“I’m afraid not,” she admitted, climbing farther out onto the rocks. “The latest in eel research, yes, but actors and actresses—I’ve just never been a gossip-monger.”

“It doesn’t matter.” To Ashley’s relief, Lillian followed her instead of turning back toward the boat. “I’m not sure how close the Hollywood version of Judith and Andrew’s marriage is to the truth, anyway. Andrew...he’s not an easy man to understand. He adored Judith from the beginning. There’s no question of that. But he’d been denied so much in his own country for so many years. He was a member of the hated aristocracy, you see, and so although he was very well educated and energetic, the Communists didn’t trust him—and therefore he had no opportunities in Hungary. So when he came to this country, he was determined to make something of himself.”

“Which he did.”

“Yes, but not without sacrifice. He and Judith went on a long honeymoon, and when they came back, she insisted they live in her house in Beverly Hills—which she’d tell anyone she’d bought with her own money, not her father’s, and certainly not Andrew’s.”

Ashley shrugged. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Andrew’s a proud man. It bit.”

“But that must have been minor—”

“It was the beginning,” Lillian said. “Crockett didn’t help matters. Being the dutiful father-in-law, he offered Andrew a position at what was then Crockett Oil.”

“Did the company have Los Angeles offices?”

Lillian shook her head. “And Judith was to begin work on a new film that spring. I don’t blame her for not wanting to give up her career and move to Houston, but neither of them was willing to make any compromises—out of love, they said. They insisted they wanted to be around each other all the time.”

Ashley tried to envision the circumstances and found that she could. It was all so depressingly common. “So one had to win and one had to lose,” she said.

“I think they both lost.”

“The film was never made, was it?”

Again Lillian shook her head, her energy for the topic seeming to fade. But she said, “Judith went into a blue funk and threatened to retire if the studio didn’t postpone the start of the film. Well, God knows why, but they did. She packed up and left—to find herself, we’d call it today. She said that while she still loved Andrew, she needed some time to herself, to be alone and find out who she was, who she wanted to be, where she would go from there. It was a radical thing for a woman to do in the fifties, but that was Judith.”

“What did her husband do?”

“What could he do? He agreed to leave her alone and give her some time. Crockett couldn’t understand Judith at all, and he talked Andrew into coming to work for Crockett Oil while Judith was meditating on her fate.”

“What about you?” Ashley asked. “Did you see Judith during this time?”

“No.” There was no hesitation.