Private Lies

Book 1: Fortune's Daughters

by Muna Shehadi

Genres: Women's Fiction; Siblings

Synopsis

'A wonderful read with evocative descriptions and enough family secrets to create a gripping journey of discovery' Woman What happens when you discover that your glamorous movie star mother could never have given birth to you? Fans of Lucinda Riley, Santa Montefiore and Rachel Hore will be gripped by Muna Shehadi's Private Lies. 'Captures your interest straightaway' 5* reader review 'I adored this...so many twists and turns. I recommend this book highly' 5* reader review The three daughters of stunning but unstable movie star Jillian Croft and her famous acting-teacher husband, Daniel Braddock, grew up being treated as special, even after their mother's tragic death. Years later, their world is overturned when they discover a medical document suggesting Jillian could never have given birth to them. Whilst Olivia and Eve insist there's some mistake, quirky, impulsive middle sister Rosalind can't leave the matter alone. Rosalind has always felt separate from her poised, successful sisters. If she has a different birth mother, she wants to know. Investigation leads her to Leila Allerton, an opera singer from New Jersey with a vibrant, close-knit family to whom Rosalind aches to belong. At first its members warmly welcome their new neighbour - but circumstances and personalities soon clash, leaving a bewildered Rosalind unsure how they'll feel when they discover her true reason for seeking them out... Readers love Private Lies! 'Truly awesome' 'Draws you in and keeps you guessing' 'The storyline was perfect. I could not put it down' 'Would love to read more of this author's books' 'Very well written and insightful' 'A good holiday read' D on't miss Muna's other enthralling novels , Hidden Truths and Honest Secrets, out now!

Release date: October 3, 2019

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 292

Sample

Chapter 1

January 20, 1967 (Friday)

Today I got the absolute best news in the world and the absolute worst. The best was that I got the part of Sarah Brown in the spring musical, Guys and Dolls! The lead role and I’m only a sophomore! Deedee Cutler was all snotty and said it’s because I’m Mr McGregor’s pet. I told her green is an ugly color and she looks terrible in it. That made her furious, but I don’t care, it’s true.

I would have been so happy today, like up-in-the-clouds happy all day long, but then the worst thing also happened and ruined my celebration. Nan got her period. She was the only one left in our whole grade, besides me. When she told me, I lied and said I got mine a long time ago but didn’t want to hurt her feelings. I can’t stand being the last one. The last one in the whole school. The last one in the whole state probably. I’m crying writing this. Mom acts like it’s no big deal, but she acts that way about everything. Christina makes me feel freakish and scared by telling me I have to go to the doctor, that sixteen is way too late. I might have to start lying to her, too, so she’ll shut up. But we share a bathroom, I’d have to really do a good job faking it.

I’m crying harder now. I hope I read this someday and laugh at how worried I was, when I was young and silly enough to think there was something wrong with me.

I think there is something wrong with me.

Rosalind ripped the tape off the next cardboard box out of what seemed to be a hundred brought down from her father and stepmother’s attic. She was hoping for something special this time, one of her mother’s fabulous outfits from a Hollywood premiere or awards ceremony, new family pictures, letters or diaries – forgotten jewels? Anything but having to go through more papers: academic papers, financial papers, legal papers.

Rosalind and her sisters, Olivia and Eve, were searching every item, every file, every envelope in every box that had been shipped here to Maine from the California house they grew up in. In the years before her death, the worst years, Mom had been notorious for hiding things she cherished, convinced someone would try to steal from her. Silver hairbrush in a stack of cooking pots. Diamond necklace at the bottom of a Kleenex box. Autographed picture of a famous co-star in the pages of a travel book. When Dad had retired from teaching and moved diagonally across the country to this modest Cape house on the coast of Maine – the family’s former summer home – everything to be sold or thrown away from the enormous Mediterranean in Beverly Hills had to be practically torn apart. Now, with Dad and Lauren abruptly relocated to the retirement community in Blue Hill after Dad’s stroke, the three sisters were at it again, examining every millimeter of every box that hadn’t been gone through ten years earlier.

