Chapter 18
Lana
As Lana and Griffin walked into the pool house, she felt like a different person from the one who’d left.
Older. Heavier. She sat hard on the bed, and violently kicked off her shoes.
Her phone rang again—her boss. She powered it off.
Griffin did the same with his. He sat beside her and took her hand in his rough one—she idly remembered fantasizing about his sword-callused hands, two endless days ago.
He ran his thumb over her skin, silent and reassuring.
There was a small cut on the soft pad below his thumb—a perfect red crescent.
They drifted into a kiss that drifted into more, and she’d never needed the physical connection more in her life.
A conversation that ebbed and flowed without the need to say a word.
A conversation about safety, comfort, letting the stress go.
About giving and receiving and not being alone. It felt so damn right.
Afterward, they showered together, and Griffin gently washed her top to toe, like a ritual.
She felt the fragments of her soul re-forming into a whole.
But a solid weight of sadness was settling in, too.
Because this thing with him couldn’t happen, even while it was happening.
Like in the Whitman poem, it was all illusion.
If only Griffin were a regular guy—a teacher, a firefighter.
But then, as much as he resented his celebrity status, it had shaped him into the man he was, and she wouldn’t change a thing about that.
What would her life be with someone like him in it?
Huh. Her life would be no different. Because if someone like him arrived in it—even in the form of a teacher, a firefighter—she would freak out and find a way to push him out, like always.
This here was perfect. With no future in it, there was nothing to sabotage.
She could relax, and enjoy it for the interlude it was.
She lay on the bed while Griffin made coffee, and brought her thoughts back to Vivien.
So many dead ends. She picked up her phone from the book-stack nightstand and turned it on.
Messages beeped, and she switched it to do-not-disturb.
Two were from colleagues: “Please tell me you’re bringing him to trivia night?
” and “Lord almighty, there’s hope for us all! ”
Lana got it—the shock that someone like her might dare to date someone like Griffin. The Matching Hypothesis (392.6: sexuality): people tended to partner up with those of a similar level of social desirability—status, wealth, talent, looks, charm. The science behind “he’s out of your league.”
She opened Vivien’s emails. Darnell’s redirection had obviously worked, because the two-factor ID pinged on her phone. A couple more marketing and spam emails had landed. Was she missing something here? Job alerts, a DNA website, a roommate-finding service, a Women in Film networking event…
She scrolled back up. The DNA website. Had Vivien done one of those kits? It was the kind of thing you might do if you were pregnant and didn’t know much about your family. There was a DNA book in her library history too.
Voices trailed out from the house—Griffin’s parents were home.
Lana moved to the kitchen counter and opened the DNA website on the tablet. She used Vivien’s email address as the username and did a password reset, which pinged Vivien’s email. You really could access a person’s life through their phone.
Griffin slid a coffee over. “What’s that?” he said, taking the stool beside her.
“Probably nothing. Vivien’s used one of those DNA websites, where you send away a sample and find out where you came from and who you’re related to.
I don’t recognize many names here, just some distant cousins on Dad’s side.
And a lot of these people must be on Mom’s side—she doesn’t know anything about her family.
Vivi never mentioned this to me—but there’s no way our parents would approve of her doing it, so maybe that’s why.
They always say they were happy to leave their pasts behind. ”
“Wait.” Griffin pointed at a name and photo on the list—a guy with a minuscule amount of DNA in common with Vivien.
“I know him. He’s a casting director. And there’s his brother, a makeup artist. This must be sorted by location.
” He scrolled down. “This woman’s a stunt coordinator.
Can I…?” He held out his hand for the tablet.
She passed it to him, and he tapped down the list. “Okay, this is getting weird—there are a bunch of people I know of. I mean, it’s an incestuous industry, so if you have one relative in it, you’re likely to have more, but… Man, I hope we’re not cousins.”
“Would anyone in your family be in the database?”
“No way. I can’t imagine anyone high-profile having a public account on a site like this.”
“But again, what use is this in finding Vivien? It’s like half the stuff we find out is weird but ultimately useless.”
“I could get Mom to have a look, see if she can make any connections—she knows everyone in Hollywood. If you’re happy for me to do that?”
“I’m happy to have anyone’s help.”
