CHAPTER 3
Clara
Studio maps are designed by people who have never been chased by memory.
They look harmless at first. Clean blocks. Stage numbers. Service roads. Fire lanes. Little rectangles with labels that pretend every building is honest about what happened inside it.
The green line makes my tongue taste like old pennies.
Malcolm stands beside me under a security light outside the lot office, holding the tablet in both hands. He keeps the screen angled so I can see it without having to stand too close. Thoughtful, which annoys me. Not thoughtful enough to be forgiven, which annoys me more.
Behind us, the west gate finishes rolling shut.
The sound crawls down my back.
Metal teeth. Slow motor. A barrier becoming complete.
I do not turn around to watch it close.
“You said there was a 17B mark,” I say.
Malcolm zooms in on the digital lot map. His thumb moves with the irritating competence of a man who has made a life out of controlling things other people trip over. “It wasn’t on the current stage inventory.”
“Because 17B wouldn’t be current.”
He looks at me.
I keep my attention on the tablet. Not on his face. Not on the scar near his eyebrow I remember not being there eleven years ago. Not on the way his left shoulder sits slightly lower than his right when he’s tired.
I have enough problems without cataloging his damage.
“Where would it be?” he asks.
“Backup builds. Inserts. Second unit. Places where productions put things they want to forget but can’t throw away because they might need the angle later.”
“Storage.”
“Hollywood calls it storage when it wants to sound organized.”
A corner of his mouth almost moves. It doesn’t. He learned restraint after me, apparently. Or before me and I was too young to recognize it as a warning.
He drags the map two stages east. “Stage 18 has archival flats. Stage 9 has old horror builds. Stage 22 is leased.”
“No.” I point to a narrow structure tucked between Stage 14 and an old mill building. “There.”
His finger stops above mine without touching.
The space between our hands is less than an inch and loud enough to interrupt my thinking.
“Wardrobe annex,” he says.
“That’s what it became.”
“What was it?”
“Temporary insert stage. We called it the shoebox because you couldn’t fit a dolly track in there unless everyone inhaled and apologized.”
He studies the map. “It’s not listed as active.”
“It wouldn’t be. Half the buildings on lots are retired until a producer needs to hide a mistake.”
“That where you shot pickups?”
“Some.”
“Scene seventeen?”
I look up then.
His face gives away less than his body. Malcolm’s face is built for bad news: controlled mouth, steady eyes, the kind of calm that makes other people hand him authority before they realize it isn’t the same as truth.
His body is less disciplined. His thumb presses too hard on the tablet edge.
The case is already cracked near the corner.
“Don’t ask me like you weren’t there,” I say.
His fingers loosen.
A golf cart rattles past carrying two crew members, a plastic crate of fake knives, and a woman in a headset whisper-arguing with someone named Brent.
The smell of damp plywood and burnt coffee rides the cold air.
Somewhere across the lot, a generator coughs, recovers, and settles into a low mechanical growl.
Malcolm waits until the cart passes. “I was on main unit that night.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.”
A laugh leaves me without humor. “You’ve improved. Very concise avoidance.”
“Clara.”
“There it is.”
“I’m not trying to—”
“To what? Manage me? Protect me? Save me from nouns?”
His jaw does not tick. He is too controlled for that. The skin along his cheek tightens, and his gaze drops to the badge clipped to my coat.
“I’m trying to find Avery,” he says.
The name does what it should. It cuts through the old argument and leaves the current girl bleeding in the middle of it.
Good.
Fine.
I can hate Malcolm later. I have a calendar.
“Then take me to the wardrobe trailer first,” I say.
His eyes sharpen. “Not the annex?”
“If Avery was wearing Laurel’s coat, I want to know who touched it before she did.”
“Diana said wardrobe asked for it back.”
“Then wardrobe knows it left.”
“And if someone on wardrobe is involved?”
“Then they’ll lie badly when they see me.”
He looks at me for half a second too long.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
He shifts the tablet under one arm and starts walking. “You always liked catching people before they had time to rehearse.”
The old familiarity lands in the wrong place.
A small, stupid part of me remembers him on set with two coffees balanced in one hand, saying, You ask questions like you’re setting traps for ghosts.
I had said, Ghosts are terrible at paperwork.
Laurel had stolen one of the coffees and declared herself evidence.
I force my attention to the lot.
The studio at night is uglier than memory.
Memory gives everything lighting. The actual place has trash bags, traffic cones, cables under rubber ramps, cigarette smoke near dumpsters, vans with dented doors, a folding table covered in abandoned fruit, and actors in partial costume scrolling on phones with fake blood drying on their collars.