Lifting the cardboard flaps, peeking cautiously, Rosalind grimaced. Files, all neatly labeled in their father’s precise handwriting. Her fingers made a clicking sound drifting across the tabs; a familiar sadness kicked in as she realized what they contained. Jillian Croft’s movie and commercial contracts, dozens of them, filed chronologically from 1970, when she was first cast in a Steve McQueen movie as the waitress who took his order, to 2001, the year she died, a small part in a B movie and a commercial for L’Oréal.

Resigned, Rosalind went through every folder, flipping through single sheets, shaking stapled pages, willing something forgotten and fabulous to fall out and cheer her up.

Nothing.

‘What do we do with Mom’s contracts?’ She waited for her sisters’ answers, betting they’d be totally opposite.

‘Toss them.’

‘Save them.’

After a week with Olivia and Eve, she was getting good.

‘If you two don’t want them, save them for me,’ Olivia said. ‘I’d like to read them, see how showbiz contracts have changed.’

‘Done.’ Rosalind got up and lugged the box over to Olivia, avoiding Eve’s eyes, knowing her younger sister wanted to point out that the contracts for Olivia’s cable cooking show probably didn’t have much in common with those for Mom’s starring roles in international blockbusters.

She grabbed the next box from the still impressive pile. Slice, rip, open. A quick paw through the tissue-paper-wrapped contents. Ha! She smiled as a plastic shoulder emerged from its white cocoon. This was more like it. Her Heart Family dolls, long-cherished playthings and companions.

She unwrapped them eagerly. First Mom, in her starchy pink dress, blond poufy hair frizzed from years of stress, skin still flawless except for a red line on her right calf. Surgery? Or a run-in with a pen? Next Dad, natty in a white-collared blue business shirt, red tie and awesome white suspenders. Cool and unruffled, not a mark on him. Men had life so much easier.

‘Look.’ She held up the happy couple. While Eve and Olivia had surfed and sailed with Ken, Barbie and their groovin’ friends, Rosalind had stuck with the solid tradition of the Hearts. Dad off to work every morning in his boxy Volkswagen Cabriolet. Mom at home caring for the adorable baby twins, a boy and a girl. ‘Hot housewife and her handsome husband, still married after all these years.’

Eve looked up, blond ponytail cascading over a shoulder nearly bared by her ripped T-shirt. ‘Oh my God. I remember those things. So corny. You played with them constantly.’

‘Obsessively, more like it.’ Olivia yawned, stretching impressively toned arms over her head. ‘I always figured by now you’d be married with ten kids.’

‘Yeah, what about that?’ Eve asked.

‘Are you kidding me? What guy could come close to this?’ Rosalind shook Daddy Heart emphatically. ‘White suspenders! When was the last time you saw a pair of those? He ruined me for other men.’

‘Don was perfect for you.’ Olivia shook her head ruefully. ‘You could have bought him a pair.’

‘Don needed to grow a pair on his own.’

Eve cracked up. Olivia opened her mouth to speak, then lost whatever she was going to say in a burst of laughter. ‘You are terrible.’

‘Thanks.’ Rosalind grinned, hoping the subject would drop. Her sisters meant well, but ‘meaning well’ usually involved being royal pains in her ass. She went back to work and uncovered the Heart twins, still resting comfortably in their double stroller, white and blue with pink wheels. They too had aged very well, for not aging at all.

‘Look what I found!’ Olivia held up a clipping. ‘An article from People, April 1981, called “Our Prayers Were Answered”. Listen to this. “After seven years of heartbreaking disappointment, the ever-glamorous Jillian Croft and her hunky acting-teacher hubby, Daniel Braddock, finally welcomed their first child, Olivia Claudette Braddock, on March thirtieth.”’ She clutched the paper to her chest, glowing with pride. ‘I can’t believe I never saw this.’

‘You didn’t? Mom showed me mine.’ Rosalind hit a dead end in her box, unable to find the remainder of the Hearts’ fabulous estate.

‘Mine’s in my baby book.’ Eve glanced at her oldest sister. ‘I didn’t know it took seven years to conceive you, Olivia. Rosalind and I came along relatively quickly after. Four years and then five. I guess you jump-started the equipment.’

