Chapter 9
Emily stared at the blank screen of her phone on the vanity table. Her room at the inn was quiet. Had been quiet all afternoon.
How long had she been sitting here, stuck in her head?
Too long.
Two days had passed since the first night shoot.
They’d reshot the scene the next evening and, by some miracle, Roscoe had accepted it.
How, exactly, she had no idea. She’d been distracted the entire time.
Which wasn’t like her at all. When she worked, she threw everything into the character she played. She was the character.
But this phone stuff…it was all she could think about.
She lifted her cell and clicked into Ryan’s contact details. Five years had passed since she’d last used this number. Five years since she’d lain in that hospital bed, wondering if she’d ever be able to use her left knee again. She’d been upset. Hurting. And she’d called him.
God, she could remember that moment so well, sitting in that bed, tears in her eyes as she waited for him to pick up.
But he didn’t.
She’d sent text messages asking him to call. But he’d never gotten back to a single one of them. No calls. No texts. Just silence.
But according to him…he had called her. He’d texted.
And she believed him. Because Ryan was lots of things, but he wasn’t a liar.
Against her better judgment, she hit his name and put the call on speaker.
The phone rang. Then it rang some more. She was about to hang up when someone picked up.
“Hello, Matteo speaking.”
She frowned at the male voice. “Hi, um, sorry…have you had this number long?”
There was a second of silence where she wrinkled her nose at her ridiculous question. Then finally, he answered. “Um, four years. Why? Who are you?”
“No one. Sorry.” Quickly, she hung up.
Her gaze returned to her phone again. Had Ryan changed his number?
The door to her room suddenly swung open, and her mother waltzed in, room card in hand.
“Would you believe there’s no sushi in this town?” Her mother huffed as she crossed the room to open the closed windows. “I swear, if I have to eat another of those pancakes drenched in butter, I’m going to drop dead from high cholesterol.” She moved to the other window.
“Mom, I need to ask you something.”
“If it’s how long until we get the hell out of here, I have no idea.” She opened the window. “Roscoe keeps pushing the schedule back. I actually think he’s turning senile. I can see why his last few movies have been flops.”
“It’s not that.”
“Oh.” Finally, her mother stopped moving and set her hands on her hips. “What?”
Emily watched her mother carefully in the mirror, choosing her next words carefully. “When I woke up in the hospital five years ago, the first thing I asked was, ‘Did you call Ryan?’”
Her mother frowned. “Why are you—”
“You told me you did.”
“Well, of course I did. He didn’t answer.”
Emily turned to look at her mother, phone still in hand. It was a different cell than the one she’d owned five years ago, but the account was the same. The numbers. The messages. “You were the one who gave me my phone when I woke up.”
“Thank God the police on the scene found it. Imagine all the contacts we would have lost.”
She studied her mother’s eyes. “Did you do something to his number?”
“What?”
“He didn’t get my calls, Mom. He didn’t get the calls that you told me you made, either. The only reason I can think of for that is that you lied. You didn’t call him.”
“Why would I—”
“Because you didn’t want me to turn down that role. Because you blamed him.”
Her mother had pushed her into acting from the time she could walk. Sometimes she felt she was living her mother’s life instead of her own.
Emily stood. “Mom. I need the truth. Did you do something to my phone to make sure we couldn’t contact each other?”
For a few seconds, her mother just stood there, completely silent and unmoving. And in that moment, something surfaced in her eyes. Something quick and unguarded.
Guilt.
Emily stepped back. “Mom…what did you do?”
“I did what any good mother would do—I saved you from yourself.”
“You think you saved me?”
Her mother stepped forward, finger pointed and an angry scowl on her face.
“You were so close to having everything we’d ever dreamed of.
And you were going to give it all up for some boy you’d dated for five months.
So yes, I blocked his number, bought a burner phone, and changed the number under his contact to that.
I stopped using the burner a year later. ”
Nausea hit her so hard, her stomach rolled. “All these years, I thought he ignored every call and message. He didn’t. You just took away any chance we had of fixing things. You hurt us.”
