The shot cut away to preroll footage of Shannon walking mournfully through a city college campus. Erin’s voiceover drifted somberly in: “Shannon was a bright young student with the whole world ahead of her when she saw a callout for a producer on the Yesteryear Ranch account. Professors in the film program described her as sharp-witted with a critical eye—so when Shannon told them she was dropping out for what she described was a huge opportunity, they assumed she was moving to Hollywood. They couldn’t have been more wrong.”
What?She’d already dropped out before she got the job with me. They were getting the timeline all wrong.
“Would you say, Shannon, that you gave up a lot in order to work for Natalie Heller Mills?”
“I would.”
Erin gave another sideways look to the camera. My brain felt hot, literally hot; if a drop of water were to land on my forehead, it would have hissed steam. Erin was asking Shannon about Caleb now: how they met, when things shifted from professional to “decidedly less so.”
“Caleb is a really great guy,” Shannon said. “He’s smart and kind, a really good dad.”
“Perhaps not as good of a husband,” Erin offered, and Shannon blushed, looking appropriately guilty. “Perhaps not,” she admitted. She started to cry.
“Let’s change the subject,” Erin said gently. Shannon nodded, accepting a tissue that Erin had procured from thin air. “In your lawsuit, Shannon, you mention several other … unsavory, let’s say, aspects of life at Yesteryear Ranch. There are some instances of alleged animal abuse—”
“Outrageous!” Caleb cried.
“—related to the number of dairy cows the family has moved through, for example. Is it correct, Shannon, that the family has witnessed the unnatural deaths of at least four dairy cows, just over the two years you worked there?”
Shannon nodded. “I can’t say whether that’s normal,” she said, “but I did find it creepy that the cows arealwayscalled Sassafras.”
“It’s a good name!” Caleb protested. “And it’s perfectly normal for animals to die on a farm!”
In my periphery, Doug placed a hand on Caleb’s shoulder, and Caleb fell silent. Then Doug noticed I was watching, and his hand slipped easily off Caleb’s shoulder and onto the spine of the couch.
“And is it true, Shannon, that the children don’t want to be filmed?”
Shannon nodded. “They hate it.”
Lying bitch.
“Do you have some footage to show us, Shannon?”
Shannon nodded.
Then my brain ceased the work of forming coherent thoughts altogether, because I was staring at Clementine’s face, on the screen, pixelated and morose, staring right at me. The footage was recent, she’d already had her growth spurt, but still: the last year, I’d been thinking near constantly about how grown-up she seemed, how close to adulthood she was—and now the truth smacked me in the face: she was so young. The screen flashed to another image: Jessa,crying in the barn, mouthingMama, Mama,her hands and shirt covered in mud, or was that cow shit? And then just as quickly: Samuel and Stetson standing by the paddocks, their little cowboy hats backlit by a big blue sky. They were fighting over control of a nail gun. And then back to Clementine, shaking her head at—me. There I was. Standing in the kitchen, saying something sharp to my daughter. Pointing at her, and then her sisters. Junebug was on the floor, wrapped around Clementine’s leg. I was telling Clementine to watch them, probably. And she was saying quietly, repeatedly:No.And now I was saying, unmistakably:Yes.
What day was this?I didn’t remember this moment. As I watched myself on the screen, I felt like I was watching another woman I used to know. Offline Natalie. Ugly and sharp and awkward and old. Like some fairy-tale witch. What was she doing here? Who let this woman online?
And then I was staring at—darkness. Shadows. Car sounds. Doors opening and closing, buckles clicking. Where were we?
Suddenly a horribly sharp voice filled the darkness. On the other side of the couch, Amelia jumped from the sound. “Vanessa, thatbitch,is undoubtedly going to run home to post about me in one of those stupid snarky online forums—bet you didn’t think someone like Natalie would shop atTarget!!!—and then I’ll have to suffer a whole week of online commentary, and Shannon! The nerve! The absolute unbelievable nerve of that spoiled uneducated morally bankrupt little son of a—”
I couldn’t breathe. My hand was frozen on my swollen stomach, but the baby wasn’t moving. Distantly, I wondered if she was holding her breath, too.
“Yes,” my voice carried on mercilessly in the black. “That would be nice. I could share the moment myself and take the wind right out of Vanessa’s stupid little sails … Girls! What did you get at ourvery specialtrip to Target today?”
No,was all I could manage to think.
“Stop filming me,” Clementine said.
“I didn’t know you were unhappy being filmed, Clementine. I’ve always told you to tell me if you felt that way. Haven’t I?”
The footage cut away to a flickering montage of videos of Clementine, hundreds of them, rapid-fire, starting when she was just a toddler, and slowly moving toward the present. Fall, winter, spring, summer. Babies springing up all around her. And her expression,Lord;miserable, miserable, miserable.
Then we were back to the interview, and Erin was giving Shannon a tissue, and Shannon was sniffing, saying how much she loved the children, how much she loved the nannies and the farmworkers, how much she loved me, and howworriedshe was for everyone involved. “I know that’s hard to understand, given everything that … happened, but I mean it.”
“I have to say, Shannon,” Erin said, “I’m surprised to hear you voice gratitude to Natalie after what she allegedly did to you.” She paused, a perfect anchorwoman expression on her perfect anchorwoman face. “Can we talk, Shannon, about the incident?”
