Chapter 34 The Last Lie
The Last Lie
The first day of trading after the closure of Wall Street, the world wakes with an excited start.
Already, the country is looking at a gaining Dow Jones Industrial Average, and hope is in the air—a new feeling, invigorated and motivated.
On the radio, the announcer talks about new starts and new beginnings, and for the first time ever, Frankie wakes to languid late-morning sun through the window, and Jack’s arm around her.
No longer is she worried they’ll be caught. No longer are they trying to hide.
“I won’t move in,” she says.
“Ah, see, I like to start the day with good morning.”
“I’m here while I figure things out and get another job, but I’m not making the same mistakes my mom—” She stops.
For as long as she can remember, she saw her mother’s life as a warning: a woman weak enough to constantly be overpowered by a man’s lure, to always hope that the next time would be different.
Suddenly, she wonders if she’s been seeing it wrong, if her mother’s strength was actually the ability to hope, the bravery to hope, in the face of everything.
To try again. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s a bit of everything, because that’s how life is.
The one thing she knows is being brave enough to love, or even being open to love, is also a kind of strength.
She remembers Nico telling her to tread carefully, that fearless people take too many risks.
But Frankie wasn’t fearless. She held anything that could’ve really hurt her at arm’s length. Where was the bravery in that?
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Frankie finally says.
“I think you’re in bed, in Venice.”
“I don’t have a plan, past today.” She stares at the ceiling.
“You know what that says to me? That you have a whole lot of options.”
Later, O’Shea calls to report that he did as instructed and returned the car to the studio. Officially, Frankie has broken free.
Then they wait. An entire day of nothing but each other.
Luxurious in its mundanity. They make pancakes for lunch, they take a bath, they organize the bookshelf, searching for a four-leaf clover Frankie once pressed between the pages of one of the novels.
And later they sit on the porch, watching shifting reflections on the canal.
Algae and settled water and a whiff of sea in the air, an ocean promise.
She thinks of going to the beach tonight, to sit on the sand and dig her toes into the cold, to take in a view that speaks of the past and the future, of here and distant lands, because it won’t matter if people see them together. Not after tonight.
“A picnic,” she says.
“On the beach. It’s a date.”
But tension starts to creep in. They’re waiting for the evening edition of Magda’s paper to be delivered, and for the chaos her article will unleash.
Working to their advantage is the fact that it will be too late for Nico to do anything to counter, though, still, Frankie watches the clock on the kitchen wall, and every noise sounds like the thwack of a newspaper and the repercussions it will bring.
“A watched clock doesn’t deliver a newspaper,” Jack says. “You feel like sandwiches?”
There’s no bread, so they do peanut butter and strawberry jelly on saltine crackers, dozens and dozens of surprisingly delicious little sandwiches.
Jack watches her. “You were wrong, by the way.”
Frankie, chewing, looks up.
“You told me I had people fixing things and cleaning up my messes, so I didn’t know repercussions.
But I was living the repercussion. And I did it, willingly, for years.
I went along with everything, because I figured I was lucky, and I’d reached the goal.
Big house, money, fame. That’s the pinnacle, right? The be-all end-all?”
“Supposedly.” A pause. “I figured you weren’t really willing to risk it all.”
“You’re wrong there too. Because how lucky could I be if I can’t do what I love, or be with who I—” He stops, and smiles.
Wiping jelly from the corner of her mouth, she says, “I think I like being wrong.”
Then there’s a knock on the front door.
They freeze. Glance at each other. They arranged to have a special messenger deliver a paper to Nico at his house, which should be happening right about now, so there’s no way it’s Nico at the door. “The paper,” Jack says.
Halfway on the Welcome Mat is the evening edition, the words We Lied in big capital letters on the front page. They take it to the kitchen, where Frankie reads aloud. The article is written from Magda, directly to her readers.
Excuse the interruption of your evening, but a development in the death of June Finney has just come to light, and I promise it deserves your attention.
RCO Studios, in a brave and bold move, has disclosed to yours truly that the facts of June Finney’s final days were different than they’d reported.
Here is what is still true: June was killed in a robbery gone wrong, and Jack Sawyer had nothing to do with her death.
Other than that, the studio admits that much of the June-and-Jack lore was just that: fiction, a tale, a myth, an invention to make the public happy .
. . a lie. Though their supposed romance captivated fans all over the world, June and Jack did not, in fact, have a love to end all ages .
. . at least not with each other. In fact, June Finney was desperately in love with someone whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life with, a man who was not Jack.
Jack, similarly, was in a relationship with a woman who was not June.
While the public, at times, feels as though it’s their right to know the details of their favorite stars’ personal to-dos, this reporter will opt to respect their privacy and only say this: They found love. And that’s all that needs saying.
Sources close to the couple claim they’d planned on publicly calling off their engagement so they could be with the people of their choosing when June’s life was cut short.
You may have caught wind of the swirling rumor that Jack was not with a friend in Malibu on the night in question, and that his alibi couldn’t hold a drop of water.
That’s because Jack was with the woman he was seeing, a woman who, for obvious reasons, couldn’t be mentioned without opening Pandora’s box.
“We made a choice to keep up the charade of their relationship,” studio publicist Frankie Donnelly said. “After all, the American people had just lost their favorite star. We didn’t want to destroy their favorite love story as well.”
But now RCO is taking the world by storm with this rare and gutsy mea culpa.
