The cellar was cold and damp and smelled of gasoline, smoke and death. Huddled under the frayed woolen blanket, Judith Land was pale and sick No longer the cool, witty American actress, she was a frightened young woman in a place where she didn’t belong. “Please, Lil,” she said, “let’s just call the American embassy and ask them to help.”

“We can’t.”

“Oh, Lil. They’ll only call our fathers. Nothing will happen.”

Lillian Parker, who wanted so to be taken seriously, shook her head, adamant. “You can make it, Judith.”

“I can’t! Something terrible will happen, I know it.”

Lillian was annoyed. “Do you want us to be the laughingstocks of the whole world?”

“Oh, Lil, no one will care.”

Shivering herself, Lillian knelt beside her friend. “Let’s do it my way, Judith, please. It was your idea to come along. Look, you’ll feel better in a couple of days, and everything will be fine. I promise. Thousands have already made it over the border.”

“But how many Americans, Lil? How many heiresses who are here illegally in the first place? I feel like such an idiot.”

Lillian sighed. “So do I.”

Finally, although it was nearly dawn, Lillian walked downstairs and found Crockett still sitting up on the sun porch. He’d suffered from insomnia for years, but refused to take any medication for it. He wanted to die, he’d always said, wide awake.

She sat near him, on a wicker chair. He didn’t look at her. “They’re in danger, Lil,” he said.

“Who, Crockett?”

“My grandchildren.” He smirked, facing her. “You’ve known who they are from the beginning, haven’t you?”

Lillian wished she’d worn something over her flannel caftan; it was frigid on the porch. She didn’t know how Crockett stood it. “How would I?”

“You tell me.”

“Crockett—”

“You knew Judith was pregnant.”

“You can’t tell Daddy...you can’t tell anyone. Lillian, please, you’re the only one I can trust.”

“But Judith—how?”

“Oh, Lil, don’t be so dumb. Now promise me, Lil. Please promise me.”

“Of course I promise.”

“I couldn’t have,” she told the man who had loved and mourned his only child. “I never saw her after the Christmas ball.”

He nodded to himself. “You knew.”

“Please don’t.”

“Don’t what, Lil? Don’t say anything I’ll regret? Don’t ask questions now that I should have asked years ago? Don’t open my old fool’s eyes? All these years I’ve had something—two children growing up on a farm in Massachusetts, raised by a madman, and I didn’t even know it. Damn anyone to hell who kept me from them—who put me in hell.”

Lillian shook her head, so tired of it all. “You put yourself into hell, Crockett.”

“This man—this filth who calls himself Bartholomew Wakefield—stole my children, stole Judith from me. If she hadn’t tried running from him, if she hadn’t been on the ranch that day...”

“But she was, Crockett. We can’t change the past.”

“No. But we can punish the people who caused such pain.”

Lillian shuddered. You must be brave... One day, perhaps. She had been brave, and her one day had never come. She needed a brandy...oblivion. “What are you going to do?”