and burst forward to get right up in his face. “You know you hurt me? Is that how you think of it? Like a broken leg or a sad couple of weeks over a high school crush? I had never let anyone in the way I did with you. You took my virginity, Sam.”
His eyes soften and he must see how close I am to tears. “The last night we were together,” he begins, wiping at his brow.
I feel my lip curl. “The night you said you were falling in love with me.”
A tiny pause and then, “Right.”
“The night before you called the Guardian.”
I’ve never had actual confirmation of this, but it was the only explanation that made sense. Still, his quiet “Yes” makes the floor tilt beneath me. “Roberta called at around three in the morning, after I left you at your door.” He inhales deeply. “Apparently Luther had a necklace made for her, nothing too extravagant, but more than they could normally afford. On the day it was delivered out of the blue—that last day we—”
My stomach dissolves just at the moment he closes his eyes, stopping just short of saying made love in the garden.
“She got an inkling what was going on,” he says, voice rough. “She called their doctor. Found out Luther’s prognosis was shit. Taking me to England and getting Roberta a gift like that was his way of saying goodbye. He didn’t want . . . they didn’t have much. Not enough for a lengthy treatment. They would have lost the farm, literally.”
Richard is Luther. Ellen is Roberta. The truth feels so obvious, it slots into place with a quiet, unobtrusive click. I think about the script I fell in love with; I think about Ellen’s strength and their bottomless devotion. It didn’t convince me that love like that was waiting for me, but it gave me hope that it could exist. After feeling nothing for years, it was enough.
“So you sold me to save him,” I say numbly.
Sam opens his eyes, and I can tell from his expression that he hates the way I’ve put it. But he gives another quiet “Yes” anyway.
“Would you do it again?” I ask. “Knowing that it hurt me, knowing how much my life would change?”
Sam tilts his face to the ceiling, and I watch as he blinks quickly, his cheeks growing red with emotion. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
“You answer with a yes,” I say, “or a no.”
“We got another ten years with him.” He looks me squarely in the eye. His are red-rimmed. “So, yes. I would do it again.”
I don’t know where we can go from here. I turn to leave, but he stops me with a hand around my arm. “Tate. Don’t walk out after that.”
“We have to get back on set.”
“Devon will come get us. Just—” He gestures to the chair again. “Sit, please?”
I lower myself back in the chair, still feeling shell-shocked. We sit in tense silence for several long moments.
“I didn’t lie about anything I felt in London,” he says, and a painful spasm turns something over in me. “Leaving you the way I did really wrecked me, and it’s okay if you don’t believe me. But I loved Luther and Roberta with everything I have. They’d given me everything.” He pauses, and in the silence I can practically feel his turmoil. “I want you to know that.”
The truth is, I do know that. It’s evident in every word of his screenplay, in every nuance of the dialogue. Their voices come through so authentically; it could only have been written by someone who loved them beyond measure.
It makes it really hard to hate him, but anger isn’t so quick to diffuse in my blood. The relief that it hadn’t been planned from the moment I spilled my secret expands, taking up space before I’ve really made room for it. It makes it hard to breathe, like the air in my lungs is under pressure.
“Is there anything else you need to know?” he asks.
Through the chaos of my thoughts, the only questions that press forward with any clarity are ones that sound so young and selfish. Did you ever think of trying to find me? Was it easy for you to just disappear?
But I’m also wrestling with feeling obtuse for not seeing the truth from the second I knew Sam wrote the script. Even if it’s set in Iowa not Vermont, the story is so clearly Sam’s. I’m fighting the