Olivia pouted her perfectly outlined lips. ‘Why didn’t they ever show me this?’

‘Who knows? Look here.’ Eve held up a bag full of name tags encased in plastic holders. ‘“Hello I’m Daniel Braddock” about two dozen times, probably from every conference he ever attended. Why would he keep all these?’

Rosalind blinked innocently. ‘In case he forgot who he was?’

Eve snorted. ‘As if the great Daniel Braddock could possibly forget who he was. Or let anyone else forget.’

‘Jesus, Eve.’ Olivia plunked her hands on to her designer-jeans-clad hips. ‘Dad’s in the hospital in terrible shape, and you think this is a good time to insult him?’

Rosalind sighed. If Eve turned right, Olivia went left.

‘His health doesn’t change who he was, Olivia.’

‘Who he is, not was.’

‘Hey, kids!’ Rosalind bounced Mrs Heart up and down in excitement. ‘Who wants to make a Spam Jello mold with Mommy?!’

Eve ignored her. ‘Who knows who he’ll be now? It was a bad stroke.’

‘The staff at Pine Ridge says he’s likely to come back to normal, or at least close. He was healthy.’

‘He’s seventy-nine, Olivia.’

‘I know how old he is.’

Mommy Heart was getting so sick of the bickering! ‘If you two stop fighting, you can make Shake-a-Pudding for dessert.’

‘Wow, Shake-a-Pudding.’ Eve broke from the stand-off. ‘I haven’t heard that name in decades. What was it again?’

‘Brilliantly marketed instant pudding.’

‘Anyway, Daddy lived through the Great Depression. Therefore the name tags.’ Olivia went back to her box, never one to let an argument die without stomping on its corpse. ‘He was not part of the disposable generation.’

‘Well, I am.’ Eve smiled coolly and dumped the name tags into the latest bulging lawn and leaf bag. The living room was strewn with them.

‘Let’s take a timeout.’ Rosalind put the doll down. ‘I need some Maine air.’

‘If we keep taking breaks, we’ll never get this done.’

‘Then since this is the only week you’ll be out here, Olivia, unlike Rosalind and me, why don’t you stay and keep working?’ Eve suggested sweetly.

Olivia gave her the stink eye, one of her greatest talents. ‘I have a cooking spot scheduled on Tuesday’s morning news, plus I’m ovulating this week so I have to get nookie from Derek. If I can find time to get back here and help again, I will. But it’s a lot harder for me coming from LA than for you two easterners.’

‘Let’s go out on to the porch.’ Rosalind stood up. ‘It’s been foggy all weekend, we’re worried about Dad, and this job sucks. A quick break will do us good.’

Silence.

She put on an authoritative scowl. ‘Don’t make me get Mommy Heart out again.’

‘Okay, okay.’ Eve reached into her box. ‘One more folder and I’ll go. Last one in this box.’

‘I’ll come now.’ Olivia peeled off the cotton gloves she’d been wearing to protect her manicure and tucked a stray lock of hair back under a silk scarf wrapped around her head. Olivia could fling rags up in the air, be under them when they landed, and still look stylish and voluptuous. Eve dressed like she didn’t care how she looked, but her height and flawless features made her a knockout anyway.

Rosalind was ‘cute’, had always been ‘cute’ and would probably be ‘cute’ until she died. Sometimes she thought she’d been dropped into her freaky-beautiful family by a drunk stork.

Stepping and hopping over piles, boxes and bags, she preceded Olivia out on to the house’s screened-in porch, which on clear days provided a gorgeous view of Mount Desert Island – pronounced ‘dessert’ instead of ‘desert’ – and its most famous denizen, Mount Cadillac. Not much of a mountain compared to, say, the Matterhorn, but a source of local pride, with a stunning view up the jagged, wrinkled coast from its top.

This afternoon, however, fog clung stubbornly to the shore as it had been clinging for the past three days, not even the suggestion of a breeze that might blow it away, or a thinning of clouds that might let sun through to burn it off. Even Rosalind was struggling to find something positive in the monochrome.

