Chapter Thirty-One
One day till the show
The second half of the final dress rehearsal of the Rhodes Players’ production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead began with Lola Wilson missing her cue.
She’d always been good at retaining dialogue, able to spout off monologues from things she’d been in years prior.
But now, sweating under too-bright lights, the words were gnats she couldn’t grasp, only swat at in confusion. Where were they up to? “L-line?”
Offstage, Jazz let out a tense puff. “Has it ever happened to you that all of a sudden…”
“Right. Sorry.” Lola willed the line into existence. “Has it ever happened to you that all of a sudden and for no reason at all you haven’t the faintest idea how to spell the word ‘wife’—”
If she did Hood, she could offer Annie the kind of financial security one would expect of a wife.
“—or ‘house’—”
If she did Hood, she could buy Annie a house with a big backyard and a rambling garden and guest bedrooms galore, just like she’d said she wanted.
A house, and a holiday house and the salon.
Whatever Annie wanted. And it didn’t matter if this show was a success or not, she could keep Jazz’s theater running indefinitely.
“—because when you write it down you just can’t remember…um…”
The rest of the line vanished like a trick of the light, replaced with a twisted kaleidoscope of faces: Kevin and Kris Mack and Clay Russo.
Vicky and Dylan. Clyde and Deb and Maria and the teens. Jamie and Mikki. Garrett and Jazz.
Annie.
Annie.
“Lola?” Now Jazz sounded less annoyed, more worried. “For chrissakes, get her some water. Cut the lights!”
Lola swayed, planting her hands on her knees. So much emotion boiled inside her, she couldn’t pick out each individual feeling. She might start to cry.
The stage swam. Her knees trembled. And then—
And then she was fifteen years old again, auditioning for Our Town, equally in love with and intimidated by acting. After performing her sides, Lola was in the small group asked to stay and read again after lunch. The rest of the hopefuls had been kindly dismissed.
On her own on the theater lawn, Lola scrabbled in her bag.
She’d forgotten her lunch. She’d had only an apple for breakfast—her always-exhausted mom worked nights and hadn’t gotten groceries in a week.
Lola was ravenous, but she had no money.
All the kids around her were tucking into store-bought salads and savory-smelling rolls. Her stomach rumbled.
“Everything okay?” A girl with a ski-jump nose and Disney-blue eyes smiled at her. Lola recognized her as one from the dismissed group. She wore brightly patterned flares and a yellow tee, her hair in two messy bunches atop her head.
Nervous, Lola nodded, affecting assurance.
The girl looked to Lola’s empty hands, eyes narrowing slightly. She dug in her backpack and pulled out a foil-wrapped sandwich. “Do you want this?”
Lola was so shocked at being casually offered the thing she needed most, it took a long moment to reply. “Oh, I’m fine.”
“Honestly, you’ll be doing me a favor,” the girl said. “My gran makes them—roast chicken salad, really good, but I think I’m destined to be a vegetarian?” She cocked her head thoughtfully. “I care way too much about chickens.”
Lola giggled. This girl was funny and it felt like a balm. Lola readied to politely decline again, but her stomach growled, loud enough for them both to hear.
The girl laughed. “Here,” Annie had insisted, her smile as warm as the summer ahead. “Please.”
Even back then, Annie Lightfoot had seen past her mask and offered what Lola needed most. More than two decades later, nothing had changed.
“Lola!”
She snapped back to the present. She was thirty-six and onstage, in costume, in the middle of a run.
Annie was hurrying over. “Hey, what’s wrong? Who was that on the phone?”
“No one,” Lola said, trying to breathe.
“Why won’t you tell me?” Annie begged. Fear shone in her eyes. “Is someone hurt? Did you get bad news?”
Vicky strode onstage, handing Lola a bottle of water. “What’s going on?”
“She was on the phone,” Annie told her helplessly. “Something’s happened.”
“I’m fine,” Lola croaked.
Dylan crouched beside her, peering up into her face. “Dude, you’re white as a ghost.”
“Put your head between your legs,” Vicky said, feeling for Lola’s pulse. “Give her some space!”
“I’m okay!” Lola insisted, a tear slipping down her cheek.
The creak of the theater doors split the tension like a snapped string. A young woman came up the center aisle. Car keys dangled from one hand, a phone in the other.
“Excuse me?” Garrett called. “We’re not open to the public yet.”
“I’m Jess,” the woman said, voice cool, practiced, edged with vocal fry. “I’m here to pick up Lola.”
Lola froze mid-breath, as if the lack of motion would stop her two worlds smashing into each other.
This couldn’t be happening.
“Pick her up?” Garrett repeated, sounding certain this was a mistake. “We’re in the middle of our last rehearsal.”
Jess looked to Lola. Deferring to the talent.
Lola felt like a criminal sprung mid-heist. “I just need…another hour.”
