Nantucket Gala (A Nantucket Sunset #12)

Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

February 2025

Los Angeles

T he day immediately following Henry’s meeting with the librarian Debra Hollow he received word from Sophia Bianchi:

Yes, Henry, I would love to see you again. Unfortunately, I’m in San Francisco meeting an old friend until this weekend. Would Sunday work? Dinner, maybe?

Henry wrote back that it would. He was grateful to have a three-day buffer between now and then—a time during which he could practice asking Sophia’s permission to write a script he’d already written. If Barry was right, she’d spring for it immediately. “It’s a way to bring her back into the public eye! It’s a way to honor her for what she’s already done!”

But if Barry was wrong? Henry would be flat out of luck.

There was no reason she couldn’t sue him.

Henry imagined calling his mother and telling her that instead of “making it before the age of twenty-six,” he was being sued by a very wealthy ex-actress and ex-screenwriter and the widow of Francis Bianchi. What would Julia say? His head echoed with possibilities. None of them were nice.

Around noon, Henry left his apartment to meet the ex-filmmaker Cindy Saucer. He wanted to discuss the making of her World War II student film back in 1977. He wanted to discuss Natalie and Sophia and peel back the multiple layers between now and the past.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised him that Cindy Saucer had given up on filmmaking. It was a difficult business, and 1977 was nearly fifty years ago. But during his research, he’d been surprised to learn that instead of filmmaking, Cindy had become a successful politician. During the nineties, she’d run for senator and lost by a narrow margin. Since then, she’d worked in government in Santa Monica before retiring in 2019—narrowly avoiding the chaos of the pandemic. In the photos he found of her online, she had hair and outfits like Hilary Clinton, and her smile was genuine. Her constituents said she was a rare breed of politician because she “really cared.”

Cindy lived in a moderately-sized bungalow in Santa Monica, just three blocks from the beach. The gate in front of the driveway opened as soon as Henry pulled up.

The politician opened the front door with a big smile. “Henry Crawford?”

Henry raised his hand. He’d read that Cindy was from the Midwest originally, and he felt a warmth about her that didn’t feel Californian or city-esque.

“Thanks for meeting me,” he said as he shook her hand.

“The pleasure is mine! It’s rare that anybody asks me about my film career. Goodness! That’s a walk down memory lane!” She led him into the living room, where she’d set up tea and decadent chocolate chip cookies. Across all the walls hung photographs of who Henry assumed were grandchildren. Most of them had lost their teeth recently. Henry’s heart swelled. He had a sense his grandmother would like Cindy.

Cindy was tremendously kind and easy to talk to. Before Henry dared dig into it, she peppered him with questions about his own career, where he’d come from, and what his plans for the future were. When she learned who his father was, she snapped her fingers.

“I’ve seen some of his segments. He isn’t bad.”

Henry smiled and cursed himself for forgetting to call his father again that week. “He’s always been very devoted to his career.”

“You can feel that,” Cindy said thoughtfully.

Henry was quiet for a moment. His feelings about his father were complicated at best.

Come on, Henry. Pull it together.

“I saw your film,” Henry said finally. Spontaneously, he pulled the floppy disk out of his backpack and waved it. He didn’t say he’d had to track down an old computer at the Echo Park library to watch it.

Cindy’s eyes glowed. “I can’t believe this. Nobody’s watched that thing in fifty years.”

“It’s really good,” Henry said. He wasn’t lying. The storytelling was tight. Both Natalie and Sophia were trained actresses. The costuming was on par with other films of the era. The painful ending was so visceral that Henry caught himself tearing up.

In fact, it felt like a tragedy that Cindy Saucer hadn’t gone on to make more films. But he didn’t want to say that, not now. The last thing he wanted to do was make Cindy regret the events of her life.

Cindy cackled and whacked her leg. “I appreciate that. I don’t know whether to believe you, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. Still makes me feel good.”

“When was the last time you watched it?”

“1985,” she answered readily. “Right after Natalie Masterson died.”

Henry’s head thrummed.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Cindy asked, raising both eyebrows.

Henry laughed. This woman was whip-smart. There was no getting anything past her.

“You’re good,” he said.

“I was in politics for thirty-nine years,” she said. “I had to figure people out like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Plus, there’s no reason to have any interest in that old student film—save for the actresses in it. What a tragedy, huh?”

Henry searched her eyes. “I wanted to ask you what they were like.”

“Sophia and Natalie?”

Henry nodded.

