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said you were missed.”
    “Reporter?” That had been two or three years before. No, longer ago than that. Perhaps four years. Strange how time was blurring. Abdu had agreed to the interview to silence any gossip about their marriage. She hadn’t expected the child to remember it. Why, Addy couldn’t have been more than four or five then. “What did you think of her?”
    “Her talk was strange and sometimes too fast. Her hair was cut very short, like a little boy’s, and it was the color of straw. She was angry because her camera was allowed only for a few pictures, then taken away from her.” When Phoebe sat on a marble bench, Adrianne continued to throw pebbles. “She said you were the most beautiful and most envied woman in the world. She asked if you wore a veil.”
    “You don’t forget anything, do you?” Phoebe remembered as well, and remembered spinning a tale about the heat and dust and using the veil to protect her complexion.
    “I liked when she talked about you.” Adrianne remembered, too, that her mother had cried after the reporter had gone. “Will she come back?”
    “Maybe, someday.” But Phoebe knew that people forgot.There were new faces, new names in Hollywood, and she even knew a few of them for Abdu allowed some letters to be delivered to her. Faye Dunaway, Jane Fonda, Ann-Margret. Beautiful young actresses making their marks, taking the place that had once been hers.
    She touched her own face, knowing there were lines around her eyes now. Once it had been on every magazine cover. Women had dyed their hair to match hers. She had been compared to Monroe, to Gardner, to Loren. Later she had not been compared to anyone; she had set a standard.
    “Once I almost won an Oscar. That’s the very biggest prize for an actress. Even though I didn’t, there was a wonderful party. Everyone was laughing and talking and making plans. It was all so different from Nebraska. That’s where I lived when I was the age you are now, darling.”
    “Where there was snow?”
    “Yes.” Phoebe smiled and held out her arms. “Where there was snow. I lived there with my grandparents because my mother and father had died. I was very happy, but I didn’t always know it. I wanted to be an actress, to wear beautiful clothes, and to have lots of people love me.”
    “So you became a movie star.”
    “I did.” Phoebe rubbed her cheek against Adrianne’s hair. “It seems like hundreds of years ago. It didn’t snow in California, but I had the ocean. To me it was a fairy tale, and I was the princess I’d read of in all the storybooks. It was very hard work, but I loved being there, being a part of it. I had a house on the water all to myself.”
    “You would be lonely.”
    “No, I had friends and people to talk to. I went places I’d never imagined going—Paris, New York, London … I met your father in London.”
    “Where is London?”
    “England, Europe. You’re forgetting your lessons.”
    “I don’t like lessons. I like stories.” But she thought hard because she knew the lessons were important to Phoebe, and another secret between them. “A queen lives in London whose husband is only a prince.” Adrianne waited, certain her mother would correct her this time. It was such a ridiculous idea—a woman ruling a country. But Phoebe merelysmiled and nodded. “It gets cold in London, and it rains. In Jaquir the sun always shines.”
    “London’s beautiful.” One of her greatest skills was the ability to put herself in a place, real or imagined, and see it clearly. “I thought it was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen. We were filming there and people would line up at the barricades to watch. They would call for me, and sometimes I would sign autographs or pose for pictures. Then I met your father. He was so handsome. So elegant.”
    “Elegant?”
    A dreamy smile on her face, Phoebe closed her eyes. “Never mind. I was very nervous because he was a king, and there was protocol to remember