The Final Act Read online

  THE FINAL ACT

  by Joy Fielding

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  An Exclusive Chapter From She’s Not There

  More from Joy Fielding

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Also by Joy Fielding

  Answer Me

  Don’t Cry Now

  Good Intentions

  Grand Avenue

  Missing Pieces

  Puppet

  Run From Me

  See Jane Run

  She’s Not There

  Someone is Watching

  Take What’s Mine

  Tell Me No Secrets

  The First Time

  The Other Woman

  The Stranger Next Door

  When I Looked Away

  To Annie,

  my sweet potato

  ONE

  THE morning began, as did so many of their mornings, with an argument. Later, when it was important to recall the precise order of events, the way everything had spun so effortlessly out of control, Cindy would struggle to remember what exactly she and her older daughter had been fighting about. The dog, the shower, her niece’s upcoming wedding—it would all seem so mundane, so trivial, so unworthy of raised voices and increased blood pressure. A blur of words that blew past their heads like a sudden storm, scattering debris but leaving the foundation intact. Nothing extraordinary to be sure. The start of an average day. Or so it had seemed at the time.

  (Images: Cindy, in the ratty, green-and-navy terry-cloth bathrobe she’d bought just after Tom left, towel-drying her chin-length brown hair as she emerges from her bedroom; Julia at the opposite end of the wide upstairs hall, wrapped in a yellow-and-white-striped towel, pacing back and forth in front of the bathroom between her room and her sister’s, impatience bubbling like lava from a volcano inside her reed-thin, six-foot frame; Elvis, the perpetually scruffy, apricot-colored Wheaten terrier Julia brought with her when she’d moved back home just under a year ago, barking and snapping at the air as he bounces along beside her.)

  “Heather, what in God’s name are you doing in there?” Julia banged on the bathroom door, then banged on it a second time when no answer was forthcoming.

  “Sounds like she’s taking a shower,” Cindy offered, regretting her interference as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

  Julia glared at her mother from underneath a mop of ash-blond hair, painstakingly straightened every morning to obliterate even a hint of its natural curl. “Obviously.”

  Cindy marvelled that one word could contain so much venom, convey so much disdain. “I’m sure she’ll be out in a minute.”

  “She’s been in there for half an hour already. There’ll be no hot water left for me.”

  “There’ll be plenty of hot water.”

  Julia banged her fist a third time against the bathroom door.

  “Stop that, Julia. You’ll break it if you’re not careful.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. Like I could break the door.” As if to prove her point, she thumped it again.

  “Julia. . .”

  “Mother. . .”

  Stalemate, Cindy thought. As usual. The way it had been between the two of them since Julia was two years old and had balked at wearing the frilly white dress Cindy had bought her for her birthday, the stubborn toddler refusing to attend her own party even after Cindy had conceded defeat, told her she could wear whatever she liked.

  Nineteen years had passed. Julia was twenty-one. Nothing had changed.

  “Did you walk the dog?” Cindy asked now.

  “And just when would I have done that?”

  Cindy pretended not to notice the sarcasm in her daughter’s voice. “When you got up. Like you’re supposed to.”

  Julia rolled large green eyes toward the ceiling.

  “We had a deal,” Cindy reminded her.

  “I’ll walk him later.”

  “He’s been cooped up all night. He’s probably desperate to go.”

  “He’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t want any more accidents.”

  “Then you take him out,” Julia snapped. “I’m not exactly dressed for a walk.”

  “You’re being obstinate.”

  “You’re being anal.”

  “Julia. . .”

  “Mother. . .”

  Stalemate.

  Julia slammed her open palm against the bathroom door. “Okay, time’s up. Everybody out of the pool.”

  Cindy absorbed the reverberation from Julia’s hand on the door like a slap on the face. She lifted her fingers to her cheek, felt the sting. “That’s enough, Julia. She can’t hear you.”

  “She’s doing it on purpose. She knows I have a big audition today.”

  “You have an audition?”

  “For Michael Kinsolving’s new movie. He’s in town for the film festival, and he’s agreed to audition some local talent.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Dad set it up.”

  Cindy forced a smile through tightly gritted teeth.

  “You’re doing it again.” Julia mimicked her mother’s strained expression. “If you’re going to go catatonic every time I mention Dad. . .”

  “I’m not catatonic.”

  “The divorce was seven years ago, Mom. Get over it.”

  “I assure you, I’m well over your father.”

  Julia arched one thin eyebrow, plucked to within a hair of its life. “Anyway, they’re looking for an unknown, which probably means every girl in North America will be up for the part. Heather, for God’s sake,” Julia shouted, as the shower shuddered to a halt. “You’re not the only one who lives here, you know.”