At least the smell outside was still addictive, salty from the sea, fresh from the pines growing thickly around the house – a smell of late August and the aging season. The Braddock family had always spent whatever summertime they could out on Candlewood Point, a bumpy eight-mile dirt-road trip from the closest tiny town of Stirling. Up here, away from the increasingly crowded southern part of the state, there was still wildness and space, places where you could sit on the shore and imagine yourself centuries earlier.

The girls hadn’t visited the Maine house often after Mom died. Even less after Dad married Lauren, a woman twenty years his junior. Busy lives, they’d said, so hard to get away.

Did they fool anyone? Maybe themselves. It was good to be back.

Rosalind inhaled deeply, remembering Mom out here doing the same, exulting in the freshness and clarity, so unlike LA. Jillian Croft had loved her home state, its smells, its topography, its coast and its freedom. She and Dad had found this property in the late 1970s at the peak of her movie career – a place to hide from her adoring public. Rosalind’s fondest maternal memories were all born here. Lobster boils and annual clambakes, sailing and kayaking, hikes and beach parties, charades and sing-alongs. Most of all, precious memories of a mother who was relatively calm and relatively stable and who had time for her girls. A mom who made dinners and read books and played games. Who fished and dug for clams and sat in the Laundromat in old clothes wearing a Red Sox baseball cap and dark glasses even though everyone in town knew who she was, and who laughed with Dad at night when the girls were in bed, instead of fighting.

Mom always took her meds up here. The rest of the year it was hit or miss. At the height of Rosalind’s judgmental pre-teens, as infatuated with the summertime peace as she’d been bewildered and exhausted the rest of the year by her mother’s shifting moods and tempers, she had asked why. Jillian had hugged her middle daughter, apron smelling of the herbed chicken she was roasting for dinner in the house’s quirky oven, and said, ‘Because out here I’m Sylvia Moore, and Sylvia Moore isn’t bipolar.’

Like so much her mother said, that had made no sense to young Rosalind. Sylvia Moore and Jillian Croft were the same person; they must have the same illness. Now she thought she understood. Mom had left Maine when she was seventeen and changed her name not long after, when she’d begun seriously pursuing an acting career. The bipolar disorder had surfaced in her early twenties.

Olivia stepped down on to the porch, pulled off her scarf and shook out her long, enviably thick auburn hair, the same shade their mother had used.

‘Nice non-view.’ She grimaced out at the-bay-that-currently-wasn’t.

‘You’re missing the subtleties. Over there, gray.’ Rosalind pointed. ‘Over there, between the gray and the gray, there’s more gray. See?’

‘Remember the year Mom was up with Dad and said it was foggy three weeks straight? Even she was ready to get out of here by the time the sun came out.’ Olivia sighed. ‘God, I miss her.’

‘I was just thinking how she was so much more herself here.’

‘Yeah.’ Olivia put a hand to the screen, gazing wistfully out at the nothing. ‘It was great, wasn’t it? When she was so happy and doing so well? And then everything got so horrible toward the end.’

‘Right.’ Rosalind hated thinking about that part. And she hated when Olivia got all actressy sad about it. ‘What’s going on with Derek? Things okay?’

‘Who knows?’ Olivia blew a raspberry that startled a mosquito from the screen. ‘He’s busy. Working hard. A lot of travel. The baby thing is a big strain, at least on me. He seems to take it in stride, but I’ll be forty in two years. I’m ready to go to in vitro, but he keeps putting it off.’

‘I had a friend who tried IVF. Worked the first time for her.’ That was a lie, but the white ones could be important. Rosalind worried Olivia was becoming convinced she wouldn’t ever get pregnant, which could help make it true.

‘Mom had trouble, also. Seven years before I came along, the article said. I thought they just waited to have me until pregnancy worked with her career. I guess it figures I’d have trouble, since of the three of us I’m the most like her.’

Rosalind gave her sister a hug, though she was getting a little sick of Olivia claiming that title, even if it was true. Olivia had inherited not only Mom’s hair and lush figure, but also her overt sensuality. Men were just as attracted to Eve, but, intimidated by her coolness, they kept their distance. Over Olivia, they slobbered in packs.

‘Are you seeing anyone, Rozzy? I still think it was a mistake to leave Don. At least he was better than that tree-hugger in Denver, and much better than the animal you dated before you left LA . . . what was his name?’

