

  “Oh sure, the Mary’s house. It’s a big old mess, but I suppose you got all the money in the world to pour into somethin’ like that.”

  “Could I talk to you about it, the house, I mean? Let me just put these bags in the room and I’ll come right back down, if that’s alright?”

  “Sure,” Dody said. “I gotta tell my friend about this, I swear he’s gonna think I’m full of it! He won’t begin to believe you’re here in town and that you wanna buy that old house. Hell, it might get him to talking after all these years from the shock of it!”

  There was a tiny bar set up on top of a wooden barrel in the Inn’s public room. Reagan sat on a worn leather sofa with Dody and sipped from a glass of cheap wine as the little girl painted all their finger and toe nails. Reagan looked around the room and felt like she had stumbled into a lost episode of Little House on the Prairie, and a bad one at that. It was sparsely furnished with faded checkered curtains at the windows and threadbare rugs on the floor, the room and the Inn had definitely seen better days.

  “Tell me about the house,” Reagan said, “why is it called the Mary’s house and where is it, exactly? I’m anxious to see it, and I’m not going to be the DeLuca girl any longer so try to forget about that.”

  “Oh honey, you’ll always be the DeLuca girl, can’t nobody outrun somethin’ like that, it’s a big deal, and why would you want to anyway? I’m always reading about you and seeing you on the Entertainment Channel, if you’re gonna give that life up then give it to me for a day! Anyway,” Dody went on, “it’s called the Mary’s house because of the sisters who lived there since before anyone can remember, and all of them named Mary this or Mary that. Go to the end of the driveway and turn right on the other side of the creek, that’s Temptation Road. Follow it up along the tree line for a couple miles, when it makes a sharp left you’ll see a big old house right there at the bend of the road. It’s set back a ways in a clearing, there’s a patch of garden that goes from the side yard to the forest. You can’t miss it, but if you go too far you’ll see the signs that say you’re in the National Forest, just turn around and come back a ways. The fog gets thick that high up on the mountain in the evenings and once in a while you’ll run across a bear so you ought not to go alone. Miss Bess Lamar knows everything there is to know about that house, and she knew the last Mary’s, too. Go over to the grocery store later on, her son runs it so she’s always there. How come you’re buying that old place? There’s stories about it, you know, so I keep my distance, anytime I leave this driveway I turn left, I don’t never go up that way. You just wanting a house in the mountains, is that it? Is your husband gonna be coming up here sometimes? Lord, I’m a fool for all his movies.”

  That night Reagan lay in bed with her eyes wide open, excitement had replaced her fear and she couldn’t wait to set foot in the house. What Dody said about not being able to out run her DeLuca girl image rang in her head. The new ad campaign was scheduled to start in a couple of months and she wanted out of her contract but she hated to let Alana down on such short notice. She stepped through the French doors that led from her room out onto the balcony, across the dark lawn a beam of moonlight illuminated a man and woman.

  The woman was Dody and the bright moonlight made her short hair glow a garish shade of neon yellow and her lined and aging face looked frightening. She was crying as she leaned toward the man trying to wrap her arms around him. Then she dropped to her knees and her hands fumbled at the front of his jeans before he backed away from her so that she covered her face as she sobbed.

  Reagan stepped backward feeling like an intruder and knocked over a small table, the sound was like a gunshot in the still night, and the two people caught in the pool of moonlight stared up at her.

  The man was about Reagan’s age with hair that hung past his chin and he had wide, enormous dark eyes. He walked away from Dody, and she begged him not to go, but he left her there, kneeling and untouched. Reagan felt her face grow hot, as if she’d witnessed something terribly intimate. She stumbled into her room and drew the curtains.

  *

  Around dawn, after she’d tossed and turned unable to sleep, Reagan wrapped herself in her green silk robe and went down the creaky stairs to sit on the front porch swing. As she settled into the faded flowered cushions her actions over the past days seemed like madness to her suddenly. She’d left the known world behind, uprooted her life, and traveled to a remote mountain village on nothing more than a whim. She pictured Dody and the mysterious man who’d stood silently above her as she cried, he was tall and young and even at a distance she could see that he was disturbingly handsome. When he’d looked up at Reagan from the moonlit patch of grass it ignited a need in her that she’d denied for too long.

  At that moment, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, in a place where she knew only the names of a woman and her daughter, she needed to hear Sean’s voice for better or worse. To know for certain in her heart of hearts that she could still inspire passion in a man. Not just the gilded reverence from afar that she received as the DeLuca girl, but as herself, Rae, the girl who had everything. Everything except what she wanted most, which was to love and be loved in equal measure.

