“Julia shot me with a dart,” Dawn said.
“She’ll do that with any suspicious characters who creep around the property. If I’d gotten your message about stopping by beforehand, I would’ve told her to look out for you, probably not on the roof though.”
Dawn eyed Julia as the Amazon reappeared and gave Dawn a bottle of water. “Is this your new bodyguard?”
As thirsty as sand, Dawn made sure the cap was already sealed, then undid it, taking a long swig.
“She’s my servant, loyal to only me.” Jac motioned Julia out of the room, but the woman lingered.
The actress coolly stared at the Amazon. “Really. Go.”
Grudgingly, Julia left. Dawn took the opportunity to scan Jac, noting how pale she was, how she plucked at her fashionable summer dress.
“I didn’t know you had a staff,” Dawn said.
“New hire. My producer says I won’t have time to—”
“Why didn’t Julia want me near the chimneys?”
The starlet paused, then laughed like her guest was crazy. “I told you—she thought you were maybe a stalker.”
“You have that many excitable fans right now?”
Jac stopped plucking, folding her hands together instead.
All the stress and tension piled up on Dawn, all the lies and mysteries. Enough. “Where’s my Friend?”
“Friend? There’s someone else…?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
If possible, Jac went even paler.
Dawn’s heart began to skitter, but not because she was afraid. Okay, maybe she was. “Tell me what’s going on, Eva.”
At first, Jac just shook her head, acting puzzled. Something hard behind Dawn’s rib cage crumbled slightly, chisled by the thrust of so many emotions. She wanted Jac to tell her she was nuts, once and for all.
But even more than that, she really did want Eva.
Maybe Jac saw that last part more than anything else, because she lost composure. “I wish,” she choked out, “you wouldn’t say it like that. Eva.”
Something boomed behind Dawn’s eyes. In her blanked vision, all she saw was a white room, then a crimson flood crashing in, painting the walls with blood and taking her under until she had to claw for breath and reality.
Da-dupp, da-dupp. Her pulse. A white-turned-red room inside her falling apart, piece by piece. It was unhinging her. It was opening her up, one wall tumbling down, then another….
She grabbed at the couch, clinging to what she knew: the blood on the sheets in Eva Claremont’s crime-scene photo. All the years she’d thought her mom was dead, all the grief Frank had endured. And the hate. God, the hate.
That’s what calmed her down. Maybe it even iced Dawn beyond shock at this point.
Weird, she thought randomly. My own mom looks even younger than me. Weird…
Jac…Eva…whoever must’ve seen that. A tear slipped down her face. “I didn’t want you to find out like this.”
“How did you want it to be?” Da-dupp. Da-dupp. “You weren’t expecting me to rush into your arms, were you?”
“You almost did, that day at the hospital.”
“That day…” Dawn swallowed. “Your eyes told me it was you, but I couldn’t…” She glared at this stranger. “I thought I was going crazy. Literally. You made me doubt my sanity.”
“I realized that day, too late, that you weren’t ready, Dawn. I wish you had been. I’ve been waiting so long for the moment you’d know who I was.”
In Eva’s tone, Dawn heard truth. She knew that all the woman’s hidden lullabies, all the mockingbird comfort, had been real. That it’d always been there and Dawn hadn’t wanted to embrace it. Couldn’t handle it.
Jac…Eva, she tried to smile through new tears. “You needed more time to accept what was happening. No matter what all the rest of them said, I know what’s best for my daughter.”
Rest of them? And…daughter.
Dawn was a daughter. She had a mother.
The little girl inside wanted to run to Eva like a child welcoming a parent home from work. She wanted to bury her face against her dress and feel the give of skin under her cheek.
“No matter what all the rest of them said?” Dawn asked instead, still quivering on the edge of denial. “Who are ‘the rest of them’?”
Eva blew that off. “That day at the hospital, I knew I’d revealed too much too soon, so I toned down my Allure. I was able to get into your mind, just for a moment, even though I know you can keep us out. Just that one time, when you had your defenses down and you needed a mother to hold you, you were open to believing. You were ready to hope I was alive, and you set yourself up to receive me. Just that one day…” Eva’s voice broke to a halt. She closed her eyes, then opened them. “Everything was always planned—the moment I would finally tell you I was alive. I was promised I could do it when I felt it was right, but I couldn’t make it happen as quickly as they wanted.”