Genuine Lies

of the church. He noted tears and solemn eyes, but as many sharp glances, studied poses. Here and there clutches of people were murmuring among themselves. Projects would be discussed, deals would be made. In Hollywood, no opportunity could be missed.
    Eve would understand, and approve.
    Julia hadn’t intended to go up to the coffin, take her last look, say the last good-bye. If it was cowardice, she accepted it. But when she saw Victor staring down at the woman he loved, his big hands clenched, his broad shoulders slumped, she was unable to simply slide into the pew.
    “I need to …”
    Paul only nodded. “Do you want me to go with you?”
    “No, I … I think I should go alone.” The first step away from him was the hardest. Then she took another, and another. When she was beside Victor, she searched her heart. These were the people who had made her, she thought, the woman who slept so beautifully against the white silk. The man who watched her sleep with grief-ravaged eyes. Perhaps she couldn’t think of them as parents, but she could feel. Going with her heart, she laid a hand on his.
    “She loved you, more than she loved anyone else. One of the last things she told me was how happy you had made her.”
    His fingers convulsed on Julia’s. “I never gave her enough. Never could.”
    “You gave her more than you realize, Victor. To so many others she was a star, a product, an image. To you she was a woman.
The
woman.” She pressed her lips together, hoping what she was doing, what she was saying, was right. “She once told me her only real regret was waiting until after the movie was finished.”
    He turned then, looking away from Eve to the daughter he didn’t know he had. It was then Julia realized she had inherited her father’s eyes—that deep, pure gray that could go from smoke to ice as colored by emotion. The knowledge had her taking a quick step back, but his hand was already coming down to cover hers.
    “I’m going to miss her, every moment of the rest of my life.”
    Julia let her fingers link with his and led him to the pew where Paul was waiting.
    The line of cars sedately cruising to Forest Hills streamed like a black ribbon for miles. Inside the individual cars some grieved deeply. Others cuddled in the cool lushness of the rented limos mourned in an abstract, general way, as people do when they hear on the late news that a celebrity has died. They mourned the passing of a name, of a face, of a personality. It wasn’t an insult to the person behind the face, but a tribute to its impact.
    Some were simply grateful to have been included in the guest list. For surely such an event would warrant plenty of print space. This, too, was not an insult. It was simply business.
    There were others who grieved not at all, who sat in the silent cave of the big, smooth car holding pleasure in their hearts as dark and shiny as the gleaming paint that glinted in the sunlight.
    In some ways, this, too, could be considered a tribute.
    But Julia, who stepped out of the car to make the short walk to the gravesite fit none of these categories. She had already buried her parents, already taken that long, difficult step from daughter to orphan. And yet, moving with her with each step, was a deep, dragging ache. Today she would bury another mother, face yet again her own ultimate mortality.
    As she stood, smelling grass, earth, and the heavy curtain of flowers, she blocked out the present and let her mind travel back into the past.
    Laughing with Eve beside the pool, drinking a little too much wine, speaking much too frankly. How had it been that she had been able to say so much to Eve?
    Sweating together as Fritz whipped them into shape. Grunted curses, breathless complaints. The odd intimacy of two half-naked women trapped in the same cage of vanity.
    Shared secrets, candid confidences, unwrapped lies. How easy it had been to forge a friendship.
    Isn’t that what Eve had wanted? Julia asked herself. To ease her into friendship, to make her care, to force her to see Eve as a person, whole, vulnerable. And then …
    What did it matter? Eve was dead. The rest of the truth, if there was a rest, would never come out.
    Julia mourned, even as she wondered if she could ever forgive.
    “Shit.” Frank scrubbed his hands over his face. His job was pushing from him at all angles. He saw only one route, and it led straight to Julia Summers.
    All of his professional life, Frank had relied heavily on instinct. A good