  She sighed and rested her head in her hands; the silky robe fell open and her long hair brushed the tops of her thighs. A small sound caught her ear and she looked up into the face of the mysterious man from the lawn. He was quietly watching her from the shadows, his long body leaned against the porch rail. They both moved at the same time, she sprang from the swing toward the front door and his foot landed on the porch steps. They bumped into one another and stopped inches apart.

  The rising sun made patterns on their faces and her heart beat like a wild caged bird in her chest, but she couldn’t turn away. His face was astonishingly handsome, with huge dark eyes that were so deeply blue they almost seemed black. His hair was nearly to his shoulders and it was sun-streaked and carelessly tousled as if his beauty didn’t matter to him. He had an intense brooding look which his mouth softened, it was wide and it looked soft and… tempting. He was so splendid, with fine chiseled features and so much rugged, untamed masculinity that she pictured him stretched out across the bed in her upstairs room. It was all she could do not to take his hand and place it over her wayward heart then move it down her needful body and because she could imagine the intimacies they would share, her face burned in the dim light.

  His hand went to her cheek and his fingertips traced her skin, moving over her lips and down to caress her smooth, graceful neck. On impulse, she stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his. She melted into him as he kissed her deeply and pulled her body hard against his, tangling a hand in her hair while the other held her waist. She heard a feral noise and when she knew that it had come from her own throat, she blushed all the more, but she was beyond caring. His mouth consumed hers and her hands rested for only a moment on the hard muscles of his chest, then moved under his shirt to feel his burning skin. The kiss went on and on and she knew she had never experienced such an immediate sensation of not only raw passion and desire, but connection with a man. His very smell was intoxicating and drew her to him, her mind flashed with scenes she couldn’t quite hold onto and she thought she heard his deeply melodic voice whisper, “mine.”

  She was sure he must feel it too, that sense of discovering your other half, of stumbling blindly in the darkness only to bump into someone who was meant to be the truest love o
f your life.

  At last he broke their kiss and let his fevered cheek rest against hers. His hands tenderly moved over her back and circled her small waist holding her body firmly to his, as if he refused to let her go.

  She let her hands discover the elegant planes of his face and he kissed the tips of her fingers when they lingered on his lips. Her eyes searched his, desperate to know if he was consumed with the same life-altering emotions that had her heart and mind reeling. In the hazy half-light and shadow she couldn’t be sure if they registered any feeling at all. With trembling voice she whispered, “Who are you?” and although she waited, he didn’t say a word. So she closed her eyes and drew a long, deep breath, then went inside, and up the stairs to her room, all alone.

  *

  When she woke after only a few hours of restless sleep, she dressed quickly in jeans, boots, a loose knit pullover and parka. She worked her thick hair into two braids that hung over her shoulders, then she drove up Temptation Road to find the house she couldn’t live without. It was as wondrous as she’d imagined, just long neglected and a little down on its luck, kind of like me, she thought and smiled. It loomed above her as she stood at the end of a crooked brick walkway and it was most assuredly a fantastical Victorian whimsy lost in the woods. The paint had faded but the house was still awe-inspiring with turrets and gables and gingerbread trim and latticework and lighting rods with milky glass balls for decoration as they pointed skyward from a multitude of roof peeks.

  She walked to the porch along a path covered with pine needles and up a broad set of wooden steps that were surprisingly sound. The porch was what all front porches should be, wide and sweeping around the sides and curling out into fanciful circular open-air seating areas at the corners of the house. Wicker chairs, tables, plant stands, wide low rockers and two porch swings were scattered about, stolidly waiting. They begged for a fresh coat of paint and cushions, but otherwise they were sturdy and it was all Rae could do not to sink into a chair and stare out at the majestic mountains and forest that seemed to cradle the house and its wide patches of lawn and arbor and riotous garden.

  The front door was tall and solid with an extravagantly romantic stained-glass window, it depicted a man and a woman caught in a passionate embrace surrounded by an audience of animals from the forest that loomed in the intricate background. The door was locked tight so she moved from window to window trying to get a glimpse of the interior. The glass panes were filmy, coated with soot and dust on the inside and so whatever was within was hidden from her.

  As she turned to retrace her steps back down the path she stopped in her tracks, it was as if every creature from the panel of stained-glass had come to life around her. There among the pine needles were red and grey foxes, raccoons, squirrels, possums, and all manner of birds of every size and color. A family of White-tailed deer wandered close to her and at the edge of the forest she glimpsed the slanted eyes of a bobcat and from deep in the woods she heard the familiar mewling cry of a bear.

