The Guest Book

Chapter One

“Once upon a time”—Cosima Frank swept the rain from her curls with a sigh—“lawyers knew how to manage an estate with a bit of flourish.”

She pressed her trench coat into Duncan’s outstretched hands and shook out her umbrella, spattering rain onto the marble floor.

“Is that so?” Ever the gentleman, he carefully hung up her coat for her in the alcove off the foyer.

“Haven’t you seen the movies? They’re supposed to gather the mourners together for a reading of the will where dark secrets come to light. Perhaps an elegant young woman faints. That sort of thing.”

“Your meeting with the attorneys didn’t go how you expected?” Duncan offered her his fond, paternal smile, which Cosima made an effort to return. All the small muscles of her face that made it possible to smile had grown stiff with disuse.

“At one point, I wasn’t sure if the gentleman from the title company was describing the Venice Beach lot Mother bought in the seventies or if he was casting a spell,” she said.

“Although I did learn that her various waterfront investments have appreciated nicely. No one can say Phoebe wasn’t savvy with her money. ”

Duncan glanced toward the center of the foyer, where a three-story-tall pink marble fountain of an elephant, complete with gold saddle, dominated the space. “At times,” he said diplomatically.

Duncan was always diplomatic.

She followed him to her mother’s study, where they had been meeting in the afternoons.

The routine had settled on the pair of them in the quiet of the massive Beverly Hills estate that Cosima’s mother had liked to call “the Castle.” Without its queen, there wasn’t the bustle of staff making rooms ready for guests anymore.

There weren’t caterers, or a bartender coming to the back entrance to set up in one of the lounges for a gathering.

There weren’t deliveries of flowers or dresses.

No architects or moneymen or agents or managers or glittering, famous, beautiful people here, admiring a new painting or antique.

It turned out the Castle was only the Castle because of Phoebe. Without her, it was a collection of empty rooms.

The smallest one was this study, where Cosima and Duncan could still smell a thin vapor of her perfume and survey the chaos piled on her desk, feeling as though she would walk in at any moment to kiss Duncan on the neck.

They settled into their chairs, a wingback by the tiled fireplace for Duncan and an Eames that could take all of Cosima’s long legs without making her back sore.

“Were there many photographers at the gate?” He reached down and pulled two seltzers from a concealed fridge in the study’s breakfront.

“Fewer. The rain’s so bad today.”

The weather for the funeral had been obediently sunny, seventy degrees, and clear as crystal—Los Angeles obeying Phoebe’s whims, as usual.

But it had been raining ever since, for three weeks straight.

The drumming of the rain became a constant in the background while Cosima sat to be interviewed about her mother, the Queen of Hollywood, and how nothing in the world would be the same without her.

The tears of the world would end, she assumed, whenever the rain did. On the first sunny day, the planet would start to spin again, and with it Phoebe’s legacy, which Cosima had inherited so she could preserve it forever.

She was the Castle’s princess, after all.

Duncan placed his seltzer bottle on the edge of the overflowing desk, centering it on a silver coaster.

He pulled out his phone and a pair of tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses that made a distinguished contrast to his salt-and-pepper hair and beard.

When he leaned back, his shirt settled into a drape worthy of Robert Redford. “Are you ready?”

Cosima took a deep breath through her nose.

She counted to four before exhaling over a slow eight counts to settle her tight stomach.

She’d had a number of doctor’s visits and tests attempting to get to the bottom of her sharp stomach pain, only to have a kind physician suggest that she consider developing a mindfulness practice and try deep breathing.

It didn’t work—her stomach still managed to twist itself into a pinching knot—but she figured the extra dose of oxygen would assist with the next set of tasks at hand. “What do we have today?”

Duncan tapped his phone. “I’m sending you a file with terms from the public library for their display of Phoebe’s papers.”

Cosima retrieved her tablet from her bag and swiped it awake. “Got it.”

“I already had the attorneys review them, and I accepted their edits. You just need to sign.”

