She visited them from time to time, since they both lived in L.A., and Emma was undeniably cute and bright and adorable. She provided a “child fix” for Whitney when she thought she needed one, which was rare. But Emma was her niece, and despite her cynicism on the subject, Whitney had to concede that Paige took motherhood seriously, and her daughter’s modeling and acting career even more so. Paige groomed Emma for stardom and often made a fool of herself on TV and movie sets. And admittedly, she had created a successful career for Emma, which Paige thought was desirable and Whitney thought was a grievous mistake.
Whitney still considered Paige a flake about a number of things, but not about Emma’s career. Paige was totally focused on it, to the exclusion of all else. She still had the occasional affair with some second-rate actor or other, whom she usually met on the set of the show Emma was on, but her romances never lasted long. She was so intense and obsessed with Emma’s career that she drove most healthy, normal men away. For Emma’s sake, Whitney tried not to be overly critical of Paige. She loved being with her niece, when they all had time, which wasn’t often. Whitney was busy with her patients and her work, and Paige was always chauffeuring Emma from one lesson to the next. “I’m going to be a big star one day, you know, Aunt Whit,” Emma loved to tease when she was with her aunt and her mother wasn’t around. She would do a little pirouette then and laugh.
“You already are a star,” Whitney reminded her. “You’re on a TV show. What more do you want?”
“I’d like to be on a girls’ soccer team, if you really want to know,” Emma would say dreamily. That sounded fantastic to her.
“I don’t think your mom will let you do that,” her aunt said.
“I know, she says I’d get hurt, or knock out a tooth or something. But it sounds like fun to me.”
“You can decide all that for yourself when you’re older,” Whitney reminded her. “You can pick any career you want one day.”
“Not likely,” Emma said wistfully, “as long as Mom breathes air. She’d kill me if I give up acting, after everything she’s done for me.” Paige knew how to run her daughter’s life with just the right amount of pressure and guilt. “She says she gave up her own acting career to make me a star like my grandmother. Mom thinks I’ll win an Oscar someday.”
“Maybe you will,” Whitney said, “if that’s what you want to do.” For now, Paige wasn’t giving her a choice, and Whitney felt sorry for her. Emma was a slave to her mother’s ambitions, but Whitney didn’t dare say too much to her niece about it. Maybe one day when she was older, she would. At nine, it was too soon.
“Mom says you’re a shrink because you think everyone in Hollywood is crazy,” Emma said whimsically, and her aunt laughed.
“I never thought of it that way, but maybe she’s right. There are certainly plenty of crazy people in the business,” and in some ways, she thought her sister was one of them, at Emma’s expense. The life of a child star was not easy or fun. Whitney had several patients who had been actors when they were young, and had paid a high price for it. She didn’t want that happening to Emma, but she knew it already was, and there was nothing she could do about it. She just tried to spend a little relaxed time with Emma whenever she could, they had a good time together, when Paige let that happen. Fun wasn’t on Emma’s schedule, or playtime or other kids.
Whitney hadn’t seen Paige or Emma for the past few weeks. She’d been busy and so had they, and she wanted to touch base with them before she left at the end of the week to meet Chad in Europe on his boat. She was looking forward to it. They were planning to sail to Portofino as soon as she arrived. It was one of their favorite spots, a romantic little port town on their way to Corsica and Sardinia and other idyllic locations. Whitney could hardly wait, and had been packing for several days. She knew she wouldn’t have time to see Paige and Emma now, but she wanted to call them before she left, to say goodbye.
* * *
—
Paige stopped and picked up dinner on the way home from Emma’s ballet lesson. They only had half an hour before her voice coach arrived. She’d bought two big salads, and set them out on the kitchen table while Emma complained.
“I’m tired of salad. Why can’t we have pizza?”
“Because you’re the star of a TV show, remember?”
“So I can never eat pizza?”
“Of course you can, we had pizza two days ago, you just can’t have it every night.”
“Why? Because you’re afraid I’ll get fat?” There was an evil glint in Emma’s eye, and Paige did not look amused. What if Emma suddenly started overeating as a way of expressing some kind of rebellion in a few years? It was a horrifying thought.
“You’ll never be fat, it’s not in our DNA.” Both she and Whitney had always been slim, as had their mother, but Emma liked torturing her sometimes, and knew how to do it. Paige was dreading her teenage years. “Besides, if we take the Broadway musical, you don’t want to put on weight before we do.”
