Stars Over Sunset Boulevard Read online

  Praise for the Novels of Susan Meissner

  A FALL OF MARIGOLDS

  “A shimmering novel of love and acceptance . . . A Fall of Marigolds turns fate into a triumph of spirit.”

  —Sandra Dallas, New York Times bestselling author of A Quilt for Christmas

  “Meissner has crafted a thoughtful story about lost loves and times past, illustrating how quickly disaster can take away what we hold most dear, and how ultimately we must move forward with hope in our hearts.”

  —Margaret Dilloway, bestselling author of The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns

  “Hits all of the right emotional notes . . . seamlessly weaves a connection between two women whose broken hearts have left them in an in-between place. . . . For book groups, or for readers looking for a book of hope without schmaltz.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “A beautiful tapestry of human need and longing . . . a must-read novel. I highly recommend it.”

  —Novel Reviews

  “A transportive, heartwarming, and fascinating novel that will resonate with readers in search of emotionally satisfying stories connecting past and present, and demonstrating the healing power of love.”

  —Erika Robuck, bestselling author of The House of Hawthorne

  “Susan Meissner knits the past and the present with the seamless skill of a master storyteller. A beautifully written, moving novel that had me gripped from the first page.”

  —Kate Kerrigan, New York Times bestselling author of Land of Dreams

  “A courageous novel, moving with great insight between the haunting parallel stories of two women trying to recover from the losses of a terrible fire in 1911 New York City and the unforgettable fall of the twin towers on 9/11. An uncommon celebration of the human spirit.”

  —Kimberly Brock, author of The River Witch

  “Weaves a compelling tapestry of past and present, of love and loss and learning to love again, of two women connected through time in a rich and unique way.”

  —Lisa Wingate, bestselling author of The Story Keeper

  THE GIRL IN THE GLASS

  “A delightful tale that will take readers into the heart of Florence, Italy. . . . Meissner blends Nora’s, Sofia’s, and Meg’s stories with a deft hand, creating a layered work of art sure to enchant readers.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Beautifully crafted and captivating, The Girl in the Glass is a story to savor and get lost in.”

  —Sarah Jio, New York Times bestselling author of The Look of Love

  A SOUND AMONG THE TREES

  “Meissner transports readers to another time and place to weave her lyrical tale of love, loss, forgiveness, and letting go. Her beautifully drawn characters are flawed yet likable, their courage and resilience echoing in the halls of Holly Oak for generations. A surprising conclusion and startling redemption make this book a page-turner, but the setting—the beautiful old Holly Oak and all of its ghosts—is what will seep into the reader’s bones, making A Sound Among the Trees a book you don’t want to put down.”

  —Karen White, New York Times bestselling author of The Sound of Glass

  “My eyes welled up more than once! And I thought it especially fitting that, having already shown us the shape of mercy in a previous novel, Susan Meissner is now showing us the many shapes of love. A Sound Among the Trees is a hauntingly lyrical book that will make you believe a house can indeed have a memory . . . and maybe a heart. A beautiful story of love, loss, and sacrifice, and of the bonds that connect us through time.”

  —Susanna Kearsley, New York Times bestselling author of Season of Storms

  LADY IN WAITING

  “Both the history and the modern tale are enticing, with Meissner doing a masterful job blending the two.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Meissner has an ability to mesh a present-day story with a parallel one in the past, creating a fascinating look at two lives where each tale is enhanced by the other. Intricately detailed characters make for a truly delightful novel.”

  —Romantic Times (4½ stars)

  THE SHAPE OF MERCY

  “Meissner’s newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves, or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic . . . Meissner’s prose is exquisite and she is a stunning storyteller. This is a novel to be shared with friends.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  OTHER NOVELS BY SUSAN MEISSNER

  Secrets of a Charmed Life

  A Fall of Marigolds

  The Girl in the Glass

  A Sound Among the Trees

  Lady in Waiting

  White Picket Fences

  The Shape of Mercy

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by New American Library,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of New American Library.