‘Wolf.’

‘Wolf! That’s right.’

‘Not seeing anyone now.’ She joined Olivia staring out into gray, wondering which she hated more, persistent fog, having her judgment questioned, or being called Rozzy. ‘I have a good life. I’m enjoying New York. I like working at the coffee shop, I have my painting, and—’

‘Painting? Walls or canvas?’

‘Canvas. Oils.’

‘Oils.’ Olivia turned and looked at her curiously. ‘I remember you drawing constantly, but since when painting?’

‘I started in Colorado.’ She could talk openly about every other part of her life, but the minute the subject turned to her art, she felt naked. Not gloriously naked, but haven’t-shaved, retaining-water naked. Already she regretted mentioning it. ‘I’m also still doing clothing design, I work out regularly, I’ve got book clubs, lot of friends. That’s enough for me.’

‘Give me a break. You’re the most romantic of the three of us. You’d shrivel and die alone. Look at those dolls you loved so much.’ She gestured at Rosalind, head to toe. ‘Why don’t you wear normal clothes and get a decent hairstyle? That bleached look is too severe, especially so short, and the loud mismatched outfit is . . . Well, you’re probably scaring off all the normal good guys. You look like a kook.’

‘I am a kook.’ Rosalind rubbed her spiky head, smiling. All this week she’d worked to let her sisters’ words roll off her, telling herself they were speaking from places of love, and that she only had to listen and be kind.

Which didn’t stop her wanting to smack them.

‘You are not a kook. You’re just acting like one. From this to that to the next thing . . . you need to settle—’

‘I’ve always been like this. A hummingbird, Dad called me, remember?’ She’d loved the nickname, nearly as much as the shimmering, darting birds themselves, until she overheard a conversation between him and Mom that made it clear it wasn’t a compliment.

Dad gaveth, and Dad invariably tooketh away.

‘The hummingbird thing is an excuse. Nothing stays as exciting as the first rush. Not haircuts, not jobs, not cities, and certainly not relationships. You need to stay with a man long enough to discover something deeper.’

‘So you keep saying.’ If Olivia counted her relationship with Derek as deep, Rosalind preferred shallow.

‘Hey, guys?’ Eve came out on the porch holding an open folder, looking troubled. ‘I found something really weird stuck in with the tax forms. It’s a medical record for Mom.’

Olivia snorted. ‘Why is that weird? She was seeing doctors her whole life.’

‘It’s not from Dr Townsend or her psychiatrist or the rehab doctors. It’s from a gynecologist in New York in January 1969, the year before she married Dad. It says, “Patient complains of difficulty having intercourse.”’

‘Ugh.’ Olivia put her hands over her ears. ‘Do not want to know.’

Rosalind grimaced. ‘Poor Mom.’

‘She was eighteen and “amenorrheic”.’

‘Ameno-what?’

‘I know that one.’ Olivia raised her hand like a school kid. ‘No periods.’

‘So was she pregnant?’ Rosalind asked. ‘What happened to the baby?’

‘No. Listen.’ Eve went back to the paper, which was trembling in her hand. ‘“Shows pelvic scars consistent with testicular removal. Appears ignorant of her condition.”’

‘What condition?’

‘Testicular removal? Did he not notice she was a woman?’ Olivia rolled her eyes. ‘I remember Mom’s scars. I saw them once when she was getting dressed, one on each side, near her hip bones. She had benign tumors removed when she was a girl. Testicles! What a quack.’

Rosalind’s skin started crawling, the way it always did when bad news was imminent. ‘Does it say what condition?’

‘There’s a diagnosis typed at the bottom. “Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome.”’

‘Huh?’ Olivia crossed the porch and peered at the paper over her sister’s shoulder. ‘Complete androgen insensitivity? What does that mean?’

Rosalind stepped closer too, digging her nails into her arms. ‘She couldn’t tolerate people with gender confusion?’

‘Oh no, no.’ Olivia shook her head drily. ‘They didn’t have gender confusion in the seventies.’

Eve didn’t smile at either joke. ‘I tried to look up the syndrome, but I can never get Google to load out here. We shouldn’t have cancelled Dad’s Internet so soon.’

