56. Erika
ERIKA
Morning light pooled on the guest room floor—honey-gold, the kind she used to mix with cadmium yellow and chase across a canvas before she forgot how.
Boxes lined the walls, sealed and labeled in Anneliese’s handwriting because Erika had run out of steam somewhere around the kitchen items. She crouched on the bare hardwood and tried not to look at the box of art supplies in the corner.
She still couldn’t draw. But she was leaving. That had to count for something.
“I knew I’d find you here.”
Erika looked up. Anneliese stood in the doorway, pizza box in one hand and champagne in the other.
“Carbs and bubbles,” she declared, folding herself onto the floor and sliding a slice toward Erika. “Mandatory for every new chapter.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Please.” Anneliese waved her off. “Remember that rat that chewed through our bathroom wall in the old apartment? You barricaded yourself in your room until I promised cookies.”
Erika laughed despite herself. “I still hear it sometimes.”
“You’ll do amazing things out there.” Anneliese’s grin softened. “But who am I supposed to stress-bake for at two in the morning?”
“I hear Bradley’s very supportive of midnight brownies.”
Anneliese picked at the pizza box’s edge. “About Bradley. His dumbbells are in the garage.” She looked up. “He’s moving in. Officially.”
Erika set down her pizza and pulled her sister into a hug. “Annie. That’s the best news.” She pulled back, eyes stinging, and not from sadness. “He’s so good for you.”
“He is.” Anneliese’s voice went soft. “He just—he knows when to stay and when to get out of the way. I didn’t know that was a thing until him.” She glanced toward the corner, and the room shifted before Anneliese said anything.
Erika picked her slice back up, more for something to do with her hands than out of hunger.
“I’m going to ask you something,” Anneliese said carefully, “and I want you to know you don’t have to answer.”
Erika’s shoulders tightened. “Okay.”
“Does it hurt? Thinking about him?”
Erika didn't ask which one. “It’s quieter than it was. Less rage.” She looked at her hands. “More like a bruise that stops surprising you.”
Anneliese was quiet for a moment.
“Have you thought about—”
“No.” The word came out sharp. “Whatever you’re about to say—no.”
Anneliese lifted her hands. “Okay. I hear you.”
Erika watched her sister’s face, waiting for the pivot.
“There is one thing,” Anneliese said. “And I know the timing is terrible.”
“Annie—”
“That film exists because of six weeks of your life.” Her voice was quiet, not urgent.
“Six weeks of your sweat and your fear and your actual talent, which you’ve been sitting on for so long it’s starting to embarrass me.
The premiere is tomorrow.” She met Erika’s eyes. “It’s yours. That’s all I’m saying.”
Not don’t let him steal it. Not prove something. Just: it’s yours.
Erika stared at her sister. They’d both wanted to be seen once. One of them had just stopped believing she was allowed to want that.
“I don’t have anything to wear.”
Anneliese’s smile was small but it reached her eyes. “Lily’s downstairs. She’s had something waiting for three weeks.” She stood, brushing crumbs from her jeans. “No rush. Think about it.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“That’s all I’m asking.” Anneliese squeezed her hand once and moved toward the door. On her way out, she set something on the floor without looking back—a sketchbook, cover soft from handling, edges worn smooth. The door clicked shut behind her.
Erika stared at it.
The room went quiet. She sat on the bare floor with tomorrow pressing down.
Yours. The word sat there, unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
The pizza forgotten, she crossed to the sketchbook Anneliese had left on the floor.
Her Bahamas sketchbook. Her hand found it before she'd decided to reach for it. He'd kept this. Kept it, and still found a way to get it back to her.
The cover fell open to his profile—the line of his nose, the shadow along his jaw, the small furrow that appeared when he concentrated. Clinical, she'd told herself at the time. Just proportion and light.
Next page.
His hands around a coffee cup. Too long spent on the knuckles, the specific geography of them. Way too long. Past-Erika had clearly made some decisions about what counted as a worthy subject.
Another page.
His face when he laughed—eyes widening, mouth falling open, that specific unguarded thing that happened when something caught him off guard and he forgot to perform. Drawn from memory.
Apparently, past-Erika had a lot of feelings she hadn’t mentioned to present-Erika.
The sketchbook closed. Pressed against her ribs.
Tucked under her arm, she went downstairs. The bottom stair creaked under her foot and everyone in the room looked up at once.
The room had been rearranged while she was upstairs—two softboxes flanking a camera on a tripod, two chairs angled toward each other in the center.
Anneliese stood by the window with Bradley. By the other window, Isabelle Vance in a dark suit, arms crossed. Lily hovered near the door with a garment bag. In the nearest chair, a woman flipped open a reporter's notebook.
“Annie—”
Anneliese crossed to her, hands open. “Let me explain.”
“Explain what?” The words came out harder than she intended. “That you ambushed me? On moving day? What the hell, Annie?”
