34. Anna
ANNA
My mother and I leave the house at seven-fifteen.
My first day.
The drive to the office takes twenty minutes. She spends eleven of them telling me about how we're going to navigate the next few months. She brought her partner up to speed and he's good with everything. I will work until I can't and go on maternity leave.
"You still remember how to read a discovery request?" she says.
"I got it."
"We'll warm everyone up to your situation slowly. We won't mention the pregnancy."
"I think they'll notice."
"This is Montana. You can hide it for a few more weeks for sure."
The baby kicks once, low in my stomach, as if reminding me it's real.
"Believe me, it's the last thing I want to talk about. What do they know about me?"
"They know what everyone in the world knows. You kids put all your laundry on the internet."
A knot tightens in my chest.
"You mean dirty laundry. You can say it."
"They saw your sex scene too."
"What did they say?"
"Well, no one said I saw your daughter's tits on Private Paradise."
"That wasn't on Private Paradise, that was a different show."
"They saw it. Don't worry, it's very casual."
"Then why did I have to put on one of your suits."
"You have to look the part."
Today I'm playing the part of a corporate lawyer. I can do this.
We turn onto Main Street.
Hartley and Simons occupies the third floor of the only building in town taller than four stories.
The lobby has a reception desk, a waiting area full of chairs trying too hard to look expensive, and a wall of windows facing the mountains.
Five months ago I was looking forward to this.
Now it feels like the backup plan it always was.
The receptionist, a young woman named Lucy, has reading glasses pushed onto her head. She smiles at my mother, then at me, then back at my mother.
The look says she's already been briefed.
"Lucy, this is my daughter Anna, she's a lawyer. She'll be working with us."
"We've heard so much about you," Lucy says.
I glance at my mother.
"Good things," Lucy adds quickly.
My mother is already moving down the hall.
I fall in beside her.
The office is small by LA standards. Eight attorneys. A paralegal team. Support staff. Corporate law — contracts, mergers, compliance. The kind of work that never makes headlines and keeps the world running anyway.
My mother introduces me to everyone with the same efficient warmth she brings to everything.
Patricia in compliance, who's been here fourteen years and immediately launches into complaints about the coffee machine.
Tom, a junior associate who graduated two years ago and still looks surprised every time someone calls him a lawyer.
Margot, the senior paralegal, who shakes my hand and tells me she's been following my work.
"I loved the Private Paradise episode," Margot says.
"Thank you," I say.
"I have a cousin in LA."
"Nice."
"He's in a gang."
"Oh."
She's definitely seen me naked.
I smile anyway.
I've gotten very good at smiling when I have no idea what role I'm supposed to be playing.
My mother steers me toward my temporary office before I can say anything else. It's a small room at the end of the hall with a window, a desk, a computer, and a stack of files already waiting.
"Discovery request is on top," she says. "Take your time."
"Mom—"
"You know what you're doing. Trust yourself."
An older woman walks in. "This is Janice, she's going to set you up with payroll."
Oh shit, this is really happening. I exhale.
My mother leaves.
Janice puts a stack of papers in front of me to fill out. She sits. "I'll help you fill it out, it's not as much as it looks. I remember you when you were in high school."
"Oh." I look at her longer and don't remember her.
"I saw you on TV."
I don't ask what episode, but from her smirk I can tell.
"You were very brave," she says.
I look up.
"To do that," she says. "On camera. I couldn't. Unless I had my breasts done."
I don't know what to say to that, so I just nod and sign the next form.
I work through a stack of files.
It comes back faster than I expect.
By ten, I've marked up the discovery request and flagged three issues my mother will want to see.
By noon, I've finished the vendor agreement and filled the margins with notes.
The work isn't difficult. That's the problem.
Margot appears at twelve-thirty carrying a sandwich.
"Your mother said you forget to eat when you're working," she says.
"She's not wrong."
She sets the plate beside me.
"How was LA?"
"Okay."
"You met Mason Creed?"
"No, never met him."
"I love him. He's so good," she whispers for some reason.
"Yeah."
"Is Luke nice?"
My hand stills on the page.
"Yeah."
"What was that like, living with a movie star?"
"It was nice."
"He's pretty hot too."
The baby shifts.
I stare at the contract.
The words blur for a second.
"I have to get back to these contracts."
"Right, we'll talk later. Tomorrow we can go out to lunch, a lot of us girls do on Thursdays."
"Yeah," I say.
She studies me for a beat. "Tomorrow."
Then she leaves.
I watch her cross the office and settle behind her desk.
The sandwich sits untouched for another minute before I force myself to take a bite.
Outside, the mountains rise beyond the windows. Unmoving. Certain.
I look at them longer than I should.
Then I turn back to the files.
Every few minutes I catch Margot glancing over. Checking on me. Making sure I'm real.
I open the next file.
Somewhere in the middle of a vendor agreement my mind drifts. Not to the career or the house or any of it. Just one thought, quiet and persistent underneath everything else.
Is he okay?
I pull myself back.
I highlight a clause that needs flagging.
I keep reading.
The next day isn't much different.