  Cindy stared toward the thick cream-colored broad-loom at her feet. It had been less than a year since Julia had decided to move back home with her mother and sister after seven years of living with her father, and only because her father’s new wife had made it clear she considered their five-thousand-square-foot lakeside penthouse too cramped for the three of them. Julia had made it equally clear to her mother that her move home was temporary, one borne of financial necessity, and that she’d be moving into her own apartment as soon as her fledgling acting career took off. Cindy had been so eager to have her daughter back, to make up for the time missed, the years lost, that even the sight of Julia’s unruly dog peeing on the living room carpet did little to dampen her initial enthusiasm. Cindy had welcomed Julia back with open arms and a grateful heart.

  The door to Heather’s bedroom opened, and a sleepy-eyed teenage girl in an oversized purple nightshirt spotted with tiny pink hearts squinted into the hall. Delicate long fingers pushed several tendrils of loose brown curls away from the slight oval of her Botticelli face, then rubbed at the freckles peppering the tip of her upturned nose. “What’s all the racket?” she asked as Elvis jumped up to lick her chin.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Julia muttered angrily when she saw
her sister, then kicked at the bathroom door with her bare feet. “Duncan, get your bony ass out of there.”

  “Julia. . .”

  “Mother. . .”

  “Duncan’s ass is not bony,” Heather said.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to be late for my audition because my sister’s moronic boyfriend is using my shower.”

  “It’s not your shower; he’s not a moron; and he’s lived here longer than you have,” Heather protested.

  “A huge mistake,” Julia said, looking accusingly at her mother.

  “Says who?”

  “Says Dad.”

  Cindy’s lips formed the automatic smile that accompanied each mention of her ex-husband. “Let’s not get into that right now.”

  “Fiona thinks so too,” Julia persisted. “She says she can’t understand whatever possessed you to let him move in here.”

  “Did you tell that pea-brained twit to mind her own goddamned business?” The angry words flew from Cindy’s mouth. She couldn’t have stopped them if she’d tried.

  “Mom!” Heather’s dark blue eyes widened in alarm.

  “Mother, really,” Julia said, green eyes rolling back toward the ceiling.

  It was the “really” that did Cindy in. The word hit her like an arrow to the heart, and she had to lean against the nearest wall for support. As if eager to add his opinion, Elvis lifted his leg into the air and peed against the bathroom door.

  “Oh no!” Cindy glared at her older daughter.

  “Don’t look at me. You’re the one who swore and got him all upset.”

  “Just clean it up.”

  “I don’t have time to clean it up. My audition’s at eleven o’clock.”

  “It’s eight-thirty!”

  “You have an audition?” Heather asked her sister. “What for?”

  “Michael Kinsolving’s in town for the film festival, and he’s decided to audition local talent for his new movie. Dad set it up.”

  “Cool,” Heather said as Cindy’s lips curled again into a frozen smile.

  The bathroom door opened and a cloud of steam rushed into the hall, followed by tall, skinny Duncan Rossi, wet black hair falling across playful brown eyes, and wearing nothing but a small yellow-and-white bath towel and a large, lopsided grin. He quickly ducked into the bedroom he’d been sharing with Cindy’s younger daughter for almost two years. Of course, the original deal had been that he occupy the spare room in the basement, an arrangement that lasted all of three months. Another three months were spent denying the obvious, that Duncan was creeping up to Heather’s bedroom after Cindy was safely asleep, and then creeping back down before she got up, until everyone finally stopped pretending, although no one ever actually acknowledged the move out loud.

  In truth Cindy had no problem with the fact Heather and Duncan were sleeping together. She genuinely liked Duncan, who was considerate and helpful around the house, and had somehow managed to maintain his equilibrium and good humor even after the maelstrom that was Julia moved in across the hall. Both Heather and Duncan were nice, responsible kids who’d started dating in their first year of high school, and had been talking about marriage ever since.

  Which was the only thing that really worried Cindy.

  Sometimes she’d look over at Duncan and her daughter as they were reading the morning paper at breakfast—Honey Nut Cheerios for him, Cinnamon Toast Crunch for her—and think they were almost too comfortable with each other, too settled. She marvelled at Heather’s eager embrace of such a safe, middle-aged lifestyle, and wondered if being the child of divorce had played any part in it. “Why is she in such a hurry to tie herself down? She’s only nineteen. She’s in college. She should be out sleeping around,” Cindy had shocked her friends recently by confiding. “Well, when else is she going to do it?” she’d continued, painfully aware of her own reluctant celibacy.

  Cindy could count on one hand the number of affairs she’d had since her divorce, two of those in the immediate aftermath of Tom’s abrupt decision to leave her for another woman, a woman he’d left for yet another other woman as soon as his divorce from Cindy became final. Seven years of other women, Cindy thought now, each woman younger and tartier than the last. A dozen at least. A baker’s dozen, she thought, feeling her jaw lock. And then along came little Fiona, the freshest tart of all. Hell, she was only eight years older than Julia. Not even a tart, for God’s sake. A cookie!

  “Mom?” Heather was asking.

  “Hmm?”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Mrs. Carver?” Duncan reappeared at Heather’s side. The towel had been replaced by a pair of fashionably faded blue jeans. He slipped a navy T-shirt over his still-damp, utterly hairless chest. “Is something wrong? You have a very strange look on your face.”