“Hurt you?” she scoffed. “Emily, look around. The whole world knows your name. You can have any role you want. You’re the highest-paid actress of your age! You have everything. And everything I’ve done has been to get you here. It’s all been for you.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t lie. None of this has ever been about me. It’s all for you. It’s always been about you. You didn’t get to live your Hollywood dream, so I had to live it for you.”
“I didn’t get to because I got pregnant with you.”
“Oh, I know. My entire life, you’ve made sure that I’m absolutely aware that getting pregnant with me forced you to step out of the limelight at the worst possible time.”
“So stop being an ungrateful brat!”
Her mother was yelling now. Speaking to her like she was the problem. Like she was the one who’d meddled in someone else’s life.
“You are the luckiest woman in America, and that’s thanks to me. I put you first. I put you before me and my career. I made the hard decisions so you didn’t have to.”
Hard decisions…that was what taking away the love of her life was, a hard decision.
A part of Emily wanted to scream back. To call her mother out on every one of her lies. But it wouldn’t change anything.
Melanie Prior truly believed she was the good guy here. That she was a saint. And no words, no argument from Emily, would ever change that.
“You made decisions that weren’t yours to make. You’ve been making decisions that aren’t yours to make. And I’m done.” Emily spun and grabbed the keys to her car rental.
“What do you mean, you’re done?”
“I’m going out.”
“No, you’re not. We’re not finished with this conversation.”
“I’m finished with this conversation.” She reached the door, and when her mother tried to grab her arm, Emily quickly moved out of her reach. “Don’t follow me.”
Then she stormed down the hall and out of the inn. She had no idea where she was going, she just needed to get away.
“You know red meat kills you?”
Ryan’s lips twitched as he glanced at the phone propped up on his kitchen counter. Nora was on a video call, but only because she’d insisted on seeing his face, something he didn’t actually think was necessary. “You’ve got sugar and chocolate on your counter.”
She pushed a lock of brown hair out of her face. “I’m making chocolate chip cookies.”
“But you’re still judging my grass-fed steak?”
“How else am I going to convince you to join my selective carnivore life?”
He chuckled, and it felt good to laugh.
His sister ate meat, just not red meat. And she didn’t actually care what he ate, it was just another way for her to try to press his buttons. “Jesus, it’s good to talk to you.”
She popped some cookie batter into her mouth. “Miss me, huh?”
“Always.”
“It’s good to talk to you too. Although, I haven’t missed the fact that that was your first laugh in our already twenty-three-minute phone call. Which is obviously not my fault, because I’m hilarious. Emily?”
Yeah, Emily. Who else? “We kissed again.”
Her hands slammed to the counter. “It took you twenty-three minutes to tell me that? When?”
“Two nights ago. It was like five a.m., we’d both been up all night on her set, and we just…”
“You kissed.” One side of Nora’s mouth lifted.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t start dreaming up this world where we live happily ever after. This isn’t one of those movies you watch.”
“First of all, not all my movies have happy endings. The guy died in the movie last night, and I bawled my sad little eyes out and had to watch three episodes of The Great British Bake Off to recover. Second, you’ve kissed twice.
You’ve loved her for a gazillion years. Why can’t this be a happily ever after for you two? ”
“There are a million reasons, Nora.”
“Name one.”
“She doesn’t live here.”
“There’s this wonderful concept called ‘moving.’ Next.”
“She doesn’t work here.”
“Every work schedule has time off. And you could also go visit her on location. Next.”
He looked at his little sister. “She hates me.”
“Based on the two times she’s kissed you, I disagree.”
“She told me she doesn’t know how to forgive me for what I did.”
Nora pushed the bowl aside and leaned closer to the camera.
“We all do dumb shit sometimes. Trust me, I’m a school counselor, I’ve heard it all.
But you had your reasons. You were exhausted from your op, you hadn’t slept in three days.
Her mother called and made you feel like you were ruining Emily’s life.
” Nora tilted her head. “You made a snap decision, what you thought was best at the time, for the woman you loved. Plus, you called and messaged the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that…”
“She crashed her car because of me. She could have died.”
