fear that I’m no more than a stepping-stone to every man who has ever meant anything to me. I feel small, and silly, and strangled by the realization that the longer I stay angry, the pettier I seem.
“I’m just trying to figure out how to feel,” I admit.
“I’m sure.” He clasps his hands, pins them between his knees. “I guess I assumed you figured it out—about Roberta and Luther—once you saw me on set.”
“I probably should have.”
“Maybe not,” he reasons. “You never met Roberta.”
Our attention turns as we hear Nick yelling something down the trail. I have a fondness for Nick—especially for Nick as Richard—that is starting to feel the way I might for an old lover, for someone I want to forever keep in my life. I think about Nick’s eyes when he’s staring at me, as Ellen. His hand when it engulfs mine. It feels so real, so intense. Was this what it felt like for Sam to grow up around Luther and Roberta? Witnessing a love like this all the time?
I know my love for this script has always been intense, even for someone who’s been looking her whole adult life for the perfect role, but I get now that it’s not only about being Ellen. It’s about wanting to know, for certain, that this kind of love exists.
But then it occurs to me . . . where is Sam in this film?
“You never come live with them,” I say. “There’s no character that’s your dad, either, when Ellen is younger. The script ends when they’re in their sixties, but you’re not in it.”
“The story is about how they fell in love in the middle of one of the most tumultuous times in our country’s history. They didn’t need me or Michael for that.”
I study him, trying to puzzle it out. Finally, he shrugs, and his smile is boyish. “It didn’t make them any more heroic at that point to have her be a single mom or bring in a three-year-old kid when they were empty nesters.”
Despite everything, this makes me laugh. “Artistic license means you cut yourself out of the story?”
He nods, and his shoulders seem to ease at the sight of my smile. “Can you believe me, though?” he asks quietly. “That the worst thing I ever did was for the best reason I ever had?”
His words spear through me, stabbing into a tender spot. Only for Sam Brandis have I felt such a complicated ache—devotion, desire, hurt, and envy of the wife who gets to puzzle out the man who, if what he says is true, would sacrifice his own heart to save someone he loves. Who could see true love so clearly in front of him and translate it into words on a page.
She gets to curl up against this man and be his best friend, his lover.
I push to stand, needing a few minutes alone to clear my head before Devon comes for me. At the door, I turn back. He’s watching me go with a tight expression I find unreadable.
“Actually,” I tell him quietly, “I think Milkweed is the best thing you ever did. And if that’s the best thing you ever did, I’m okay being the worst.”
twenty
MY CABIN’S SCREEN DOOR slams behind me, and the sound seems to hang in the fog of the early morning air. The farm has turned cold so fast. Indian summer left and abandoned us in the chilly vacuum of Northern California fall.
I don’t ever want to leave Ruby Farm. It’s more than just a quiet retreat; it’s like a warming of my bones, some settling of the frenetic beat that seems to always course through me. My house in LA feels sterile and uninhabited, doing little to calm me down between projects. But I’m so seldom there that it’s never felt worth the effort to make it into a homey place. And then when I am there, I regret not making the effort. The prospect just feels so overwhelming.
Here, each morning, I wake up in my cabin and try to pretend this is where I live now. I’ve put my clothes in the dresser and closet, stocked the small kitchen with a few staples. I go for long runs. I keep flowers on the table and had Mom ship me a few blankets from my house. Up here, I can pretend the chaos and exhaust and clatter of LA not only isn’t my home anymore, but it doesn’t even exist.