The Serpent's Bite Read Online Free Page A

vanished, and she felt like the dissimulating teenager again, Daddy’s perfect innocent angel, the promising ingénue, a role she had played with gusto and great early results.
    Her opening gambit was to show daughterly concern.
    â€œYou sure you can hack it, Dad? I mean healthwise.”
    She remembered vaguely that he had been diagnosed for high blood pressure, a condition that supposedly caused his mother, her grandmother, to die early of a cerebral hemorrhage.
    â€œI’ve been working out like a demon. I’m in terrific shape.”
    â€œDoesn’t high altitude affect high blood pressure?”
    â€œUnder control,” he answered. “I take pills.”
    Her solicitousness seemed a knee-jerk reaction. Why such lingering concern for his health when her fondest wish was otherwise?
    â€œYou’re over seventy,” she said.
    â€œNot by much,” he corrected her.
    She knew he was being disingenuous. He would be seventy-five in December.
    â€œI wouldn’t broadcast that,” he said. “Granted that the outfitter has a sixty-years age limit. Besides, I’m fit as a fiddle. And I don’t look my age.”
    â€œYou could be taking a risk.”
    She hoped he would interpret her concern as genuine. Actually it opened up possibilities.
    â€œI can handle it,” he murmured. “Old is not as old as it used to be.”
    She supposed it was meant to be a joke, and she giggled appropriately.
    â€œWhat about Scott?” she had asked, deflecting the conversation.
    Her brother, younger by a year, thirty-seven now, was locked in another compartment of estrangement, although he did contact her occasionally. What they had in common was the same complaint: their father’s unwillingness to open his purse and the status of their inheritance.
    At one time, their father had been generous, more than generous. As an older dad with a lucrative business, he had the means to be generous. Then, abruptly, his businessman’s experience kicked in, and he had closed the spigot. For their own good, he had alleged. Granted, he might have been right, especially in the case of her brother, whose passion was more commercial than artistic and, to be honest, a lot less intense.
    For Courtney, her obsession was her ambition. She yearned for celebrity status as a movie star, knowing she had the drive and talent, although she had passed what was the traditional age of breakthrough in the twenties. So far, she had not made much of a career dent, which did little to dampen her determination. There was the occasional tiny television part or extra role in a commercial crowd scene and the occasional free turn on one of the many live stages in Los Angeles.
    Still, despite all the setbacks, all the failures, all the rejections, all the pain of not being called back from auditions, and the lack of getting a respectable agent or manager, she remained unalterably committed to her pursuit, no matter what. Unfortunately the lack of her father’s funding was a devastating setback for her career plans and the maintenance required for her to keep going. Giving up was not an option.
    The joint financial issue with her brother, and the only real discussion between them on the rare times when they talked by telephone or communicated briefly by e-mail, was how to get this spigot reopened. So far they had both failed miserably. Courtney had bolted. Scott had not, maintaining a tepid telephonic relationship with his father. But then, he was always the weaker and needier sibling.
    There were other matters between them that were buried too deeply to ever resurrect in dialogue, although she knew they were ever present in their consciousness and, like all histories, could never be erased.
    â€œScott is coming,” her father told her on the phone. “But it’s all contingent on your presence.”
    â€œWhy mine?” she had asked, playing the innocent.
    â€œIt’s either a family thing, or