Chapter 9
BENNETT
The rest of the week blurred into the usual cycle of notes and rewrites, with barely any communication from Laina.
By Friday, I was running on caffeine and nerves, having only gotten a few hours of sleep each night.
My bed felt too empty without my wife next to me, but she hadn’t given me any sign she was ready to come home yet.
Forcing my dejected thoughts out of my head, I scanned my episode six notes while I walked to the soundstage. It was already filled with pre-tape energy when I got there. People were being seated, and the crew moved with the focused pace that came with filming in front of a live audience.
I took my place near the bank of video monitors, headset around my neck.
This was the part of the job that normally fed my muse—watching the performance in real time, catching the half-second delays in a joke, rewriting a line between takes, and pitching a tighter punchline when something didn’t fully land with the audience.
Jordan dropped onto the seat beside me. “Pirate bit’s up third. Charlotte wants one more pass on the ‘sea claimed my ship’ line before we go to tape.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Let’s hear it as is on the first take and adjust if it’s dragging.”
He nodded and stood to go deliver the news to the actress, who asked for last-minute rewrites on a regular basis. It was Jordan’s turn to disappoint her since I’d done it just last week.
I scanned the set as a production assistant handed me a fresh coffee I hadn’t asked for.
I thanked her without looking away from the screens.
Everything appeared to be ready to make a few hundred people laugh on cue.
My job was to make sure the reactions came at the right places, big enough for the final edit.
I flipped to the pirate bit pages and read them over again.
And for the first time since creating Sally’s character, I felt a niggle of doubt.
But then my attention was pulled to the stage, where Peter started to go over the rules with the audience before getting them pumped up.
I put my headset on and stared at the monitors, focusing on the only thing I could control right now. My job.
While the audience warmed up and the first two scenes ran, I stayed on the pages for the invitation to the pool. The dialogue was solid. The escalation was well-timed. On paper, it worked perfectly.
Then I thought about Laina sitting at the dining table last year, brown kraft paper spread underneath a dark canvas with antique keys laid out in a careful pattern.
She’d been mapping some obscure constellation she found in an old astronomy book.
It had caught her attention because the star’s formation represented a giraffe, one of her favorite animals.
Struggling with a key that kept slipping, she’d laughed under her breath. Then she’d joked about how she must have been a disgruntled Renaissance painter in a past life—the kind who got stuck painting the same angels over and over until they got it just right.
It had been the kind of throwaway comment Laina made when she was focused on something. She probably didn’t even remember saying it, but I did.
And I had used it for inspiration.
Somewhere between that quiet moment and the version in the script in front of me, the painter had become a pirate queen. The mild joke had become a full delusion, dramatized into something an audience would laugh at on command.
I stared at the line about the sea claiming her ship and felt the first real drop in my stomach that had nothing to do with nerves over timing or punchlines. But it was too late for second thoughts.
Charlotte took her mark. The floor manager called for quiet. The cameras pushed in.
I put the pages down and forced myself to watch the monitors as the scene started, already knowing the audience was going to love it.
The director called, “Action!”
Charlotte stepped into frame with the perfect mix of sincerity and chaos the character required. The setup landed cleanly. One of the other actors delivered the invitation to the community pool fundraiser.
Charlotte’s expression shifted into exaggerated mortification. “Absolutely not. The sea claimed my ship once. It’s been more than six hundred years since I sailed rough waters as Iliana the Dread, but I will not give it a second chance to claim me.”
The laughter came from the audience before the floor manager cued them. A few people even whooped.
Their reaction egged Charlotte on, strengthening her pirate-queen posture. Her dramatic hand gestures became bigger, along with the absolute certainty that a public pool was a personal threat. Every exaggerated beat played exactly the way it had been written to play.
The audience laughed through the whole bit, loudly enough that I knew this scene would survive the edit and probably end up in the promo for this episode.
Jordan glanced sideways at me with a satisfied nod. On the monitors, Charlotte hit the final escalation and held for the reaction. The audience rewarded her with enthusiastic applause. I sat there with the headset on and watched people thoroughly enjoy what we’d written.
Shaping characters for reliable laughs was the job. And I was good at it.
But tonight, every burst of laughter scraped my nerves because I was all too aware it was landing on the real woman who had made a quiet joke in the privacy of our home.
Laina had trusted me with the candid version of herself that she didn’t share with everyone, and I’d actually thought that changing her quirks until they were unrecognizable made them fair game for inspiration. That it would cause her no harm.
The scene wrapped to strong applause. Charlotte broke character and grinned, already looking toward the monitors for feedback.
“Great energy,” the director complimented through the headset. “We should keep most of that, but let’s go again for coverage. Same pace. Charlotte, you can push the ship line a half second longer if you want. They loved it.”
She gave a thumbs-up. The audience settled for the next take.
The next take started. The laughter came just as easily.
I kept my eyes on the screens and did my job while the realization finished cutting through every excuse I had left.
The second take wrapped even cleaner than the first. Charlotte took a small bow toward the audience before the floor manager waved them quiet again.
“That’s classic Sally.” Jordan made a note. “They’re going to push the ship line all week.”
He hadn’t said anything I hadn’t already realized myself, but hearing it out loud made my stomach clench.
Someone clapped Charlotte on the shoulder as she came off her mark. The usual post-scene commotion surrounded me, but I stayed in my seat with my headset still on and gave the minimum required answers when people looked at me for confirmation.
The audience was still buzzing when they started ushering them out. I stared at the now-dark monitors and thought about their laughter.
Then I forced myself to my feet, stretched the stiffness out of my shoulders, and went to do my goodbyes to the cast and network execs who’d shown up for the taping.
Since we finished in a record-breaking three hours, with the cast nailing their scenes in just one or two takes with no mistakes, I was done in time to pick Lucy up after the football game her squad had performed at tonight.
I made it to the high school just as the stadium lights started shutting down in sections. Lucy was near the edge of the lot with a couple of other girls, still in her uniform with her backpack over her shoulder. When she saw the G-Wagon, she said a quick goodbye and climbed in.
“How was the game?” I asked.
“We won, and the halftime routine went great.” She buckled her seat belt. “I’m glad you could pick me up. Shelly’s mom was happy to drop me off, but I was a little worried she’d ask about the Sally stuff.”
My hands tightened on the steering wheel, and I grimaced. “I’m sorry you’re caught in the middle of this mess.”
“My friends have all been pretty cool about it.” Her shoulders slumped. “I just wish I had been nicer to Mom when she came home that night.”
“I wish I’d done a lot of things differently too, but we can’t change the past, kiddo.” I reached out and squeezed her hand. “All we can do is make sure we treat your mom how she deserves from now on.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I’ve sent her a few more texts, and she’s replied each time. But it’s not the same. I could really use one of her hugs right now.”
“I’m sure she misses you just as much.” I only wished the same could be said for me.
The door lifted after I hit the garage remote as we approached the house. I was stunned to see Laina’s car parked in its usual spot.
Lucy followed my gaze, then sat up straight. “Mom’s home!”