Woman in Blue Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF EILEEN GOUDGE

  “Eileen Goudge writes like a house on fire, creating characters you come to love and hate to leave.” —Nora Roberts, #1 New York Times–bestselling author

  Woman in Red

  “Once you start this wonderful book, you won’t be able to put it down.” —Kristin Hannah, New York Times–bestselling author

  “Beautifully intertwines … two stories, two generations … [Goudge’s] characters are appealing both despite of and because of their problems.” —Library Journal

  “Eileen Goudge has crafted a beautiful tale of loss, redemption and hope. Woman in Red is a masterpiece.” —Barbara Delinsky, New York Times–bestselling author

  Blessing in Disguise

  “Powerful, juicy reading.” —San Jose Mercury News

  The Diary

  “A lovely book, tender, poignant and touching. It was a joy to read.” —Debbie Macomber, New York Times–bestselling author

  Garden of Lies

  “A page-turner … with plenty of steamy sex.” —New Woman

  “Goes down like a cool drink on a hot day.” —Self

  One Last Dance

  “Enlightening and entertaining.” —The Plain Dealer

  Such Devoted Sisters

  “Double-dipped passion … in a glamorous, cut-throat world … Irresistible.” —San Francisco Chronicle

  Thorns of Truth

  “Goudge’s adroit handling of sex and love should keep her legion of fans well-sated.” —Kirkus Reviews

  Woman in Black

  “This novel is the ultimate indulgence —dramatic, involving, and ringing with emotional truth.” —Susan Wiggs, New York Times–bestselling author

  Woman in Blue

  “Romance, both old and new, abounds. Fans of Goudge’s previous books, romance readers, and lovers of family sagas will enjoy the plot, characters, and resolution.” —Booklist

  “A touching story with wide appeal.” —Publishers Weekly

  Woman in Blue

  Eileen Goudge

  To my sister, Patty, who lives by the sea.

  Those who inspire in us

  the greatest affection are not always

  those for whom we have the highest regard.

  —From Horace, by George Sand

  PROLOGUE

  Reno, Nevada, 1981

  The first time Kerrie Ann disappeared was only the warning shot, as it turned out. Lindsay was fixing them something to eat and looked up from scraping scrambled eggs onto their plates to ask Kerrie Ann if she wanted ketchup with hers, only to find the folding chair in which her three-year-old sister had been sitting just moments before, swinging her small feet in their dirty pink Keds back and forth, back and forth, in that annoying way of hers that caused the chair’s hollow aluminum frame to squeak like a rusty hinge, empty. The only indication that she’d been there were her stubby crayons, strewn over the tabletop next to the open Washoe County yellow pages, where she’d been coloring an ad for pet supplies—a cartoon dog begging for treats. It was as if she’d vanished into thin air: Tabitha playing games on Bewitched.

  “Kerrie Ann?” Lindsay kept her voice low so as not to wake their mom. Crystal’s shift ended when most people were getting up to go to work. Often she didn’t get home until the sky was light, and then she would sleep straight through until the following evening. Crystal’s one ironclad rule was that she not be disturbed during those hours. Damn it, Linds. I bust my ass for a few lousy dollar bills off the craps tables, and I’m supposed to wipe your snotty little noses on top of it?

  Kerrie Ann wasn’t in the living room when Lindsay checked. There was no muffled giggle from behind the sofa—an old nubby beige one that smelled of mildew and was marred by a coffee-colored stain in the shape of the African continent—where at night they slept toe-to-toe, Lindsay with her knees tucked up to give her sister more room. No singsong voice calling, “See if you can find me!” The only sounds were those of a car engine firing noisily in the parking lot below and the asthmatic gurgling of the window unit as it sluggishly stirred the hot, close air of room 22 in the Lucky Seven Motel without doing much to cool it.

  Lindsay crept to the bedroom door and cracked it open as quietly as possible. Pale fingers of light poking through the drawn blinds traced the outline of the figure sprawled faceup atop the unmade bed. Crystal was still dressed in the clothes she’d worn to work the night before—tight white jeans and a stretchy purple top with spangles sewn across the front—her makeup smeared and her platinum hair mussed. Something winked at Lindsay in the darkness: the toe of a patent-leather high heel peeking like a shiny black nose from the hamster’s nest of discarded clothing on the floor beside the bed.

