11. Solenne
— ? —
Solenne
Morning light fills Odette’s kitchen, warm and golden, the particular California sunshine that feels like a homecoming after six months away.
Summer is at the table with a bowl of cereal, methodically picking out the marshmallow shapes and eating them first while Bunny supervises from the chair beside her.
“The pink ones are the best,” she informs me. “The green ones taste like the box.”
“Maybe don’t eat the green ones, then.”
“I have to eat them. They’re in there.” She frowns at a green shape, then eats it with visible resignation. “This kind is better than the one we had before we went to Italy.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember everything,” she says this with the absolute confidence of a four-year-old. “Daddy liked the blue ones. He always tried to steal mine.”
I pour myself coffee from the pot Odette made before she left for her morning run and lean against the counter, watching my daughter navigate her breakfast. She mentions Valentin casually now, the way she mentions any fact about her life.
Daddy liked this. Daddy did that. She talks to him every few days on the phone, calls coordinated through Odette because I still can’t bring myself to hear his voice directly.
She doesn’t understand why he’s not here, but she’s accepted this new reality the way children accept things, with questions that come and go like weather.
Three weeks. We’ve been here three weeks. Long enough for the guest room to start feeling like a place we live instead of a place we’re staying. Long enough for me to sign divorce papers and slide them across a lawyer’s desk.
I didn’t cry in the office. I saved that for later, alone, where Summer couldn’t hear. But I signed my name and I meant it.
“Mama?” Summer looks up from her cereal surgery. “Can we go to the park today?”
“Maybe this afternoon. I have a meeting this morning.”
“Another one?”
“Another one.”
“You have a lot of meetings.”
“I do. But this one might be interesting.”
She considers this while fishing another pink marshmallow from the milk. “What’s it about?”
“A story I’ve been working on. About a woman who has to start over when her whole life changes.”
“Does she have a bunny?”
“She doesn’t yet. Do you think she should?”
“Everyone should have a bunny.” Summer holds up Bunny as evidence. “For when things are scary.”
The front door opens and Odette comes in, flushed from her run, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail that’s mostly escaped its elastic. She grabs a water bottle from the fridge and drains half of it before acknowledging our existence.
“You’re up early,” she says to me.
“Meeting prep.”
“The development one?”
“Rachel Levy. She read the treatment I sent over.”
“The limited series?” Odette leans against the counter beside me. “The one about the woman rebuilding after leaving everything?”
“That’s the one.”
“How are you feeling about it?”
I shrug, but the truth is I’ve been thinking about this meeting for days.
Not because I’m nervous about Rachel’s opinion, but because I’m excited in a way I haven’t been excited about work in a long time.
The treatment poured out of me in the first week we were here, late nights after Summer was asleep, words I didn’t know I had until I started typing them.
“I think it’s good,” I say. “I think there’s something real there.”
“There is.” Odette finishes her water. “I read it. It made me cry, and I don’t cry at pitches.”
***
The production company offices are in a converted warehouse in Culver City, all exposed brick and natural light. Rachel Levy meets me in a small conference room with glass walls and a view of people moving purposefully through the open floor plan beyond.
“I read your treatment twice,” she says, settling into her chair. “The first time fast, the second time slow. Which is usually how I know something’s working.”
“And?”
“The bones are strong. The woman’s journey feels specific and universal at the same time, which is hard to pull off.
” She opens her tablet and scrolls through notes.
“I have questions about the second act. She makes the decision to leave, she arrives somewhere new, and then there’s a stretch where it feels like you’re not sure what her active problem is. ”
“She’s figuring out who she is without the context she’s always had.”
“Right, but that’s internal. What’s the external engine? What’s she doing while she figures that out?”
I think about the weeks since we arrived. The meetings, the calls with lawyers, the nights lying awake in Odette’s guest room with pages spread across the bed. I was working through most of our marriage. I want that part of my life back without having to surrender the rest.
“She’s rebuilding,” I say. “Not just emotionally. Practically. She has to find work, find a place to live, figure out how to be a single parent. All the mundane logistics of starting over.”
“That could work. Make the logistics feel urgent, give her obstacles that force her to act.” Rachel makes a note. “What about the husband? He’s mostly absent in the second act.”
