I nod, and then we meet eyes and she smiles a soft smile that Charlie doesn’t give just anyone. “Don’t be nervous,” she says quietly, and helps me stand. “You’re going to be amazing.”
Nick and I leave the trailer with the sounds of music—and Charlie and Trey laughing hysterically about something said after we left—filtering along after us. We are immediately swallowed by the serenity of the farm; in contrast to the makeup trailer, the space outside is so quiet it’s a little like stepping onto an empty soundstage, with that hollow, echoing silence.
“You’ve known Charlie since you were kids?” he asks.
“Eight years old.”
He grins back over his shoulder at the trailer. “She’s a trip.”
I laugh at this, nodding. But Charlie is more than a trip. She’s a sparkler, firecracker, a fistful of gunpowder. Marco is my calm, Mom is my home, Nana is my conscience, but Charlie is my wide-open sky, my free-dancing, stargazing wild rumpus.
“There’s your dad,” Nick says, voice low. He clearly took my word for it that it’s okay to call him “your dad,” but had some reservation about whether or not I need careful warning.
I follow his attention up the path toward the Community House. Even at a distance, it’s easy to recognize my father—it’s his posture, the cocky lean. He’s in jeans, a worn leather jacket, sunglasses, and wearing the ubiquitous brilliant grin. Facing another man, Dad is listening in the intent way that makes a person feel like the only important thing on the planet. I have a pulse of envy that this is the only sign of intimacy I ever get from Dad—his attention, his complete focus—and it’s really just something he’s mastered to appear sincere. He gives it away to anyone.
Dad spots me over the man’s shoulder and perks up, waving. “There’s my girl!”
The other man turns. I don’t know him, so my smile is that instinctive kind of bright that I’ve learned makes me seem friendly, chases away any potential diva concerns. He’s enormous. Oh, the writer, my brain sings back to Charlie in the trailer. Bearded, frowning, eyes like moss, with a scar through his—
Shock is a cold hand on my shoulder, a complete standstill in my brain and chest and veins. Nick collides with my back, and reaches forward, gripping my arms from behind. If he hadn’t caught me, I would have fallen forward onto the dirty path, face-first, straight as a board.
“Tate.” Nick’s deep voice is surprised, and seems to come in and out. “Whoa. You okay?”
Dad’s words float to me, also muted and fuzzy. “Tate! Up here!” He waves wildly, and his grin is something from a carnival; his head is too big, his mouth too wide.
I blink down to my feet; my heart is a hammer, my ribs are nails. I’m trying to put all of this together, to figure out if I knew, if someone told me and I forgot. Did I lose this important piece of information somewhere along the line? How could he just be here? The trail weaves in front of me but I stare at it, willing it to come into focus, unable to look at the man beside Dad.
His face registered immediately who I was, but his expression revealed no shock. He stared grimly down the path at me and then bowed his head, exhaling a long, resigned breath.
He knew. Of course he knew. The question is, did I?
Unable to get a word out, I turn, and start moving stiffly in the opposite direction.
I remember being drunk one night with Charlie, so drunk I could barely walk. At least, that’s what she told me happened. At the time I’d felt like I made my way down the hallway in a seductive saunter. But the next morning while I nursed a lurching, debilitating hangover, Charlie told me I’d ricocheted my way down to her bedroom, stopping twice to catch my balance against the wall, before falling into her room and passing out just inside the door.
This memory rises in me like bile. I wonder how I’m walking now; it feels like walking, but it could be crawling, tripping, ricocheting down the path. The stones leading to my cabin come into view and some internal fail-safe tells me to turn. Like a joystick has been jerked to the left, I pivot, tripping over a cobblestone and catching myself on the first step.
I hear a voice, voices.
“What’s going on? What did you say to her?” It’s Dad, accusing Nick of something. Nick’s voice pleading innocence, his own confusion.
And then I hear the quiet words, “Let me get this.”
It’s the voice of Sam Brandis, jogging down the path, showing up out of the blue fourteen years too late.
thirteen
I THINK I CLOSE the door but there’s no slam, only footsteps carefully making their way up the three small stairs behind me.
“Tate?” He’s at the threshold now but doesn’t step inside, and in this weird fugue I’ve entered, I find his hesitance hysterical.
Did he watch me on Evil Darlings? In the mirror, seeing myself in costume for the first time, I didn’t look like nineteen-year-old Tate. I looked like timeless, feral Violet: ruthless, manipulative, like I could murder someone with a flash of my teeth against their neck. In every attack scene, I imagined I was attacking Sam.
