Free The Lost Husband by Katherine Center Page B

said.
    “And now she’s got me a little spooked,” I said.
    “Understandable,” Jean said. Then, as if she’d made a decision, she said, “You know about Sunshine, right?”
    “All I know about Sunshine,” I said, “is that she has promised never to contact my dead husband without my express permission.”
    “Well,” Jean said, starting a new batch of eggs in the skillet, “she had kind of a tough childhood.”
    “Tough how?”
    Jean paused. “All this was in the tabloids, anyway,” she said. “So I’m not breaking any confidence.”
    “The tabloids?”
    “Sunshine is Amber McAllen.”
    “Amber McAllen the actress?”
    Jean nodded.
    What she was telling me was impossible, I thought. For one thing, Amber McAllen had been very famous. World-famous. For another, Sunshine had to be at least ten years younger than me—but Amber McAllen and I were the exact same age.
    I’d seen her many times before, of course. I’d seen her on the covers of People and Redbook and, famously, naked in a mud bikini on the pages of Vanity Fair . I’d seen all her movies—even the one about the pole-dancing vampire. She’d been just about everywhere in pop culture for about five years. She’d burst onto the scene at fourteen, starting out bright and plucky, celebrated everywhere for her come-hither innocence and great skin. And then, as she got a little older, she fell prey to the party scene and became a cautionary tale. After a period of ups and downs, she got fired from a Spielberg movie, went abruptly into rehab, and hadn’t been heard from again.
    It’s rare that a movie star actually disappears in a quick way like that. Usually they follow a slower decline—struggling, relapsing, scrabbling for attention as it becomes harder to get. But Amber McAllen just quit. She quit making movies. She quit designing handbags. She quit endorsing fragrances and charities. She bought her way out of contracts. And in turn, as if all our feelings were hurt, she was decisively forgotten.
    “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “What would Amber McAllen be doing here? And wearing goth fashions? And working at the feed store?”
    “She’s from here,” Jean said. “Or, at least, her family is.”
    I glanced out the window. Now the kids were just going to have to be late to school—which wouldn’t bother Abby much. She’d announced recently that school wasn’t “her thing” and she’drather stay home. She’d started begging every morning to work for Jean as a goat groomer instead of going to second grade.
    “Why, babe?” I’d asked, wondering if I should worry about this new development. “You love school.”
    Abby shrugged. “I just like animals better than people.”
    Of course, she had to go to school. But—this morning at least—not right away.
    Jean turned off the new batch of eggs and put the skillet lid on to keep them warm.
    “I almost ran over Amber McAllen?” I said again, letting the idea sink in.
    I didn’t know how long it had been since she’d done any acting. Five years, maybe? Long enough, though, that when I’d actually come face-to-face, or rather bumper-to-knee, with the woman who had starred in two of my favorite movies, I hadn’t even recognized her.
    Of course, she’d changed a bit. She was no longer blond, but had dyed her hair obsidian black. She was no longer anorexically thin, but something akin to plump. All those things that movie stars do to make themselves so much more beautiful than the rest of us—starving, waxing, exfoliating, spray-tanning, Photoshopping—she was no longer doing. And so even though I trusted that Jean was absolutely telling me the truth, I still had trouble believing her.
    “She doesn’t look like Amber McAllen,” I said.
    “Looks aren’t everything,” Jean said, and then filled me in on the backstory. Things I knew—that everyone knew—about Amber McAllen’s mother swindling her and stealing her fortune until she had to break off all ties.