Chapter 1 #2
summer, but as Julia had told Maury and Evelyn, its failure had been a blessing in disguise.
As she raised her champagne flute to her lips in a silent toast to her absent friends, her assistant director appeared in the archway to the foyer and waved discreetly.
At twenty-five, Lindsay Jorgenson was young for such an important post, but she had graduated summa cum laude from USC’s film school, she’d proven herself exceptionally capable as a production assistant in the show’s early years, and she absolutely deserved a promotion.
She was also the eldest daughter of Cross-Country Quilter Donna Jorgenson, which made her all the more qualified as far as Julia was concerned.
Wasn’t one of the perks of being an executive director to be empowered to make executive decisions that happened to benefit a friend’s daughter?
When Julia raised her eyebrows in a question, Lindsay smiled and nodded, her loosely braided, long blond hair slipping over
one shoulder. It was time.
Julia tapped her glass with a fingernail, taking care not to damage her flawless manicure. “If I may have your attention,
please, friends,” she called, projecting her voice as conversations hushed and her guests’ smiling faces turned her way. “Lindsay
has the show queued up, so as soon as we take our seats, we can begin.”
“This way, everybody,” said Lindsay, beckoning. Murmuring with anticipation, the guests followed her through the archway into
the hall and downstairs.
Julia gestured graciously for her friends and colleagues to precede her to the theater room, a feature that even more than the spectacular views had convinced her and Charles to purchase the house so many years before.
Built deep into the cliffside foundation, windowless and cool even when the Santa Ana winds blew mercilessly, the theater could comfortably seat forty-eight people in the plush leather seats arranged before the large screen in six rows of eight, and a dozen more on the tall stools along the back wall.
Julia had always been the first audience for Charles’s documentaries, aside from his cinematographers and editors, who saw dailies and rough cuts throughout production.
After Charles passed, Julia had remodeled the adjacent cutting room into a yoga studio, but she hadn’t changed a thing in the theater, except to update the projector after her second husband made off with the original.
After serving him with divorce papers, she had allowed him a day alone in the house to clear out his things, but he had taken other random pieces out of pure spite.
Ironically, he could have well afforded to buy a new state-of-the-art projector with what he’d been paid for their honeymoon snapshots, which he’d sold to the National Enquirer without her permission, setting off a chain of revelations that compelled her to divorce him less than a year after the wedding.
She had taken care not to repeat that mistake when she divorced husband number three. That time she had changed the locks
before the papers were served, and her assistant had kept watch during her soon-to-be-ex’s move-out.
Shoving the ugly reminiscences aside, Julia followed the last straggler into the theater and shut the door behind them. Searching
for an unoccupied seat, she spied Ellen gesturing to her from the front row. After making her way down the aisle, Julia settled
in between Ellen, on her left, and Nigel Crawford, her leading man, on her right. She glanced over her shoulder to smile at
the two young actors who played her grandsons: Noah, age twenty, and Chance, sixteen. The young men paused long enough to
flash her a pair of impressively photogenic grins, but they quickly resumed their conversation, apparently debating the merits
of what sounded like a horrifically violent video game with philosophical pretensions.
Julia and Noah were the only actors from the movie version of A Patchwork Life who had been offered roles in the television series.
Nigel’s character hadn’t existed in the ill-fated film, and Chance had been cast only after the original actor’s agent had flatly declined the television reboot, dismissing the failed film as a “toxic train wreck” and the series as “probably cursed.” This turned out to be yet another blessing in disguise, since Chance proved himself a fine actor and an excellent addition to the company of players.
In recent years he had also become something of a teen heartthrob, but with any luck he wouldn’t let the flattery go to his head, ruining his craft and turning him into a miserable Hollywood cliché.
His real name was Eugene Durchdenwald, but he’d changed it when his agent warned him he’d never make it in Hollywood burdened with such a clunky moniker.
So he adopted Chance for the roles he hoped casting directors would give him, and he picked Boxty after seeing it on a menu during a family trip to Ireland.
By the time he realized “boxty” was not the chef’s name but a type of potato pancake, the name Chance Boxty had become so well-known that he’d had no choice but to keep it.
