The Final Act Read online

  “Angry?” What was Julia talking about? “Why would I be angry?”

  “Promise me you’ll at least try to understand.”

  “Understand what? What’s going on? Tom,” Cindy implored, her eyes veering reluctantly from her daughter to her ex-husband. “Tom, what is she talking about? Where did you find her?”

  “Don’t you get it yet?” he asked, looking at Cindy with a mixture of pity and scorn.

  “Get what?”

  A second’s hesitation before Julia’s simple response. “I was never lost.”

  The words ripped through Cindy as if fired from a gun. She staggered back, dropped her daughter’s hand. “What are you talking about? Where have you been?”

  There was a long pause, a second exchange of glances between father and daughter before Julia answered. “At the cottage.”

  “What?”

  “She insisted on coming back as soon as we heard the news about Faith Sellick,” the Cookie interjected quickly.

  “Is Ryan okay?” Julia asked. “The news reports barely mentioned him.”

  “You’ve been in Muskoka all this time?” Cindy’s head was spinning. Her daughter was back. She wasn’t injured. She hadn’t been kidnapped, or raped and murdered, then buried in a shallow grave. She was alive and well. Wasn’t that all that mattered? What difference did it make where she’d been, that it appeared she’d been relaxing in the country while her mother was going crazy in the city, that instead of being concerned about her sister, her grandmother, her aunt, she was asking after Ryan, that even more astounding, she seemed oblivious to the hell she’d put her family through these awful last two weeks?

  Cindy turned toward Tom, another horrifying thought slowly crystallizing. “Did you know about this? Did you know where Julia was all along?”

  “You promised you wouldn’t get angry,” Julia reminded her.

  “Maybe you should sit down,” Tom said.

  Without protest, Cindy lowered herself into a kitchen chair, braced herself for whatever staggering revelations might follow.

  “This doesn’t leave this room,” Tom warned, closing, then locking, the sliding glass door.

  Julia took a deep breath, blew it out slowly, as if she were savoring a forbidden cigarette. “As you know, two weeks ago, I had an audition with Michael Kinsolving for a part in his next movie. Dad said you saw the tape.”

  “Yes,” Cindy acknowledged quietly. “You were wonderful.”

  Julia smiled proudly. “Thank you.”

  “Unfortunately, wonderful auditions aren’t enough these days,” Tom continued, assuming control. “There are too many beautiful, talented actresses out there, and Julia needed something that would give her an edge over the competition, something that would get her the attention she deserves.” He paused dramatically. “And what better way to get noticed than to disappear?”

  The room went in and out of focus as Cindy shook her head in disbelief. Surely she’d misunderstood. Surely she’d misinterpreted what her daughter and ex-husband were trying to tell her. “You’re saying this was a publicity stunt?”

  “I just wanted a chance, Mom. Michael was auditioning so many girls. He hasn’t had a hit in a while, and Dad said the studio was pressuring him to give the part to a name Hollywood actress. We knew we had to do something to level the playing field.”

  “So you concocted this scheme . . .”

  “To make Julia as recognizable as any of the famous actresses in town for the festival,” Tom continued, unable to disguise his enthusiasm. “Cindy, I’m an entertainment lawyer. I know how this business works. I knew we had to do something pretty drastic to get the results we needed. And it worked. Hell, Julia’s practically a household name. Entertainment Tonight did two whole minutes on Michael’s possible involvement in her disappearance the other night. Do you have any idea what that kind of exposure is worth? Michael would be a fool not to give her the part now, and trust me, Michael Kinsolving is nobody’s fool. He knows a good story. So does the studio. And they also know everybody likes a happy ending.”

  “Good story?” Cindy repeated incredulously. “Happy ending?”

  “Okay, Cindy. It’s obvious you’re upset. But can you at least try to keep an open mind?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Cindy looked at her daughter through wide, disbelieving eyes. Could her daughter really be so unfeeling, so monstrously self-absorbed? “Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through? What we’ve all been going through? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “We thought about it,” Julia began.