  *

  Reagan walked up and down the brick-paved main street when she drove back to town, stopping first at the grocery store looking for Miss Bess, only to be told that the old woman was a late sleeper and to stop by after lunch. She wandered through the drugstore and the tiny used book stall and then a store selling gardening supplies.

  In a one room shop filled with bear skin rugs she spoke to man who must have been six feet nine inches tall. His name was Cyrus and he proudly told Reagan that he was a full-blood Cherokee Indian, then he turned so she could see his jet-black hair that hung in a heavy braid all the way to his rattlesnake belt.

  “It’s a dent in destiny, that piece of earth and the fortuitous house that belongs on it, the good Mary’s house,” he said when she asked him if he was familiar with the property she was hoping to own. His voice was low and deep like the growl of the animals whose hides littered the floor and hung on the walls all around him. “If you are meant for the house then you are charmed,” he said as he walked to a wall and ran his hand over the fur of a large black bear skin. “These bears were not good hearted creatures; my beliefs would never lead me to destroy an animal living at peace with the Earth. Take care near the woods and the lonely places, that’s where they wait.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser!” Reagan thought as the door closed behind her, its little bell ringing as she left the rug shop. She felt a lot like Alice who had fallen through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole and uttered those very words.

  “Hey there!” Dody called to her from just up the street, she waved and motioned for Reagan to join her.

  “Great heavens whose complexion could possibly look as good yours? Out in the bright light of day no less, and I bet you don’t have a stitch of makeup on, either!” she held Reagan at arm’s length to study her, then hugged her tightly as if they were old friends.

  Reagan let Dody hug her and she lightly hugged her back, because she didn’t know what else to do and she was lonely and anyone who said “stitch of makeup” had to be sweet and harmless.

  “Are you hungry?” Dody asked, already holding her hand and leading her toward the café/bar at the end of the street. “My little girl’s in school right now and I don’t expect nobody at the Inn today, so how about we get us a bite to eat? This is the only waterin’ hole for miles around and it can get a little rough at night but at lunch time they serve a good grilled cheese sandwich and of course fried snake, but really it’s just chicken nuggets so don’t faint. If we’re lucky Larissa will be working,” Dody said all in a rush as they scooted into a vinyl covered booth. There was an old-fashioned jukebox against the back wall and Dody excused herself and dropped a few coins in it.

  “My blood bleeds love red, my soul is wide open,” an achingly smooth country voice sang, and Reagan remembered hearing the Brandon Rhyder song on the radio the day before. It was called “Love Red” and as it played she had been wishing for just such a love as she drove away from her past and into her future.

  “Well here’s my star employee playing the jukebox in the middle of the day so that I had to get Quint a key to a room myself,” a tall, good-looking man, one of a pair who’d just walked through the door, said to Dody. He caught her arm as she passed by and leaned down and kissed her full on the mouth.

  “Stop it now, Wade! Come meet our star guest and I do mean star. Hey there, Quint! I didn’t know you’d be around town this week. Reagan this is my boss Wade Campion and his friend…” she said as the second man stood still and looked surprised for a moment when he saw Reagan.

  She too, felt her heart begin to hammer as she recognized the chiseled face of the man she’d kissed on the porch that morning as the sun was rising. He must have cut his hair she thought sadly, as he slid into the booth next to her, smiling and holding out his hand.

  “I’m Quinton,” he said and kissed her hand, never letting his eyes leave hers, “and you are the legendary Reagan Hart. The girl who stole my heart a long time ago, but I guess you hear that all the time.”

  “It’s Rae,” she said, caught up in his dark blue velvet eyes, “I go by Rae when I’m just being myself… which I am right now… and intend to be from now on… so you cut off all your wonderful hair?”

  “Seriously?” he asked and turned to smirk at Dody and Wade who had settled in across from them, then he turned back to Rae and laughed, “You met Fletcher? If you tell me he spoke to you that would be classic, although I suppose if a man chooses to speak after twenty years it should be to a beautiful and famous woman. But he didn’t, did he? I’ll bet my long suffering big brother held fast to his ‘strong silent type’ image even when he was face to face with his heart’s desire.”

  She could see the subtle differences then, the man sitting next to her was probably a few years younger and less strikingly handsome than her mystery man and although her heart had beat at first, its wild thumping had slowed. They were brothers and the one she had not met formally but had kissed as he kissed her back was Fletche
r and he couldn’t talk, and his brother Quint was making a joke about it.