Griffin frowned, pushing his coffee away. He stood, his expression retracting.
“Griffin?”
“What?”
“You just did the thing.” She pointed at his face, scribbling in the air with her finger. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing. I just remembered—Mom texted me. Sit tight. I’ll be back.”
As he left, tablet in hand, Lana picked up her phone and flicked through the photos of Vivien’s room.
She stopped on the newspaper article and stared at it awhile.
Then she gasped, standing. The bar stool clattered to the floor behind her.
She hurriedly logged into Vivien’s library account, and pulled up her lending history.
“Oh, wow,” she said, clutching her head.
Don’t look at what’s there—look at what’s not.
Behind her, the door clicked open.
“Griffin!” she said, turning. “I’ve just figured out—”
She froze. It wasn’t Griffin. It was Estelle Duman.
“Ah.” Estelle strolled in as if she’d been invited, trailing a floral perfume and a cream silk scarf.
“The librarian.” She perched on the edge of the bed, adjusting the covers.
She couldn’t miss the tangled evidence of what had recently happened there.
Like Griffin, she was beautiful on screen and beautiful from a distance, but up close she was extraordinary. Tall, lithe, flawless brown skin.
“I’ll get Griffin.” Lana ran her fingers through her hair, wet and tangled from the shower. “He’s over at the house, talking to—”
“No need.” Estelle raised a slim, elongated hand, the pale-pink crescent nails backlit by the sun.
“I’ll wait. Mitch let me in. I’m still on the green list at security, surprisingly.
I thought Griffin would have deleted me by now.
It was madness coming in. Next there’ll be headlines about a love triangle. ”
Lana righted the fallen bar stool, and found herself clinging to the back of it. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m not here to check out the competition, Lana, if that’s what you’re thinking. I have information that might prove useful to your situation.”
“My … situation.”
“Your sister’s situation.”
“How do you know—?”
“Let’s wait. Save me repeating it for Griffin.” Estelle crossed her legs, slowly and gracefully, like she meant to draw attention to them. “So you infiltrated the set?”
“I … uh … wanted to see if I could find information. About Vivien.”
Estelle smiled, a deliberate reveal of perfect teeth.
“I see that’s not all you infiltrated. Well done, you.
He never invites people in here. To his parents’ home, on occasion.
But this is his sanctuary.” She looked at the ceiling, as if the answer to some question was written there.
“He trusts you.” She spoke as if it were a thing of wonder.
“Griffin trusts nobody.” She lowered her gaze to meet Lana’s.
“I’m intrigued. You’re not his usual style. ”
So everyone reminded her. “Oh, we’re not together,” Lana said, hating herself for feeling like she had to explain, to deny. She wasn’t answerable to this woman, so why was she acting like her prey? The Bond girl had caught Miss Moneypenny in bed with the hero.
Estelle’s eyebrows rose in perfect black arches.
“But then he does have a hero complex. I don’t mean that as a bad thing—he’s one of the good guys, for sure—but he doesn’t always protect himself like he should.
He can afford to be a good guy, of course, because he has power.
But he chooses very carefully where he uses it.
He can’t resist stepping in to be the hero in a narrative about injustice, and he can’t resist a damsel in distress. ”
Estelle rose, not via any obvious effort on her part, but as if lifted by an invisible wire.
She wandered—glided—toward the windows that faced the view.
Nothing seemed subconscious; she did everything meaningfully.
Her sentences seemed scripted, her movements so poised they could be choreographed.
People who insisted that celebrities were regular folk hadn’t met these ones.
Only two days ago, Lana had watched Griffin and Estelle kiss, again and again.
Now, that seemed perverse. With most of the blinds closed, the room suddenly felt very narrow.
“Do you know,” Estelle continued, “they wanted to cast a nineteen-year-old for my role in Gods and Mortals?” Lana went to answer but Estelle kept talking. “I’m twenty-nine, so I’m getting offered mom roles.”
“At twenty-nine?”
“Oh god, yes. Not mother-of-the-bride, not quite. But school mom, for sure—and there’s no coming back from that. But you know what Griffin did? Not only did he insist they cast someone nearer his age, but he demanded I get paid the same as him. And do you know what happened?”