‘I’m sure it’s nothing serious.’ Rosalind wasn’t sure at all, but it made her feel better to say so, and anyway, their mother had died of a drug overdose eighteen years earlier, so it wasn’t like whatever this was could kill her retroactively. ‘We can look it up next time we’re in town.’

‘I’m not waiting that long.’ Olivia dug out her phone, poked at it, then put it to her left ear, right hand to her hip. ‘Donna, hey.’

Rosalind exchanged a look with Eve, who made a sound of impatience. ‘Tell me you’re not asking your assistant to—’

‘Fine. Busy. Hey, can you look something up for me? Phone works up here, but the nearest Internet is half an hour away.’ Olivia turned from Eve’s eye-rolling. ‘Thanks. What is “complete androgen insensitivity syndrome”? Yes, I’ll wait.’

‘Jeez, Olivia.’ Still looking through the file, Eve perched on a rather clunky chair Dad had nailed together from driftwood. Ugly but functional, and he’d been so proud. Mom had sat in it while he was around, then moved off as soon as he left the room. ‘There might be something else in here that will tell us. You didn’t need to bother her.’

‘No problem.’ Olivia tossed her hair and resettled the phone at her ear. ‘It’s her job.’

Rosalind seriously doubted that. Or that it had been Donna’s job to search – in vain, as predicted – for a place that would deliver Chinese food to Candlewood Point.

‘You found it? Good. What does it say?’ Olivia listened intently. Her face fell. She gasped, eyes widening. ‘But that’s . . . absurd.’

Rosalind moved toward her. Underneath the drama, her sister was genuinely upset. ‘What is it?’

‘Are you sure?’ Olivia held up her hand to ward Rosalind off. ‘Are you sure? There’s no other definition? Nothing anywhere? This is “complete androgen insensitivity syndrome”? That’s what you said, right, Eve?’

‘Yes.’ Eve rose from the chair, still clutching the file. ‘What is she saying? You’re making me nervous.’

‘Thanks, Donna.’ Olivia disconnected the call and faced her sisters, looking shaky. ‘The diagnosis must have been typed wrong. Or it was mixed up with someone else’s record. Or it’s fake. If our mother had that, she could not have given birth to any of us. She’d have had no uterus. No ovaries. No Fallopian tubes. No female reproductive ability at all. Period.’

Fog condensation dripped off the trees on to the porch roof in a spattering drumbeat.

Rosalind shivered. ‘What the hell?’

‘That’s impossible,’ Eve said.

‘Of course it’s impossible,’ Olivia snapped. ‘We’re standing right here, all three of us.’

‘Can I see that?’ Rosalind took the document from Eve’s folder and studied it carefully. It looked entirely legitimate, the doctor’s name and address printed across the top – James R. Winston, MD – her mother’s maiden name typed in Courier font in the appropriate spaces, ‘Sylvia Moore’. ‘I’m sure there’s a mistake. Monday morning, tomorrow, we should call the office in New York and talk to this doctor or his assistant or something.’

‘This was fifty years ago. The guy won’t still be practicing. He probably won’t even be alive.’ Olivia started pacing, still clutching her phone. ‘And the office wouldn’t keep records that long.’

‘We could ask Lauren.’ Rosalind dropped the paper back into the file. She didn’t want to look at it anymore. ‘She might know.’

‘No.’ Olivia spoke sharply. ‘We are not asking Lauren about Mom’s health issues.’

Rosalind barely suppressed an impatient retort. Dad had married Lauren fifteen years earlier, three years after their mother died. Olivia still acted as if he’d committed a crime. ‘We can’t ask Dad, at least not until he’s recovered enough for full sentences. Yesterday he called me “Roland”.’

‘No Lauren.’ Olivia crossed her arms over her chest. ‘None of her business.’

‘I understand how you feel.’ Rosalind gentled her voice. ‘But if Lauren knows something, she can save us a lot of—’

‘If she doesn’t, you’d effectively be telling her something I am only about four thousand percent sure Mom wouldn’t ever want her to know.’