  There was no sign of Kerrie Ann. If she’d gone in to use the bathroom, Crystal would have been up by now, cursing a blue streak and blaming Lindsay. Another of Crystal’s rules was that they use Miss Honi’s bathroom downstairs if they had to go rather than disturb her.

  Lindsay checked theirs anyway, just to be sure. But Kerrie Ann wasn’t on the toilet or playing hide-and-seek behind the shower curtain. Lindsay was tiptoeing back across the room when her mother stirred, eyelids flickering. She froze. But Crystal only muttered something in her sleep, then flopped over onto her belly. Lindsay reached the door safely, easing it shut. Leaning against the wall, she let out a slow breath. That had been a close call. What if her mother had woken up to find Kerrie Ann missing? You didn’t want to get Crystal riled up before she’d had her coffee and first cigarette of the day. She’d never actually hit either of them, but when she was in one of her moods, things could get ugly very quickly. Lindsay was only in sixth grade, but she knew every curse word there was.

  She was getting that tight feeling in her stomach again, a feeling that almost always had to do with Kerrie Ann. Before her sister had been born, when it had been just her and Crystal, she’d managed okay. By the time she was in kindergarten, in addition to being able to feed and dress herself, she could read street signs, count change, and order Chinese takeout over the phone. By third grade she was doing most of the shopping and cooking. She was also well-versed in the facts of life, thanks to her mother’s habit of bringing home strange men: Often Lindsay would wake to muffled thumping and moans in the bedroom or stumble into the bathroom in the middle of the night to find a naked man taking a whiz. She’d grown to accept it the way other children her age took it for granted that everyone had a mommy and a daddy. Some of the men had been nice. One, a bearded, heavyset man named Stan who was a fry cook at the all-night diner where Crystal sometimes caught a bite to eat after work, had shown her how to make a Western omelet. And she’d picked up a few phrases of Spanish from a blackjack dealer named Luis.

  The winter Lindsay turned nine Crystal announced that she was taking some time off work. She grew fat, slept even more than usual, and was in a bad mood most of the time. The following summer she went off to the hospital. A day later she returned carrying a small, fleece-wrapped bundle. “Meet your new sister,” she said, depositing the bundle in Lindsay’s arms. Lindsay unfolded a corner of the blanket to reveal a small, scrunched-up face with a pair of bright blue eyes peering from its reddish folds. Eyes that fixed on her like a homing device. She and her baby sister stared at each other for a minute, taking each other’s measure. Then the infant stiffened and began to howl loudly enough to bring old Mr. Huff stumping up from downstairs to see what all the commotion was about.

  Life hadn’t been the same since.

  Now Lindsay had this whole other person to look after besides herself. And Kerrie Ann was a handful, no doubt about it. Her baby-fine, strawberry-blond hair was perpetually snarled, and she’d whine and cry whenever Lindsay tried to unravel the knots using her fingers or the
hairbrush. When Kerrie Ann was a toddler, everything she could put into her mouth—dirt, caterpillars, old chewed gum off park benches, once even a poker chip—had gone in one end and out the other. And she’d had every childhood ailment known to humankind, from earaches to allergic rashes to head lice.

  Plus she was as slippery as a goldfish. In stores she was forever wandering off, and by the time Lindsay would track her down, her pockets would be stuffed with pilfered loot that Lindsay would then have to return to the proper shelves. At the park, where Lindsay took her on nice days when it wasn’t too hot, her little sister was a blur, streaking down slides and scampering like a monkey over the jungle gym, from which she always had to be pried, wailing in protest, when it was time to go home. Once she’d chased a Mr. Softee truck, crossing a busy street to get to it. She might have been hit by a car or, if the nice lady who’d brought her back hadn’t found her, still been out there roaming the streets, a red-haired menace to society.

