Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Christmas Day 2024
Los Angeles, California
H alf out of his mind with surprise, immersed in stories from the past, Henry drove back to Echo Park and parked next to a taco truck. He sat in his car for nearly twenty minutes before he remembered to get out. He wasn’t hungry after that colossal Chinese meal, but he poured himself a glass of whiskey and disappeared into his bedroom. From his mattress, he listened to the sounds of his apartment and his roommates, who hardly knew him. He wondered if they missed their families or if they wished Henry had been there today to celebrate the holidays. He guessed not.
Probably soon, he’d leave this apartment and these roommates behind. They’d be a part of his past.
He wondered if he would ever think about them at all.
How long had Sophia been married to Francis? A few years? Yet it was clear to Henry that Sophia still thought about Francis nearly all the time. He took up so much of her brain.
A quick Google search told him that Sophia had never married anyone else. In fact, the internet didn’t say if she and Francis had ever gotten divorced.
He burrowed against his pillow and let himself close his eyes. For a few minutes, he let himself tumble through stories of the Hollywood elite. He let himself dream of being among them himself.
But then, his heart throbbed with thoughts of the Copperfields all the way across the continent.
It was nearly ten in the evening over there, but that didn’t mean anything. They’d accept his call. Henry grabbed his phone and called Grandma Greta, pacing his room until whoever lived the floor below knocked on the ceiling, telling him to quit it. He’d forgotten how thin the floors were. Was everything in Los Angeles built terribly?
“There he is,” Greta answered. “Merry Christmas, honey. How was your day?”
Henry returned to his mattress and puffed out his cheeks. “She’s really something, Grandma.”
Greta cackled. “Isn’t she? She’s an old Hollywood diva. I haven’t seen her since the old days, but we’ve talked a few times on the phone since your grandfather came home. How does she look?”
“She looks healthy,” Henry said, sounding hesitant. Was he going to tell his grandmother what Sophia had told him? Wouldn’t that break Sophia’s trust?
But he needed Greta’s guidance right now.
“And did she feed you Christmas dinner?” Greta asked, still sounding cheery.
Henry laughed, thinking of the platters of Chinese food. “She did.”
“What did she cook?”
Henry palmed the back of his neck. “She told me never to say.”
Greta laughed. In the background, Henry could hear the sounds of his remarkable and boisterous family. Were they singing? Playing games? He burned to ask. He wanted his grandmother to set the scene, as she so often did in her letters.
“Why didn’t you tell me I was going to see Francis Bianchi’s wife?” Henry blurted. “I walked right into the lion’s den!”
Greta laughed gently. “I wasn’t sure if you knew Francis Bianchi! Oh, but it makes sense that you do. You’re a screenwriter. You appreciate fine art. So many people stopped paying attention to Francis Bianchi and that entire film era, but not you. You’re a Copperfield.”
Greta sounded pleased.
“It shocked me,” Henry offered. “I saw his photograph on the wall and couldn’t believe it.”
“I bet Sophia loved that,” Greta said. “What else did she say? Did she tell you what she’s been up to since the eighties?” She paused. “Did she tell you where her husband wound up?”
Henry flared his nostrils. It was clear his grandmother knew about the suspicions of murder. His thoughts swirled.
“It was strange,” Henry said finally. “Sophia told me something. I’m not sure how to deal with it. And I’m not sure if I should tell you.”
“Did she profess her love for you? I heard she was doing that for a little while back in the nineties,” Greta joked.
“No. Nothing like that.” Henry pressed his lips together. “She told me Francis Bianchi didn’t write A Cataclysm or A Sacred Fig .”
Henry could hear a tiny gasp escape his grandmother’s lips. “Did Francis steal the ideas?” Greta asked finally. “I always wondered why his stories changed so spectacularly in the eighties. I always wondered what, exactly, inspired him. It’s so clear now. Oh, but I wonder who! Maybe that cinematographer of his. Perhaps he paid him off and told him to keep quiet?”
“Sophia says she wrote them herself,” Henry said.
Greta was quiet. In the background, Anna’s baby wept, but the sound grew thinner and smaller as someone, probably Anna, took the baby out of the room.
Henry thought, I should be in Nantucket. Why am I here in this tiny, smelly, badly carpeted room?
“Grandma?” Henry asked because he was afraid Greta wasn’t there anymore.
“I’m here. I’m just surprised,” Greta said with a laugh. “Wow. If you’d have told me back then that she was the brains behind those films, I don’t know what I would have said.”
“Do you think you would have believed it?”
“I don’t know,” Greta said. She sounded mystified. “I thought I was ahead of the game with women’s rights. I thought women should have every creative job there was. But when I first met Sophia, I assumed she was a bad actress who’d struck it big with Francis Bianchi. I liked her, but I never sensed any kind of creative vision behind her.” Greta sighed. “I hate the way that sounds. I’m sorry, Henry. I’m not proud of this.”
“Thank you for being honest,” Henry said. “It makes it all the more remarkable. Why did she want to hide the truth? Especially from you?”
“That’s what I keep coming back to,” Greta breathed. “I always spoke about my novels, about my ideas. Why didn’t she join?”
“Maybe Francis said she couldn’t?”
“Maybe. He was an arrogant son of a gun,” Greta remembered.
“He was wanted for murder?” Henry asked, hoping his grandmother would tell the story in her own words.