  “You thought about it?”

  “We couldn’t tell you,” Tom said curtly. “We knew that, at the very least, you’d feel compelled to tell your mother and Heather. And then Heather would tell Duncan, and your mother would tell Leigh, and then where would we be? Don’t you see? It wouldn’t have worked if you didn’t honestly believe that Julia was missing. Your daughter’s the actress in the family, Cindy. Not you. The police would have seen through you in a heartbeat.”

  “Besides,” the Cookie added matter-of-factly, “we knew you’d never agree to it.”

  Cindy felt suddenly sick to her stomach. “That afternoon at the morgue . . .”

  “Not my idea, believe me.” Tom waved his hands in front of his face, as if to rid himself of the memory. “I wouldn’t want to go through that again.”

  “And what happened afterward in your apartment . . .”

  “What happened in our apartment?” the Cookie asked.

  “All the people the police questioned—Sean, Duncan, Ryan—people whose lives have been turned upside down as a result of this little charade. And Faith. My God, poor Faith!” Again, Cindy saw the hapless young woman hurl herself in front of the speeding train, heard the sickening thud of metal against flesh.

  “Faith didn’t kill herself because of me,” Julia protested.

  “She was suffering from postpartum depression.” Cindy struggled to stay calm, to keep her voice down. “Do you think it helped her to be hauled into the police station for questioning? To find out you’d been sleeping with her husband?”

  “And exactly whose fault was it she found that out?” Tom asked, narrowing his eyes accusingly.

  “I’m really very sorry about what happened to Faith,” Julia said. “But she was Loony Tunes to begin with. You can’t blame me for what she did. We had no way of knowing she’d pull something like this.”

  “You had no way of knowing that she’d pull something like this? Cindy repeated incredulously.

  “Kindly lower your voice,” Tom instructed.

  “Kindly go fuck yourself,” Cindy shot back.

  “I told you it was a mistake coming here,” the Cookie said, throwing her hands into the air in defeat.

  “You didn’t consider that there might be consequences to your actions?” Cindy asked her daughter. “It never occurred to you that not everything works out exactly as planned? That sometimes the things we set in motion have a way of spiraling out of control?”

  “I just want to be famous,” Julia said evenly, as if this made everything understandable, as if it made everything all right.

  “So the end justifies the means?” Cindy stared at her daughter, the young woman who only moments before she would have given her life just to hold in her arms. Julia was her father’s daughter, she realized in that instant. She always had been.

  (Flashback: Julia, four years old, Shirley Temple curls tamed into two long braids, holding tightly to her father’s hand as they walk down the street; Julia, age eight, proudly sitting on the shiny red bicycle her father bought her for her birthday; Julia, at thirteen, wearing a fancy brown-and-blue-striped taffeta dress, posing beside her father, so handsome in his tuxedo, before they leave for the annual Havergal father-daughter dinner-dance; Julia the following year, packing her clothes into the new Louis Vuitton suitcase her father bought her, then carrying it outside to his waiting BMW, leaving her childhood—and her mother—behind.)r />
  “So what happens now?” Cindy asked, her energy sapped. “What exactly are you planning on telling people? That Julia was a victim of amnesia?”

  “It’s simple,” Tom said. “We tell them that Julia was feeling down because she thought she’d blown her audition, so she wandered the countryside for a couple of weeks, trying to clear her head, didn’t even look at a paper until today. . .”

  “The police will never buy it.”

  “Are you kidding?” Tom reminded her. “It was their idea.”

  “And I’m just supposed to go along with this charade?”

  “Do you have any other choice?”

  Did she?

  “I could tell them the truth.”

  “You could, yes,” Tom agreed. “But then, in all likelihood, Julia will be arrested, a promising career will be nipped in the bud, and I’ll be disbarred. Is that what you really want?” Tom paused, allowed his words the necessary time to sink in before continuing. “Look, Cindy. Right now you’re hurt and you’re angry, and that’s completely understandable. You’ve been through hell these last few weeks. Nobody knows that better than I do. But I urge you to think this through, and consider our daughter’s best interests.”

