“Fair enough.”
My radio was set to the Bruce Springsteen station—it had been ever since I’d driven back to Boston from the Jersey Shore. I turned it on. “I’m on Fire” was playing. Speaking of preludes…I shut it off quickly and checked the GPS. We had about forty minutes to Gloucester, and I wanted them to be as subtext-free as possible. “Let’s talk about Natalie Blythe,” I said.
Fifteen
By the time Tony and I arrived in Gloucester, I’d learned a lot about Natalie Blythe. I’d learned that, like me, Natalie had gone to Boston U. I’d learned that she’d come from a “large and welcoming” Irish family in West Roxbury and that she’d fallen in love with acting after playing the Virgin Mary in her third-grade Christmas pageant. I’d heard that her mother’s untimely passing from cancer had broken her heart, but that she had found solace in self-help books by Louise Hay and Eckhart Tolle—and by the romances her mother had loved. “She claimed she’s read all of Melanie Joan’s books,” Tony had said. “A few of them more than once.”
But as he also pointed out, the wordclaimedwas doing a lot of heavy lifting. “I only know all of this because it’s what Natalie told Melanie Joan and the other producers during the castingprocess,” Tony said now, as I pulled into a public parking lot overlooking Wingaersheek Beach. “So it’s not exactly sworn testimony.”
“The motive was obvious,” I said.
“Right,” he said. “And actors tend to be great liars. It’s part of their skill set.”
I refrained from telling him that I’d also heard that said of Hollywood agents. “You ever see her reading?” I asked. “Or listening to an audiobook? Did she talk about books with you or with anybody?”
“I didn’t see much of her at all,” he said. “She started pissing off Melanie Joan one day into shooting. She was gone, I think, within the first week.”
I turned off the car. “Melanie Joan’s memoir makes it sound like a much longer time.”
“I was as surprised as anybody when I read that prologue,” he said. “I barely even remembered that there had been another Cassandra before Meredith took over, and out of left field, Melanie Joan’s talking about how Natalie retraumatized her.”
“By rewriting her character.”
“Yep,” Tony said. “You do not fuck with Cassandra.”
“Clearly.”
“Hey, what should I do about this dog?”
Rosie knew the worddog. It woke her up. She shook her head vigorously. Tony lifted her off his lap and handed her to me. Rosie was small, but very dense—more so lately, thanks to Blake’s bottomless treat drawer. I found the weight of her reassuring.
“Great,” Tony said. “She sheds.”
“If Rosie stays long enough to shed on you, it means you’ve earned her trust.”
We both got out of the car. I reattached Rosie’s leash and set her down beside me.
Tony swatted at his jacket and pants. “She must really trust me,” he said.
“That makes one of us,” I said.
“Hey,” Tony said. “I’ll earn your trust.” He winked at me. Winking at me had never been the way to earn my trust.
He left to feed the meter. I stood next to the car, waiting for him, gazing out at the beach.
Wingaersheek Beach was, for lack of a less irritating word, dreamy. Smooth white sand that was distinctly non–New England–like, and some of the clearest, calmest water I’d seen outside of the Caribbean. I inhaled deeply. It made me remember how much I loved the smell of the ocean when it wasn’t laced with coconut oil.
My phone vibrated, breaking my reverie. I slipped it out of my purse and looked at the screen. Richie.
I put it up to my ear. “You’ll never guess where I am right now,” I said.
“No idea,” he said.
“I’m in Gloucester,” I said. “And I’m thinking of you.”
Richie knew Gloucester. When he and I were married, we used to escape here over the summer, booking a room at one of the many seaside hotels just to jump into the ocean, dry off, and go to the Seaport Grille for lobster and martinis. Then it was back to the hotel…
“Nice memories,” Richie said. Reading my mind. “Why are you in Gloucester?”