  First Printing, January 2016

  Copyright © Susan Meissner, 2016

  Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Random House, 2016

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  New American Library and the New American Library colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information about Penguin Random House, visit penguin.com.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-19784-8

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Meissner, Susan, 1961–

  Stars over Sunset Boulevard / Susan Meissner.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-451-47599-2 (paperback)

  I. Title.

  PS3613.E435S73 2016

  813'.6—dc23 2015030034

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Raechyl and Nicole,

  two talented young women who possess old souls, artistic minds, and a love for nostalgia

  Contents

  Praise for the Novels of Susan Meissner

  Other Novels by Susan Meissner

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1938 CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1939 CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
r />   CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  1942 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  1962 CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Guide

  Special Excerpt from A Fall of Marigolds

  Special Excerpt from Secrets of a Charmed Life

  About the Author

  That star-enchanted song falls through the air

  From lawn to lawn down terraces of sound,

  Darts in white arrows on the shadowed ground;

  And all the night you sing.

  —Harold Monro, “Nightingale Near the House”

  Hollywood

  March 9, 2012

  Christine unfolds the tissue paper inside the pink-striped hatbox and the odor of lost years floats upward. She is well acquainted with the fragrance of antiquity. Her vintage-clothing boutique off West Sunset overflows with stylish remnants from golden years long since passed.

  “I thought you were going to hold off estimating that lot until this afternoon,” her business partner, Stella, says as she joins Christine in the shop’s back room. The two friends are surrounded on all sides by the wearable miscellany of spent lives.

  “Mr. Garceau, the man who brought this stuff in last night, just called. There’s apparently a hat in one of these boxes that wasn’t supposed to be included. He told me what it looks like. I guess the family is anxious to have it back.”

  Christine withdraws a paper-wrapped lump from inside the box, revealing at first just a flash of moss green and shimmers of gold. Then she pulls away the rest of the layers. The Robin Hood–style hat in folds of soft velvet, amber-hued fringe, and iridescent feathers feels ghostly in her hands, as though if she put it to her ear, it might whisper a litany of old secrets.

  She has seen this hat somewhere before, a long time ago.

  “Is that it?” Stella asks.

  “I think so. He said it was green with gold fringe and feathers.”

  Stella moves closer, brow furrowed. “That hat looks familiar to me.”

  “It does to me, too.” Christine turns the hat over to inspect its underside for signs of its designer—a label, a signature, a date. She sees only a single name in faded ink on a yellowed tag:

  Scarlett #13

  1938

  ONE

  December 1938

  A brilliant California sun bathed Violet Mayfield in indulgent light as she neared the soaring palm tree and the woman seated on a bench underneath it. Legs crossed at the ankles, the woman rested her back lazily against the skinny trunk. She held a cigarette in her right hand, and it was as if the thin white tube were a part of her and the stylish smoke that swirled from it an extension of her body. The woman’s fingernails, satin red and glistening, were perfectly shaped. Toenails visible to Violet through peep-toes winked the same shade of crimson. The woman wore a formfitting sheath of celery green with a scoop neckline. A magazine lay open on her lap, but her tortoiseshell sunglasses hid her eyes, so Violet couldn’t tell whether the woman was reading the article on the left page or gazing at handsome Cary Grant, whose photograph graced the right. A wad of wax paper lay crumpled on the bench beside her handbag and a bit of bread crust poked out of it. She sat in front of the Mansion at Selznick International Studios, the stunning white edifice that moviemaker Thomas Ince had built back in the twenties to look like George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

  The woman under the tree didn’t look at all like a fellow studio secretary, but rather a highly paid actress catching a few quiet moments of solitude between takes on the back lot. Violet glanced around to see whether there was someone else sitting outside the Mansion on her noon break. But the woman in front of her was the only one eating her lunch under a palm tree, and that was where Violet had been told she’d find Audrey Duvall. She suddenly looked familiar to Violet, which made no sense at all. Violet was two thousand miles away from anything remotely connected to home.

  “Miss Duvall?” Violet said.

  The woman looked up drowsily, as though Violet had awakened her from sleep. She cocked her head and pulled her sunglasses down slightly to peer at Violet over the rims. Her luminous eyes, beautiful and doelike, were fringed with long lashes she couldn’t have been born with. The casual glance was the wordless reply that she was indeed Audrey Duvall.

