Sweet Revenge

family album for a woman who had had no one but herself and a small boy.
    She came back blowing dust from a large red scrapbook. “You know how I kept books on my favorite celebrities.”
    “Your star books.”
    “Yes.” Unashamed, Mary sat down and opened it. WhenChauncy jumped on it, she tut-tutted and patiently set him back on the floor. “This is Phoebe Spring. Look here, this picture would have been taken at the premiere of her first movie. She couldn’t have been more than twenty.”
    He moved over to sit on the arm of her chair. The woman in the picture had her hand on the arm of a man, but you didn’t notice him. Only her. Her dress was some fantasy of sequins and sparkles with her hair dark and full around the shoulders. Even in black and white her luster shone through. Her eyes were all innocent excitement, her body all promise.
    “It made her a star,” Mary mused, flipping through the pages. There were other pictures, some studio-posed, others candid. She was never less than beautiful. Through the pictures, some curling at the edges with age, she exuded sex. Taped with them were snippets of gossip Mary had clipped from movie magazines and tabloids. Rumors of Phoebe’s affairs with her leading men, with producers, directors, politicians.
    “Here, this one was at the Oscars when she was nominated for
Tomorrow’s Child.
Pity she didn’t win, but she was escorted by Cary Grant, and that counts for something.”
    “I saw that movie. She fell in love with the wrong man, bore his child, then had to fight against him and his wealthy parents for custody.”
    “I cried buckets—every time I watched it. She was so valiant and mistreated.” Mary sighed again and turned the page.
    There was a picture of Phoebe in some stiff, pale satin, curtsying gracefully to the queen, then one of her dancing with a dark, sharp-featured man in a tuxedo. Philip didn’t have to be told it was Adrianne’s father. The eyes, the bone structure, the coloring, said everything.
    “This?”
    “That’s her husband. King Abdu something or other. She married only once, you know. Oh, the papers and magazines were full of it. How they met right here in London while she was filming
White Roses.
How they fell in love the minute they clapped eyes on each other. He sent her two dozen white roses every day until her hotel suite was like a greenhouse. He booked a whole restaurant so they could havedinner alone. Him being a king and all made it ever so romantic.”
    From her position as an onlooker, even after more than a quarter century, Mary’s eyes still misted. “People started remembering Grace Kelly and Rita Hayworth, and sure enough she ended up leaving the movies and marrying him. Going off to that tiny little country over there.” She indicated it with a wave of her hand.
    “Jaquir.”
    “Yes, that’s it. Like a fairy tale it was. Here’s a picture of her on her wedding day. Looks like a queen.”
    The dress was breathtaking with layers of lace and miles of silk. Even under the tulle, Phoebe’s hair had shone like a beacon. She’d looked radiantly happy, achingly young. In her arms she had carried white roses, dozens of them. And around her neck, glittering, glowing, all but burning through the photograph was The Sun and the Moon.
    Both diamond and pearl dropped, one resting tight beneath the other, from a heavy double-braided chain of gold. The settings were like starbursts, ornate, old-fashioned, and glorious.
    He may have been retired, but the tips of his fingers itched, and his pulse increased. To hold that, to own that for even a moment, would be like owning the world.
    “After they were married there wasn’t much news, and hardly ever pictures. There’s some custom over there against pictures. You heard she was having a baby, then that she’d had a little girl. That would be your Adrianne.”
    “Yes.”
    “People talked for a while, then you read less and less until she showed up in New York with her daughter a few years later. It seems the marriage wasn’t a happy one, and she ended up leaving him to go back home and pick up her career. There’s an interview here soon after, but she didn’t say much other than she’d missed acting.”
    She turned the page and there was another picture. This Phoebe was still beautiful, but the lushness, the glory, was gone. In its place were strain and nerves. Beside her was Adrianne. She couldn’t have been more than eight, and small for her age. She stood