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“You’ve had a rough couple of days, and I don’t think you’ve been sleeping enough,” her mom continued. “I’m glad the camera was off. Thank you, Mr. Jefferys, for riding in to the rescue.”
“It’s Harry, and it was my pleasure,” he reassured her. “And I promise there’s no security camera on the swimming pool. We learned that lesson after we hosted a group of newlyweds. No one needs to see that.”
She could only imagine. “I’m feeling better.”
“I’m not.” Her mom leaned forward. “I won’t feel better until I’m sure you don’t have a concussion. And we need to figure out if you broke your ankle. If you did . . .”
Then the film would be done for her. They would find someone else, and she would have to move on and hope she didn’t lose more work. “It’s not broken. I can move it. It’s probably a sprain.”
“That can be just as bad,” her mom muttered. “You can’t play the role if you can’t move properly.”
The role was a physical one. She’d been training to ensure she could reasonably play a fit deputy. Her mom was right. If she couldn’t do it, they would dump her. Insurance would pay her salary, but she would be out the opportunity, and it would get around that she wasn’t available. She would likely lose out on the offers she had on the table.
Her life felt so precarious. She was always aware that her career could be over in the blink of an eye.
“I’m going to talk to your sister,” her mother was saying. “She’s the one who set the system up. She should have organized those cables better. And she shouldn’t have put them anywhere near that pool.”
“Don’t blame Ally. She’s doing the best she can.” Her sister was the only one who actually knew how to set that stuff up. Normally she would go into a studio to record interviews, but the nearest one was in New Orleans, and she still didn’t have a car. The idea of driving in via golf cart hadn’t appealed.
The truth of the matter was she didn’t particularly want to go into a studio. It was nicer to stay in Papillon. When she wasn’t doing press, she’d joined Gavin in one of his classic on-set adventures. That was what he called exploring their environs. When she was a kid and filming in Europe, her mom had been nervous about taking them anywhere that wasn’t pure tourist stuff. Gavin had been the one to scoop them all up and go adventuring, as he called it. There was something about Gavin Jacks that people responded to. He didn’t come off like some pretentious Hollywood elite even when he was eating tofu or practicing yoga. People naturally liked him, and that meant they were willing to share their stories with him. When they were working together, Gavin would take Brynn, Ally, and her mom with him.
She’d enjoyed hanging out with him at the bar, playing pool and dancing with some of the locals. She apparently was now a member of a gym here in Papillon as well. And she was attending what had been called an all-new vision of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with a cast made up entirely of actual cats.
She kind of loved this place.
“Ally needs to think about you. She cut corners because she’s too busy doing her own social media to think about her sister,” her mom said with a huff. “She doesn’t have a job if you don’t have a job.”
And that was truly the problem between her and her sister. Ally never got to forget that Brynn was the breadwinner. Her mom constantly reminded her that all things flowed from Brynn.
Of course her sister resented her, but it wasn’t like she’d tangled the cords so Brynn would fall. And she’d only laughed a little. She’d been the one to call 911, only to have Harry tell her it would be far faster to drive to the clinic themselves.
Ally had been left behind to pick up the mess. Like usual.
Brynn sighed because she wasn’t sure how to heal that breach between them. Most of the time Ally was great. She could count on her sister, but there was something fragile about their relationship. Like a thread that had been pulled too taut and could break at any moment.
“She’s had to do a lot of tech work over the last couple of days,” Brynn pointed out. “Don’t make it worse than it needs to be.”
“You sound exactly like Gavin. Has he been filling your head with all of his hippie nonsense?”
Brynn bit back a groan. “Gavin isn’t a hippie, Mom, and you know it. He just doesn’t think you need to be so hard on Ally, and I agree.”
“Well, when you’re a parent, I suppose you can handle things as you see fit,” her mom bit out.
