a part, like the one on TV, that suited her, but now the party was over, and she had to scramble in all directions to survive. She had never been so panicked in her life, because she had gotten so used to all those luxuries that seemed entirely normal to her now, but she could no longer pay for them.
By the next morning when she got to the set, she looked like she’d been dragged behind a bus by her teeth for a week, but everyone else on the set looked the same. There were only a very few actors who either lived simply, or had put money away. Most of them were like her, riding a wave, with the illusion that it would never hit the beach. It just had. She felt as though she had been run up on the rocks, and no one else on the show looked much better. They were worried about alimony, child support, rent, mortgages, private school for their kids, ex-wives, current wives, expensive girlfriends, and all the things they loved to do, from fancy restaurants to facials, trainers, shrinks, vacations, hotels, Ferraris. Gemma was not alone in her panic and misery, but that didn’t make it any better. The atmosphere on the set was agonizingly tense, and the only time anyone came to life was when they were on camera, but even their performances were impacted by how upset they were by the news of the day before. Their lifestyles and futures were on the line, and everyone was calling either their agent or their shrink or both. Her panic over her situation obscured her grief over her father for the moment, which was something of a relief.
Gemma had no intention of telling her sisters what had happened. They’d hear about it soon enough, but Kate called her to see how she was doing, and she could hear something in her sister’s voice.
“Something wrong?” She had an uncanny sense of her sisters, which made it hard to hide from her.
“No, of course not. Just a long week on the set. I had a lot of scenes to catch up on, and well, you know, Dad…” She tried to blame her tone on him to get Kate off the scent. But she didn’t sound sad, she sounded panicked and anxious. In fact, she was so scared, she hadn’t thought of him in several days, except to lament the fact that he couldn’t bail her out this time, as he had in the past. He always came through for her, after a brief lecture about saving her money for a rainy day. But she was a star, and he knew she needed to maintain a lifestyle. She was Daddy’s Girl. He would have been horrified if he’d known what that added up to. She spent more on makeup and her trainer than most people did on rent, not to mention facials. She had a woman fly in from New York to give her facials, with a gentle electric shock machine for two thousand dollars a pop, plus her airfare and hotel. And she hadn’t thought twice about spending it until now. She flew first class everywhere, or chartered planes for the life of a star.
“I just wanted to remind you that you’re coming up to go through Dad’s things. I think it’s hard on Juliette to have it all sitting there. It’ll be nice for her if we can go through it, keep what we want, and give the rest away. We still have his papers to go through. And we agreed to do it before Caroline goes to Aspen for the summer. They’ve rented a house there. And you’re probably going away too. Are you chartering a boat this year?” Her sisters’ lives were on another planet from Kate’s, but she didn’t begrudge it to them. It was what they did, while she worked on the ranch, which was the life she had led, and wanted, for twenty years. She had raced home from college to do it, so now she couldn’t complain, and didn’t.
When Kate asked Gemma about the boat, she felt sick momentarily, remembering what she had spent on it. Seven hundred thousand dollars for a week, which had seemed like nothing to her. But it had been fabulous, and she had invited ten friends to go with her. They’d gone to Monaco, Corsica, and Sardinia.
“No, not this year,” she said, trying to sound casual. “I haven’t figured