  Only at Miss Honi’s was her sister content to stay put. Miss Honi Love, who lived in the unit directly below theirs, looked after Kerrie Ann during the hours when Lindsay was in school. But since she got paid only sporadically, Crystal being forever short on cash, and since she was a good-hearted woman who genuinely cared for the girls, it had developed over time into something far more than a job. The way Miss Honi fussed over Kerrie Ann, anyone would have thought she was her own little girl. And Kerrie Ann was just as devoted to Miss Honi. Lindsay would arrive home from school to find her little sister either playing quietly with Miss Honi’s angel collection or curled up on Miss Honi’s lap in the burgundy plush recliner in front of the TV. The two of them could sit like that for hours, Miss Honi smoking her Pall Malls and Kerrie Ann sucking her thumb, watching the dramas unfolding on Days of Our Lives and All My Children.

  Sometimes Miss Honi told stories about what it had been like back in the day, when she’d been a top draw at gentlemen’s clubs like Diamond Jim’s and the Silver Dollar Lounge. She’d even shown them a photo of herself back then, all creamy limbs and Cleopatra eyes, her sculpted red-blond curls piled high atop her head, wearing spike heels and a spangled bikini bottom, a pair of tassels the only thing covering her breasts. She’d looked like a life-size party favor.

  Now she was plump and middle-aged. She often joked that she’d be lucky to squeeze one of her big toes into that old costume of hers. She still liked to dress up, only now it was capri slacks and frilly, low-cut blouses that showed off her sizable bosom or sundresses with cinched waists in a variety of exotic prints. Miss Honi was inordinately proud of her dainty feet and owned several dozen pairs of shoes. Even relaxing at home, she wore marabou-trimmed satin mules, which Kerrie Ann loved tottering around in when playing dress-up.

  It occurred to Lindsay that her sister might have gone to Miss Honi’s. Where else?

  She let herself out the front door, easing it shut behind her. It was late, the sun dissolving like a giant lemon drop into the far-off mountaintops, streaking the horizon with brilliant bands of cherry and tangerine. A handful of stars winked in the sky’s deepening blue, and off in the distance, the casinos and clubs along the strip formed their own constellation, which cast a candy-colored glow over the streets around it. The club where Crystal worked was but a remote star in that constellation.

  From where Lindsay stood, looking out over the railing of the balcony that wrapped around the top floor of the two-story motel, she could see the swimming pool below. It was fenced in, but the lock on the gate had long ago been pried open, and the manager, Mr. Boyle, hadn’t bothered to get it fixed. It wasn’t unusual when she came home from school for Lindsay to find a group of neighborhood boys gathered by the pool, drinking beer and generally being obnoxious. No one ever went for a dip, though. If there was one place in the U.S. of A. where you were likely to contract a tropical disease, Crystal was fond of griping, it was the pool at the Lucky Seven Motel.

  It would also be easy for a three-year-old to fall in and drown.

  Lindsay’s stomach clenched as she set off in the direction of the stairway, her bare soles slapping against concrete still warm from the sun: a girl just shy of twelve, tall for her age with long, coltish legs brown from the sun and the nubs of breasts showing under the faded Garfield T-shirt she wore with her navy shorts. She walked fast, her dark brown ponytail bouncing at the nape of her neck, the curl at the tip going from a comma to an exclamation point with each forceful step.

  She was so intent on finding her little sister that she was only dimly aware of noises drifting from behind the sun-bleached coral doors lining the walkway—the muttering of TV sets, a phone ringing, a mother yelling at her kids to shut up. Kerrie Ann was a pain in the butt, but she was her pain in the butt. She and Crystal were the only family Lindsay had. Lindsay didn’t even know who her father was, much less where he lived. And her grandparents on her mother’s side, who lived in Crystal’s hometown in Ohio, apparently wanted nothing to do with either their wayward daughter or her illegitimate kids. Crystal hadn’t seen or spoken to anyone in her family since she’d disgraced them by running off at the age of seventeen, when she’d been pregnant with Lindsay.

  Lindsay could have found her way to Miss Honi’s unit blindfolded. The scent alone, a potent mixture of perfume and cigarettes, would have been enough to guide her. She knocked on the door, and after a minute or so it swung open, her sister’s babysitter materializing like an oversized nymph from the cloud of smoke that wafted forth. Miss Honi had been to the beauty parlor that day, and her hair, the yellow-red of marigolds, was piled atop her head in a mass of sculpted ringlets that added several inches to her already statuesque height. She was wearing a low-cut Hawaiian-print sundress, which emphasized her ample curves, and a pair of color-coordinated lime-green sandals whose straps were decorated with rows of plastic daisies. The pendant on her necklace, sparkly pink stones in the shape of an angel, nestled in the cleft between her breasts, and a cigarette was propped decorously in the fork between two scarlet-nailed fingers. It was like encountering a neon sign in the middle of nowhere.

