Mattie hated to see her devil-may-care ex-husband so tortured. “But they both accept you. Nick, of course we have regrets. Those who don’t never stretched themselves, never took risks.”

He nodded, his eyes closed, the once-dark lashes almost nonexistent. “I’d planned a very different life for myself, Mattie,” he said in his sandpapery voice. “I didn’t expect to end up an old man living on the largesse of my granddaughter.”

“Now, don’t start being hard on yourself after all these years. You’re too old for that. You can’t change the past.”

“I should never have gone back to Cedar Springs.”

“Where would Naomi be if you hadn’t? At the bottom of the Cumberland River, likely enough. Would your staying away have stopped Joe Cutler from heading north to tell me my father was dying? Where does the blame begin-or stop? I can blame my father for my repressive childhood, but how did he become such a difficult man? We can keep digging into the past for explanations and excuses, even understanding. You could blame your flaws on a murdered, legendary grandfather who remained an elusive fantasy to you. You re-created him in two of your greatest films, made him both real and unreal. But Nick, ultimately we each have to take responsibility for our own choices and actions.”

He looked half-asleep, but instinctively Mattie knew he was listening. “Nick,” she went on softly, “if you’re going to assign blame, assign some to me as well. I can’t get off scot-free. If I’d never left home-”

His eyes opened. “You had no choice.”

“Of course I did. Darling, if that day we met on the Cumberland was meant, then so was the rest of it.”

“Joe Cutler and Lilli?”

Mattie sank back and stared out the window, the sun glittering on the wide, still Hudson. Joe had died in battle. Lilli-who knew? Still facing the window, she said, “You can’t think Joe was responsible for Lilli.”

Nick made no comment.

Her heart thumped, spreading pain through her chest; all she needed now was to drop dead of a heart attack. “Nick?”

“Someone knew about her role in Casino, Mattie. I was being blackmailed over it.”

Mattie felt as if she’d been stabbed. Turning to Nick, she saw he was deathly pale.

“I paid up to keep whoever it was quiet. Lilli couldn’t stand the thought of her family finding out about her role in one of my pictures-about her dream of becoming a movie star. Amazing, isn’t it? Hundreds of women would have done anything to get that role, and Lilli wanted to keep it secret, at least until she’d figured out if acting was really what she wanted in life. I guess when you think about it, hundreds of women would have liked to have been a Chandler heiress, too. The blackmail was amateurish-demands to have envelopes of cash left in Congress Park, that sort of thing. It just didn’t seem dangerous, or I’d have insisted we go to the police.”

“You never told me.”

“I didn’t think it was that significant.”

The train rocked slightly as it moved steadily north, and Mattie felt her stomach turn over as she realized she hadn’t been the only one with secrets. “Did you tell Lilli?”

“No. She had enough on her mind.”

“Do you think-could it have been Joe?”

Nick’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know.”

Lilli had always been compassionate and generous, Mattie thought, if sometimes dangerously blind to other people’s faults. If she’d suspected Joe Cutler of blackmailing Nick, she’d have tried to help him-to save him from himself. He could simply have gotten in over his head, engaging in a harebrained blackmail scheme before he really got to know her. Mattie was sure his friendship with her daughter-in-law had been genuine.

Nick had closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. Mattie sat back, annoyed. From long years of experience she knew he was holding back on her. There was more he could tell her. She also knew, however, she couldn’t torture from Nicholas Ulysses Pembroke one word he didn’t want to tell her. Men, she thought, disgusted. They always spared women the wrong things. The truth she could handle. It was deceit she loathed.

But hadn’t she deceived her own granddaughter?

“I suppose it would be convenient to blame everything on Joe since he’s dead,” Mattie said, trying to control her impatience with Nick, with herself. “But would that account for why we’re on this train heading for Saratoga right now?”

Nick answered with a badly faked snore.

“If you weren’t so bloody old,” she said, “I’d give you a good kick.”

One eye opened. “You know, Matt, you always have been a hard-hearted old bat.”

“A good thing, or living with you would have killed me a half century ago.”

The train rocked and pressed on, and Nick settled back in his seat, and in a few more minutes his snores were no longer faked. Mattie sighed, wide awake. She wished she, too, could sleep. But that was impossible when all she could do-had done for the past few days-was to relive those days twenty-five years ago when she learned her father was dying and her daughter-in-law had disappeared.

“You got it bad, my friend.”

“Shut up, Sam.”

Sam grinned across from Zeke at a small table at a café on Broadway, drinking cappuccino. Zeke had ordered black coffee. “I only speak the truth.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“She’s only half Chandler,” Sam said.

“Half is enough.” We’re from different worlds, Joe had said about Sara Chandler. Zeke understood what he’d meant. “But that’s not even the point. Dani is a distraction I don’t need at the moment.”

“No doubt.”

“And she doesn’t trust me,” Zeke added quietly, almost to himself. “She doesn’t trust anyone right now but herself.”

“Can you blame her?”

Zeke checked his irritation, which was mostly with himself. After leaving Dani at Pembroke Springs, he’d worked hard to get his rage under control. What had Joe been doing in Saratoga four years after Lilli’s disappearance? Why hadn’t Zeke known? He was tangled up in a thousand threads with nothing to hold them together, nothing to make any sense or order out of them.

“Where is she now?” Sam asked.

“At the train station picking up Mattie and Nick.”

“Just what we need, a couple of old Hollywood types underfoot. Know why they’re here?”

“No,” Zeke said. He had to get himself back on an even keel. But finding Dani taking on Quint with a rock had thrown him off balance. And Ira. The poor guy had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Quint could have taken them both out without working up a sweat. Of course, Dani’s aim was pretty good…

Zeke pushed back his chair and stood up. “Quint’s staying in a rented house not far from here. I went by earlier, but he wasn’t home.”

“You leave a calling card?”

“I broke in and had a look around. He’ll know.”

Zeke had considered tossing the place, but he’d found bunk beds in one bedroom and dinosaur sheets in the linen closet. The owners probably thought they’d been fortunate to rent to a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer.

“I’ll find him,” Sam said.

“Thanks.”

“What about John Pembroke?”

Zeke threw a few dollars onto the table in the sunny restaurant, its festive atmosphere so different from his own mood. “I think he’s relatively safe in the hospital. My bet is Quint took him out of the picture when he had the chance, or just didn’t want Pembroke to see him up at the springs.”

Sam’s eyes were hidden behind his sunglasses. “And Dani?”

“All my years in this business, Sam, and I’ve never met anyone-man or woman-so determined to get things done on her own, in her own way.”

“She’s a Pembroke. She courts disaster.”

“Yeah, well, she can wait until I’m back in San Diego fishing.”

Sam scooped up Zeke’s dollar bills. “Does that mean she’s on her own?”

“No,” Zeke said, “it does not.”

As he left he heard Sam laughing.