Читать книгу Child of Her Dreams - Joan Kilby - Страница 7

“BREATHE IN, signorina.”

Geena sucked in her stomach, and the Italian seamstress wielded needle and thread to take a tuck at the waist of her ivory silk creation. Holding her breath made Geena feel even fainter; she hadn’t eaten for two days in preparation for the launch of a new collection of Milan’s hottest designer.

Throbbing techno music swirled through the dressing room as models returned from the catwalk, hurriedly stripping off one set of clothes in exchange for another. Geena’s tightly strung nerves jittered with the warring effects of too many pills and too little food and sleep. She reached for another cigarette.

Lydia, her agent, glided over and ran a hand down Geena’s back, pinching as though testing for flab. Penciled eyebrows lowered under a fringe of jet-black hair. “You look…fabulous, darling.”

Geena tweaked the strands of her waifish coif and shook her head in self-disgust. “I need to lose five pounds before the Paris show.”

“You seem on edge, Geena.” Lydia eased the cigarette from between Geena’s fingers and took a drag. “I’ve got plenty of girls for Paris if you want some time off at a Swiss spa.”

Geena’s heart raced at the thinly veiled suggestion that she wasn’t needed. “I’m fine. Honestly.”

“Think about it,” Lydia said, blowing smoke over her shoulder as she drifted off to another client.

Geena’s worried gaze followed her agent in the mirror. If Lydia wasn’t insisting on her coming to Paris, if Lydia wanted her to take time out to go to a spa, Geena must be overweight. Maybe even on her way out.

Glancing at her image, she saw haunted blue eyes shrouded in gray and purple eyeshadow. Maybe Lydia wanted to replace her with some dewy-skinned teenager. At twenty-eight Geena was getting old to be a supermodel.

She was aware suddenly that her breathing was shallow and her rapidly beating heart had taken on an irregular rhythm. Please, no, not palpitations now; she was due on the runway in seconds.

She gulped air, trying to fill her lungs, scrabbled in her tote bag for a vial of pills and swallowed two with a gulp of mineral water. This was crazy. Forget Paris; after Milan she needed a break. After pushing her feet into a pair of four-inch heels, she made her way to the stage entrance.

The master of ceremonies detained her with a hand on her arm. “You okay, signorina? Your face, she is blanca—white.”

Geena ignored the spinning in her head and gave him a brilliant false smile. “I’m fine.”

She willed herself forward with an exaggerated sway of her hips and emerged into a blaze of klieg lights and popping camera flashes. Beneath the music and blinding lights she was uneasily aware of her erratic heart. For whole seconds she couldn’t feel a beat. Then, just when she was sure she was about to die, blood thundered through the chambers as her heart raced to make up time.

She wanted to turn around right then, but the designer had paid big money for her to make an appearance. Smile, Gee. You can do it.

Midway down the catwalk, she faltered as pain traveled along both arms and a massive hand seemed to reach into her chest to squeeze her heart. She stopped dead and half turned, as if to go back to the dressing room. The next instant, everything went black.

Geena drifted upward, confusedly wondering where she was, what was happening. Below, a model lay facedown on the catwalk, long limbs sprawled awkwardly. A crowd had gathered around her, and people were shouting, gesticulating. Someone rolled the model over. With a jolt, Geena saw her own face staring unseeingly at her.

She was high above the room, floating among the klieg lights. Odd, she couldn’t feel their heat. With detached interest she contemplated the hysterical urgency of the people trying to revive her. Some of the other models were crying. Excited shouts for a doctor yielded a small man in a black suit pushing his way through the crowd. Help was on its way, but it was too late.

She was dead.

The babble of voices formed a wall of sound that she turned away from, wanting peace. A tunnel appeared before her, and she went into the cavernous darkness, marveling at the soft, warm atmosphere. Then she was moving, traveling faster and faster through the darkness amid strange whooshing noises that came from nowhere. A pinprick of brilliant white light came into view. As she came closer the light grew larger and brighter, like the light of a trillion suns.

The light was good; she yearned toward it and eagerly allowed herself to be drawn in, for the light was love. Love and joy transcendent, bliss greater than anything she’d ever known. She felt incandescent, glowing with love and peace like the filament of a million-watt lightbulb. Was this a dream? Had doctors pumped some reviving drug into her veins? Perhaps any second she would wake up.

The light vanished.

She was in a small room with pale-green walls. Brown vinyl settees stood catercorner to an end table strewn with magazines and comic books. On one wall was a poster of a giant tooth being scrubbed by a cartoon dolphin, and in another corner stood an empty coatrack.

Geena looked again, and on one settee sat a woman reading a tattered copy of Good Housekeeping. She had long straight honey-blond hair parted in the middle, and her slim figure was clad in a seventies-style lime-green pantsuit.

The woman shut the magazine. Eyes glistening, she rose and reached out. “Geena. My baby.”

