She leaned back on the couch and shut her eyes. The letters felt warm in her fingers, as if they were alive. She picked up the first one and began to read. When she was done, she moved on to the second, then the third, until she’d read them all. Her tea cooled. The fire crackled. She curled deeper into the couch, and slowly, she began to pray. One by one, she held each letter in her hand and prayed for the person who’d written it.
Then she began to pray for herself.
Darkness slipped over the cottage. The fire burned lower. She prayed the prayer of the lost.
Let me see the way.
But when she finally opened her eyes, all she could see were her colossal missteps.
She’d created the Four Cornerstones as a way of fighting her own insecurities. Someplace inside her, the frightened little girl who’d grown up at the mercy of unstable parents still craved stability so badly that she’d constructed a system of rules to make herself feel safe.
Do this and this and this, and everything will be all right. Your address won’t change from one month to the next. Your parents won’t get so drunk they forget to feed you. No one will scream hateful words or run off in the middle of the night, leaving you alone. You won’t get sick. You won’t grow old. You’ll never die.
The Four Cornerstones had given her the illusion of security. Whenever something happened that didn’t fit neatly inside them, she’d simply shoved in another building block to try to shore them up. Finally the whole structure had grown so unwieldy it had crashed in on her. She’d been living a life of desperation, all in an attempt to control the uncontrollable.
She rose from the couch and gazed out at the darkness on the other side of the window. The Four Cornerstones combined sound psychology, common sense, and the spiritual wisdom of the masters. She’d heard too many testimonials not to understand how useful they were. But she’d wanted to believe they were more than that. She’d wanted to believe they were some kind of rabbit’s foot that offered protection from the dangers of being alive. If you follow these rules, you’ll always be safe.
But life refused to follow any rules, and all the organizing, reorganizing, goal-setting, calculating, and meditating in the world wouldn’t whip the universe into shape. Nor would a thousand Cornerstones, no matter how well conceived.
That was when she heard it. A tiny voice that came from deep inside her. She closed her eyes and strained to hear, but she couldn’t quite make out the words. Frustrated, she stayed where she was, eyes shut, cheek resting against the window frame, but it was no use. The voice had slipped away.
Although the room was warm, her teeth began to chatter. She felt lost, alone, and very angry. She’d done everything right. Well, almost everything, if she didn’t count falling in love with a gutless coward. She’d done everything too right. She’d been so busy imposing order on her life that she hadn’t taken the time to live it. Not until she’d come to Italy. And look what a mess that had turned out to be.
Once again the voice whispered inside her, but she still couldn’t hear the words, only the pounding of her heart.
“Ren?”
He snapped to attention. “Yes. That’ll be fine. Whatever you think.”
“Are you sure?” Howard Jenks sank his burly frame deeper into his chair, looking increasingly like someone who was having second thoughts about his choice of leading man. And Ren couldn’t blame him. He kept having these attention lapses. One minute he’d be right there on top of the conversation, and the next minute he’d drift off.
He also knew he looked like shit. His eyes were bloodshot, and only a master makeup artist could have gotten rid of the circles underneath them. But how good could you look when you hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in days? Damn it, Isabel, leave me the hell alone.
Larry frowned at him from the opposite chair of Jenks’s suite at Rome’s St. Regis Grand. “Are you sure about that, Ren? I thought you’d decided you didn’t want to use a double for the scenes on the Golden Gate.”
“I don’t,” Ren replied, as if that’s what he’d meant to say all along. “It’ll just complicate things, and I’m comfortable with heights.” He meant to stop there, but the words kept on coming. “Besides, how tough can it be to catch a six-year-old girl?”
An uncomfortable silence fell over the room. Oliver Craig, the actor who was playing Nathan, lifted an eyebrow.
Craig looked like a choirboy, but he had the acting chops of a pro. He’d studied at the Royal Academy and done rep at the Old Vic. A low-budget romantic comedy had brought him to the attention of Jenks.
“Those stunts on the bridge involve more than chasing little girls,” Jenks said stiffly. “As I’m sure you’re aware.”
Craig came to his rescue. “Ren and I were talking last night about the balance between the action scenes and the quieter moments. It’s quite extraordinary.”
Larry picked up the conversation-how glad Ren was to finally have a part that would display his amazing talent, how brilliantly Ren and Oliver were going to work together-blah, blah, blah. Ren excused himself and headed for the bathroom. When he got there, he leaned over the sink to splash his face with cold water. He needed to pull himself together. Last night Jenks had taken Larry aside and asked him if Ren was using.
He grabbed a towel. This was the biggest break of his career, and he was blowing it, all because he couldn’t concentrate. He wanted to hear Isabel’s voice so badly he’d nearly called her a dozen times. But what would he say? That he missed her so much he couldn’t sleep? That his need for her had grown into an ache that never went away? If he hadn’t agreed to attend the harvest feast, he could have slunk off into the night like the reptile he was. Instead, he was going to have his guts wrenched out all over again.
Yesterday he’d run into an American reporter who wanted to know if the rumor he’d heard was true. “Word is, you and Isabel Favor are an item.”
Savannah and her big mouth had already gotten busy. Ren had denied everything, pretended he barely knew who Isabel was. Her fragile reputation could never survive a public liaison with him.
He told himself the same thing he’d been saying for days. At some point an affair either had to end or take the next logical step forward, and there was no next step for two people who were so different. He should have left her alone from the beginning, but the attraction had been more than he could resist. And now, when it was time to walk away, some needy part of him still wanted her to think well of him afterward. Maybe that was why he was trying so hard to come up with at least one good memory he could hand her before they said their last good-bye.
He flushed the toilet he hadn’t used and went back out. The conversation stopped when he appeared, which took away the mystery of what they’d been talking about. Oliver, he noticed, had left. Not a good sign.
Jenks pushed his half glasses on top of his head. “Sit down, Ren.”
Instead of dropping into a chair as he should have to show that he understood the gravity of the situation, Ren wandered over to the bar and popped a bottle of Pellegrino. Only after he’d taken a slug did he sit. His agent shot him a warning look.
“Larry and I have been talking,” Jenks said. “He keeps reassuring me that you’re totally committed to this project, but I’m having some serious doubts. If there’s a problem, I want you to put it on the table so we can deal with it.”
“No problem.” A bead of sweat had formed near his hairline. He knew he had to say something that would reassure Jenks, and he tried to find the right words, only to hear himself come out with the opposite. “I want a child psychologist on the set whenever the kids are there. The best you can find, got it? I’ll be damned if I’m going to be responsible for any little girls’ nightmares.”