“I care about you,” she said. “And I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” she repeated it, again and again, and she was crying too. “I don’t understand why you’re here. And I think I’m trying to punish you for it.”
She brought her hands to my face, clasping my own hair to my cheeks.
“You are the world I’m trying to save, Nadine Heywood. You consume me. And if at the end of all this I burn forwhat I’ve done, don’t even think about trying to snatch that spotlight from me. It’smymoment.”
“Then take it,” I pushed back. “Stop letting them win. You’re the best actress of a generation so—”
“You’rethe best actress of a generation.”
“For now! Next year you’ll claw it all back, and the year after I’ll snatch it in turn, and we’ll keep spinning onunlessyou’re behind bars.Act, Harper. Control the narrative. Put on the performance of a lifetime andstay with me.” I’d have dropped to my knees again if I thought it might have helped. But despite the depth with which I now knew her, some things remained the same. And nothing riled Harper into action like a provocation. “But if you think it’s too much for you then let me know and I’ll stop giving the detectives ammunition for an abetting charge. Save us both or drag yourself down—pick one.”
———
Harper filmed a tell-all interview with Declan O’Brien.
After a month of barely leaving the house, there she was, gaunt and tired buttrying.Not taking any of this lying down, fighting to regain control one more time.
“Do you think it’ll be convincing?” she asked, the night before it aired.
No. Not when suspecting her was so damn entertaining.
But it might remind everyone that it was a running joke. That to actually believe she did it was a conspiracy too far.
“It will definitely regain some favor.”
“I just never even considered that playing the game wouldn’t be enough,” she said, head on my lap as I wound braids into her hair. I couldn’t keep myself still, not with her. “I never thought I’d lose at it either.”
I couldn’t berate her out of this one—not when thiswasher trying.
“You’re just letting the understudies have a moment,” I assured her. “People have been suspected of far more than this and are still at the height of their fame. I think the public are poised for a new angle on this, and you’re giving them one.”
“Go on then,” she said. “As the press do. Tell me the best story you know. I don’t care if it’s a real one.”
“The best story I know is presently unfurling.”
Her eyes fluttered shut, and god, I wanted to count each and every eyelash. “Tell me that one. I want to hear who I am through your eyes. Maybe I’ll like her better.”
Harper through my eyes was everything, the whole axis upon which my world hinged. I didn’t know how to tell her that—I was an actress, not the one writing the lines. I could only ever recycle someone else’s words.
But I could try.
So I took a breath, and I began. “This is the truth as I’d only admit it to you, my love: We all stopped talking when Harper Moore walked into the room.”
———
My love.They hadn’t said that word to each other, but Nadinestumbled over it now and Harper caught it—let her linger in it, before sighing and nuzzling farther against her. Unspoken, but declared.
Unspoken, except in every word Nadine was about to say, and every line nestled in between.
“I love you,” she said, when she reached the end, though of course it wasn’t the end, not yet.
“I love you too,” Harper replied.
The interview aired on Friday May 7, 2004.
Harper Moore was arrested the following morning.
THEIR SIDE OF THE STORY: HARPER MOORE