“Nobody could prove anything,” Greta said. “He had plenty of alibis. But even I felt it was fishy.”
“Did he seem capable of committing murder?”
“I asked your grandfather that,” Greta offered. “Bernard said that Francis was always passionate and didn’t always have control. Bernard thought maybe it was an accident. Something like that. But they never released the notes from the investigation. They must have questioned Francis for ages.”
Greta sounded far away, suddenly, as though she’d dropped into her own memories.
Henry’s throat was tight. “I can’t stop thinking about the film they were about to make. The Brutal Horizon . I skimmed some of the script at Sophia’s place. I think it would have been a masterpiece.”
“You’re probably right,” Greta said. “What a tragedy that we’ll never see it.”
Henry was quiet. He didn’t know what to make of any of this.
He didn’t know how to think about his “favorite screenwriter” of all time.
“I guess this means Sophia is really my favorite screenwriter?” he suggested.
Greta laughed. “It sounds that way.”
“She told me not to tell anyone.”
“I imagine she knows you’d tell me,” Greta said. “Maybe it’s part of the reason she told you. She wanted it to get back to me.”
Henry hadn’t thought of that. He guessed his grandmother was right.
“Francis died a few years back,” Greta said thoughtfully. “He must have been nearly ninety.”
“A long life.”
“And he never made any other films?” Greta asked.
“No,” Henry said. “Once he left the United States, it was over for him. He never directed anything again.”
This was something Henry knew for sure. Francis Bianchi had faded into obscurity after the allegations.
But if he hadn’t committed murder, why had he let his career fade away?
Why hadn’t Sophia gone to Paris with him?
“You’ve opened up a can of worms, haven’t you?” Greta laughed.
“It seems that way.”
Henry could feel his grandmother’s smile through the phone.
“I’m proud of you, Henry,” Greta said.
“All I did was eat Chinese food,” Henry said.
Greta let out a cry of alarm. “She bought you Chinese food for Christmas dinner? What a travesty.” Greta laughed and laughed. “I should have paid attention to Sophia back then. It’s clear she always had a bit of magic up her sleeves.”
“I don’t think she’s run out of that magic,” Henry said.
“It sounds like you want to see her again?”
Henry wasn’t sure. Maybe he did. Perhaps he wanted to continue to study her—if only for his own creative gain.
“I enjoyed our conversation,” Henry said.
He did not say that it was the first invigorating conversation he’d had in months.
Soon after, Julia stole the phone from Greta to pester Henry about his Christmas Day.
“Did you eat enough?” she asked. “Do you want me to send you anything? We have so many Christmas cookies. I don’t know how we’ll get through them.”
“There are so many of you there,” Henry reminded her. “They’ll be gone by New Year’s Eve.”
In response, Julia sent him a photograph of more Christmas cookies than he’d ever seen at once: stacks of Tupperware, baking trays, bowls of frosting, flour like snow on the counter.
“I need you to understand the gravity of the situation,” Julia said. “We’re buried under baked goods.”
“Please come help, Henry!” Anna cried as she passed by the phone.
Henry’s heart spasmed. All he wanted was to burrow into the warmth of his grandparents’ home and listen to the steady conversations around him. All he wanted was to eat four cookies and let himself fall asleep and sing karaoke with Grandpa Bernard and hold his sister’s baby.
But after he was passed from his mother to his sister Rachel to his sister Anna to his cousin Danny to his aunt Ella, Henry finally found a way to jump off the phone. “Love you!” he called into the speaker, then pressed END. He gasped for breath. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding it.
Alone, Henry lay on his stomach and searched the internet for clues about Francis Bianchi, Sophia Bianchi, and the alleged murder. But the only initial articles he found had trashy headlines like “This Top American Director was Forced Out of the Country for This Strange Reason!” or “You’ll Never Believe Where Francis Bianchi Ended Up!” None of the articles were hard-hitting or based on research. And when he tried to find out who Francis Bianchi was said to have murdered, he found only a few grainy photographs of Francis and a woman who looked to be Sophia.
After nearly two hours of searching, Henry put his phone away, rolled over, and looked at the ceiling.
What he’d learned thus far was very little.
But he now knew where the alleged murder had taken place.
Nantucket Island.
It was remarkable.
At the Nantucket Gala in June 1985, a young woman had died. Her name was Natalie Masterson. She was rumored to be the next big Hollywood star. But she never got the acclaim she sought. She left Nantucket in a body bag. Francis left on a top secret plane to Paris.
Where was Sophia during all this?
Sophia offered just one quote immediately after Francis left, presumably before her PR agent instructed her on what to say and when to say it.
She said, “He’s running from what he’s done.”
Did that mean Sophia believed her husband to be the killer? Why wasn’t that testimony used in a trial against Francis? And why did she speak of him so highly—if she knew he’d killed that woman?
Henry jumped up to find his notebook. Still standing, he scribbled to himself, sketching out an outline for his next script.
He had a hunch the producers wouldn’t be able to resist.
Finally , he thought as he wrote scene after scene deep into the night. Finally, they’ll pay attention to me.
But just as soon as the dark thought had entered his mind, he rebuked it. He didn’t want to be power hungry like Francis Bianchi. But he didn’t want to hide in the shadows like Sophia Bianchi, either.