Guilt had undercut his elation at winning at the track, and yet that night, unable to stop himself, he went to a private lake-house gambling parlor. An attractive woman in her forties taught him poker, then invited him back to her room. He said yes.

Mattie found out through a mutual acquaintance. There was always someone, Nick had discovered, willing to bear bad news. He’d admitted everything. At first it was unclear whether the zest for gambling he’d just revealed bothered her more than his infidelity, but then she’d let him know in no uncertain terms that in her view, gambling and infidelity were part and parcel of the same basic corruption. Nick had tried to explain that he had no intention of self-destructing like his grandfather, that the woman had been nothing at all like her, just a stupid fling, he couldn’t even remember her name. That only seemed to enrage her more.

“I had no idea monogamy meant so much to you,” he’d said, stung by her anger.

“Does it mean nothing to you?”

As far as his heart was concerned, he was uncompromisingly monogamous. Mattie was the only woman he truly loved.

She’d left him after his second meaningless affair, but came back. After the third she stayed away six months. They’d begun to argue. Less the polite, repressed daughter of Jackson Witt, Mattie had learned to hold her own in a good fight. After her husband’s fourth affair, she’d moved out for good. She finished the movie she was working on, announced her “retirement” and headed to New York. She and Nick were divorced. Mattie was thirty years old. Everybody-especially Nick-had believed she’d come back to Hollywood once she cooled down.

She never did.

Nick had accused her of being as hard-hearted and unforgiving as her father, igniting another of their by then legendary fights. And yet, even as she’d bought a town house in Greenwich Village and enrolled their son in school, he’d remained hopelessly and forever in love with her. He’d look back on his repeated affairs in despairing wonder. None of the women he’d slept with meant anything to him, nor he to them. So why had he indulged in affairs?

“I hope you find what you want in life,” Mattie had told him in one of her more charitable moments.

Too late, he had.

What he wanted-all he wanted-was the dark-eyed girl he’d found gazing at the Cumberland on a warm, quiet Tennessee morning.

But as his cab arrived at the busy Los Angeles airport, Nick pulled himself out of the past. He couldn’t undo his mistakes. What he could do, he thought, was to try to save his son and his granddaughter from them.

Thirteen

A lively discussion of the ailing Yankees had been going on for the past hour on Mattie’s front stoop. She was right in the midst of it, fiddling with one of her handmade kites as she maintained that pitching was to blame for the team’s latest ills. Not that she knew a thing about baseball. From argument over the years, however, she’d learned that a cry for more pitching was generally a creditable position to take.

She only half listened to the debate. A cab had turned down her street and slowed in front of her town house.

Before it came to a full stop, Dani jumped out.

Mattie quietly asked everyone on her front stoop to leave.

They complied. Nick had called a little while ago. She knew their son was now in the hospital in Saratoga.

A dark-haired man who had to be Zeke Cutler climbed out of the cab after Dani. He looked like his father, whom Mattie had known as a little boy. And like Joe. Naomi must have sent him, she thought.

Their eyes met. He was definitely a Cutler, and Zeke was the only Cutler left.

He came up onto the sidewalk. “It’s good to see you, Miss Witt,” he said.

“Hello, Zeke.”

Dani stiffened visibly. “So you do know him.”

Zeke looked at her, and Mattie instantly felt his attraction to his granddaughter. “I’ll leave you two alone to talk,” he said.

To talk, Mattie thought. Of course. She’d have to tell Dani everything.

“No. Don’t leave.” Mattie set her kite down. “This concerns you, too, Zeke. Come inside. Both of you.”

Her front room was cool, the ceiling fan whirring, and she served fresh-squeezed lemonade she’d bought from a small grocery around the corner and a few butter cookies she pulled from the freezer and let thaw on a plate. Zeke sat on the couch. Dani sat across from him. There was one other chair, but it was uncomfortable, and Mattie had no intention of going through this ordeal on an uncomfortable chair. She sat next to Zeke on the couch.

“How’s John?” she asked.

There was a moment’s silence as Dani and Zeke exchanged glances, obviously debating who was supposed to answer. Finally Zeke said, “He’s doing fine.”

“It was an accident?”

“He told the doctors he tripped and fell.”

Mattie suspected he’d told Zeke more. But Dani blurted, “Which isn’t true.”

“I see,” Mattie said, setting down her lemonade glass, untouched. “John doesn’t know anything of what I’m about to tell you. I didn’t want him to have to be in the position of holding back from his own daughter…” She inhaled deeply through her nose, just wanting this done. “I thought this information was no one’s business but my own.”

Dani didn’t say a word. That concerned Mattie, since her granddaughter had always been one to speak her mind.

“Zeke and his brother, Joe, came to see me in Saratoga about a week before Lilli disappeared. I gave them an old tent and let them camp out on the grounds-they chose a spot near the bottling plant, which of course was abandoned in those days.” She looked at Zeke. “You were what, thirteen or fourteen?”

“Thirteen.”

“And Joe was eighteen. I remember that.”

The room was so silent. She wished she’d turned on the radio in the kitchen or even had a grandfather clock, although she’d refused to have one in her house since leaving Cedar Springs. A ticking clock always reminded her of her father’s oppressive home. But the silence now was awful.

“He thought you were something,” Zeke said gently.

Mattie smiled, appreciating his gesture. “I’m afraid I wasn’t the glamorous movie star he expected to find. I dressed in Nick’s old clothes half the time, I said and did as I pleased-and I wasn’t as young as the woman he’d seen in the movies. Then again, maybe he wasn’t expecting Mattie Witt the film star. Maybe he was expecting Jackson Witt’s older daughter, I don’t know. But what he got was me.” She waved a hand. “Well, none of that matters. Joe was a tolerant young man.”

“Why did he come see you?” Dani asked.

“I’m getting to that. I want…” She swallowed, twisting her hands together in her lap. “I want to tell everything. Not long after Joe and Zeke arrived, Lilli came up to the cottage while they were there. I introduced them. There was an instant rapport between Joe and Lilli-nothing romantic. Lilli was confused about what her life was supposed to be, what she wanted it to be. When her mother died, her whole world came apart. She didn’t know if she wanted to be what she’d seemed destined to be. Joe understood. He helped her get some distance from herself and her problems-he encouraged her to see not just the obligations and responsibilities and restrictions of her life, but also its joys and meaning.”

Mattie paused. Dani stared at the fireplace, her eyes shining. Zeke watched her, and Mattie wondered if he knew how close her granddaughter was to crying. She hid her vulnerabilities so well. But so did her grandmother.

“Did he know about Casino?” Dani asked without looking at her.

“Yes.”

“Did you?” she asked, her dark eyes on Zeke.

Mattie looked at him, too, and he answered, “No.”

“When Joe found the gold key out at the pavilion near the old bottling plant,” Mattie went on, “he decided to give it to Lilli. He could have kept it for himself, but he didn’t think that was right.”