People look at me as we pass.
Some recognize me.
Some don’t but recognize the way other people recognize me, which is worse. That secondhand stare. The one that says I should know why this woman matters.
A young crew member near craft services whispers to another. The other elbows him hard enough to spill coffee down his sleeve.
I keep walking.
My visitor badge bumps against my coat with each step.
VISITOR — TEMPORARY ACCESS.
Nice. Accurate. Slightly insulting.
Malcolm slows beside a row of trailers. “You want a minute?”
“No.”
“Because if you do—”
“Do you offer everyone little emotional intermissions, or am I a legacy perk?”
His mouth tightens. “You’re angry.”
“I’m busy.”
“You can be both.”
“That sounded dangerously close to insight.”
“I’ve had eleven years.”
I stop.
He stops because he knows better than to take one more step when I don’t.
There are twenty feet of asphalt between us and the wardrobe trailer. A yellow porch light buzzes over the door. Two garment racks stand outside under plastic covers, swaying a little in the wind from an industrial fan around the corner. The plastic makes a soft, skinless sound.
“I need you to understand something,” I say.
His attention stays on my face. Not roaming, not soft, not hungry for forgiveness. That would be easier to hate.
“I’m here because Avery is alive and somebody used Laurel’s name to pull me in. I’m not here to make peace with you. I’m not here to process. I’m not here for the commemorative trauma tour.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to look at me like—”
I stop because the sentence gets too honest without permission.
Like you remember me.
Like you kept something.
Like you have any claim to the girl I was before the reports turned her into weather.
Malcolm’s hand flexes once at his side.
“Like what?” he asks quietly.
The bad thing about knowing someone well is that even their restraint starts answering questions.
“Like that,” I say.
He looks away first.
Tiny victory.
Hollow as a prop wall.
The wardrobe trailer door opens before either of us can ruin the night further. A woman with blunt silver hair, black glasses, and a measuring tape around her neck steps out holding a clipboard to her chest.
She sees Malcolm, then me.
Her face drains so fast it would be funny in a kinder genre.
“Ms. Vane,” she says.
I smile. It feels professional enough to count as a weapon. “That depends who’s asking.”
“I’m Teresa Hall. Wardrobe supervisor.”
“Current wardrobe?”
“Yes.”
“You worked the original?”
“No. I was assistant on two reshoots. Years ago.” Her eyes flick to Malcolm. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“Neither did I,” I say. “That’s been the theme.”
Malcolm steps half a pace back.
Not leaving. Not taking over.
Interesting.
I turn to Teresa. “Laurel West’s red coat. Who pulled it?”
Her fingers tighten on the clipboard. “It’s not Laurel West’s coat.”
Wrong answer.
I tilt my head. “Try again.”
Teresa wets her lower lip. “It’s an original hero wardrobe piece from the archive.”
“Hero wardrobe piece,” I repeat.
She closes her eyes for half a second like she heard herself. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t waste sorry on phrasing. Who pulled it?”
Teresa looks over my shoulder, maybe toward the production offices, maybe toward a life where she called in sick tonight.
“The request came from production.”
“Names are beautiful things.”
“Victor approved it.”
“Who requested it?”
“Avery.”
Malcolm shifts beside me.
I keep my eyes on Teresa. “Avery requested to wear the original coat?”
“She asked to see it.”
“When?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“Why?”
“She said she was doing research.”
“Did that strike you as odd?”
“Actors ask for strange things all the time.” Teresa gives a nervous laugh that dies halfway out. “One actor on a vampire show made me soak all his socks in tea because white cotton ruined his process.”
“That’s upsetting, but not an answer.”
Her mouth presses flat.
Good. She has moved from fear to irritation. Irritated people are less careful.
“She was intense,” Teresa says. “Not difficult. I don’t mean—”
Her eyes cut to me.
The word sits there, embarrassed by itself.
I let her sit with it.
Teresa clears her throat. “She was focused. Asked questions about the original wardrobe aging, continuity, stains. She wanted to know what was real and what was added after.”
“The mark on the cuff?”
“Yes.”
My fingers curl inside my coat pocket.
Malcolm sees. Of course he sees.
I take my hand out and flatten it against my bag strap.
“Who had access after Avery looked at it?” I ask.
“Me. My assistant, Paul. Diana came by and rejected it for the shoot. Victor came by after. Nate from publicity wanted photos for legacy content, but I told him no.”
Nate.
Publicity.
A name with bad lighting around it.