  “Our daughter’s best interests,” Cindy repeated numbly.

  “Please, Mom. I’m so close to getting everything I’ve ever wanted.”

  “You can’t really want to see your daughter go to jail,” the Cookie said.

  “I thought all you ever wanted was for Julia to come home,” Tom reminded Cindy.

  “I thought so too,” she said.

  There was a noise in the hallway and Elvis suddenly galloped into the room.

  “Elvis!” Julia fell to her knees, hugged her dog to her chest. “How are you, boy?”

  Heather appeared in the kitchen doorway. “I heard voices,” she said, falling silent when she saw her sister.

  “What’s going on?” Norma Appleton called from the top of the stairs.

  “Julia’s home,” Heather shouted back at her.

  “Julia?! Leigh, wake up! Julia’s home.”

  In the next instant, Cindy’s mother and sister came flying into the room, crying happily, and gathered Julia inside their arms, smothering her face with kisses.

  Moments later, the women sat huddled together at the kitchen table, their bewildered faces heavy with anger, relief, and pain, as they tried to recover from the shock of the early-morning revelations.

  “I’m really sorry,” Julia told them, standing next to her father on the other side of the room. “I honestly didn’t think everybody would be so upset.”

  “You didn’t think we’d be upset?” Her grandmother’s head shook from side to side in disbelief.

  “You didn’t think, period,” Leigh said bitterly.

  “How could you do this to Mom?” Heather asked.

  “I said I was sorry,” Julia said testily.

  “Okay,” the Cookie chirped into the silence that followed. “I think we’ve said everything that needs to be said. There’s nothing to be gained from going over the whole thing ad nauseam.”

  “I’ll call the newspapers first thing in the morning,” Tom said. “Tell them Julia’s come home.” He squeezed Julia’s hand. “That she’s ready for her close-up.”

  Julia smiled, her free hand automatically reaching up to smooth the side of her hair.

  Cindy stared at her older daughter. Still just a child really, despite her twenty-one years. Maybe there was still hope. Maybe time would bring some measure of maturity. Or maybe not. Maybe Julia would always be a bit of a monster. Maybe her single-minded self-absorption was the very quality that would make her a star, her obvious contempt for the feelings of others resulting in her being adored by millions.

  Her father’s daughter all right.

  But her daughter too.

  Cindy walked to the phone and punched in the number for the Fifty-third Division. “I’d like to speak to the officer in charge, please.”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Tom demanded.

  “If you tell the police the truth, I’ll deny it,” Julia said quickly. “I’ll say you were in on the whole thing from the beginning.”

  “This is ridiculous,” the Cookie snapped. “You’re just doing this to get back at Tom and I.”

  “Tom and me,” Heather said from her seat at the kitchen table.

  “What?”

  “Object of the preposition,” Heather said.

  “I don’t believe this! Tom, do something.”

  “Mom, please,” Julia pleaded. “I just want to come home.”

  The words tugged at Cindy’s heart.

  “Officer Medavoy,” a familiar voice announced in Cindy’s ear.

  “Officer Medavoy, it’s Cindy Carver. We met the other night. My daughter Heather . . .”

  “Yes, of course. How is she?”

  “She’s wonderful. Wonderful,” Cindy repeated, her eyes absorbing the miracle that was her younger child. All these years she’d overlooked Heather’s quiet light because she’d been so blinded by the raging fire that was Julia. All those years Cindy had given short shrift to one daughter because she was so busy mourning the loss of the other. And now Julia was back, and she was saying exactly what Cindy had been waiting a lifetime to hear: Please, Mom. I just want to come home.

  And it was too late.

  “It’s my other daughter I’m calling about. Julia.”

  A collective intake of breath.