Cindy furrowed her brow. “It’s funny. It was almost fifty years ago, but I remember it all so clearly. I burned with such a fiery energy back then. All I wanted was to be a filmmaker. I wanted to prove myself to all the men at film school who said I couldn’t be anything. Every day on set with Natalie, Sophia, and the whole gang was the best day of my life. Natalie and Sophia took direction very well. They were good actresses. There was a reason I picked them. If I remember correctly, forty-four other women auditioned for those roles.”

“Wow. For a student film?”

“I had money to pay them,” Cindy remembered. “I’m told these days there isn’t a lot of money at that level anymore, which I think is too bad. How do filmmakers cut their teeth if they don’t have money? Does that mean only the children of wealthy parents get anywhere? Oh, but I digress. I apologize. It’s been a long time since I made a political speech.”

Henry laughed gently.

“Do you think it’s likely that Sophia introduced Natalie and Francis?”

“Definitely,” Cindy said. “Sophia and Natalie were pulling for each other. There was a lot of love between them. After Sophia married Francis, she obviously wanted to use her power to boost Natalie’s career. As I understand it, Natalie had floundered for a few years.”

Henry nodded. “Do you think it’s likely that Natalie and Francis had an affair?”

Cindy’s face collapsed. “That’s the rumor, right? But it breaks my heart to think that. Why would Natalie betray Sophia like that? Then again, why would Sophia trust Francis? He was always a cheat, wasn’t he?”

“But do you think he could have killed Natalie?”

Cindy sighed. “I don’t think anyone knows what happened that night. That’s why Francis never went to prison, right?”

Henry’s thoughts ran in circles. Cindy Saucer had given him no new information. She’d only solidified his belief that Natalie and Sophia had been brilliant friends turned enemies.

“Do you know anything about Dean Chatterly?” Henry asked.

“Oh! That poor actor who died?”

“He was Natalie’s boyfriend at the time of his death,” Henry explained.

Cindy shook her head. “There were whispers of foul play. Some people said he was involved in one gang or another. But I don’t think they ever came up with any answers.”

Henry let out a sigh and looked down at the floppy disk. It rested easily on his lap. He didn’t have anything else to ask, and he struggled to know how long to stay. Did Cindy have a husband? He seemed to recall a male figure in some of the photographs he’d seen online, but there was no sign of him here at the house.

Suddenly, Henry was terrified that this woman was lonely.

“Do you want to keep the floppy disk?” he asked.

Cindy’s eyes widened. “Is that an option? Don’t you need it for your project?”

“No,” Henry assured her, passing over the disk.

Cindy held it as though it were a morsel of treasure. Her eyes filled with tears that she blinked away. “It’s strange to think about those days. It makes me wonder what could have been—for all of us. For me and Natalie and Sophia. At least I made it out of the film industry and into another field. But Natalie didn’t make it out with her life. And Sophia? She disappeared.”

Henry’s heart swelled. “I hope to shed some light on what happened to them both.” He swallowed, then added, “I have reason to believe that Sophia wrote several of Francis Bianchi’s scripts.”

Of all the people he could spill the beans to, Cindy Saucer felt like the most appropriate.

“He stole her work?” Cindy gasped, put her hand over her mouth, then let it drop. “I don’t know why I’m so surprised. That kind of thing happened all the time. Women were never appreciated. They still aren’t.”

Henry raised his chin. “I don’t know much about your political career, Cindy, but from what I gleaned, it seems you worked hard for girls and women. You tried to build a better world for them. And in that way, I think you did more for the betterment of humanity than you ever could have behind a camera.”

This time, a tear spilled from Cindy’s left eye. She pressed on it with the palm of her hand.

Henry wasn’t sure why he’d felt called to say that. But he felt a tenderness toward Cindy that he couldn’t fully fathom. Maybe it was because he wasn’t sure if his own film career would work out. Perhaps it was because he was frightened of what he would find at the end of his Untitled Bianchi Script research.

Maybe he was just jet-lagged.

For more than an hour after that, Henry and Cindy talked about everything. Cindy told him more about her filmmaking days, then swapped those stories out for politician ones. She talked about meeting Jimmy Carter and both George Bushes and Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. She talked about the current state of American politics. She talked about what it was like to be a woman in a man’s political sphere.

She said things that would stay with Henry for the rest of his life.

She said things that made him want to call both of his sisters and his mother and say, “I love you. I wish our world was a better one.”

When he left that evening, he hugged Cindy goodbye.

“Good luck on your project, Henry,” Cindy said, waving goodbye as the gate opened for him. “I can’t wait to read about you one day. You’re going to make it. This I know.”

But Cindy didn’t know if Henry would make it. Nobody did.

All he could do was keep working.