“He hates me.” Lilly suddenly looked too fragile to be a star. “He hates me, and I love him more than anyone on earth.” She seemed to pick up the iced tea tumbler as a distraction. “His mother, Maida, was my older sister.”

The intensity in her voice made the small of Molly’s back tingle. “Kevin told me his parents were elderly.”

“Yes. Maida married John Tucker the same year I was born.”

“A big age difference.”

“She was like a second mother to me. We lived in the same town when I was growing up, practically next door.”

Molly had the sense that Lilly was telling her this not because she wanted Molly to know but simply to keep from falling apart. Her curiosity made her take advantage of it. “I remember reading you were very young when you went to Hollywood.”

“Maida moved when John was assigned to a church in Grand Rapids. My mother and I didn’t get along, and things went downhill fast, so I ran away and ended up in Hollywood.”

She fell silent.

Molly had to know more. “You did very well for yourself.”

“It took a while. I was wild, and I made a lot of mistakes.” She leaned back in the rocker. “Some of them can’t be undone.”

“My older sister raised me, too, but she didn’t come into my life until I was fifteen.”

“Maybe it would have been better for me that way. I don’t know. I guess some of us were just born to raise hell.”

Molly wanted to know why Kevin was so hostile, but Lilly had turned her head away, and just then Amy popped out onto the porch. She was either too young or too self-absorbed to recognize their celebrity guest. “The room’s ready.”

“I’ll show you upstairs. Amy, would you get Miss Sherman’s suitcase from her car?”

When Molly let Lilly into the attic, she expected her to object to such humble quarters, but Lilly said nothing. Molly pointed out the general direction of the beach from the window. “There’s a nice walk along the lake, but maybe you know all this. Have you been here before?”

Lilly set her purse on the bed. “I wasn’t invited.”

The uncomfortable prickling Molly had been feeling at the back of her neck intensified. As soon as Amy appeared with the suitcase, Molly excused herself.

Instead of heading back to the cottage for a nap, she wandered into the music room. She touched the old fountain pen at the desk, then the ink bottle, then the ivory and rose stationery with WIND LAKE BED & BREAKFAST engraved at the top. Finally she stopped fidgeting and sat down to think.

By the time the small gold anniversary clock chimed the hour, she’d made up her mind to find Kevin.