If Only in My Dreams Read Online Free Page A

topless in
Playboy
. Which she turned down, of course. No need to overexpose herself—literally—at this stage in her career.
    The magazine people assured her agent that the offer would remain open.
    Not that it matters now
, Clara thinks with a pang, touching the gauze-covered scar on her right breast.
    So what? You weren’t going to do it anyway
.
    Still…
    Stop that! Focus on the positive. You’ve still got a big career ahead of you as a serious actress
.
    Her first movie led to a slightly larger role in a critically acclaimed medical drama that unfortunately bombedat the box office. But that, in turn, opened the door to her first starring role in
The Glenhaven Park Dozen
, an ensemble period piece based on a true story.
    In real life, eleven servicemen from a tiny suburban New York village perished on the beach at Normandy in the first wave of the D-Day invasion. The screenwriters have taken artistic license, making it an even twelve.
    Clara plays Violet, the fictional pregnant wartime bride of Jed Landry, a doomed soldier who actually existed.
    It’s a juicy role. Plenty of tender, passionate moments with her heartthrob costar Michael Marshall, a haunting monologue she gets to deliver in the fury of a staged blizzard, and a hysteria-filled moment of truth at the climax, when she learns of her husband’s fate.
    Clara has devoted months of her time preparing to play Violet, immersing herself in period films, swing music, old magazines. She hired a dialect coach to help her perfect the 1940s’ speech style—a distinct vocal patter characteristic of the era.
    She even hopped the sleek silver Metro-North train to Westchester County and spent two beautiful Indian summer afternoons up in Glenhaven Park. There, she soaked up the small-town atmosphere, chatted with old-timers, and even studied photographs and relics at the library’s local history exhibit.
    All because she wants to get this right, aware that it’s the kind of role that can launch a career to the next level, and now…
    Malignant
.
    Clara waits for the tears to begin again, but there seems to be a temporary dry spell despite the painful lump in her throat.
    She looks around the living room, all hers now since Jason finally came to get the last of his possessions before Thanksgiving. There’s the stack of scrapbooks that preserve sentimental childhood relics and, of course, her press clippings. There’s the framed series of stills from her brief run in
Les Mis
before it closed—and there’s the empty spot beside them where a portrait of her and Jason used to hang.
    There are her plants, her books, her CDs. The Waterford vase her father and stepmother gave her last Christmas—why a
vase?
—and this morning’s empty coffee mug and yesterday’s
Daily News
and the telephone.
    On the shelf above the mantel is her eclectic collection of angel figurines—all of them with dark hair. As a little girl, Clara once asked her grandfather why angels always seemed to have golden hair and not brunette, like hers. Naturally, her grandfather began a mission from that day forward to find and buy for his only granddaughter every dark-haired angel in the metropolitan area.
    Good old Grandpa.
    On the end table is a framed black-and-white photograph that catches Clara’s eye tonight. Her grandmother, Irene, looking like a forties’ pinup girl—busty, wearing dark lipstick, hair in sleek waves—smiles out at her. She must have been in her early twenties when the picture was taken, blissfully unaware of what her future would hold.
    Clara pulls her eyes away from the photo. She can’t look at it—not tonight.
    Beside the window, a foil-wrapped red poinsettia droops thirstily, a smattering of curled leaves littering the sill. She bought it at the supermarket on a whim a few weeks ago.
    I should water it
.
    No, the plant can wait
.
    I should call someone
.
    She reaches for the cordless receiver, wondering whom to call.
    Not her mother.
    Nor her father, who lives