But that was so long ago. Fourteen years? My life scrolls past me: lovers, sets, the swimming faces of cast and crew. At some point it stopped feeling like London actually happened. It was just a terrible dream I had once.
“Tate, can I come in?”
“No.” My voice sounds far away, even to my own ears.
He doesn’t leave, he just moves back from the door. Heat seems to fill the cabin, like he’s standing in there, enormous, warm, alive right in front of me.
“Tate,” I hear him say quietly. “We’re going to have to deal with this.”
I sit heavily on the couch, and the springs squeak. Leaning back, I count the number of exposed beams overhead. Seven. This cabin is old, so old and rustic and loved. I idly wonder how many knock-down-drag-out fights it’s seen before.
“What is going on?” I ask the ceiling. Suddenly my head is pounding. “Seriously, what is going on?”
Sam seems to take this as permission to join the conversation and very slowly steps into the cabin, keeping a safe distance once the door has closed behind him.
Pressing my hand to my mouth, I struggle to not laugh. Laughing isn’t the right reaction here. Dad is somewhere out there, waiting for me to come do my job and wondering what the hell just happened. Nick, too. Sam Brandis is here, of all places, for some reason? I’m grappling for logic, but it’s completely evading me.
Sam steps closer, kneeling a few feet away, staring at me. I’m unprepared for how it feels to meet his mossy-green eyes; a sharp pain spears me somewhere vital, making it hard to breathe. I look back up at the ceiling.
Where do we even start in a situation like this?
“What are you doing here? And how?” I frown. “Wait. Are you here with my dad?”
He laughs out this single, incredulous breath and then blinks to the side, like he isn’t sure he heard me right. “Tate, Milkweed is mine. I wrote the film.”
I squeeze my eyes closed. But—“The writer is S. B. Hill.”
“Sam Brandis,” he says quietly. “Hill was Luther’s last name. I legally took it before he died.”
Luther. I knew him. Can still remember his bursting laugh, his teasing, glimmering brown eyes. A tiny, conscientious part of me feels a pang at the idea of him dying. But a louder, brittle voice carries above the fray: They used you, Tate. They probably made it to the Lake District with a shitload of money in their pockets.
“Should I have known this?” I ask him. “That you would be here? I feel like this shouldn’t have been a surprise to me today.”
“It’s understandable,” he says quietly. “You’re so busy. You have so much—”
“Don’t do that,” I cut in. “Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not,” he says quickly. Immediately. His eyes are so wide, like he can’t quite believe this is happening either. “Tate. I’m so ama—”
“Who even are you?” I ask. “I thought you were a farmer.”
“I am.” He opens his mouth and then bites his lip, shaking his head as if in wonder. “But you knew I wrote, too. I write, still.”
“Okay, let’s be honest, Sam. If we’re going to do this, at least be honest: apparently, I didn’t know anything about you.”
He looks like he wants to argue this but blinks away, seeming to search for words. “Well, I write. I’ve always written, but Milkweed is different. It’s—”
“No. Stop.” I lean forward, pulling my arms in, curling into a ball. Suddenly I feel devastated: not just that he’s here, but that he’s a mallet and my love for this project is a precious sheet of glass, and I worry just having him near me is going to shatter it. I love Milkweed so much I don’t want him to say a single thing that ruins it for me. “I don’t care. I don’t. This was the film that was going to really test me; maybe even get me short-listed for awards. This is my shot at something better. Don’t try to tell me about you, or this, or why.”
I feel like I’m going to cry. I take an enormous breath, pushing back the emotion until I feel nothing. I fill myself with nothing but air. It’s been a while since I did this—since I felt this much and needed to tamp it down—but the instinct comes back so easily.
Sam shifts in his crouch, resting a forearm on his knee. He’s wearing a soft, cream Henley, open at the throat. Olive jeans. Boots. I chance a peek at his face again. The comma scar is hidden beneath the beard. He has barely looked away from my face.
“I tried to tell you,” he says. “And I knew it would be hard. So I told the studio heads we might want to go a different direction for casting.”
“Are you serious?” I ask, grateful for the anger rising out of the blankness, stabilizing me. “You told them you didn’t want me as Ellen?”
He exhales and looks at the floor for a beat. “I said we knew each other when we were younger and I wasn’t sure you’d want to take the role. Contractually, I had casting approval. They held firm, though, and I’m glad. I think you’ll be great in it, Tate. I really do. It wasn’t about my preference, it was about yours.”