  “Your brother can’t speak and you find that amusing?” she said, gathering her purse and giving him a venomous look that caused him to stand hurriedly and let her out of the booth. “You’re rude and maybe just a bit arrogant and obviously not a very loyal family member. I have to tell you,” she said, bending toward him so that he and Wade both got an eyeful of her breasts in her Agent Provocateur bra when the neckline of her blouse gaped open, “I find that highly detestable in a man.”

  *

  It began to rain and the wind blew crazily as she walked back to the grocery store looking for Miss Bess, she dug around in her purse trying to find her foldable umbrella. Dody stood at the door of the Snakebite and called after her when she stormed out of the café but Rae didn’t turn around. She wasn’t exactly sure what had pissed her off so badly, Quint’s easy smile and kissing her hand like he was James Bond or some sort of pretentious jackass. Or his disregard for his mute brother, or the look in his eye that said “I’ll have you in bed before you know what hit you.” He just rubbed her the wrong way she decided, and for some inexplicable reason she felt a deeper connection to his brother whom she had only seen twice, and kissed once and had never spoken a word to.

  *

  Miss Bess Lamar sat in a hickory wood rocking chair in the over-stuffed grocery store that her son owned. She was a paper-thin bird-like woman who rocked and hummed while she worked the New York Times crossword puzzle. She spat tobacco juice into an empty tuna-fish can with deadly precision. Her teeth rested next to her in a glass of water on a small table. She looked up and saw Rae looking at the teeth and said, “Damn thirstiest teeth I ever owned, they’re always in that glass!” and she laughed to beat the band. “What makes a movie star like you think you can just waltz in here and buy up that little patch of magic up on Temptation Road, anyhow?”

  “I’m not a movie star,” Rae said, sitting down on an unopened box of canned sweet corn, “and I can feel the house calling to me, please tell me about the Mary’s and then point me in the right direction so I can make an effort to own it because honestly, I’ve been wishing for something extraordinary to happen in my life.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you about the day those old ladies disappeared and then you’ll want the Green boys to put the old house to rights if the Reverend Bertram will let you have it and that is a big if! Go see the preacher first then the Green boys, they’re relatives of a sort and they can get the Mary’s place back to good for you. It might take a piece of time but I wouldn’t trust the job to nobody else.”

  “Alright, I know where the church is but where will I find these green boys and why are they green?”

  Miss Bess laughed so hard she slapped her leg with one hand and covered her mouth with the other, probably to hide her missing thirsty teeth.

  “Awe, you city gals ain’t too quick are you? Lordy! Green’s their name, Doc Green’s boys, Teddy and Fletcher, but stay clear of the young smarty-assed one, Quint. That boy is a wolf in sheep’s clothes, and you can quote me on that. Go on down the block to that red brick building on the corner, that’s where they live. Their workshop’s downstairs and bedrooms up. Go scratch on the door and wait, one of ‘em is bound to be around on a rainy day like this.”

  “What if the brother who can’t talk is the only one there, will he hear me knock on the door? Will I have to write everything down so he can understand?” Rae asked as she finally located her umbrella in the bottom of her purse.

  “So you already met the pretty brother, huh? Oh don’t look so surprised, that Fletcher Green is the kind of man that makes a woman’s blood heat up, even an old fossil like me. Yes, he can hear just fine and he could talk if he took a notion to, they say. Nothing wrong with him, he just quit talking when he was a boy, after the accident that messed up that family. Well, that’s not for me to gossip about, if you get the Mary’s house and hire him and his brother Teddy, maybe things will come to light, but then again, maybe not.”

  As Rae walked outside the wind caught her Burberry umbrella and turned it inside out and she heard Miss Lamar cackle for all she was worth.

  “Careful now, it’s a witching wind!” Bess called out and Rae could hear her laughing halfway down the block.

  The story was that the Mary’s had disappeared ten years before. A limousine pulled up to the fanciful Victorian house one day and loaded the women and their luggage and a cage of assorted birds. They were a set of four sisters, just the same as all the generations of Mary’s before them. They stopped in town just long enough for the eldest sister, Mary March, to roll down the car window and ask the Reverend Bertram to run get her a cold bottle of cream soda, then she gave him the deed to the house and instructions for selling it. They were off to give her a Viking funeral, she said, she was one hundred and six years old and she was done with herb gardening and ready for bigger things. She and her sisters had been born in the mountains but now they wanted the sea. That’s where they were headed, somewhere hot where no one would care if hundred year old women lounged naked on the sand. She’d arranged for the property taxes to be deferred until the next Mary came to claim the house and she trusted that the good reverend would know her when she appeared.

  “She can catch up the taxes and the place is hers,” Mary March said simply, “the house, the garden and all that goes with it.”