  “She’s home,” Cindy told the officer. She closed her eyes, shook her head, a cry escaping her mouth as she tried to continue. Could she really tell the police the truth, knowing that her daughter might go to jail, her dreams of stardom over? Hadn’t the last two weeks seen enough misery and shattered dreams to last a lifetime? “She waltzed in about an hour ago,” Cindy announced, “totally unaware of everything that’s been happening.”

  “Thank God,” she heard the Cookie whisper, as Julia burst into a flood of grateful tears against her father’s chest.

  Cindy continued reading from the invisible script her ex-husband and daughter had prepared, surprised by how convincing she managed to sound. Tom was right. When all was said and done, what other choice did she have? “Thank you,” she told the officer before hanging up the phone and facing the others. “He said he’ll let Detectives Bartolli and Gill know what’s happened, that they’ll probably contact us first thing in the morning.”

  “Thank you so much, Mom,” Julia whispered.

  “You did the right thing,” Tom said.

  Cindy glanced toward the kitchen table, expecting to see at least a hint of recrimination in her mother’s eyes, a scowl of disapproval on her sister’s lips, a look of disappointment on Heather’s face. But all three women were nodding their tearful support. There were no judgments here, Cindy realized. Only love.

  Tom kissed Julia’s forehead. “Try to get some sleep, sweetie. You want to look good for the reporters in the morning.” He touched the Cookie’s elbow, began leading her toward the hall.

  “Wait,” Cindy called out. What was she doing now?

  “Cindy, we’re all beat. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

  “Julia can’t stay here.” The words were out of Cindy’s mouth almost before she realized they were in her head.

  “What?” Tom stopped abruptly.

  “What?” Julia echoed.

  “You can’t stay here,” Cindy said again, the words sounding no less strange for having repeated them.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Cindy took a deep breath, releasing the air slowly from her lungs, feeling her heart about to burst. “I love you, darling. I always will. You know that. And I’m so sorry.” She glanced from Julia to Tom, then back again. “It’s just that I can’t spend any more time living with someone I don’t really like.”

  Julia’s eyes filled with unexpected tears. She quickly lowered her head, her hair falling across her face as it had during her audition fo
r Michael Kinsolving.

  (Fantasy: Julia raises her head, tears falling the length of her cheeks. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Please forgive me. I never meant to hurt you. I love you more than anything in the world. I promise I’ll change. I promise things will be so different from now on.”)

  Julia remained in that posture for several seconds, then a toss of her hair, a shrug of her shoulders, brought her head back up. When her eyes next met her mother’s, the tears were gone. “Whatever. I’ll stay at Dad’s.”

  The Cookie’s eyes widened in alarm.

  Could she really do this? Cindy wondered. Could she really send her daughter away? Was she prepared to lose her again, possibly forever? Cindy felt her body shudder, as if finally absorbing the fact that Julia had been lost to her a long time ago.

  Julia stood in the middle of the kitchen, not moving, as if giving her mother a few extra seconds to change her mind. “Okay, then. If that’s the way you want it. Come on, Elvis. We’re going back to Dad’s.”

  “Oh no,” the Cookie wailed. “I will not have that mangy mutt peeing on my good carpets again.”

  “Come on, Elvis,” Julia repeated, as if the Cookie hadn’t spoken.

  Elvis slowly raised himself up from his position underneath the kitchen table and lumbered over to the middle of the room to where Cindy was standing. Then he barked loudly three times, and stretched himself across the top of Cindy’s feet.

  “Fine.” Julia rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Stay here, if that’s what you want.”

  “Thank God,” the Cookie muttered.

  “Shut up,” Julia snapped.

  “You shut up.”

  “Ladies, please,” Tom implored, ushering the two young women toward the front door without so much as a backward glance.

  Cindy followed, her eyes trailing after them as they walked down the street. She saw Julia climb into her father’s car, watched that car pull away from the curb, then turn the corner onto Avenue Road.

  And then she was gone.

  (Flashback: Julia, age fourteen, her ponytail waving behind her, carries her suitcase into her father’s waiting BMW, leaving her childhood—and her mother—behind.)