“He’s dealing with the fallout back home. His part of the story is learning what he missed, not trying to get her back yet.”
“Yet.” Rachel looks up. “So there’s a reconciliation arc?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe she realizes she’s better off without him. I haven’t decided.”
“That’s honest.” Rachel sets down her tablet. “Most writers come in with the ending locked. You’re still living in the question.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It can be a strength, if you let the uncertainty drive the character instead of stalling her.” She leans back in her chair.
“Here’s what I think. The voice is there.
The emotional truth is there. You know this woman because you understand something about what she’s going through.
What you need is a clearer shape for the middle, and a sense of what she’s fighting for beyond survival. ”
“What would make you want to keep watching her?”
Rachel turns the tablet toward me. “Here. Where she refuses a job because the person offering it keeps calling it a favor. I want to see what happens when she has to go back and ask for it.”
We talk for another hour, about structure and pacing and the particular challenges of telling a story about internal transformation in a visual medium. By the time I leave, there’s one scene I want to rewrite before I lose it.
I call Odette from the car and ask if she can keep Summer a little longer.
“We’re headed to the park after the library,” she says. “Do what you need to do.”
I spend the afternoon in a café with my laptop and a sandwich I forget until the bread has gone hard at the edges. The woman in my scene goes back for the job. She makes a joke that doesn’t land, gets angry when she doesn’t mean to, and finally asks for a wage instead of a favor.
I delete the speech I gave her about independence. She doesn’t need it anymore.
When Odette sends a photograph of Summer crouching beside a caterpillar, I close the laptop. I’ve missed the park, but there is still dinner. I pack up and go.
This is what I missed. Not just the work, but the feeling of building something. Of having opinions that matter, ideas that might become real.
The sky has gone dark by the time I’m driving back toward Odette’s house, clouds rolling in from the ocean.
Rain in Los Angeles still feels like an event, and I watch the first drops hit the windshield with something like wonder.
By the time I pull into the driveway, the rain has become a steady downpour.
I run from the car to the front door, getting soaked in the ten seconds it takes to cover the distance.
Odette and Summer are in the kitchen, finishing dinner. Summer has spaghetti sauce on her chin and is telling Odette a complicated story about a caterpillar she saw at the park.
“It was green,” she explains. “But also a little bit yellow. And it was very slow.”
“Caterpillars are usually slow,” Odette agrees.
“This one was extra slow. I think it was tired.”
I towel off my hair and join them at the table, listening to Summer’s caterpillar analysis while I eat the plate Odette saved for me. The rain drums against the windows, a steady rhythm that feels almost cozy.
After dinner, I take Summer upstairs for her bath. She insists on bringing Bunny into the bathroom, though Bunny has to stay dry on the counter.
“Bunnies don’t like baths,” she explains.
“No?”
“No. Bunny takes dust baths. Like chinchillas.”
“Where did you learn about chinchillas?”
“The library. They have books about everything.”
I wash her hair while she tells me about chinchillas and their bathing habits, then wrap her in a towel and carry her to the guest room that’s become hers. Her pajamas have rabbits on them, which she chose specifically because of Bunny.
“Story?” she asks, climbing into bed.
“One chapter.”
We’re working through a book about a girl who befriends a family of mice living in her walls. Summer likes the mice but is skeptical about the girl.
“She should tell her mom about the mice,” Summer says, when I finish the chapter.
“Why?”
“Because secrets are hard. And her mom might want to meet them.”
I close the book and set it on the nightstand. “You’re right. Secrets are hard.”
“Mama?” She’s looking at me with the particular intensity children get when they’re about to ask something important. “When is Daddy coming to visit?”
I smooth her hair back from her forehead. “I don’t know, sweetheart. Soon, maybe.”
“I want to show him my drawings. The ones from the library.”
“I know you do.”
“Can you tell him? When you talk to him?”
“I’ll make sure he knows.”
She nods, satisfied, and closes her eyes. I sit beside her until her breathing evens out, then slip quietly from the room.
***
Odette is in the living room with a glass of wine, the rain still drumming against the windows. She hands me the other glass she’s poured without asking if I want it.
“Meeting went well?”
“Really well. Rachel had good notes. I know what I need to fix.”
“Good.”