“I don’t care,” Emma said with a shrug. She dug into her salad with no interest and stopped eating when the voice coach came. She stayed for two hours and after that, Paige watched Emma take her bath, and then they spent another forty-five minutes going over her lines for the next day. She knew them flawlessly, although she was tired by then, and started to miss a few. She was drifting off to sleep as Paige stood looking at her for a moment and smiled as Emma’s eyes fluttered closed. She was already sound asleep.
“Good night, my beautiful little star,” she whispered and then closed the door softly behind her. Building an important career for her was a demanding, full-time job, but Paige never regretted it for a minute. Emma had made her dreams come true, and now she was going to do the same for her. She was going to give Emma dreams that she never even knew she had.
Chapter 2
Emma had a long shooting schedule the next day and was in every scene on the call list, but she knew all her lines. She met with Belinda, the teacher, during lunch to turn in her homework, and Belinda gave her a break and didn’t assign her homework for that night, because she knew Emma would be tired at the end of the day. They had a flexible study schedule that accommodated her obligations on the set.
They finished shooting at four in the afternoon, after starting at seven A.M. Emma had been in hair and makeup at six-thirty, and had to learn a new, very emotional scene that the writers had added the night before. Paige had helped her learn her lines, as she always did. As soon as Emma came off the set, Paige drove her to Santa Monica for her hip-hop lesson. She would have canceled it, but she knew it was Emma’s favorite activity. The traffic was terrible getting there, and the lesson ended at seven, which gave them just under an hour to pick up something for dinner and be back at their house in Beverly Hills at eight o’clock to meet with Emma’s drama coach, Marty Smith. He was an excellent drama coach for children, and he’d been working with Emma since she started on the show. She had learned a lot from him, he was a hard taskmaster, but known for his great results. He also didn’t tolerate anyone being late, and Paige knew that if they didn’t get there on time he was capable of leaving to make the point. She was trying to speed through heavy traffic, while Emma played on her iPad. Paige stopped at a 7-Eleven and picked up half a roast chicken for dinner when they got home, and she got Emma a blue Slurpee slush drink because she begged for it, and Paige didn’t want to argue with her. They were both hungry and it was late, and they got back onto the freeway, and Paige groaned when she saw the traffic slow down up ahead. There was an accident, and she knew Marty would have a fit and might even leave if they were late. Emma’s lips were blue from the dye in the drink by then, and Paige laughed when she saw her in the rearview mirror, and noticed then that Emma hadn’t put her seatbelt back on yet after their stop at the 7-Eleven. She was going to remind her, but they were stopped in traffic. Emma was usually good about that, and always reminded her mother and told her not to text, which she sometimes did if they were very late. Paige always had her sit in the backseat, to be safe, and she was diligent about seatbelts, most of the time. But once in a while if she was too busy or rushed she forgot, even after the buzzer sounded three times before it stopped.
* * *
—
Whitney had had a long day too. It was her last day in the office before leaving on her trip. She was handing off all her regular patients to a psychiatrist who had covered for her before for the month of August. He taught at the medical school at UCLA, and her patients liked him. She’d seen her last patient that afternoon, and was going to finish packing that night. She had a stack of new bikinis and wraps for the trip, and a ticket for the flight to Paris at eight the next morning. She was flying straight to Charles de Gaulle airport, and had a two-hour layover until the flight to Nice at six A.M. local time. Three of the crew members from Chad’s boat were meeting her, as they always did, and by eight A.M. local time, she’d be on his yacht. They planned to leave the dock immediately and head for Portofino, which was about a seven-hour trip by sea. By late afternoon, they would be in Portofino in time for dinner, and their vacation would have begun.
Chad liked to travel as far offshore as possible, and Whitney knew her cellphone wouldn’t work then, so she wanted to call Paige and Emma that night, before she started traveling the next morning. Paige had all the Satcom numbers on the boat from previous trips, but Whitney had emailed them to her again. She wouldn’t need to call, but it was good to have them, just in case. Whitney usually texted her a few times from the trip, but her vacations with Chad were the only time when she disconnected from all her responsibilities, and she could hardly wait. He was planning to have guests on board for a day or two in Sardinia, but for most of the three weeks, they would be alone. She loved her time with him, and being able to relax and forget life in L.A. completely.