And wasn’t that the damn thing about it?

But he hadn’t gone up to the Pembroke, not so much because of Dani, but because of the memories. Right now, just being back in Saratoga, at the track, at the Chandler Stakes, was enough torture. Everywhere he looked he saw a reminder of Lilli, of all he’d lost, of how badly he’d failed her and his daughter. It was painful having one’s shortcomings before him at every turn. He didn’t expect anyone’s sympathy, least of all his own. He’d earned his misery.

A crowd had gathered at his stretch of white fence, where a skittish chestnut was being led onto the track, its brightly clad jockey a popular favorite. He waved and smiled, knowing how to play to his audience. Then, when his gleaming thoroughbred touched the dirt, he turned his attention to his job, and the fifty thousand people watching him might not have been there. John was suitably impressed.

He stuck a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it.

“I thought you quit.”

Turning, he grinned at his daughter, as small and pretty as ever. “Hello, sweet pea.”

“Don’t ‘sweet pea’ me, Pop. What’re you doing here? How come you didn’t tell me you were coming?” She stopped herself, her hands balled into tight fists at her sides. “Never mind. Obviously we can’t talk here. You, me, the Chandler Stakes-reporters would fall all over themselves if they saw us together. Where are you staying?”

“Don’t trouble yourself about me.”

“I’m not. I just want to be able to find you in case you try to wriggle out of telling me what you’re up to.”

“You sound just like Mattie in the old days when she’d yell at Nick for being such a heel. He used to say he’d never met a more unforgiving woman. Still says it.”

“The Pembroke men,” Dani said with a grudging smile, “don’t make forgiving easy.”

“True.”

“You’re welcome to stay with me at the cottage.”

He grinned. “Can’t leave your old man to the elements or you just want to keep tabs on me?”

But he noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the bruises and scrapes on her arms and legs, and his heart lurched.

“Pop,” she said, “we need to talk. Meet me up at the cottage after the race.”

He nodded, wishing and regretting and wanting so much to see his daughter smile-really smile-and to hear her laugh as she had when he’d scoop her up as a tiny black-haired toddler and toss her in the air. In those days, he had always counted on himself to catch her.

“I mean it, Pop. If you try to sneak out on me, I’ll call the law on you if I have to.”

“For what?”

“I’ll make something up.”

She darted into the crowd that was settling down now for the start of the Chandler. John held his position against the fence, watching his daughter. He’d heard rumors just in his short time in town that she was on the verge of self-destructing. That she’d rather end up broke and discredited like her father and paternal grandfather than rich and respected like her mother’s father. That she’d rather, in the end, be a Pembroke than a Chandler. John didn’t believe the rumors. All her life his only child had struggled simply to be herself. It was a struggle he understood, even if he’d been defeated by it, and even if she’d never believe he could know how she felt.

He turned back to the track and placed his forearms on the wide, flat top of the fence. The horses were taking their places at the starting gate. Amazingly, he hadn’t even picked up a program.

But it wouldn’t have mattered.

He wasn’t there. He was at the track of another era, not twenty-five years ago when Lilli disappeared or even thirty years ago when they’d been so happy together, but all the way back to his first summer in Saratoga when he was thirteen years old. His mother had “retired” from Hollywood by then and moved him to Greenwich Village. He’d come to love the hustle and excitement of Manhattan, even as he longed for the dry, sunny days of Beverly Hills and his father’s kidney-shaped swimming pool.

“Don’t worry about being stuck in New York forever,” Nick would counsel him during their weekly telephone calls. “Your mother will come crawling back to me soon enough.”

John had known his mother would never return to California. At first, eager New York hostesses had invited her to all their society dinners and benefits. Mattie, who preferred flying kites in Central Park or wrapping herself in a tattered afghan by the fire and reading murder mysteries, refused-politely-any and all invitations. The twisted result was that she became even more of a legend. Her unconventionality in retirement coupled with her still-extraordinary beauty and the continued popularity of the fifteen movies she’d made had ensured her place not only in film history, but in the imaginations of ordinary people. To John, the Mattie Witt of film legend was unreal to him. The Mattie Witt he knew wasn’t so glamorous and young, but spoke in a lingering southern accent, had had her hair cut off the moment she’d hit the streets of New York, seldom put on makeup or followed fashion. One of her favorite outfits was an orange flight suit, which she’d wear anywhere. John would remember seeing pictures of his mother in sequined evening gowns and gobs of makeup, her lips painted red and her hair done up and diamonds glittering at her neck, and would collapse in a fit of laughter, so different was she after she’d quit Hollywood.

For their trip to Saratoga that muggy August day, she’d collected her convertible-bright red with a cream interior-from the garage and had John drag out her old upholstered valise, which she’d stuffed full. He’d packed it in the back of the car, along with two boxes of glass bottles.

“What’re the bottles for?” he’d asked.

“I’m going to fill them with mineral water and give them to friends as gifts. Here.” She thrust a shoe box at him. “These are my labels. We’ll ink them in during the evening and on rainy days.”

It had sounded horrid to John.

His eccentric mother had put on her driving gloves and wore a lemon-yellow Chanel suit as she drove with the top down, the bottles rattling in the back. Her eyes had seemed blacker and huger than ever.

“Where will we stay?” John had asked.

“At the estate your great-grandfather built.”

That sounded exciting to John. He’d never been there, and he’d imagined all sorts of things-maids, silk sheets, fresh-cut flowers, tennis courts, an indoor swimming pool.

“Remember he was a gambler who came to a bad end,” Mattie added.

“But in The Gamblers-”

“That movie is more fiction than fact. The real Ulysses Pembroke was shot dead over a poker game and left his pregnant wife penniless. He could have done something worthwhile with his life. He was extraordinarily bright-and yes, I’m sure, quite charming.” She glanced at her son with her dark, so knowing eyes. “Very much like your father, I imagine. And you, if you’re not careful.”

When they arrived in Saratoga, John had been hugely disappointed with the Pembroke estate. It was overgrown and spooky, a testament to his great-grandfather’s wasted life. Locked and boarded up, the main house was just too daunting, and Mattie and John dusted up the gingerbread cottage and moved in for their stay. As he’d explored the grounds, he’d found countless indications of what the property must have been like in its day-leggy rosebushes, giant hedges, perennials surviving against all odds, a slate tennis court covered with brown rotting leaves, cracked marble and stone statuary and fountains, an abandoned croquet ball. He’d cleared decades of fallen leaves, twigs, moss and mud from a mineral spring near the main house, among the few original Saratoga springs not already bought up and preserved by the state, and tried its bubbling water. The taste was absolutely hideous. He’d thought he’d been poisoned.

“Mother, Mother!” He’d raced into the kitchen, where Mattie was frowning over a table full of kerosene lamps. The cottage had no electricity. Breathless, he’d told her, “Mother, we can’t give that water to people! It’s poison!”