Genuine Lies by Nora Roberts

of us. One night, angry that I wouldn’t give him a commitment, he left my apartment. And he was killed in a car accident.”
    She drew her hand from Julia’s. “I fell apart. Tried to commit suicide. That’s when I met Eve. She was researching her role of the suicidal wife in
Darkest at Dawn.
I’d botched the job, hadn’t swallowed enough pills, and was in the hospital under observation. She talked to me, listened to me. It may have started as an actress’s interest in a character type, but she came back. I’ve often wondered what she saw in me that made her come back. She asked me if I wanted to waste my life on regrets, or if I wanted to make then work for me. I screamed at her, swore at her. She left me her number and told me to call if I decided to make something of myself. Then she walked out, in that go-to-hell way of hers. In the end I called her. She gave me a home, a job, and my life.” Nina drained the rest of the wine. “And that’s why I’ll rent islands for her, or do anything else she asks me to do.”
    •   •   •
    Hours later, Julia was wide awake. The story Nina told her crowded her mind. The private Eve Benedict was so much more complex than the public one. How many people would take a stranger’s tragedy and find a way to offer hope? Not just by writing a check. Easy to do when the money was there. Not by making speeches. Words cost nothing. But by opening that most intimate chamber, the heart.
    Julia’s ambition for the book began to creep along a new path. It was no longer a story she wanted to tell, but one she needed to tell.
    As longer-range plans began to form, she thought of the paper still in her pocket. It concerned her more now after Brandon had responded to her casual question by telling her he’d found the envelope lying on the front stoop. She ran her fingers over the page, then withdrew them before she could give in to the urge to take the paper out and read it again. Better to forget it, she told herself.
    The night was growing cool. A breeze fragrant with roses ruffled the leaves. In the distance, the peahen screamed. Even though she recognized the sound, still she shuddered. She had to remind herself that the only danger she faced was becoming too used to luxury.
    There was little chance of that, she thought, bending to pick up one of her discarded sandals. Julia didn’t consider herself the kind of woman who could fit comfortably into minks or diamonds. Some were born for it—she tossed the scuffed leather toward the closet—some weren’t.
    When she thought of how often she misplaced earrings, or left a jacket crumpled in the trunk of her car, she admitted she was definitely better off with cloth and rhinestones.
    Beyond that, she missed her home. The simplicity of it, the basic routine of tidying her own things, shoveling her own walk. Writing about the famous, the glamorous was one thing. Living like them another.
    Peeking into Brandon’s room, she took another look. He was sprawled on his stomach, his face smashed into his pillow.His latest building project was neatly arranged in the center of the room. All of his miniature cars were lined up in a well-orchestrated traffic jam on his desk. For Brandon, everything had a place. This room, where the famous and powerful must have slept, was now completely her little boy’s. It smelled of him—crayons and that oddly sweet, somewhat wild aroma of a child’s sweat.
    Leaning against the doorjamb, she smiled at him. Julia knew that if she took him to the Ritz or plopped him into a cave, within a day Brandon would have cordoned off his own space and been content. Where, she wondered, did he get that confidence, that ability to make a place of his own?
    Not from her, she thought. Not from the man who had conceived the child with her. It was at times like this that she wondered whose blood ran through her to be passed off to her son. She knew nothing about her biological parents, and had never wanted to