Anneliese didn’t crumble. “I broke my promise. I know that. But I’m not sorry I believe in you. Those are two different things.”
Erika stared at her sister.
“I’m sorry for the method,” Anneliese said. “Not the belief.”
The anger was still there. But underneath it, gratitude was working its way up through the cracks, and she hated how much that scared her
“I want to know what this is.” Erika’s voice steadied. “I want to know what this is before anyone decides anything for me.”
Lily stepped forward. “Eri—remember three weeks ago? You picked up a pencil. Just held it for a second and put it back down.” Her voice was steady. “You didn’t think I noticed. I noticed.”
Erika looked at her.
“If you want to leave, I’ll come with you,” Lily said. “No questions. But maybe, listen first.”
Teagan stood. “Erika. I’m Teagan Truly, Los Angeles Courier.
I’ve been covering Martin Blackwell and Zenith Pictures.
The cover-ups, the settlements. But half the story, yours, went untold.
Fifty thousand people watched what happened to you.
They’ve speculated. Judged. But no one’s heard from you. Not in your own words.”
"The Courier." Erika looked at Anneliese. "This is the paper that ran the piece on Martin."
Teagan nodded. Waited.
“Does Martin get to respond before it airs?”
Teagan’s expression shifted. Recognition. “We give Zenith and Blackwell forty-eight hours to comment. Standard practice. But your interview publishes first—before the premiere, before any response. Your words come first.”
Erika looked at her hands. The cool leather cover of the sketchbook sat heavy in her lap.
“What would you ask me?”
“About the Bahamas set. When you first knew something was wrong. What you remember. What came after.” Teagan’s voice was measured. “You lead. If you need a break, we stop. If a question’s too much, we skip it.”
“How long?”
“As long as you need.”
Erika turned to Isabelle.
“Why are you here?”
Isabelle looked at the floor, back up. “For Stasia,” she said. “I should have done this eight years ago.”
“What do you mean, for her?” Erika had known Isabelle was building the case. She hadn't known Isabelle was also the one who'd shut her up in the first place.
“I drafted her NDA. Smoothed out the settlement papers.” Isabelle’s voice went flat. “I watched a terrified nineteen-year-old crumble and told her silence was her only option. Patricia Voss handed me the file and said make it go away or we find someone who will.” A beat. “So I made it go away.”
“Eight years is a long time to wait for someone to grow a conscience.”
Isabelle took it without flinching. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”
“But it didn’t.”
“No.” Her face cracked—not performance, just the weight of it finally showing. “Every year I watched Martin's power grow—bigger budgets, more praise, more protection.”
“So what changed?”
“I watched them try to bury you the same way they buried her.” Isabelle’s voice went hard. “And I realized I wasn’t just watching. I was the burial.”
She met Erika’s eyes. “Stasia never got to tell her story. Sixteen women in those files never got to tell theirs. You’re not signed to silence. That’s not nothing.”
Her voice hardened. “I’m tearing up every NDA I signed. If Zenith finds out, I’m finished—fifteen years, gone. But I can’t be the person who stays quiet anymore.”
She thought of the sketchbook. His face when he laughed. The way she hadn’t wanted to close it.
“What if I do this and it doesn’t help? What if I tell them and I still feel broken?”
Nobody rushed to answer. The silence held for a beat. Real silence.
“Silence protects him. Not you.” Lily’s voice was quiet. Just that.
She thought of Stasia. Nineteen years old. Silenced for eight years.
“And the studio can’t stop me? I never signed anything.”
“You never signed an NDA,” Teagan confirmed. “They can’t touch you.”
Erika looked at Anneliese. Not a question. Just her sister’s face, the one she’d been reading her whole life. Looking at it now like she was trying to memorize it differently.
Anneliese didn’t say anything. Just held her gaze.
Lily moved to the garment bag by the door. Unzipped it quietly. The emerald silk caught the light—deep and specific, a green that had been waiting for her.
Erika looked at it for a long moment.
Yours.
“Start the camera.”
She crossed the room and sat in the chair.
“You’re sure?”
“No.” She almost smiled. “But I’m doing it anyway.”
The leather was cool against her back and the lights were too bright and Teagan was across from her with a pen and a patience that could outlast her silence.
The red light blinked once, twice, held steady.
“Erika Morgan.” Teagan’s voice was even, unhurried. “Fifty thousand people watched the livestream. The world thinks it knows your story. But they’ve never heard it from you.”
The memory arrived before she was ready—rotting floorboards, mildew, Martin’s shadow filling the doorway. The cold of the floor against her cheek. The comments scrolling past on a screen she couldn’t see.
“I went to the Bahamas for Anneliese,” she said. “To pretend to be her. I thought staying small would protect me.”
She looked at the red light. Steady. Unblinking. Witness to everything.
“I’m done with small.”