took him nearly a year, but he sent me that.”
“But it doesn’t give her name in the caption.”
“Do you doubt that’s your mother? Nobody I’ve ever known looked like her.”
“It is her. Did this guy you hired tell you anything else?”
Myron eyed her closely. “Well, for starters he told me he thought her name wasn’t Julia.”
“What?”
“He said she had all the tools to be really something in the industry, but she just upped and left after only being on the scene for a few years. No one knew why and no one knew what had become of her. And no one he could find could tell him her last name. But apparently her first name was Amanda. Or at least that’s the one she used at the time.”
“Why would my mother change her name?” demanded Pine.
Myron, in response, spread his long, thin arms. “How should I know? I’m only telling you what the guy told me. And he wasn’t some chump off the street. He came highly recommended. A real pro.”
“Can I talk to this ‘real pro’?”
“Afraid not.”
“Why?”
“He dropped dead of a heart attack about a month after he reported back.”
Pine felt like she’d been hit by a truck.
“I can see what a shock all this is for you,” said Myron sympathetically.
Pine, her suspicion needle now hovering near the red zone, said, “And why would you go to all that trouble to track down my mother’s past?”
“Like I said, I’m a curious guy. And most people like to talk about their pasts. Neither one of your parents ever did. Not while they were sober. It just made me wonder.”
“Wonder what?” Although Pine was already wondering herself.
“That maybe they weren’t who they said they were. I mean, I told you her name might’ve been Amanda. But she comes here and it’s suddenly Julia Pine.”
“And my dad?”
“I don’t know. He could very well be who he said he was. I didn’t check into him.”
“Does Britta know about all this?”
“She doesn’t know that I investigated your mom, no. But she was there when Julia let slip that she had done some modeling.”
Pine slumped down in a chair as she studied the photo of what was undoubtedly her mother walking the stage at a major fashion show in London. She read a bit of the article and said in amazement, “Karl Lagerfeld? This was Karl Lagerfeld’s fashion show for Chanel? I basically know nothing about the fashion industry but I’ve heard of him.”
“According to my guy, your mom apparently walked the runways of all the major designers’ shows around the world back then.”
“So how did I not know this?”
“It was long before Google. You couldn’t just look it up online. And as I said, she only did that work for a short time. She wasn’t like Cindy Crawford or Claudia Schiffer, who made careers out of it and became world famous. Your mother was taller and more gorgeous than any of those supermodels. But she didn’t stick with it. So she passed into obscurity. No Wikipedia page or anything.”
“Why? What happened to her?”
“I have no idea. They just showed up here one day with two little kids in tow. From the little bit they told us, I thought they had met on a blind date or something and fell in love.”
“So they weren’t high school sweethearts?”
Myron took back the magazine and looked down at the photo of the long-legged Julia Pine sauntering down the catwalk in an elaborate Karl Lagerfeld creation with her hair piled high looking like she owned the world and everyone in it.
“Does she look like she would be enrolled in a high school in Kansas? She couldn’t be more than seventeen there.” He gave her a hard stare. “And when I just now said your parents showed up here with you and your sister in tow, you didn’t seem surprised. And you knew you weren’t born here.”
“When I was an adult, I found out I was born in New York. It was quite an eye-opener, actually, because up till then I thought I was born in Georgia.”
Myron nodded but didn’t comment on this.
“You said they didn’t talk about themselves while sober. Did my dad ever talk about his past when he was drinking?”
Myron set the magazine down and rubbed his chin. “Actually, he did. Your dad wanted to be an actor. At least that’s what he said. That’s why he was in New York, working on his career. That might be when he met your mom. That’s pretty much the