I borrow one of my mother's blazers. It's a size too big and I don't care. In LA someone would have clocked it immediately — Delia would have said something, the internet definitely would have said something. Here I just blend in. Nobody is scrutinizing anyone. Nobody is keeping score.
Nobody knows.
For the first time in months, that feels like a gift.
My mother brings Mr. Hartley by my office. We talk for a few minutes. I've met him a handful of times over the years. His daughter, Sue, works here too. Another family business pretending it isn't one.
He looks at me, then at my mother.
"If Sue and Anna take over someday, we won't even have to change the name on the door."
My mother smiles like it's the best thing she ever heard.
I smile too.
The thought lands heavier than it should.
A week ago, my future was Los Angeles.
Now it's a name on a door in Montana.
At lunch, I go with the girls and Sue to The Rusty Spur.
The place hasn't changed. Same worn booths. Same neon beer signs. Same smell of burgers and fryer grease hanging in the air.
The questions start before we've ordered.
LA. Hollywood. Auditions. How casting works.
My sex scene gets more attention than anything else.
"But he's really touching your breasts?"
"Yes."
That earns exactly the reaction I expected.
Then someone finally asks the question they've all been circling.
What's it like dating a movie star?
I give them the edited version. Parties. Agents. Managers. Celebrities. Who I've met. Who was nice? Who wasn't?
They listen like I'm describing life on another planet. Which I suppose I am.
"So Luke Wolfe," Margot says. "In real life."
"In real life."
"Is he as—" She makes a gesture that covers everything.
"Yeah," I say. "He is."
"And you just left?" Patricia says. "He's in Morocco and you just?—"
"He's shooting. It made sense to come home for a while. Be with my mom."
"So you're going back when he's done?"
I reach for my water.
"He won't be done for a few months. So."
They look at each other.
"So you're just... waiting?" Sue says.
"Yeah."
Then the conversation shifts and I realize I'm the one listening.
Margot's youngest just made the travel soccer team and her ex-husband has been driving him to Billings every Saturday for practice. Six a.m. She says it like it's nothing.
"Ex-husband," she says, correcting herself like a typo. "We do the Saturdays together for the kids. It's fine. It's very civil." She picks up her fork. "Mostly."
Patricia's daughter is turning seven next weekend. The party is princess themed. Forty kids. She's been making cupcakes every night this week.
"My brother was supposed to help, but he's back in rehab so." One clean shrug. Like she's been shrugging about it for years because she has. "The cupcakes are fine. I like making them."
Sue's husband coaches little league. Has for six years.
Their son quit after the second season. "But the other kids needed a coach and Mike's not the kind of person who can just walk away from that.
" She says it the way you'd say the sun came up this morning.
Like it's just a fact about the man she married.
"You have to come for dinner," Margot says to me. Not as a polite suggestion. As a fact already decided. "Friday. I'm making lasagna. You'll meet the boys." A pause. "If Luke has a brother, send him my way."
"I'll see what I can do," I say.
"I'm serious. I have been on three dates in two years and one of them tried to sell me a timeshare."
"Margot," Patricia says.
"I'm just saying."
"Sunday we're doing a cookout if the weather holds," Patricia says. "You should come. Bring your mom."
"My husband makes his own barbecue sauce," Sue says. "He's very proud of it. We have to pretend it's the best thing we've ever tasted."
"Is it?"
"God, no." She leans in. "But don't tell him that."
I laugh harder than I have in weeks.
The food comes. Nobody touches it because we're all still talking. The waiter comes back twice. We wave him off.
"So are you still pursuing acting? Auditioning?"
"I'm taking a break."
The table goes quiet.
"I should tell you guys. I'm pregnant."
Then Patricia grabs my arm.
"Oh my God."
"Anna."
"How far along?"
"When are you due?"
They're all talking at once. I can't keep up. I'm laughing and I don't know when I started.
"Nineteen weeks," I say.
"We need cake," Sue says.
"We absolutely need cake," Patricia agrees.
Sue flags down the waiter. "Do you have any cake? Like a whole cake? We're celebrating."
The waiter looks at our table — four women, one of whom is already crying a little, that's Margot, she's pressed both hands to her face — and says he'll check with the kitchen.
They find a chocolate cake. Half of one, leftover from someone's birthday the day before. The waiter brings it out with a candle stuck in the middle, slightly crooked.
"To Anna," Margot says, raising her Diet Coke.
"To Anna," everyone says.
I blow out the candle.
We stay for two hours. The waiter stops checking on us and just leaves the check on the table and lets us be. We eat the cake. We eat our cold food. We order coffee and pie and then more coffee.
By the time we walk back to the office I feel something I haven't felt in months.
Not fixed. Not resolved.
Just held.
No one mentions Luke and Rebecca in the same sentence.
Not once.
For that alone, I'm grateful.
Back at the office, I settle behind my desk and return to the contracts.
My mother stops by twice before three o'clock.
The second time she stops in the doorway.
"That was a long lunch."
"I told them I was pregnant."
"I heard."
She looks down at the stack of completed files. Then at me. Pride softens something in her face.
She leans down and kisses the top of my head.
I wait until she's gone before opening the next contract.