She rolled her eyes.
“It’s for a good cause. They do good work over there. They give voices to people who had theirs taken away.”
“It’s great, really. I’ll have one of my tuxedos steamed. What color is your dress?”
“Red.”
She looked ravishing in red.
She perked up and grabbed one of the notebooks from the pile on the floor. “I don’t know what to do with these.”
Evie sat on my living room floor, fighting off the dogs trying to slobber her with their love. She tossed another one of Charles’s notebooks into the large pile.
“We should probably burn them now that they’ve drained the lake,” I told her. They’d drained Falls Lake for regular maintenance a few days ago, finding Charles’s wrinkled, water-logged body. Since then, security had been tighter than ever, and police were rampant all over the studio lots. It was a bitch going anywhere now.
“I—what if I missed something?” She furrowed her brow. “This can’t be all of their relationship. It makes no sense. Every page is written on, but it feels like entire pieces are missing. One day, they are in love in Paris. The next they’ve been fighting in Austria.”
She huffed and fell back onto the carpet. The dogs attacked her, breaking the tension. Her giggle filled the room as they licked her face. “Stop, you two!” She laughed, pushing them away and sitting back up. She brushed her hair out of her face and inhaled deeply. “Okay, I need to focus. What do we do now?”
“What can we do?” I shrugged. “Right now, one wrong move and we’ll be caught. I can’t take a piss without security standing outside waiting for me.”
“It’s awful. I feel like they aren’t there to protect us, but to watch us,” she groaned.
Bingo.
“What do we know from the journals?” I redirected the conversation. I didn’t really feel like talking about work right now.
“Charles had a few interesting quirks, including an eidetic memory. I think what he said was true. He’s not my dad. The time doesn’t match up.” She scrunched up her face.
I knew she’d been hoping out of all six possible candidates, her father would be the one who actually loved her mom.
“So, who do you think it is?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” She shrugged. “I don’t know if I even care anymore.”
The notebooks revealed more about Lita Reyes than we ever knew. She’d come to Hollywood when she was eighteen and was an instant hit with small projects. However, she learned quickly that sex sold, and if you wanted something, you had to use whatever you had in your arsenal to get it.
I’d been taught the same lesson.
Charles recorded every verbal and physical abuse she had suffered at the hands of Hollywood while dating him. He’d written it down matter-of-factly, almost like an impartial third party. It read like a news article, not her lover confessing about the crimes he witnessed. It was all very odd, and it was all in his handwriting, with every entry signed by him at the end.
Lita had been chewed up and spit back out by the industry she claimed to love. She’d told Charles about being molested by directors offering her minor roles—she was barely an adult. She got her start on casting couches, eventually working her way up in a male-dominated industry by shutting her mouth and taking what scraps they gave her—until she finally landed a break-out role and didn’t have to take the abuse anymore.
However, from Charles’s recounts, it sounded like her mind had been altered by it all. She’d become jaded, hating most men, which made Charles special.
He was everything Lita needed in a partner. He was kind and took things slow. He took her career seriously and was never jealous of the attention she got. For a while, anyway.
She loved him.
That was what made Lita’s betrayal so hard. Evie wasn’t Charles’s child, because Lita had gotten pregnant while on location filming a movie. Charles had been here in California the entire time.
It made sense now why she started the charity to help women like her. Manipulated by an industry built on taking advantage of people’s desire for fame. Sure, she was never required to sleep with any of the men listed in Charles’s journals, but she wouldn’t have had the career opportunities otherwise.
That was one of the sleazy underbelly secrets everyone knew in Hollywood but would never admit to. It was either who you knew or who you blew. And Lita and I shared that in common. We didn’t know anyone.
Having experienced the casting couches firsthand, Charles’s accounts of her being a completely willing participant were doubtful. I was sure some, maybe even most, were what both parties had agreed to. But, I’d been in a number of rooms where choices were taken and consent was murky.
It was why she’d left the knives for Evie with Bryce and started the charity. You couldn’t trust anyone in this industry except yourself. Evie was right. We were missing a piece of the puzzle. Who was her father?
