Genuine Lies

though her body felt too light, her head too hazy.
    She remembered that they had driven over to pick Brandon up—at her insistence. She couldn’t have stood it if he’d heard from the television. Still, she hadn’t been able to tell him everything, only that there’d been an accident—a pitiful euphemism for murder—and that Eve had been killed.
    He’d cried a little, his natural emotion for a woman who had been kind to him. Julia wondered how and when she would find the way to tell him that woman had been his grandmother.
    But that was for later. Brandon was sleeping, safe. Perhaps a little sad, but safe. Paul was not.
    She found him on the deck, looking out to the sea that plunged in black waves onto black sand. For a moment she thought her heart would break. He was silhouetted in themoonlight, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of the jeans he must have pulled on when he’d left her alone in bed.
    She didn’t have to see his face, his eyes. She didn’t have to hear his voice. She could feel his grief.
    Uncertain if she would help him more by going to him, or staying away, she stood where she was.
    He knew she was there. From the moment she’d stepped into the doorway, her scent had carried to him. And her sorrow. For most of the night he’d been doing what needed to be done, automatically. Making the necessary calls, screening others. Eating the soup she’d insisted on heating, browbeating her into taking the pills that would help her rest.
    Now he didn’t even have the strength to sleep.
    “When I was fifteen, just before my sixteenth birthday,” he began, still watching the water roll dark toward the sand. “Eve taught me to drive. I was here on a visit, and one day she just pointed to her car. A goddamn Mercedes. She said ‘Get in, kid. You might as well learn to drive on the right side of the road first.’”
    He pulled a cigar from his pocket. The flare of the match etched the misery on his face, then plunged it into shadows again.
    “I was terrified, and so excited my feet were shaking on the pedals. For an hour I drove all over Beverly Hills, bucking, stalling out, bumping over curbs. I nearly creamed a Rolls, and she never blinked. Just threw her head back and laughed.”
    The smoke burned his throat. He threw the cigar over the rail, then leaned on it. “God, I loved her.”
    “I know.” She went to him and put her arms around him.
    In silence, they held on to each other, and thought of Eve.

The world grieved. Eve would have enjoyed it. She copped the front page of
People
along with a six-page spread.
    Nightline
dedicated an entire segment to her. Eve Benedict festivals preempted regular programming on nearly every channel. Including cable. The
National Enquirer
was screaming that her spirit haunted the back lot of her old studio. Enterprising street people were selling T-shirts, mugs, and posters faster than they could be manufactured.
    One day before the Oscars, and Hollywood was draped in black glitter. How she would have laughed.
    Paul tried to bury his grief, imagining her reaction to the tributes—tacky and triumphant. But there were so many things, countless things, that reminded him of her.
    And there was Julia.
    She moved through each day, doing what needed to be done, her energy constant and practical. Yet there was a haunted desperation in her eyes he couldn’t ease. She’d given her statement to Frank, spending hours at the station going over every detail she remembered. Her seamless control hadtorn only once—the first time Frank had played back one of the tapes. The moment she’d heard Eve’s rich, husky voice, she’d bolted to her feet, excused herself, and dashed away to be violently ill in the ladies’ room.
    After that, she managed to sit through every replay, corroborating the tape with her own notes, adding the date, the circumstance of the interview, the mood, her own interpretation.
    And during those three miserable days, she and Brandon had stayed in Malibu while Paul had made arrangements for the funeral.
    Eve hadn’t wanted the simple. When had she ever? Her instructions had been left for Paul in the hands of her lawyers, and had been crystal-clear. She’d bought the lot—prime real estate, she’d called it—nearly a year before. Just as she’d chosen her own coffin. A gleaming sapphire blue lined in snowy white silk. Even the guest list with predetermined seating arrangements had been included, as if she’d planned the ultimate