Chet Williamson - Reign

In her room, Terri wept.

And Ann Deems wept too, wept knowing that what her daughter said could not be true, was not true, but doubting, and weeping for her doubt. She did not sleep well that night, and in the morning she called Donna Franklin to tell her that she was ill and could not come in to work. It was a cowardly thing to do, she knew. The best thing would be to go to Kirkland and confront the truth, whatever it might be. If what Terri had said was true, she would learn it quickly enough by the way Dennis acted toward her. If it was not true, she could learn that quickly enough too.

But either way she lost. If Dennis had not seduced Terri, then her daughter was a vicious liar. If he had, then the man she loved was not worthy of her love. It was a no-win situation, and one that she did not want to face. To move from such buoyant joy to such terrible doubt was more than she could bear.

So again, she thought to herself, she would take the coward's way out. She would avoid the confrontation. She would hide.

If she had known with what disappointment Dennis Hamilton heard of her absence, she would have been considerably cheered.

Dennis had begun the morning feeling radiant. He was to meet with Mack Redcay, a young set designer whose sprawling, passionate scenery had been the only thing the critics (and Dennis) had liked about the previous fall's "big musical," which, to everyone's amazement, was still running on the basis of advance ticket sales, but was rumored to be closing in early April.

Redcay had agreed to design Craddock, and had come to Kirkland that morning on a six o'clock commuter flight which Sid met at the Philadelphia Airport. Dennis, Redcay, and Curt breakfasted in Dennis's suite, and afterward they went down to the theatre to show the designer the stage. They were joined there by Evan, who had copies of the stage blueprints for Redcay, and by Donna Franklin, who had brought Redcay's contracts down from the office.

"Where's Ann?" Dennis asked her, as he had expected she would be the one to run that particular errand.

"She called in sick today."

"Anything serious?" he said, trying to sound only vaguely interested and failing miserably.

"She didn't say – just that she felt under the weather."

Dennis nodded and turned his attention back to Redcay and the stage, hoping there was nothing really wrong, and yet selfishly hoping that there was, for he could not bear the thought of Ann wanting to stay away from him.

The rest of the morning was spent touring the stage, exploring the flies (Evan, Dennis noticed, seemed reluctant to ascend), examining the area beneath, and endlessly going over the blueprints. Redcay seemed a quiet, almost sullen man, but his store of questions was endless, and before anyone realized it, it was time for lunch.

They decided to take Redcay to the Kirkland Inn, and were walking through the theatre lobby when they saw Terri Deems. She was carrying a small, green canvas bag that Dennis assumed held her lunch, and smiled at him knowingly when she saw him. "Dennis?" she said. "May I speak to you for a minute?"

Her sly smile indicated to him that she knew precisely what was going on between him and her mother. So what was this to be then? he wondered. A case of premature nepotism? He felt more than a trifle wary as he told the others he would only be a moment. "What is it, Terri?" he said softly, not wishing the others only a few yards away to hear.

She gave a little laugh. "I just wanted to make sure that, despite what happened last night, you don't think too badly of me."

What was she talking about? "I'm sorry, I… last night?"

"I'm not usually that easily… won over," she said, as though he understood perfectly what she meant. "I guess I've always had kind of a schoolgirl thing for you. And I was flattered that you'd feel that way about me."

"Terri, please… I'm not sure what you mean."

Now her laugh was marred with disbelief. "God, how quickly they forget. Last night? The two of us? In the costume shop?"

He shook his head, feeling as though he had been displaced in time. Was the girl insane? Had his affair with her mother somehow unbalanced her? "I wasn't in the costume shop last night – I didn't see you at all last night."

Now the look on her face was one of sheer exasperation. "Why are you doing this?" she said, raising her voice. "You get a kick out of playing with all the help?"

"Please, Teni," he said. "Keep your voice down. I have no idea what this is all about, but whatever it is, can we talk about it later?"

"I like this job too much to lose it," she said, her voice boiling with anger. "So if last night was what I had to do to keep it, okay. But don't look for a repeat performance, Mr. Hamilton, and don't think my mother doesn't know about this either. And if you try to have me fired, I'll have you in court on a sexual harassment charge so fast it'll make your head spin. And maybe I'll throw in rape for good measure."

"Look, Terri, please -"

"Because I have no pride, none at all – I think I proved that last night!"

She spun away from him and ran through the doors to the stairway, leaving Redcay and Curt puzzled, Evan furious, and Dennis stunned. He could only stand and stare, terribly confused, at the door through which she had vanished. The next thing he felt was Evan's arm on his shoulder, pulling him around to face his son.

"Looks like your reputation's spreading, isn't it?" Evan said in a harsh whisper, anger in his eyes. "Guess I'm not the only kid who's a little pissed about what his parent is doing." Then he turned and ran too, in the opposite direction from Terri.

Dennis, breathing heavily, saw Curt and Mack Redcay, their faces pale and uncertain. He willed himself to calm, and addressed Curt. "Before we go down to the Inn, give them a call, Curt, and tell them it will be a party of three today."

Lunch was not the disaster Dennis had feared it would be. Mack Redcay was a professional, and, outwardly at least, had dismissed whatever interpersonal relationships plagued the Venetian Theatre as none of his affair. The talk quickly returned to set designs and the capability of the theatre's stage to house the impressive ideas Redcay was considering. Dennis's attention seemed to be on the conversation, but he let Curt carry the weight of it. In truth, his mind was focused on Terri Deems and what he was supposed to have done with her in the costume shop the previous night.

At least Evan had not overheard the words, only the tone of Terri's voice, and had assumed that she was deriding Dennis for seeing her mother. Best to leave it at that. If the boy had even suspected that Dennis had done… what Terri seemed to be accusing him of doing, there would be no end to it.

But damn it, Dennis knew what he had done the previous night – he had watched the videocassette of Olivier's Othello with Sid, all two and a half hours of it, then had played a couple of hands of gin, said goodnight, and gone to bed. He had been nowhere near the costume shop. So what was the girl talking about?

It hit him as he finished his soup. Maybe, just maybe, Terri was telling the truth. Maybe it was the Emperor she had seen. It seemed so obvious that he was amazed he hadn't thought of it the moment she began to speak of things that could not be.

The Emperor. In the costume shop with Terri. And that meant that he was not an hallucination, not a mere figment of Dennis's imagination, but was real, real enough for another person to see him and speak to him and – what else?

But no, that would have been impossible. What he had seen was no more corporeal than a ghost. His hand had passed right through it. How could it have been capable of what Terri had implied?

Then the hardest thought of all struck him. What if The Emperor, like all good actors, was a liar?