“What we realized is we chose wrong,” Ms. Donnelly continued.
“It wasn’t fair to anyone, including the man June loved unquestioningly and unwaveringly right up until the end.
And though we are respecting his privacy, he deserves to know how much he meant to her.
Just as the American people deserve to know that what was presented to them wasn’t always truth.
The ability to dream and imagine a life that’s different than your own is no small thing.
Films are extraordinary and important and have been a gift to the world during these hard times.
But though people deserve the ability to dream, they also need the truth that makes dreams attainable.
Perfect is not possible. June Finney had flaws.
She struggled and made mistakes. But instead of letting her be true to herself, faults and all, we tried to make her into what we thought the public would want, even going so far as to deny her real love.
This was wrong, and it’s time for a rewrite.
It’s time for us to be more truthful and accepting of our very human celebrities.
The public deserves this, the many talented actors and actresses at RCO and every studio deserve this, and certainly June Finney deserved this.
Hollywood’s stars are earthbound, after all, and nothing is perfect, including us. We will try to do better.”
How’s that for a Wednesday-night revelation?
I don’t know about you, but I wish June could’ve been with the person she loved, and I certainly hope Jack and others will get that chance.
In fact, stay tuned, because Jack Sawyer has told me something else he wants to come clean about.
It takes a big man—or woman, or studio—to admit they’re wrong, and I, for one, think even more highly about RCO because they love their stars enough to let them be who they are.
I certainly hope my fine readers feel the same.
Frankie and Jack debated about taking it further, about revealing more, but ultimately decided against it.
Was that right? Or wrong? Could Nico have saved June in the first place?
Without a true medical inquiry—and one not determined to protect the studio’s interests—how could anyone know?
And though even Frankie understands that this line of thinking could be nothing more than a feeble and final way to protect someone she feels conflicted about, the truth is there was no way to reveal Nico’s involvement without betraying June and revealing her private life in a way she would’ve hated.
For now, this was the best they could do.
For June, and for everyone. Including Tank.
Frankie pictures him reading these words, knowing definitively that June did love him.
Soon, she will reach out to him as well, but in the meantime, she hopes this reconstructs a bit of the world he once believed in.
“The article’s good,” Jack says, wrapping two bottles of NuGrape soda with a kitchen towel and setting them in the basket. “Remind me I said that later, when Magda’s next story comes out.” Then a pause. “But I’m glad, for June. Even though it’s not perfect.”
“There’s no being perfect in an imperfect world,” Frankie says. “But at least it’s something.”
They are about to leave for their picnic when the phone rings.
Frankie knew he’d call her apartment first, then track her down with Jack.
Again, the phone rings, and she pictures Nico answering the door, the messenger handing over the paper with the note she paper-clipped to the front: For June . . . the last lie.
She picks up the phone. “Hi.”
“You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“I think I do.”
Silence. From across the room, Jack watches her, then leaves to give her privacy.
“This is going to affect other studios, not just us,” Nico says.
“I hope it does.”
“It’s not gonna go over well.”
“Didn’t think it would.”
There is a long silence, and then he gives a small laugh.
“You got ahead of it, I’ll give you that.
” Another pause, and he continues. “Timed it so I couldn’t get a response out till tomorrow.
Spun what I planted. Recalled that I used the words Pandora’s box and put that line in there as a reminder of all you know, a message I’d receive loud and clear.
And made it so somehow the studio looks good enough that I can’t undo this. ”
“You’re saying I did well?”
“For someone intent on blowing up their place of work, yes, you did amazing.”
Despite herself, she smiles.
“Jack too,” Nico adds. “Donna—that story’s gonna be a doozy. And his agent already called. The powers that be will not love him doing plays.”
An addendum to his contract. A correction, a chance to get back to the core of what he loves.
“I think he’s earned the chance to do what he wants.” Then she adds, “But, Nico, I tried to tread carefully.”
When he says nothing, she presses the phone closer. She thinks she hears him breathing.
Finally, voice jagged, he says, “I appreciate it. More than you know.” A pause. Again, she hears a wavering breath. “I didn’t know, if that helps. That she was—well, I didn’t know.”
She says nothing.
“I tried, but I couldn’t wake—”
“Nico.” Now she stops him before he admits too much with an operator listening. “Aren’t you the one who told me you’d be a rich man if intentions counted?”
Barely, she thinks she hears him pushing the phone away, as though he doesn’t want her to hear him cry.
“I should go,” she finally says.
“Wait.” He clears his throat. “Are you behind what happened with Romeo and Juliet?”
It takes Frankie a second to understand he’s talking about the parrots. “No. Why? What happened?”
“Someone left the door to their addition and a window open.”
Immediately she’s hit with worry but then remembers that Nico once told her that Los Angeles would make a good home for them, with all the tropical fruits and berries people insist on planting.
Now he continues. “They were last seen enjoying their freedom at the rainforest set before taking off. Just strange that one of the windows was open at the same time that door was open, so I thought you might’ve known something about it.”
“No,” Frankie says, but then she pictures Betty with her hands on the latch. Betty, who told Frankie about the wild parrot she saw outside the window. “Actually, it might’ve been me.”
“Really?” Nico says, but she hears the doubt in his voice. “And you’re only now remembering this?”
“It’s been a busy few days.”
“I guess at least Betty will be happy.”
Betty, who told her that the studio kept June and Tank apart so they could enforce their own version of romance. I love a good love story, but some things are just cruel.