  “My name’s Violet Mayfield. I’m new to the secretary pool. Millie in accounts payable told me you are looking for a roommate. I was wondering if you’d found one yet.”

  Audrey smiled and her painted lips parted to reveal moon-white teeth. “Good Lord,” she exclaimed, her voice rich and resonant, almost as deep as a man’s. “Where are you from?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “You’re not from around here.”

  “Um. No. I’m from Alabama. Originally.”

  Audrey’s smile deepened. “Alabama. Never been to Alabama.”

  Violet didn’t know what to say. Had the woman not heard what she asked?

  Audrey patted the empty space next to her. “Have a seat. What did you say your name was?”

  “Violet Mayfield.” She sat down, and the cement beneath her was warm from the sun despite it being early December.

  Audrey lifted the cigarette gently to her mouth and its end glowed red as she inhaled. When she tipped her head back and released the smoke it wafted over her head like a feathery length of gauze.

  “Want one?” She nodded toward the pack of cigarettes peeking out of her handbag.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Don’t smoke?” Audrey puffed again on the cigarette and smiled as the smoke drifted past her lips.

  Violet shook her head.

  “My last roommate didn’t, either. She was always leaving the windows open to let the smoke out.”

  “Did you not like it when she left the windows open? Is that why you need a new roommate?”

  Audrey laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Violet said nothing.

  “She got married.”

  “Oh.”

  Audrey pushed the sunglasses up onto her head, fully revealing shining tea-brown eyes that complemented her shimmering brunette hair. She seemed to study for a moment Violet’s navy blue dress with its plain white collar. Violet’s mousy brown hair—far less wavy than Audrey’s—was pulled back into a beaded barrette she had bought in a five-and-dime on the day she started heading west.

  “So you just moved, then? From Alabama?”

  “I came by way of Shreveport, actually. I’ve been working for my uncle the past year. He’s an accountant.”

  “And how long have you been here?” Audrey asked.

  “Two weeks.”

  “And you found a job that quickly?” Her tone held a faint edge of sly admiration. “Good for you!”

  “I’ve worked in an office before,” Violet said quickly. “And I went to secretary school.”

  “I’ve heard there’s a school for what we do,” Audrey said, amused. “What are you? Nineteen? Twenty?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “That will come in handy here, looking younger than you really are,” Audrey murmured. “I’m thirty and can still pass for a twenty-year-old if I need to.”

  “Why would you need to do that?”

  Audrey tossed back her head and laughed. Even her laugh was low and rich. “You seem to have a kna
ck for humor, Violet from Alabama.” She arched one penciled eyebrow. “So. Did you come to Hollywood to be a movie star?”

  Violet startled at the question. “No!”

  “That’s why most girls your age come here.”

  The thought of performing in front of people didn’t interest Violet in the least. Hollywood had beckoned her for a different reason. “That’s not why I moved here.”

  “No?”

  Her motivation for coming to California apparently mattered to Audrey Duvall. “I met one of Mr. Selznick’s talent scouts at an audition in Shreveport. He said he’d put in a good word for me if I wanted a secretarial job at the studio.”

  “You went to that audition?” Audrey’s eyes widened in measurable interest.

  “Only because my cousin Lucinda insisted I come with her. She found out people from Hollywood were coming to Shreveport to search for a young woman to play Scarlett O’Hara. I let her talk me into being interviewed along with everyone else. I think by the time Mr. Arnow got to me he was just relieved to talk to someone who had actually read Margaret Mitchell’s book and wasn’t fawning all over him.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “I told him I was a much better secretary than I was an actress and that I knew stenography, and that I’d lived in the South all my life. He told me if I wanted a job at Selznick International in Hollywood, he’d put in a good word for me. He said it would be handy to have a Southerner in the secretary pool during the filming. So I came.”

  “Just like that?” Audrey seemed both intrigued and dubious.

  Violet nodded.

  “You have a family back there missing you right now?”

  “Just my parents. And my two brothers, Jackson and Truman. They’re both married now and raising families. I doubt they think about me much.”

  “But your parents?”

  Violet’s thoughts somersaulted back to the strained phone call she had placed from Shreveport, telling her parents she’d been offered a job in Los Angeles and was taking it. They had begged her to reconsider.