“Not because of you. Because of a drunk driver.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “How’s work?”
“Really? Knee-deep into possibly the most important conversation of your life, and you ask me about work?”
“You said kids are making dumb decisions?”
She rolled her eyes. “They’re kids. It’s what they do. But they have good hearts. The big problem is that the school needs to make some budget cuts, and apparently my name is being thrown around.”
“How do you know that?”
“Word travels fast in a school setting.”
“Don’t even think about coming here.”
She touched a hand to her chest like he’d hurt her. “Way to stab me in the heart. A few months ago, you were trying to convince me to join you.”
“That was before all the shit started going down. I swear there’s a new threat every other week.”
“But things have settled down now, right? The bad guys are all behind bars or dead?”
“There’s still the matter of a number of missing and dead women.”
“Uh, yeah, the five women dating back twenty-five years who may not even be connected.”
“The most recent woman went missing six years ago, Nora. If the pattern continues, and they are related, there’s someone making women go missing from this town, and they could strike again soon.”
This time, Nora tossed a chocolate chip into her mouth. “And you think if I moved to Deep River, I could be number six?”
“We’re not testing it.”
A fist pounded at his door.
Nora frowned. “Expecting company?”
“No. I’ll call you back.”
“Okay, but don’t shoot anyone. No one needs to die because you’re in a mood over Emily.”
“Goodbye, Nora.” He hung up but still smiled, because shit, he loved the woman. She was a breath of fresh air.
People were often surprised when Nora told them she was a school counselor. They expected someone softly spoken and careful with their words. But that was why she was so good at her job. She met kids on their level.
He crossed to the door and looked through the peephole.
The fuck?
He pulled it open. “Melanie. How do you know where I live?”
She rolled her eyes. “I made sure I knew the second I saw you here. Where is she?”
Before he could respond, Emily’s mother stormed past him, straight into his house.
He turned. “Who? Emily?”
“Yes, Emily. Who else would I care about?” She moved into his office. “Emily!”
“She’s not here, Melanie.”
Instead of doing what a normal person would do—like listening and walking out again—the woman stormed up the stairs and continued to yell. “Emily? If you’re here, you need to come back to the inn! You’ve proven your point. This needs to end. Now.”
He followed her into his bedroom. Yes, his fucking bedroom. “Is Emily missing?”
“Considering she stormed out of the inn like a five-year-old and refuses to answer my calls, I’d say yes.”
“What did you do?”
“Me?” She laughed, but the sound was almost hysterical.
She checked the next bedroom, then the bathroom.
“It’s interesting how I sacrificed everything to get that girl to where she is, and instead of thanking me, instead of admitting, ‘God, Mom, you’ve given up your dream so that I could live mine,’ she stomps out without a backward glance! ”
Ryan lifted a brow, because “sacrificed” seemed a bit rich, considering the woman was benefiting quite significantly, both financially and lifestyle-wise, from Emily’s hard work and talent.
Melanie ran down the stairs, stomping through the living room and kitchen before returning to the front door. “She’s really not here?”
“I already said that.”
She huffed, but instead of walking out of the house, she glared at him. “You know, when you broke up with her, I thought maybe I hadn’t given you enough credit. Maybe you were smarter than you looked.”
“I’m guessing there’s a but coming.”
“But then she comes here, and instead of giving her space, you crowd her. You make sure you’re right there at every turn, always on set. Watching her with those predatory eyes.”
“Predatory?”
She shoved a finger into his chest. “You know exactly what you’re doing. And it needs to stop. All of it. Before she does something stupid.”
“Like kiss me?”
“Like throw her entire career down the drain. Back. Off!” She stormed out of his house.
The door had barely slammed closed when his phone rang, Zac’s name appearing on the screen.
He hit the answer key. “Hey, have you seen Emily around town? Her mom just paid me a visit. She can’t find her.”
“Actually, that’s why I’m calling. Emily’s at Trap. And I’m pretty sure she’s on a mission to drink her body weight in vodka sodas.”
Shit. He grabbed his keys on the way out of the house. “I’m coming now.”