  Her sisters, Mary Bless, Mary Scott and Mary Sue, nodded their heads in agreement, then turned their faces forward as if their eyes were already focused on the sandy paradise ahead. They had driven away with dust rising off the road behind the car and when it settled, they were no more than a memory.

  *

  Reagan was speechless at the stark beauty of the Goodfellow’s Gospel Church when she stepped inside the small sanctuary. The wooden exterior of the building was tall and narrow with plain wood siding painted white and a simple cross rising from the steeple. Inside, tall four-paned windows lined the side walls. Every surface, benches, walls, floors, ceiling and pulpit were crafted from native Longleaf pine that was polished and glowing. On the far end wall behind the pulpit a stained glass window rose nearly to the roof and depicted Jesus holding a lamb in his arms, it made Reagan smile and tugged at her heart. Other than touring the grand cathedrals of Europe she hadn’t been inside a single house of worship since she’d lived in Los Angeles. She and her mother had attended the First Baptist Church every Sunday morning and Wednesday nights when she was growing up in Texas and the familiar image of the Savior brought sweet tears to her eyes.

  She had come to the church every day over the last week, only to find the doors locked and a hand written note taped there saying the reverend was feeling poorly and would return sooner or later. The office was at the back of the church and Reagan entered just as the doddering old preacher was leaving for the day. The reverend Northram Bertram sighed and motioned for her to have a seat, then he sat wearily behind his desk with his lips twisting and twitching as he sized her up.

  “The Mary’s house, you say? Well, it’s quite simple child, it can only be handed over to a Mary!” he told her firmly as if the case were closed then and there.

  “Oh, I see… well, actually I don’t. A Mary? I heard they were sisters, you know, born to the same set of parents, I suppose. Were they some sort of religious order?” Reagan asked.

  The reverend stopped twitching and leaned forward, his arms resting on the desk. He was a large man and his bulk caused the wooden desk to creak in protest. “A Mary is a Mary. A woman or any person who’s Christian name is Mary. Like I said it’s very simple, the sisters who owned the house left it entrusted to the church with adamant instructions to sell it to the new Mary who would come to claim it.”

  “I am that Mary, I believe,” she said, surprising the reverend and herself, as well.

  He leaned back in his chair, considering, and his mouth worked silently once more.

  She reached in her purse and handed him her California dr
iver’s license.

  “Mary-Reagan Hartford?” he asked, perplexed.

  “That’s right. Reagan Hart is my professional name. I used to be someone else before I was famous, just a normal girl I guess you’d say.”

  He was quiet for a long while then his cloudy eyes twinkled and his lips turned up in a smile and he said happily, “my goodness, welcome home Mary-Reagan.”

  *

  She had been Mary-Reagan way back when, thirteen years before, in the cotton growing capitol of the South. She had also been Miss Dewberry Festival and Boll Weevil Queen, dubious honors at best. Her mother had followed the dusty path she made as she dragged her suitcase to the Greyhound station and she sat beside her as Rae waited for the bus.

  “Where you headed, Rae?” her mother asked, stroking Reagan’s hair, her voice was rough from too many bars and too many men and too many years in Texas.

  Rae handed her the bus ticket, afraid to speak or she might change her mind, might ask if her mother wanted her to stay.

  “New York? Naw, that’s no good for my girl, cold nights and cold folks. California darlin’, Hollywood. That’s for you, why they’ll notice you in a minute out there.”

  Tears ran down Reagan’s face and her mother took the scarf from her hair and wiped them away. “Rae, angel, you know I wish you could stay but there’s nothin’ for you here. What would you do, work beside me slingin’ booze, get some boy to drive you to Corpus Christi to junior college? I see the way it is baby, you’re so pretty and all the boys buzzin’ around includin’ ol’ Hank when he thinks I’m not lookin’. You’re like a tickin’ bomb in this little hole in the road and I don’t wanna see you livin’ my life all over agin.” Her mother exchanged the ticket from New York to L.A., took a roll of money wrapped with a rubber band from her purse and pressed it into her daughter’s hand. She kissed her and said, “Go on, now!” as the bus pulled up. She stood and waved and blew kisses, and Rae watched from the back window of the bus until her mother and the cotton fields and that dirt water town were out of sight.

  She got off the bus in downtown Hollywood and the people wandering and sleeping and living in the bus terminal and on the streets and alleys were scarier than the den of rattlesnakes she once stumbled upon back in Texas. She waited outside for a cab and not a single one ever drove by. Zombie-ish teenagers and stinking men and old women begged for spare change and food. A girl with a shaved head screamed that Rae was wearing her clothes, that she’d better give them back. A man who was foaming at the mouth implored her to pledge her wretched life to Jesus while another man wagged his penis at her then peed on his own foot. She went back inside to use the pay phone but the receiver was missing.

