Page 94 of Jane Deyre

I’m still shaken when I get to the guesthouse. And because all the lights are on when I know for sure I turned them off, my nerves grow more jittery. Somebody’s been inside it. The locksmith? One of the groundskeepers who’ve been here to clean up the front yard? Maybe the Wi-Fi guy? Clutching the book, I hurry to my bedroom. The first thing I note is my door is ajar. Nothing’s been done so that I can lock it from the outside. Cautiously, I step inside. My eyes circle the room. The last thing they land on is my vision board.

My heart does a flip-flop and I gasp. The Hollywood star with my name is missing. And so is my photo of Thornhill. In their place is a photo of an old cemetery with tombstones. Someone has written my name on one of them. With my birth year. Beneath it:The crazy bitch deserved to die.I swallow past the ball of horror in my throat and take a deep, fortifying breath. For sure, this has to be Ms. Fairfax’s doing. She practically called me insane this afternoon. I rip off the photo from the board and crumple it in my hand. I’m not going to let her mess with my head. Get in the way of my dreams. Tomorrow, I’ll draw a new star with my name and tack it onto my vision board.

After a quick bathroom run, I shed my clothes for my pajamas, lock the door, and climb into bed with Edwina’s memoir in my hand. Eager to commence. Hoping I won’t hear strange noises from the room next door.

Once I start, I cannot stop. I begin with Ward’s heartfelt foreword. A testament to his lifelong love for his godmother and his desire to share her incredible story with the world. My eyes are already misting. Then, I dive into the first chapter and I’m quickly pulled in by the opening paragraph:

Every person has a story.

Every house has a story.

If walls could talk...

Alas, they can’t. God made them mute.

So I will speak for them. Be their voice.

I am the Queen of Thornhill.

And this is our story...

The prose is tight yet lyrical. So beautiful. So emotive. Rather than glomming on to every word, my eyes race over them. Flipping the pages, unable to stop. Yes, it’s that good. Reader, you should read it for yourself, but let me share the gist of it. You will get to know the legendary Edwina Rochester. Understand her and feel for her equally. You will also gasp and shed some tears. When you learn her shocking secrets.

Edwina was born on December 12, 1956 to Edward and Elizabeth Rochester right here at Thornhill. Her father was the scion of Byron Rochester, the self-made head of Paradigm Studios, which he founded in the late thirties. By the time Edward was running the studio, he was worth millions. And soon a billion thanks to being a ruthless businessman. And the star power of his precious daughter.

From early on, Elizabeth had a love-hate relationship with her beautiful daughter. She was the apple of her father’s eye and manifested at an early age extraordinary talent. Despite his wife’s protestations, Edward gave her singing, dancing, and acting lessons from the very best. There was only one problem with the dancing lessons... Edwina was born with a sixth toe on her right foot. A rare physical anomaly known as polydactylism. This was a source of great embarrassment to her parents, who demanded perfection in their child. For Edwina, it was a source of pain and conflict.

The kids at the elite private school I attended mockingly called me a six-toed monkey. But I loved my sixth toe. It made me special. I even had a name for him: Mr. Pinky. It repulsed my perfectionist mother. It repulsed my perfectionist father. Most significantly, it got in the way of my ability to dance... so my father unbeknownst to me, ordered a doctor to amputate it. My mother conspired with him, tricking me into going to the doctor for a general checkup. Complete with a visit to Cee Cee Brown’s for an ice cream sundae. Three hours later, I woke up at home and Mr. Pinky was gone. A plaster cast in his place. I couldn’t walk on my foot for weeks. And even when I finally could, it hurt. Over sixty years later, it still hurts. Phantom pain, my doctor has said. The pattern of my life was set. A precious part of me taken from me. The worst was yet to come.

I read about this rare condition with great interest. As I do, the bone spur on my right foot aches. A simpatico feeling? My mind flashes back to the time when John Reed shot me with his BB gun and I fell from the tree and broke my ankle. The emergency room doctor who set my foot noticed the spur and asked me if it hurt. I told him it sometimes did and felt like the bone was trying to burst through the skin. The X-rays suggested I may have had an extra toe at some point. I never thought much about it after that, though the pain still persisted from time to time.

A fast reader, I turn the pages quickly. My interest piqued with every word. The beautiful, no-longer-deformed child star grew into a beautiful woman. As beguiling as she was beautiful. By the time she was twenty-one, she had over two dozen movies to her name. Each one more successful than the one before. Edwina was already a legend. A box office sensation. A gorgeous sexpot with raven-black hair and violet eyes. A vixen whose wild, glamorous life America couldn’t get enough of. Her scandalous sexcapades filled the tabloids; she was linked to a string of lovers. One notorious actor after another. Warren Beatty. Steve McQueen, Jack Nicholson. Mel Gibson. Even some prominent politicians, including a future unnamed president.

Then tragedy struck. When she was twenty-five, both her parents perished in a plane crash, leaving her their vast fortune, Paradigm Studios, and Thornhill. The beautiful heiress sold the studio to Paramount for another small fortune and took up residence at Thornhill. America’s fascinating sweetheart became known as the Queen of Thornhill.

Dalliances with the world’s richest, most powerful men ensued, but none seemed to fulfill her. As soon as one was cast off, another replaced him. Until she met Bertrand Mason, the author of the critically acclaimed Pulitzer Prize–nominated bestseller,Miracle in the Rain, the basis of her eagerly anticipated, latest movie. Meeting him for the first time at her agent, Max Fuller’s office, it was love at first sight for the both of them.

He was unlike any man I’d known before. Bookish. Not too tall. Conservative in his appearance. Though a man of words, tongue-tied in my presence. That was the charm of him. His allure. I’d brought along a copy of his book for him to sign. As I watched him sign it, he grew handsome to me. He had extraordinary hands, his fingers long and tapered, and beneath his horn-rim spectacles, were caramel-colored eyes that melted with lust for me. What he wrote made me fall fast and hard in love with him.

To Edwina Rochester~

The most beautiful woman I have ever set eyes on. The woman who will makeMiracle in the Raincome alive.

And immortalize Anabelle Bright in the hearts of fans around the world.

Thank you from the bottom of my loving heart...

~Bertrand Mason

Two weeks later they eloped in Las Vegas. Stunning the world with their shotgun marriage. Edwina added Bertrand’s surname to hers, but to the world she remained the legendary Edwina Rochester.

The following February, Edwina won her first Oscar for her moving portrayal of Anabelle Bright, the tragic protagonist ofMiracle in the Rain. A movie that shocked the public with its sexual boldness and Edwina’s full-frontal nudity as she made love in the rain to her co-star, Hollywood heartthrob Malcolm Carr.

Despite Edwina’s Oscar and several others,Miracle in the Raindidn’t win Best Adapted Screenplay or Best Picture (those awards instead both going toThe French Connection) nor did Bertrand win any literary prize for his novel. It was, in fact, the last novel he would ever write.

While Edwina’s career continued to soar, being offered more movie roles than she could take on, Bertrand’s career began to sink. His agent dropped him and the literary world ridiculed him, calling him a one-book wonder and “Mr. Edwina Rochester.” He began to spend less and less time with Edwina, holing himself up in his office—the guesthouse—staring at a blank page of paper in his typewriter. Yet, Edwina stood by his side, despite her social secretary, Alice Fairfax, suggesting he was having an affair and urging her to leave him. And gossip magazines constantly featuring headlines like:

Dateline Hollywood