“Mom?” Tears came to Geena as she was folded in loving arms. She was only three years old when Sonja Hanson had died, but deep in Geena’s heart and mind was the indelible memory of her mother’s scent, the loving timbre of her voice, the safety of her embrace. “Mom, is it really you?”

“It’s really me.” Sonja wiped away the moisture below each shadowed eye with a gentle swipe of her thumb. “Look at you, all grown up. You’re so beautiful.”

“Oh, Mom, we missed you so much—” Her voice broke. “All those years…”

Tears bled from her mother’s eyes. “I missed you, too. You and your sisters. Don’t cry, darling. Your father and I went to a better place. Truly.”

Drawing back a little, Geena glanced dubiously around the little room. “Is this Heaven? It looks like a dentist’s waiting room.”

Sonja laughed softly. “No, it isn’t Heaven.”

“Then…oh, no, I’ve gone to the other place! Was it the pills? I swear I was going to get off them right after the Paris season.”

Her mother shook her head, smiling sadly. “The pills helped send you to me, but we’re not in the other place, as you put it. It doesn’t exist.”

“Limbo, then?”

Sonja smiled and took her by the hand. “Come, sit down and we’ll talk.”

Geena realized then that although they were communicating, no words had been uttered. She sat with her mother on the settee, hands linked with Sonja’s, and let her thoughts flow outward. “Where’s Dad? When can I see him?”

“I’m sorry, darling, that won’t be possible. It’s not your time.”

“What do you mean? Aren’t I staying here with you?” Now that she’d found her mother after being without her for so many years, losing her again seemed unbearable.

“I’m sorry,” Sonja repeated. “You have important work left to do in life.”

“Modeling?” Geena said bitterly. “It killed me.”

Sonja brushed her fingers through Geena’s wispy auburn bangs, as if she couldn’t help touching her child. “A little glamour can lift people’s spirits if not taken to extremes, but I didn’t mean modeling.”

Before her mother could say what she did mean, Geena had to ask the question that had preyed on her mind her whole life, even though she flinched from the painful memories of her parents’ deaths and the aftermath of that dreadful night. “Mom, there’s something I’ve always wondered about. Was Dad…drunk the night of the crash?”

“No,” Sonja said firmly. “A dog leaped in front of the car. Your father swerved to avoid it and hit a patch of black ice. We skidded and crashed into a tree.”

“I knew it. I mean, not about the dog, but we— Kelly, Erin, Gran and I—knew she couldn’t be telling the truth.” Sonja lifted her eyebrows, and Geena explained. “Greta Vogler planted the idea in everyone’s mind that Dad went off the road because he was drunk.”

Sonja let out a deep sigh and squeezed Geena’s hands. “Try not to let Greta bother you. Forgive her if you can.”

“But how, when she—”

“Trust me, Geena, darling.”

Geena couldn’t understand her mother’s forbearance, but neither did she want to waste precious time talking about Greta Vogler. Heaven was simply being reunited with her mother. Geena could still hardly believe she was here, talking together as if they were sisters.

“I’m afraid it’s time for you to leave,” Sonja told her, as if aware of Geena’s thoughts. “You should go back to Hainesville.”

“Hainesville? What on earth would I do there?” Yet even as she scoffed, the thought of returning to her childhood home filled her soul with a promise of peace. “Maybe a visit would do me good.”

“Live there. People need you.”

Geena laughed. “Me?”

“You have a talent for helping others. When you were little, you took in every stray that came your way.”

“Mom, that was long ago. Besides, I’m dead. How can I help anyone? I want to stay here with you. I really want to see Dad. And Gramps.”

“It’s not your time, Geena.” Her mother hugged her again, then rose. “You must go back.”

“No!” Geena panicked as she realized her mother really meant it. “Mom! Where are you going?”

Sonja opened a door on the far side of the room. Through the crack Geena glimpsed a rambling flower garden crisscrossed with swaths of lush green grass. In the fragrant center, a fountain burbled.

“Mom, take me with you. Don’t leave me!” Geena sobbed, as desperate as a three-year-old watching a coffin being lowered into the ground. “Mommy!”

Her mother returned to wrap her once more in her warm embrace. The light surrounded them both. Love, ineffable and infinite, poured through Geena as she clung to her mother.

“Geena, sweetheart, be brave. We will be together again someday, but for now you must go back.” Sonja’s voice was gentle, but again firm. “A child needs you. You’re going to be a mother.”

For the first time since Geena had arrived in this place, she felt utter disbelief. “I can’t have a baby. I haven’t had a period in over a year.”

“Goodbye, darling,” Sonja said, slowly backing away. “Tell Gran that Gramps misses her. But he doesn’t mind the wait. He has all the time in the universe.” With that, she went through the door and disappeared around a cluster of flowering shrubs.

Geena found herself moving through the tunnel at dizzying speed, away from the light. The light faded to a pinprick. Once again, everything went black.