  A police car pulled up out front and she walked to it and began to cry.

  “Cry to the Lord, sister!” shouted the drooling evangelist.

  “Bitch stole me blind! She’s wearing my clothes, arrest her now! See those tears? She knows she’s a filthy thieving whore.”

  The bald girl was right up in the officer’s face as he stepped out of the patrol car. A female officer walked around from the driver’s side and told everyone to step back, to find shelter for the night or arrests would be made. The small band of loony’s dispersed, all but Rae. She stood there crying like it was the end of the world.

  The officers looked at each other and the woman rolled her eyes and shrugged, “Geez, you’re such a push over, McClure!”

  Rae looked up into his eyes and they were so tender in the middle of all the madness that she just cried harder. He took her bag, opened the back door of the cruiser and put it and her inside. They drove through streets that were filthy, past boarded up buildings and people who slept in cardboard boxes and raggedy hookers making obvious drug and sex deals, and the patrol car passed it all by.

  They drove onto a freeway and the city began to look different, lights stretched out in all directions and Rae could make out dark mountains to the west. Billboards were plastered with beautiful faces and bodies and the names of movies and TV shows.

  The officer with the wonderful eyes spoke into a radio, “McClure and Bryant, off duty, ten-ten, over.” He turned to look at her sitting in the back seat wiping her eyes and sniffling like a fool. “I’m Officer McClure and this is Officer Bryant, we’ll get you settled somewhere. Do you know where you’re going?”

  She shook her head and would have cried some more but she was emptied out and felt hollow inside, she had no idea where she belonged.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “Oh come on Sean,” his partner sighed.

  “Really, Sarah?” he gave her a look and she said, “Okay, In and Out Burger?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “let’s go to the one in Westwood, we can sit inside, I’m sick of eating in the car.”

  Inside the restaurant Rae went to the restroom, splashed her face with water and pulled her hair into a ponytail. She looked closer to fifteen than eighteen with her hair pulled back so maybe the officers wouldn’t toss her out on the mean streets, maybe they would have pity and take her to an orphanage since that’s what she felt like.

  When she sat down at the table officer Bryant took one look at her and asked, “How old are you? Are you a runaway, am I gonna see your face on a milk carton? You have made a giant mistake, honey. L.A. is not the kind of place for a kid on her own, not even a girl with an angel’s face.”

  Rae reached in her bag and handed over her driver’s license, the officer studied it and handed it to McClure.

  “So you’re eighteen, barely, if that isn’t a fake, we’ll check it out. So, Mary-Reagan Hartford from Texas, I have one thing to say to you, get back on that bus and go home.”

  The radio on her belt squawked just then, “Bryant, call your kid, you’re needed at home, over.”

  She went to a payphone and Rae looked at Officer McClure who was still studying her license. He looked up and she wanted to lean across the table and hug him and maybe kiss him and thank him for having such a soft heart. He was broad shouldered and muscular with sandy-blonde, closely cropped hair, he made her think of a prize fighter. He was young, probably twenty three or twenty four and he was handsome in a rough and ready sort of way. His eyes and mouth made him sexy as hell and in turn made Rae dizzy with longing.

  “Where will you take me?” those were the first words she’d spoken.

  “Wherever you want to go, do you know anyone? Is there someone you can stay with until you find a place of your own?”

  “I have some money. I guess I need to look for a room and maybe a used car. I’m sorry I cried like that, it was a long trip and I hated to leave my mother, I just graduated from high school and I needed to get out of my home town. When I got off the bus it seemed worse than what I’d left behind and I realized I didn’t have a plan at all, so I kinda lost it. I’m embarrassed about acting like a big baby and you’re so nice to have pity on a stupid girl from nowhere Texas.”

  “I’m going to have to run your license, make sure you’re eighteen and that no one’s looking for you.

  I’ll see that you’re safe for the night. Maybe you could stay with Bryant for a few days, I’ll have to ask if she’ll go for that, would you be comfortable staying with her?”

  “Are you married, do you have someone?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

  “No, I have a little place in Santa Monica, it’s not much, there’s a futon in the living room….”

  Bryant returned looking weary, “I gotta go, trouble in paradise, I’ll get a bite later. Are you two finished?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “hey Sarah, do you have room for one more for a few days?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I’ve got my nine year old, my mother and my boyfriend fighting over the one TV in my apartment as we speak. Sorry, kid. We’ll take her to Hope Center. She’ll be good there for a couple of weeks, won’t you, Mary-Reagan?”

