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