Nodding, Cosima dragged the papers into her project organizer. “Next?”

“There’s an issue with the release of the budget for the endowed theater chair at UCLA. When I talked to the foundation CFO, she said what’s needed is a phone call to the bank, but you’re the only one authorized to talk to them.”

“Right.” Cosima made a note, adding it to the list for her assistant to schedule an appointment. She took another slow breath.

Duncan leaned back in his chair and fiddled with his heavy gold wristwatch. Her belly cramped again, this time because he was stalling, and she knew why.

“You’ve seen the stock reports,” he said.

This wasn’t a question. In her Burbank office, a high-definition wall-mounted monitor displayed the vagaries of the global market in real time.

She had a phone and a tablet and a laptop, all of them connected to the internet.

In addition, Cosima received a crisp butter-yellow cardstock folder every morning with her breakfast. It, too, contained a market update, among other briefings essential to the operations of Phoebe Frank Studios, better known as PFS.

It was the same folder her mother used to review while eating her own breakfast.

“Power vacuums make the market nervous.” Her voice sounded far away.

“They do. On the upside, that means the market will settle out once a new CEO has been named.”

Once you name the new CEO, he meant.

Cosima’s mother had built PFS into an empire on the shoulders of her first project, Ship of the Cosmos, a low-budget film that she wrote, directed, and starred in as Captain Astra Saturnine.

Ship of the Cosmos went on to become one of the biggest film franchises of all time.

It spawned sequels and prequels, limited-series spin-offs and animated versions, comic books and novelizations, action figures, fast-food toy tie-ins, and conventions.

For three decades, PFS had been synonymous with Ship of the Cosmos, even as the studio’s scope grew to constitute a significant portion of Hollywood’s continued output.

And yet Phoebe Frank, in what was possibly her first misstep, had not named a successor.

Instead, she had charged Cosima with the knighting.

Phoebe had called this a “compromise.” Cosima considered it a punishment, since it had come after she made it clear that she could not—or, in her mother’s view, would not—succeed Phoebe.

That last, horrible, monthslong argument with her mother was the first time Cosima had refused to do what Phoebe wanted.

It surprised them both.

Cosima often thought of her life as Phoebe’s daughter in terms of before and after.

From her birth and appearance on the cover of People—swaddled in lace, cradled in her loving mother’s arms—until her graduation with a niche degree in the arts, her life had been a public performance of what it was to be the daughter of a famous creative.

After the whirlwind of finals and graduation, Cosima had traveled, experimented, and dreamed of making something of her own.

Then she’d come home to rest and regroup, only to be told that Phoebe needed her.

Cosima’s advice was required. Her unique knowledge of Phoebe Frank Studios.

How well she could anticipate what her mother would want done.

How good she was at doing things Phoebe’s way.

It worked out well for Phoebe. For the stockholders, too—until Phoebe was gone.

Now, the global entertainment industry, the markets, the PFS licensing and franchise partners, the media, and even the internet cinephiles looked to Cosima for a decision that she’d already taken too long to make.

They had expected her to deliver it like a puff of white smoke from the Vatican, perhaps.

Or they’d looked for the name of the annointed to float from the Castle on the exhale of her mother’s last breath.

Duncan watched her for a long, quiet moment.

Her stomach pressed against her heart, her throat, and locked her voice up tight.

He sighed at the screen of his phone. “Do you want to talk about the garden project instead?”

She did not. She took a sip of seltzer, hoping it would remind her stomach to be a stomach rather than a bag of knives. “Of course. That sounds perfect.”

When he looked up from his phone, it was to smile at her with sympathy.

Duncan was wonderful. He’d always been wonderful, ever since Cosima’s mother met him on a jet boat in the French Riviera, where he had at least six heiresses and models fighting over him—but naturally he chose Phoebe, with her long legs and curly hair and big eyes.

At that time, Phoebe’s fame was wildfire, but, telling the story, she’d liked to portray herself as though she were an awkward girl reading on the beach, noticed by a handsome rake.