“Just so you know—scheming like this is so much more fun with you than against you. Good night, Nadine.”
———
That’s how it went for months—public escalations and private … whatever we were. We got so cocky we even went back to London, just to be photographed at the same Wimbledon games. Kasia had her baby and named Harper a godmother. We ran lines and helped prepare each other for auditions, even, laughably, the same part in a Western that eventually cast Chelsea Green. We agreed we each got a person to confide in aboutus, so I introduced her to Ivan—hilarious, he a touch startled and thoroughly amused (“It’s about time, Nadine, your obsession was unconscionably obtuse.”) and her beyond nervous knowing how much his opinion mattered to me. I met her mother—terrifying, worried I’d be another part of Harper’s life to disappoint her, but she seemed to understand the damage she’d inflicted. She seemed to want to undo it.
And I did not have a nose ring, which helped.
Harper and I even spent the goddamn holidays together, being unbearably adorable and detestably in love—though, ofcourse, we weren’t calling it that. I don’t think we even quite recognized it as that.
We moved on, as well as we could.
On New Year’s Eve they found Joel’s body.
July 2004
Helicopters swarm over a mansion in Beverly Hills, Harper Moore emerges, sunglasses on, head bowed as she rushes to a car.
Kayla Alexander:She was at my New Year’s party when she found out Joel was dead. I’ve never seen Harper so upset. She’d been on edge for months, and then she got the news and … I didn’t get it before. The “break” in “breakdown,” but it’s like everything in her crumpled.
Jasmine McKenna:I think by that point we were all prepared for a body—we just thought it would be an overdose in a locked room or a corpse in a crushed car. An accident. Not a grave. Not a woodland. Not a murder.
Caleb Krause:I was at a bar with Nadine when the news hit. I guess we both felt a little culpable because she fully fainted. Passed clean out.
Nadine Heywood:Our rivalry had never felt fiercer, but sometime around autumn it had begun to fizzle out. Harper was far more concerned with Joel, and I was wracked with guilt about the role I had played in that … but I suppose the long and short of it was that I hadn’t been okay in some time. I didn’t realize it was possible to grieve so deeply, that sadness could tear a pit inside you. So when Harper lost Joel, my first thoughts were compassion. I wouldn’t wish loss on anyone. And I knew what the paparazzi had done to me, their relentless digging like they wanted the darkness to consume me solely so they could photograph that too. It began almost immediately—the press hounding her and making up stories. If I, the woman whose hatred was legendary, could see she was innocent and hurting, how could the rest of the world not? And I think the public did; it’s just the paparazzi who wanted to sell a lie. They should be ashamed.
January 2004
HARPER FLEW BACK TO LONDON ON THE FIRST FLIGHT she could get.
I wanted to beg her not to. We could fly anywhere. We could hide, start over, sell off our jewelry and our handbags and live off the funds for the rest of our lives. I wasn’t sure I could cope without being able to lose myself in a part, but for her I’d try. For her I would drive and just keep going.
If I had stayed strong during the act, she had lasted the distance.
And now she was the one issuing plans. “They won’t have enough to arrest me,” she assured. “And I’m too high profile to have anything other than an airtight case. If they had all they needed, they wouldn’t politely be asking me to come to London; they’d have me arrested right now and extradited over.”
I brought her hand to my lips, wanted to kiss each and every knuckle like I might never touch those hands again.
“We’ve got by this long because I, along with the rest of the world, believed Joel abandoned me. We might have suspected foul play, but now that’s been confirmed. Someone took him from me—so I’m going to go be devastated about it.”
“At least you’re a talented actress.”
She looped her fingers through mine and kissed me, a long lingering press of her lips that I tried not to think of as, potentially, our last.
She drew away with a smile. “I am what you made me.”
Foul Play Suspected in Joel Ingram’s Death—Wife Harper Moore Reportedly in London to Liaise with the Police
“Whoever did this didn’t just take my husband from me, they snatched my grief and replaced it with animosity. I’ll never forgive them,” Claims Joel Ingram’s Widow Harper Moore, Pushing for Justice After the Alleged Murder of Her Husband.
Not Seen Since the BAFTAs? What We Know About Joel Ingram’s Last Known Whereabouts
Harper couldn’t phone me. If they suspected her, and they must, they’d tap her phone. If they knew I’d worked with her, it would be so much easier to piece everything together. Herinnocence rested primarily on the factshecouldn’t have done this.
Thatwecould was beside the point.
Which meant I traced her in headlines, rumors, and one of her own trackers slipped in her bag. I didn’t even bother shutting the laptop anymore; it was open at all times to a dozen news sites and gossip columns.
I worried about her without me. We were strongest together.