  “My name’s Rae,” she said.

  “She has money for a motel,” McClure
said, “I was just asking. Let’s get back to the station, you can go home, I’ll run her ID and then drive her wherever she needs to go.”

  *

  Rae fell in love with Sean McClure’s body, it was incredibly muscled and hard and she could’ve run her hands over it forever. They made love in his unmade bed the minute they walked into his tiny house and it was not at all like the two high school boys she’d known back home. He was romantic and tender which was completely at odds with his solid, officer of the law looks. They made love three times that night and he called in sick the next day which he’d never done before.

  Sean had never felt such intense heat from a woman’s body as he did when he held Rae. He was obsessed with the feel of her silken skin as his hands stroked her high, full breasts then moved down to her narrow waist and across her flat belly then under her to cup the small, round ass that fit perfectly in his hands. He thought her unbelievably long legs were a miracle as they wrapped around him, pulling him into her so that he was happily lost.

  When they finally abandoned the bed, he called a fellow policeman with an old Toyota for sale and negotiated a good price. She bought it and they cruised along the boulevards of Los Angeles with Sean showing her all the landmarks the city was famous for. They stopped to eat fried chicken and waffles at Roscoe’s then drove back to his house, parked the car in his driveway and tumbled into bed yet again.

  It was all so easy from there, as if fate was pushing her life along. No casting calls or sex on the director’s couch. She stayed with Sean, made herself useful, cooked his meals, and couldn’t keep her hands off him. She pulled his mouth to hers each day as he walked through the door and he would carry her like a child to the bed or they would crash onto the kitchen table or crumple to the floor, ravenous for one another.

  She drove around Los Angeles in the Toyota while he was on duty, and she marveled at the mansions and the multitudes of people, some exquisite, others hideous.

  Sean and Rae played on the beach when he wasn’t working or hiked in the surrounding hills, they camped sometimes and swam in creeks laced with mossy boulders, the water flowing down from the Sierra Nevada’s was cold as ice. He fished and she cooked his catch over an open fire. She would pull him down onto a bed of leaves and lying naked together they thought of nothing more than what was happening in that very moment.

  One night they went to Harvelle’s Blues Club to hear some music and an elegantly dressed woman handed Rae a card and insisted that she come to her hotel the next morning.

  “It’s your destiny, my dear, that face will be your fortune,” she cooed in a melodic foreign accent.

  Sean made love to her that night with such ferocity that she thought she would never walk again. As they lay panting and sweat soaked he pulled her onto his huge chest and held her like a baby.

  “You’ll be gone soon,” he whispered, “don’t forget me and remember that I’ll always rescue you whenever you need it.”

  She dressed in her nicest sundress and high heeled sandals, Sean had gone to work without waking her. They had made love again in the night, their hands lingering on each other’s bodies as if to imprint the shape and feel, neither of them saying a word other than their cries of release. Rae was meeting the beautiful woman at the Beverly Hills Hotel and she nearly fell off her platform sandals from nervousness. She kicked the ridiculous shoes across the room and slipped into cowboy boots. She curled a few strands of hair with a curling iron, ran her fingers through the thick, walnut colored mass and let it fall loosely down her back. She applied heavy mascara and pale pink lip gloss and when she looked in the mirror, there was a wild young witch with a mane of shining brown sun-streaked hair and enormously slanted and dark-rimmed sea-green eyes.

  Heads turned as she walked through the hotel lobby and people whispered, but when the perfectly dressed woman motioned to her from the bar there was complete silence. The woman’s name was Alana DeLuca and her family’s centuries old leather empire was launching a couture line and a signature perfume that Rae would be the face of.

  “I love your style, my darling. The boots, the cheap dress with your incomparably beautiful face, delightful!”

  She told Rae not to bother to pack a bag, a stylist would accompany them to New York for the photo shoot which was months behind schedule. She had already set it in motion after seeing Rae the night before. From there they would go on to Milan where the corporate headquarters and Atelier were located. Alana shortened Rae’s name from Mary-Reagan Hartford to Reagan Hart when she became the embodiment of DeLuca. In the span three months Reagan Hart became a worldwide it girl, fame was immediate and indescribably intoxicating. She never understood why famous people bitched and moaned about being famous, she considered it the best thing in the world, a pure and privileged high.

