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My Darling,

My heart beats faster knowing I have the right to call you that My darling What have I done in ht I dream of you, of the sound of your voice, the scent of your skin, the taste of your lory ofI wake, afraid it’s all just a dreaine it, hoe sat by the fire on that cold, clear night, talking as we had never talked before?

Only friends, as I knehat I felt for you, what I wanted with you, could never be How could such a woman ever want someone like me? Then, then, did it happen? Did you coether like madness while the fire burned and the ? If it was, I want to live in dreams forever

My body aches for yours now that we are so far fro for your voice, but not only on the radio or the record player I long for your face, but not only in photographs or on the movie screen It’s you I want, the you inside The beautiful, passionate, real wohts ere able to steal after

Co Come back to me and to our secret world where only you and I exist

I send you allin this new year

I am now and forever,

Only Yours

Here? Cilla wondered, carefully folding the letter again Had it been here in this house, in front of the fire? Had Janet found love and happiness in this house in the final eighteen , another of her brief encounters?

Cilla counted out the envelopes, noting they were all addressed the sah soht, and the last postmarked only ten short days before Janet took her life in this house

Fingers tree this time, she noted

This stops now The calls, the threats, the hysteria stop now It’s over, Janet The last time was ato my wife, but then I’ve seen the sickness in you tiain Understand er all I’ve built, and my future, for you You claim you love me, but what does a woman like you know about love? Your whole life is built on lies and illusions, and for a tinant, as you claim, there’s no proof the responsibility is ain with exposure, or you will pay for it, I promise you

Stay in Hollyhere your lies are currency They’re worth nothing here You are not wanted

"Pregnant" Cilla’s whispered word seeh the house

Shaken, she pushed off the stool to open the back door, to stand and breathe and let the chilly air cool her face

CULVER CITY 1941

"To understand," Janet told Cilla, "you have to start at the beginning This is close enough"

The hand holding Cilla’s was san as an old photograph, faded and frayed, and slowly took on color and depth

Two long braids lay over the shoulders of a gingha flowers Those brilliant, cold and clear blue eyes stared out at the world The illusion of it

All around Cilla and the child ould becorandmother people bustled, on foot or in the open-sided jitneys that plowed along the wide avenue Fifth Avenue, Cilla realized-or its movie counterpart

Here was MGM at its zenith More stars than the heavens could hold, and the child clutching her hand would be one of its brightest

"I’ for three years now Vaudeville first I wanted to sing, to perfored by a thousand ar a star," she continued as she led Cilla along "A hts All the candy in the candy shop"

Janet paused, spun into a co "I can dance, too I can learn a routine with one rehearsal My voice is ic in my throat I remember all my lines, but h she knew the answer She’d read the interviews, the books, the biographies She knew the child

"Because I believe it Every time, I believe the story I make it real for me so it’s real for all the people who come to watch me in the movie show Didn’t you?"

"Sometimes I did But that meant it hurt when it stopped"

The child nodded, and an adult sorrow clouded her eyes "It’s like dying when it stops, so you have to find things that ain But that’s for later I don’t know that yet Now, it’s all bright" The child threw out her arer than Judy and Shirley, and the camera loves me almost as much as I love it I’ll make four movies this year, but this one makes me a real star ’The Little Comet’ is what they’ll call’I’ll Get By’ and nature song"

"They’ll play it at my funeral I don’t know that yet, either This is Lot One Brownstone Street" Just a hint of priss entered her voice as she educated her granddaughter, and tugged her along with the small, soft hand "The O’Haras live in New York, a down-on-their-luck theatrical troupe They think it’s just another Depression-erain the factory wheel But it changes everything They’ll be riding on the tail of the Little Co addict, but that’s another thing I don’t know yet I owe that to ave theht’s sleep and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the " Bitter, adult eyes stared out of the child’s pretty face "She wanted to be a star, but she didn’t have it I did, so she pushed, and she pushed, and she used ed ned ed ave me pills so I could make more I hated her-not yet, but soon Today, I don’t tails "Today I’ I always knohat to do with a song"

She gestured "That’s the soundstage That’s where the hosts and drea dresses and tuxes passed right through them "But in there, it’s real While the camera’s on, it’s all there is"

"It’s not real, Janet It’s a job"

The blue eyes filled armth "Maybe for you, but for me, it was my true love, and my salvation"

"It killed you"

"It made me first I wanted this That’s what you have to understand to figure out the rest I wanted thisI wanted ever again, until it was nearly over Those few , and even the director’s eyes blur with tears When, after he yells ’Cut,’ the crew, the cast all break into applause and I feel their love for me That’s all I wanted in the world, and what I’d try to find again and again and again Sometimes I did I was happy here, when I was seven especially"

She sighed, smiled "I would’ve lived here if they’d letfrom New York to ancient Rome, froround for a child? This was horateful"

"They used you up"

"Not today, not today" Frowning in annoyance, Janet waved the thought away "Today everything’s perfect I have everything I ever wanted today"

"You bought the Little Farm, thousands of miles from here A world away from this"

"That was later, wasn’t it? And besides, I always came back I needed this I couldn’t live without love"

"Is that why you killed yourself?"

"There are so s It’s hard to pick one That’s what you want to do That’s what you’ll need to do"

"But if you were pregnant-"

"If, if, if" Laughing, Janet danced over the sidewalk, up the steps of a dignified brownstone façade, then back down "If is for tomorrow, for next year People will play if about my whole life after I’m dead I’ll be ihed again, then swung Gene Kelly style on a la aboutme back just like the Little Farm You’re the only one who can"

She juo It’s tiinning for me" She blew Cilla a kiss, then ran off down the sidewalk

As the illusions of New York faded, as Cilla slowly surfaced fro voice soaring

I’ll get by, as long as I have you

But you didn’t, Cilla thought as she stared at the soft sunlight sliding through the s You didn’t get by

Sighing, she crawled out of the sleeping bag and, scrubbing sleep from her face, walked to theto stare out at the hills and ht about a world, a life, three thousand miles west

"If that was home, that hat you needed, why did you come all the way here to die?"

Was it for hinant, and they covered that up? Or was that just a lie to stop your lover fro your affair?

Who was he? Was he still alive, still in Virginia? And how did you keep the affair off the microscope slide? Why did you? was a keener question, Cilla decided

Was he the reason you unplugged the phone that night, then chased the pills with vodka, the vodka with more pills until you went away? Not because of Johnnie then, Cilla rief of losing your indulged eighteen-year-old son Or not only because of that

But a pregnancy so close to a death? Was that overwhelht in the dark?

It mattered, Cilla realized All of it randmother, but because she’d held the child’s hand in the dreae of impossible stardom

It mattered Somehow she had to find the answers

Even if her mother had been a reliable source of inforht not-it was hours too early to call Dilly In any case, within thirty in to arrive So she’d mull all this, let it turn around in her head while she worked

Cilla picked up the stack of letters she’d read, retied the faded ribbon Once again she tucked the table currently standing as a work area, along with her stacks of files and houred out what to do about them, the letters were her secret Just as they’d been Janet’s