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Mark dragged deeply, wheezing as he exhaled. “I heard my old buddy Eric and she split up. Is she back in entertainment management? I’m an actor, y’know.”
Powers huffed and slowly inched back toward the door. Mark Chambers’ gaunt body and scar-seamed face would cause even the most stoic person to shudder. “She’s trying to arrange a meeting between you and your daughter. Consider it an act of benevolence.”
Mark’s eyes popped wide. “She found my kid?”
Powers nodded. “You stay put and when we’re ready for you, I’ll come back and bring you to her.”
A siren blared, the high-pitched peal rushing through a cracked windowpane. Muffled voices accompanied plodding footsteps on stairwell treads in the hall.
Mark sniggered. “Bree doesn’t know the meaning of benevolence. She needs me for something…you get me out of this crack den today.”
He swept bony fingers from his shoulders to his legs. “And I can’t meet my baby looking like this. I’m going to need some cash.”
Chapter Sixteen
Once again, Jenna sensed something was troubling her daughter. She’d been quiet since coming home from school and didn’t seem anxious to go to gymnastics’ practice.
“Spill it, kiddo,” Jenna demanded later that night. “What did the delightful little Miss Baldwin do now?”
Janie dropped her chin to her chest and admitted to a scene at school with Tiffany and her crew bragging about going to a concert in the city.
“Concert? Aren’t they a little young for that?”
“No, Mom. It’s Kylie Harte. She’s the prettiest and best singer in the world.”
She isn’t, Jenna mused. Kylie Harte was a former child star with an autotuned voice and generous butt who gamboled on stage in revealing outfits. At fifteen she topped the pop charts and was idolized by both adolescent girls and middle-aged men.
“Tiffany talked about the concert all day, like she wanted me to feel bad because I wasn’t invited. Why does she have to be so mean to me? I never did anything to her.”
Jenna let her eyes flutter shut and took a cleansing breath to cool the scrape of anger. She readied herself to speak in the incidental tone of a parent imparting the life lessons of high-roads and being the better person. But when tears rolled down her daughter’s cheeks, she sincerely wished Tiffany Baldwin would crap her pants in front of the entire school the next day.
Jenna swept Janie into her arms. “I hate to simplify it baby, but some people, for whatever reason, are just not nice.”
“Mmm.” The child burrowed close, and Jenna hugged tight as if the circle of her arms could act as a bulwark against “not nice.”
She had a repository of memories of what “not nice” meant and where “not nice” lived. More and more often her mind slipped back there to Hollywood. The Industry was a road littered with alcohol and drugs, producers who were borderline rapists, and a blood-thirsty media. Its glamour was simply a beautiful veil covering a disfigured face.
Jenna willed away a shudder and forced her thoughts back to the present. She wouldn’t project her own hurt and past trauma onto her daughter. She ruffled Janie’s hair. “You did kick her butt at the last three gym competitions. Maybe Tiffany is a little jealous.”
“Of what?” Janie exhaled a long sigh. “She lives in the nicest house in town with a built-in swimming pool. She has all the best clothes, and her own horse.”
Jenna stroked Janie’s back. Tiffany had much more than the trappings of upper-class entitlement. She had the one thing Jenna had denied her daughter. Tiffany Baldwin had a daddy.
****
An hour later, Jenna tucked Janie into bed. She studied her face, the face of the person she loved above all else. She hated to see such beauty and innocence touched by childhood confusion and hurt. She hated to see even an insignificant dilemma wipe away her daughter’s smile. Jenna knew how happiness and trust could be taken in the blink of an eye. She hugged her again. “Night, baby.”
“Night, Mommy.”
As she slowly descended the stairs, she tried in earnest to convince herself it was just a concert, and her daughter would be fine. Disappointment was part of life. Then a thought struck. Janie would have to endure the post-concert bragging, and oh how Tiffany Baldwin would rub the experience in Janie’s face.
Line cutting, table stealing, and obnoxious, celebrity barging were the things about her former life Jenna missed least. When the time came to tell Eric the truth, she would insist he never use his position to Janie’s advantage. Jenna foraged in a cabinet for an old copy of the White Pages, long hidden away, and proceeded to break the vow.
The listing for Ina Cummings was in the book and Jenna dialed. She wasn’t sure if her hand shook from anger or from an attack of nerves, but there was little time to think before a ringing sounded in the receiver. She took a breath and waited.
****
Ina Cummings’ telephone was an old Ma Bell rotary black and heavy as an anvil. Though Eric was sleeping, his face mashed into a pillow, when the phone rang, the shrill jangle woke him. Jarred, he sat up to find Ina staring down at him. “What the fuck! What happened… Where…What?”