Jess’s eyebrows pinched. She looked at her phone, then back to Lola. Pointedly.
“We’re not open to the public,” Garrett repeated testily, looking between Lola and Jess. “You’ll have to wait outside till we’re done, Jess.”
“Can’t leave without Lola or I’ll lose my job.” Jess spoke in a kidding-not-kidding voice.
“What?” Vicky stepped forward, her cape trailing behind her. “What do you mean?”
“Where are you taking Lola?” Dylan asked Jess slowly.
Lola met Annie’s gaze.
Annie stared back beseechingly, moving close enough to give Lola’s hands a squeeze. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “You can tell me.”
The words cut Lola’s heart out of her chest and flung the still-beating organ onto the stage floorboards.
Lola forced herself to straighten. Look the cast in the eye. Start talking. “I just got a call.” She stumbled over explaining the film. The accident. The offer. “They want me to step in. As Maid Marian, one of the leads.”
“Opposite Clay Russo.” Zoe breathed, crossing herself. “And Kris Mack! No one blows up a gas station like Kris Mack!”
Lola licked her dry lips. “The first thing I have to do is a scene with…Haejun.”
This electrified half of the cast.
“What?” Mikki squeaked.
Zoe stepped forward, eyes like basketballs. “Are you serious?”
“Now, who’s that again?” Clyde asked.
“He’s the biggest K-pop star in the world,” Emery said. “Harry Styles is basically a white Haejun.”
Orchid squealed, clapping. “Can we meet him?”
“If anyone is meeting Haejun, it’s me,” declared Maria. “He’s a cutie patootie.”
“Yes—well done, Lola,” Jazz announced, leading the cast in a round of applause, her armfuls of bracelets clanking.
Annie still hadn’t said a word. As if she sensed there was more to come.
Lola willed herself to keep going. “The Haejun thing…it has to happen tomorrow. In London.”
“Tomorrow?” Jazz repeated. “But the show’s tomorrow.”
“And we’re not in London,” Clyde added shrewdly.
“I know,” Lola whispered, glancing guiltily at Jess.
Like a group of meerkats, the cast followed her gaze to the handler, who smiled back awkwardly.
“So, Jess,” Vicky said, “is here to take you…”
Lola gulped. “To the airport.”
The mood in the theater transformed, a freezing gust of wind announcing a pending storm.
“Oh,” Dylan said quietly.
“But, surely they can shuffle things around for you,” Deb said. “I mean, you’re Lola Wilson. Aren’t you?”
In that moment, Lola truly didn’t know who she was.
“How can we do the show without you?” Clyde asked.
“We can’t,” Kat answered bluntly. “She’s ditching us.”
Half the cast gasped. The other half froze.
“I’m not ditching you,” Lola assured everyone. “The show isn’t off. Look, I only just heard about this. I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, you have to do it,” Zoe said incredulously. “It’s Clay Russo and Kris Mack and hello, Haejun.”
“Doing it means you don’t get to perform,” Emery told her. “Don’t you have family flying in?”
“Understudies!” Jazz shouted, one finger raised jubilantly. “Lola, who’s your understudy?”
Everyone looked hopefully to Zoe, the teen who’d made the most effort all month.
But it was a white-faced Kat who shakily raised her hand. “Um—me.”
“Ah,” Jazz said, a bit less confidently. “Rightio…”
Lola gathered every ounce of strength she had and looked at Annie.
Annie stared back, wounded, her lips pressed into a hard line.
That was it. Lola couldn’t do it. Annie was more important than anything else.
Lola stepped toward her, touching her arm in a way that pushed the just friends believability. The least of her concerns. “Can we talk?”
Annie followed Lola through the wings to the green room. Lola shut the door, expecting Annie to be a teary, panicked mess.
But Annie’s face was oddly blank. Cold. “So,” she asked, folding her arms. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Lola said carefully. “We’ll decide together.”
Annie let out a short, humorless laugh, glancing up to the ceiling with a tense jaw. “Lola. What do you want to do?”
The question sounded like a riddle Annie already had the answer to. Lola took a beat to untangle her ambition, her desire, her responsibility, her—
“It’s not a complicated question!” Annie exclaimed. “What do you want?”
“It’s not that simple,” Lola shot back.
“Yes, it is,” Annie said, eerily calm. “Do you want to do this movie? Or is this just like the dress?”
“What dress?”
“The dress,” Annie spoke slowly, “that you wore last night. You didn’t like it. You only wore it because it was what other people wanted you to wear.”
A scalding flush of emotion burned Lola’s cheeks. Deep down, a part of her knew Annie was right. But another part decided Annie was being simplistic. Didn’t understand how the industry worked. Couldn’t see the whole picture.
Lola knew how this looked—jetting out of her small town for a big-budget overseas shoot. She’d promised Annie that she wouldn’t disappear.