  “She’s thinking about my father,” Julia announced wearily.

  “What? I am not.”

  “Then why the rigor mortis smile?”

  Cindy took a deep breath and tried to relax her mouth, feeling it wobble precariously from side to side. “I thought you were in such a hurry to get in the shower.”

  “It’s only eight-thirty,” Julia said as Elvis began barking.

  “Would someone like to go for a walk?” Duncan asked the dog, whose response was to run around in increasingly frantic circles and bark even louder. “Let’s go then, boy.” Duncan bounded down the stairs, Elvis racing ahead of him, as the phone in Cindy’s bedroom began to ring.

  “If it’s Sean, I’m not here,” Julia told her mother.

  “Why would Sean be calling on my line?”

  “Because I won’t speak to him on mine.”

  “Why won’t you speak to him?”

  “Because I broke up with him, and he won’t take no for an answer. I’m not here,” Julia insisted as the phone continued to ring.

  “What about you?” Cindy asked her younger daughter playfully. “Are you here?”

  “Why would I want to speak to Sean?”

  “Be back in twenty minutes,” Duncan called from the front door.

  My best kid, Cindy thought, entering her room and reaching for the phone on the night table beside her bed.

  “I’m not here,” Julia repeated from the doorway.

  “Hello.”

  “It’s me,” the voice announced as Cindy plopped down on the edge of her unmade bed, a headache slowly gnawing at the base of her neck.

  “Is it Sean?” Julia whispered.

  “It’s Leigh,” Cindy whispered back as Julia rolled disappointed eyes toward the window overlooking the backyard. Outside, the late-August sun created the illusion of peace and tranquillity.

  “Why are you whispering?” Cindy’s sister asked. “You’re not sick, are you?”

  “I’m fine. How about you? You’re calling awfully early.”

  “Early for you maybe. I’ve been up since six.”

  It was Cindy’s turn to roll her eyes. Leigh had elevated sibling rivalry to a fine art. If Cindy had been up since seven o’clock, Leigh had been up since five; if Cindy had a sore throat, Leigh had a sore throat and a fever; if Cindy had a million things to do that day, Leigh had a million and one.

  “This wedding is going to be the death of me,” Leigh said. “You have no idea what planning a wedding this size is like. No idea.”

  “I thought everything was pretty much taken care of.” Cindy knew that Leigh had been planning her daughter’s wedding ever since Bianca was five years old. “Is there a problem?”

  “Our mother is driving me absolutely nuts.”

  Cindy felt her headache spreading rapidly from the top of her spine to the bridge of her nose. She tried picturing her sister, who was three years younger, two inches shorter, and fifteen pounds heavier than she was, but she couldn’t remember the color of her hair. Last week it had been a deep chestnut brown, the week before that an alarming carrot red.

  “What’s she done now?” Cindy asked reluctantly.

  “She doesn’t like h
er dress.”

  “So change it.”

  “It’s too late to change it. The damn dress is already made. We have fittings this afternoon. I need you to be there.”

  “Me?”

  “You have to convince her the dress looks fabulous. She’ll believe you. Besides, don’t you want to see Heather and Julia in their dresses?”

  Cindy’s head snapped toward Julia, still watching from the doorway. “Heather and Julia have fittings this afternoon?”

  “No way!” Julia exclaimed. “I’m not going. I hate that stupid dress.”

  “Four o’clock. And they can’t be late,” Leigh continued, oblivious to Julia’s rant.

  “I’m not wearing that god-awful purple dress.” Julia began pacing back and forth in the doorway. “I look like a giant grape.”

  “The girls will be there,” Cindy said pointedly, watching her daughter throw her arms up into the air. “But I’m getting a really bad headache.”

  “A headache? Please, I’ve had a migraine for two days now. Look, I have a zillion things to do. I’ll see you at four o’clock.”

  “I’m not going,” Julia said as Cindy hung up the phone.

  “You have to go. You’re a bridesmaid.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “She’s my sister.”

  “Then you wear the damn dress.”

  “Julia. . .”

  “Mother. . .”

  Julia spun around on her heels and disappeared into the bathroom at the end of the hall, slamming the door behind her.

  (Flashback: Julia, a chubby toddler, her Shirley Temple curls framing dimpled, chipmunk cheeks, burrowing in against her mother’s pregnant belly as Cindy reads her a bedtime story; Julia, age nine, proudly displaying the fiberglass casts she wore after breaking both arms in a fall off her bicycle; Julia at thirteen, already almost a head taller than her mother, defiantly refusing to apologize for swearing at her sister; Julia the following year, packing her clothes into the new Louis Vuitton suitcase her father had bought her, then carrying it outside to his waiting BMW, leaving her childhood—and her mother—behind.)

  Later Cindy would wonder whether these images had been a premonition of disaster looming, of calamity about to strike, whether she’d somehow suspected that the glimpse she’d caught of Julia disappearing behind the slammed bathroom door was the last she would see of her difficult daughter.