‘Okay, but—’

‘Drop it, Rosalind.’ Eve tossed the folder on to the big table the family had gathered around countless times for lobster feasts. ‘No point.’

‘I want to understand what’s going on.’

‘We all do, but that’s not the way.’

‘This is ludicrous. I can’t believe we’re giving this any credence at all.’ Olivia stomped into the house, leaving Eve to shrug at Rosalind, and Rosalind to shrug back. Moments later, Olivia stomped out again, holding a photo album. ‘I was saving this to look at during dinner. We have picture proof right here, a whole book full.’

‘God, that’s right.’ Rosalind wilted into relief. ‘The pregnancy bible.’

‘Hallelujah!’ Eve got up and crowded around the album with Rosalind.

‘Pregnant with me.’ Olivia stabbed a finger on to a picture, flipped a few more pages and stabbed another. ‘About to give birth to me, standing in front of the house in Beverly Hills. And there’s Aunt Christina, who was midwife for all three of us. Here’s Mom pregnant with you, Rosalind. At six months, then at eight.’

‘So why the diagnosis?’ Eve asked. ‘If it’s a mistake, why would she or Dad keep the paper?’

‘Pregnant here with you, Eve, on a trip to Paris at the end of 1989. That’s all three of us.’ Olivia shut the book with a snap. ‘Told you.’

‘So what happened? They fixed her?’ Eve took the album from Olivia. ‘So she could have us?’

Rosalind shook her head, a little queasy again. ‘No reproductive organs whatever, Donna said. It’s not like they could have grown her new ones.’

‘Could they transplant—’

‘Not back then. Don’t know about now.’

A bird rustled through the lower branches of infant pines, gave a tentative peep, then was quiet. The stillness was eerie. Even the little waves seemed to have gone silent against the rocky shore.

‘She could have been preparing for a role. She really got into that stuff.’ Eve’s face lit hopefully. ‘Remember when she flew to Montana to learn how to ride and take care of horses for her first movie with Burt Reynolds? And for the Pioneer Spirit role, she stayed in a log cabin for a week without anything modern. She hated every second, but she did it.’

Rosalind really wanted Eve’s solution to make sense, in spite of the fact that it didn’t. ‘I don’t remember any role she played where she couldn’t have kids.’

‘Why would she bother creating a whole medical sheet about it?’

‘To make it seem really real.’ Eve’s voice cracked. ‘I could see her studying it, getting herself to feel all miserable.’

‘Not buying it.’ Olivia shook her head.

Eve sighed. ‘Maybe we should talk to Lauren. If this is true, Dad must have told her something.’

‘Not if there was nothing to tell,’ Olivia shot back. ‘If we tell Lauren, we’d be betraying our mother. And what if this got out? What would that do to Mom?’

Eve laughed bitterly. ‘Mom’s not really in a place where she can care.’

‘Jesus, Eve. That is cold. I’m talking about the press. It would be a madhouse. They were even all over Dad after his stroke.’

‘The thing is . . .’ Rosalind wrapped her arms around herself, looking back and forth between her sisters, stomach positively roiling now. ‘We do look really different from each other. Blonde, brunette, redhead, different eyes, noses, you’re both tall, and I’m—’

‘Stop. Stop right now.’ Olivia picked up the pregnancy album and brandished it. ‘Three pregnancies, three daughters. Enough already.’

‘I get that you’re upset, Olivia. We all are. But we have to look at all possibilities.’

‘Okay.’ Olivia tossed the album on to the table and folded her arms. ‘Given what we know for sure to be true, that she was pregnant and delivered each of us, what are the possibilities?’

‘That . . .’ Rosalind shrugged. ‘I don’t know, that she faked the pregnancies?’

‘What?’ Olivia looked horrified. ‘Why would she fake pregnancies?’

Eve lifted an eyebrow. ‘Well, duh.’

‘So no one would know she couldn’t have children,’ Rosalind said.

‘Why would she care that much?’

‘Because image was so important to her.’ Eve’s tone was bitter. ‘You know that. It’s vital to your biz.’

‘Enough to make it worth faking three pregnancies? Three births?’ Olivia shook her head. ‘Not buying that either.’

Eve stayed silent, studying the