  *

  For two years she was never still, she circled the world on the De Luca jet, wore DeLuca couture and Alana’s jewels and carried purses that cost more than the average American automobile. The world’s top designers sent her their clothes to be photographed in and keep, along with ever more dizzying offers to leave DeLuca and become their muse. She showed the offers to Alana who would smile and kiss both her cheeks, raise her salary and see to it that Rae’s mother had a bigger house, a newer car, and endless world cruises which had become her passion.

  Rae was adored by the world and pampered by the DeLuca International family. She stayed in Milan with Alana when she wasn’t traveling, and Alana arranged for a private voice coach to rid Rae of her hated drawl. Tutors arrived at the villa to educate her about art and literature and any other subject that piqued her interest.

  Just before her twentieth birthday, Rae flew to Madrid to shoot a new ad campaign for the DeLuca fragrance line. She would be photographed with Spain’s most famous bullfighter who was also an aspiring actor. Reagan’s hair had been lightened to a caramel color and teased into a beautiful mess reminiscent of Bridgette Bardot, her huge sea-green cat-like eyes were rimmed with kohl black eye-shadow swept up at the corners and her lips were stained dark pink and appeared bee-stung. She wore a deep-green washed-silk mini-skirt that barely revealed the perfectly rounded bottoms of her little ass. A matching fitted bustier pushed her breasts up into pale crescents and reduced her narrow waist to almost nothing. An emerald chocker circled her slender neck and flesh colored stilettos showed off her spectacular long legs. The Spaniard’s black hair was pulled into a low, sleek ponytail and his eyes were as slanted as Rae’s but coal black and luminous. His overtly masculine good looks combined with Rae’s chic, bombshell femininity, appeared on billboards around the world and caused a major surge in perfume sales. It also landed the actor his first major film role and brought Rae firmly to the attention of Hollywood’s hottest director.

  *

  Carlo Bianchi had directed three of the top grossing movies of all time and he had done it in the last five years. He, too, had risen to fame quickly and was drunk with power. He’d become insatiable in his need to own all that glittered in the world and Reagan was the most glittering woman of the day. To the lovely Spanish style cottage she’d purchased in the Hollywood Hills, he sent a Bentley convertible, a personal chef and an American Express Centurion Card. An invitation to accompany him to the Academy Awards followed.

  They married secretly in Las Vegas six weeks later and had a no-holds-barred wedding in Tuscany the following summer. Carlo was attractive but not truly handsome, he was tall and lean with thick dark hair and soft brown eyes. He worked out with a personal trainer and looked younger than his forty five years. His smile and his passion for life were irresistible, he had that quality that televangelists and cult leaders possess, he mesmerized all who knew him, Reagan included. Alana didn’t like him from the beginning; she thought he was shady, that he had a secret. She was certain that he was bi-sexual or a bigamist or had been in some South American prison, she didn’t believe he was Italian.

  Reagan moved into his palatial estate in Malibu and even though they
had sex fairly often they maintained separate bedrooms. Carlo snored like a chainsaw and she required the three bedrooms next to hers to be refitted as closets. Rae continued to be the DeLuca girl and she was offered script after script for small parts in movies and a role in a TV series that was perfect for her.

  Carlo intercepted them all and threw them away, “you’re a face my love, a persona. Why tarnish your perfect mystique with acting, you want to be like Madonna and be ridiculed? You’ve never quite lost your Texas twang, what are you going to do, remakes of Tennessee Williams plays forever more?”

  She never saw it as holding her back, he was a great director so he knew talent when he saw it. She was still the face of DeLuca twelve years later and was considered one of the ten most beautiful women in the world. She had been on the best dressed list without interruption since Alana had taken control of her wardrobe. Her face had graced the covers of fashion magazines worldwide, articles had been written about her charmed life, wasn’t that enough?

  Carlo and Reagan wanted for nothing except, perhaps, a child. He had three grown children from three earlier marriages and he wasn’t close to any of them. The first five years their lives together seemed magical and the next five were heartbreaking for Rae as she got her period exactly on time each and every month.

  “Surely you don’t want to ruin your magnificent body carrying a baby,” he would say, talking to Rae as if she were a child. “You are as exquisite as any woman could possibly be, there isn’t a single blemish on your skin. No, you were not meant to have children, my sweet. If it were God’s will, it would have already happened.”

  On her thirtieth birthday she cried openly to her gynecologist over her inability to become pregnant.

  “Reagan, we have run every test known to modern science over the last five years, the problem can’t possibly be with you.”

  “What are you saying?” she asked, drying her eyes.

  He handed her a card, “call my brother’s office, he’s the best urologist on the west coast, your husband should make an appointment.”

  Carlo swore to her that he would see the doctor, but he was leaving for the South Pacific to begin his next film and would get around to it in a couple of months when he came home on break.