Turning back around, Julia fixed her gaze on the screen, heart beating a bit faster in anticipation. She and Ellen exchanged
quick, reassuring smiles. They had spent hours conferring with the editor and they were very pleased with the final cut, but
they wanted their colleagues, the critics, and their fans to love it as much as they did.
“ ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,’ ” Nigel proclaimed, regarding the screen expectantly, his rich baritone
no doubt reaching all corners of the room. At sixty-four, Nigel was as ruggedly handsome as when he had first played Henry
V for the Royal Shakespeare Company in his native London four decades earlier. An avid swimmer and longtime vegan, he was
as fit as a man twenty years younger, and the few lines around his hazel eyes and threads of silver in his gingery-brown hair
made him appear all the more distinguished. Julia, who knew the same adjective was almost never used to compliment a woman,
took care to keep her own hair the same lovely shade of honey blond she’d favored since the early 1980s. Her vigilant stylist
had vowed that no gossip columnist would ever have cause to snark that Julia looked too old to play Nigel’s love interest,
not on her watch.
“Our fifth season,” Ellen marveled, shaking her head, then reaching up to adjust her glasses.
She had been a rather awkward and mousy twentysomething when she and Julia had first met, but after a few years in Los Angeles, and with Julia’s tactful guidance, she had acquired a fine sense of style.
That evening, Ellen’s tan slacks, white scoop-neck top, and blue blazer were well tailored, and her thick, light brown hair was cut in a chic layered bob.
“Honestly, who could have imagined it, when we shot the pilot?”
“I could have, and I did.” Julia smoothed her linen slacks as she settled more comfortably into her seat. “I knew we were
on the cusp of something glorious and groundbreaking.”
“Really? Even after the movie version imploded so spectacularly?”
“The concept was excellent. The film didn’t implode until after you and I resigned.” Julia tossed Nigel a smile that might
have been mistaken as flirtatious by anyone who didn’t know them well. “If this dashing fellow had been cast in the movie,
it might have succeeded even without us.”
“Doubt it,” said Ellen flatly. “Stephen Deneford ruined my script beyond redemption with the ridiculous changes he demanded.
As long as he was directing, not even the second coming of Laurence Olivier could have saved that movie. No offense, Nigel.”
“None taken, darling.” Nigel waved a hand dismissively. “We all suffer in comparison to Olivier.”
Julia patted his shoulder fondly. “I’d rather have you as my scene partner any day.”
She would have gone on, but the house lights were dimming. A moment later, the familiar hammered dulcimer, guitar, and fiddle
tune of their theme song flowed from the surround sound speakers, though the music was nearly drowned out by applause and
cheers. Julia too applauded enthusiastically as the opening credits rolled, and she breathed a happy sigh when the title in
its familiar vintage font appeared, superimposed over a crane shot of a sweeping prairie landscape.
That title hadn’t always inspired such delight.
Years before, when Julia had been searching for a new project after her previous series had been abruptly canceled, Maury had shown her the script for a movie he promised was the project they had been searching for.
“It has heart, it has warmth, and it has a fantastic part for you,” he had said, placing the script in her lap and closing her hands around it. “Trust me.”
“A Patchwork Life,” Julia had read the cover page aloud, testing the sound of it. She had winced so forcibly she could’ve pulled a muscle.
She wanted Masterpiece Theatre, and Maury had given her something so corny it could have been freshly harvested from a Midwestern farm. But Maury had represented
her throughout her career and she trusted his judgment, so, shaking her head and expecting the worst, she had turned to the
first page and had begun to read.
Within moments, she had forgotten everything else troubling her—the lamentable demise of Family Tree, the humiliating dearth of new offers, the patronizing responses of the few industry execs who owed Maury too much to avoid
returning his phone calls. Sadie Henderson and her life in pioneer-era Kansas drew Julia in entirely. She could almost smell
the prairie grasses and tilled soil as the script transported her to the small prairie homestead Sadie struggled to build
with her husband, Augustus. When Augustus died in a tragic accident, leaving Sadie with two young sons to raise alone, she