  “Lord almighty, sugar, what’s got into you? You look like you got chased here by a rabid skunk,” she drawled, taking note of Lindsay’s flushed face and the sweat beaded on her brow. She peered past Lindsay into the shadows beyond the porch light. “Where’s my baby girl?”

  Lindsay felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. “I … I thought she was with you.”

  Miss Honi grew very still. From the TV blaring in the background came the manic cackle of a laugh track. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying you don’t know where your sister is?”

  Lindsay swallowed hard, blinking back tears. “I only turned my back for a minute, I swear. She was right there.”

  Miss Honi frowned. “Your mama know about this?”

  Lindsay shook her head, saying miserably, “I was supposed to be watching her.”

  Miss Honi’s frown deepened, her ruby-lipped mouth pursing the way it did when she had something to say but was too polite to say it. Something to do with Crystal, no doubt. Lindsay had overheard her talking on the phone once, muttering to whoever was at the other end, “Shoot me for saying so, but if motherhood was something they taught in school, she’da flunked that course.”

  Lindsay didn’t have to ask whom she meant.

  Miss Honi’s upbeat tone didn’t mask the worry on her face. “Don’t you fret none, sugar. We’ll find her. She can’t have gotten very far, an itty-bitty thing like her.”

  Fleas were itty-bitty, too, Lindsay thought, but just try catching one.

  Together they headed to the motel’s office, where they found Mr. Boyle with his balding head bent over a racing form. “No, I ain’t seen her,” he informed them, muttering under his breath as he went back to circling his picks. “You folks oughta keep a closer watch on your kids.”

  “And you, mister, oughta watch your mouth.” Miss Honi leaned down and thrust her face into his, eyes narrowed to emerald slits and her bonne
t of marigold curls quivering as if from a strong gust. Before the stunned manager could react, she spun on her heels and sashayed out the door.

  Lindsay didn’t share her indignation. Mr. Boyle might be a mean old bastard, but he was right: She should’ve kept a closer watch on her sister. If anything were to happen to Kerrie Ann …

  As if picking up on her thoughts, Miss Honi reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “She’ll turn up. You’ll see. She’s got the Rocky Balboa of guardian angels looking out for her, that one.” Miss Honi’s angel collection wasn’t just for show; she believed in angels the way Lindsay once had in Santa Claus, a million years ago.

  And maybe there were such things, Lindsay thought. All those close calls from which her sister had escaped unscathed couldn’t be chalked up to pure luck, could they? Like the time Kerrie Ann had tripped and fallen, charging down the stairs to the parking lot, and would have tumbled all the way to the bottom if one of her sneakers hadn’t caught in the railing. And the time she’d swallowed a mothball, thinking it was candy; if Miss Honi hadn’t rushed her to the hospital, she might have died.

  Lindsay struggled to keep up with Miss Honi as the tall woman clipclopped across the parking lot in her high-heeled sandals at a rapid pace, making a beeline for the pool. It was deserted inside the chain-link enclosure when they reached it, with no sign of any recent activity, but they circled it nonetheless, with a grim sense of purpose.

  On the far side of the fenced enclosure was the cinder-block shed housing the laundry facility, which consisted of a pair of coin-fed washing machines and dryers that were out of service as often as not. It was deserted as well. Not that Lindsay had expected to find her sister there, or anywhere on the premises for that matter. The Lucky Seven Motel wasn’t a place where people got lucky; it was where they landed when their luck ran out. Except for the handful of year-round residents, like Crystal and Miss Honi, most guests stuck around only long enough to make the next score, turn around a losing streak, or get pawned valuables out of hock. Fights born of desperation were commonplace, and the police were frequently called in to settle disputes. It wasn’t the kind of place where it was safe to wander around after dark. Especially for a three-year-old girl who didn’t know enough to stay out of trouble.